 Looks like we're on, we'll go ahead and get started. Good morning everybody, welcome to the 9.30 AM, public portion of the closed session litigation of our December 10th, 2019 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony. Thereafter, the council members will move to the courtyard conference room for our closed session. I'd like to ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council member is Cron. Here. Glover. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to us on any closed session items? I see none. So at this time, we'll go ahead and adjourn our council meeting to our courtyard conference room where the city council will go into our closed session. Hey, shall we get started? Oh, that's good. So I'm just going to go there for a little bit. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and get started. If I could get your attention. Good morning, everybody. Thank you. We'll go ahead and get started. So welcome to our now 10, 25 session of our December 10th, 2019 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I'd like to ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council member is Cron. Here. Glover. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. And if you could clerk, please lead us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So we'll go ahead and be introduced to some of our new city employees. And we'll go ahead and start with our Assistant Director of Libraries, Eric Howard, to introduce our new library employees. Good afternoon. I am very pleased to introduce Rachel McKay, who's been actually with the library part time since 2016. She's one of our outreach LA twos. You'll see her often working downtown, but she also wears an outreach hat, which means she supports us in our jail services. Which has been wonderful, and we're getting lots of praise for all the work that we're doing there. So we are very pleased to introduce Rachel today. Wonderful. Well, thank you and welcome. I'd like to now invite up our Park Superintendent Travis Speck to introduce the new employee with the Parks and Rec Department. Good morning, Mayor, Council. Very pleased to introduce Sean Sled, Parks Maintenance Worker. Sean is a longtime resident of Santa Cruz. He graduated from high school here and he's raising his own son here in the city. He worked for many years in the construction trades as an independent contractor and brings a very strong skill set to us in that area. He started with the city this summer as a temporary Parks Maintenance Worker working at Neary Lagoon. And we were all impressed with his work ethic, his problem solving skills, and really his positive teamwork. So we're very excited to be able to offer him a position as Parks Maintenance Worker. He's working with the Central Zone staff, so covering Harvey West Park, Pogonip, and downtown. So if you see him out on his beat, please say hello. Really, welcome. All right, welcome, Sean. And I'd like to now invite up our Acting Recreation Superintendent Jill Bates to introduce the new employee. Hi, Jill. Good morning, Mayor, City Council. It is my honor and pleasure to introduce Shannon Cotton, Recreation Assistant for Special Events and Special Classes in the Recreation Division at the Parks and Recreation Department. Shannon was born and raised, or born in Santa Clara, lived in Las Gadas, Monterey, San Diego, but was raised in Aptos. And she attended and graduated Aptos High School. She participated in high school volleyball and soccer, and she went on to Chico State with a volleyball scholarship. She majored in Recreation Administration. She had two internships, one at Pinnacles National Park and one at Glacier National Park. And her job experience, she worked with the City of Watsonville Parks and Recreation Department prior to coming on board here at the City of Santa Cruz. And she has a lot of hobbies. She loves to run the trails. She's anxious to get out and run the trails at Poganip. She loves to hike and camp and anything outdoors. She has a very supportive, close family. She has a supportive mother and father who she deeply respects and two older sisters that she looks up to. Shannon has a faithful pet, Doxin, named Ollie, who she rescued in Chico two years ago. And they have been best friends ever since. Shannon has hit the ground running since she came on board and took over an event down at the Santa Cruz Cal Beach Surf Club plaque dedication. And she did that all on her own with the help of some staff. So we have been very, very happy. And it is my pleasure to welcome Shannon Cotton to the City of Santa Cruz. Welcome Shannon. And last but certainly not least, we'll go ahead and invite up our water director, Rosemary Minard, to introduce her to me. Good morning, Mayor and Council. It's my pleasure today to introduce to you two new employees of the Water Resources Group. These are two new water resources analysts that's a new position we created last spring. And these are the first two people hired into this position. These folks do all of our natural resources, planning and monitoring. Sometimes you'll see them in the lagoon on the San Lorenzo River doing fish counts. They also do a lot of other work related to watershed management and environmental compliance. So we're really lucky to have both of them. The first I'm going to introduce is Randy Holloway. Randy brings to us a master's in watershed science from Cal State University at Monterey Bay. And he is a BA in philosophy from UCSC. So those two things should go together somehow. I'm not sure exactly, but. And he's been a staff scientist at several local environmental engineering companies. He's done water treatment equipment sales and installation and a previous internship and part-time technical assistant before with our water resources group. He lives in Santa Cruz since 1986. He's drummed in many different bands around town and enjoys all of the outdoor activities we have here. So please welcome Randy. And next I want to introduce to you Marina Sadorik. And she's also brings a graduate degree. She's a graduate of UCSC in environmental studies and biology. She's got a lot of good experience as a fishery scientist. So that's really a big help for us and a lot of the work that we're doing. She was a scientific aide at Cal Fish and Wildlife, completing stream monitoring work related to salmon and steelhead populations in Santa Cruz and San Mateo County. And then she also worked as a fisheries biologist for Pacific State Marines Fisheries Commission, managing coho and steelhead population monitoring projects in Santa Cruz and San Mateo County. She grew up in Monterey. She's got water in her blood. I think she's volunteered at the Monterey Bay Aquarium since high school, so 12 years of that. She enjoys backpacking and gardening. So please help us welcome Marina. Welcome, welcome all the new city employees. Thank you for choosing to work for the city of Santa Cruz. So we'll go ahead and move right along to our presentations, which I think many of you in the room are here for. And it's a real treat and honor to be able to present the 2019 Officer Jim House Community Service Award. And I'll just say a few remarks about the award. So the Officer Jim House Community Service Award is an annual award given to community members and city employees for outstanding service to the Santa Cruz community. The award was created in honor of Officer House, who retired in 2007. And after serving as a Santa Cruz police officer for 26 years, and I had an opportunity actually to work with him briefly as he worked at the county office of education after that. He was known throughout the city for his positive approach and partnership building between the city and the Santa Cruz community. Officer House Community Service Award honors his legacy of positive collaboration, problem solving, and recipients of the award are found to exhibit extraordinary dedication and efforts through improving the quality of life in Santa Cruz through constructive solution oriented work. Work in collaboration with the city or city departments and other community stakeholders. And embody a spirit of cooperation between the city and the community. And set a positive tone that inspires and motivates others. And those who knew Jim know he really did embody those characteristics. So this year's nominees included so very many impressive and worthy community members and city employees who were nominated and being part of the committee for selecting it, very, very difficult. And so at this time, I'd like to really acknowledge all those who were nominated and provide certificates to the nominees and then we'll go ahead and provide the certificates to the recipients of the awards. So if you could come and accept your certificate as nominees when I read your name. And I'd like to just read a little brief sort of paragraph about the characteristics you displayed. So first I have Amanda Rotella as a 2019 City Employee nominee. I'd like to just acknowledge her demonstration of extraordinary dedication and effectiveness to improve the quality of life for the Santa Cruz community through a positive collaborative solution oriented approach. As well as Mike Hopper as a nominee. And we have Claire Fleisler as a nominee. Is she here, Claire? And Sergeant John Bush who was unable to make it. So we'll go ahead and hand out these certificates and thank you for being here and for your extraordinary work. Right, so congratulations. Your colleagues and supervisors all recognize the amazing contributions that you all provide to our city. And I want to thank you so much for your service. So this year our selection committee met and we chose the following recipients for the 2019 Jim House Award, one recipient from the community and the other a city employee. And I'll start with our community recipient of the 2019 Jim House Award and that's Dr. David Ravel and go ahead and come on up. David Ravel is a PhD as a principal of Ravel Coastal and is a well known and respected member of the community who is dedicated to improving the sustainable quality of life for our community through his professional and volunteer efforts. To collaboratively and thoughtfully protect our local coastal resources and watershed from sea level rise both now and in the future. He has been an incredible advocate asset and partner for the city of Santa Cruz. His coastal resources and by extension the community at large. In the course of his efforts, he has worked collaboratively with countless local stakeholders. Thank you for your service, David. And so this year's city employee recipient of the 2019 Jim House Award is Jill Bates. She has served as a member of the Parks and Recreation Department for over 35 years. Her collaboration with the Santa Cruz Fire Department and the Junior Life Guards Program. And the engagement with youth and families have led to hundreds of youths going through that program. Learning about water safety, but most importantly learning about what it means to be a leader. She has also been the city's leader with all aspects of Little League, youth sports, adult league sports and is well known for her organization and energy among the local sports community. Her dedication to providing quality services and outstanding programs to Santa Cruz is virtually unparalleled. So thank you for your service, Jill, and congratulations. Just saying, this has actually been an honor and a pleasure to be a part of the city of Santa Cruz and work for our community and all of you and I am in great company. So congratulations to the recipients of the award, to the nominees, and I want to thank all of you who are here to support this recognition. Thank you for being here and for your service to the community and also the recognition of those who you work alongside. So at this moment, we'll go ahead and conclude this part of the ceremony and we'll move into the next presentation. You're welcome to, if you'd like to transition how you'd like, if you're not here for the next portion. So our next presentation is the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. And we have Felicia Van Stolk, who is the new Executive Director of the Museum of Natural History, and welcome. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Director of the Museum of Natural History. I'd like to thank you for your time and your support of the museum. And just wanted to share a little update about the museum. We are going to be closing our doors very soon for just a brief closure and so I hope you're able to join us for the holiday or before the holidays. And if not, join us in the new year on January 10th for our grand reopening. We will have a new exhibit focusing on mushrooms. And there will also be some exciting renovations in our historic building that we're looking forward to sharing with all of you. Well, I've also brought some annual reports here to share some of our recent successes. If I can, in particular, I would like to, I'm particularly proud of how many local students we've been able to serve through the museum's programs. Last year, we spent 250 hours outside in city parks with over 7,000 students and parents. And I'd like to add that many of those students and parents are super thrilled with the recent TLC that the whale got in our park. So thank you for that. As soon as the whale was open, it was covered in children, it's lovely. I just love how much love the parks have been getting today and in general how the emphasis on loving our trails and the nature we have here. It makes our mission so achievable, the connecting people to nature and science and promoting stewardship. I consider the city of Santa Cruz an essential partner with us in that mission. And some of you might know that the city ran the museum for over 100 years before we became an independent nonprofit. So I'm also here to thank you for your support and especially another shout out to the Parks and Rec Department for their support as we have become our own independent nonprofit while maintaining that strong partnership with the city. And to that end, as a gesture of our gratitude, I have brought a present. This painting here is by a local artist, Mika Nikau, who has hung her art in our Art of Nature science illustration exhibit for many years. And it shows a mandala of a food web that supports sea otters and kelp forests, things that make our bay very special. And I love that this mandala also emphasizes the importance of interconnectedness and relationships. It reminds us of important relationships like the one between the museum and the city. Those are things that make our community strong and special, just like our kelp forests. So thank you for your support and I hope to see you all at the museum soon. Thank you so much for the presentation and naturally just that beautiful piece of art and the symbolism behind that. And as a student who just went through your program, I can really attest to the incredible services you're providing to our children. So thank you very much. Councilor Myers. And I just want to recognize Felicia and welcome her as our new executive director. Felicia is born and raised here. She's also the first woman executive director at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. And so we're very pleased to have her here. And she's going to continue to educate our children county wide on nature and science into the future. Okay, thank you. Okay, so our next presentation is for Rick Martinez. And it's bittersweet because it's 30 years of service, but it's a retirement moment in proclamation. So I'm honored to be in this position to be able to sign this proclamation to mark this moment in your career. If I can, maybe I'll just read a few of the where as's and then let you have the mic. You are the mayor. We're a little bit longer, so I'll go ahead and do that. So whereas on June 1st, 1989, Richard Martinez was hired as a beach ranger, a park ranger by the city of Santa Cruz Parks and Rec Department. And I'll skip a good portion because I want you to be able to say your words. But whereas Richard Martinez currently serves on or has served on numerous boards and committees, and on December 19th, 2019, Rick Martinez will be retiring and will be honored for being an outstanding example of loyalty and a tremendous asset to the city of Santa Cruz. This community, our community, and its police department, and long remembered and appreciated for both his friendship and for his 30 years of commendable service. And he will be sorely missed, so it's my pleasure as mayor for a little bit longer to hereby proclaim today, or to hereby proclaim, excuse me, December 19th, 2019 as Richard Martinez retirement day in the city of Santa Cruz. And I encourage our entire city, the co-workers and others to join me in expressing our heartfelt appreciation for your 30 years of service and dedicated exemplary service and numerous contributions that I've been able to observe, particularly in education. And for the Santa Cruz Police Department and the city of Santa Cruz, we really wish you well in your retirement, so congratulations. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, this is definitely a bittersweet moment for me, I think as the mayor mentioned. I spent my entire adult life as an employee of the city of Santa Cruz. So it's really become my home, and I wanted to really share some comments about my journey and kind of how I got here today, especially since this will probably be the last time I'll be talking to you as an employee of the city of Santa Cruz and as your deputy chief of police. So let me start, took some notes because I want to make sure I didn't miss anything. Still from the heart, it's just concise from the heart. That's for your timeline today. Like my grandparents and parents, I was raised here in Santa Cruz. Despite having a multi-generational community ties, I spent my youth living in several low-income Section 8 housing units throughout the city and county with my mother and my younger sister. That is when we could find housing. So I have first-hand lived experience with many of the core issues our community continues to struggle with, which is why I wanted to take this opportunity to implore you to continue to collaborate and advocate for an increase in affordable housing and bed space for those suffering with behavioral health issues and those struggling with addiction. Also, striving to change the nimby-led narrative and political self-interest that has kept us as a community from getting those most vulnerable into a safer, more humane place, simply preserving life. That's my parting plea to you and to our community. Over 30 years ago, I began my employment with the city of Santa Cruz. He has a beach ranger working on the beach under the Parks and Recreation Department and Lifeguard Service while I was attending college. I actually intended on getting into hospitality, you know, a career running a hotel or resort management, actually, but the Loma Prieta 1989 earthquake changed that intended path. As a first responder deployed into the downtown the evening of the earthquake, I quickly realized what being a public servant truly meant and I never left. Despite the adversity I've overcome throughout my career and adversity is probably being a bit of an understatement, I'm more than appreciative of the opportunities and life the city of Santa Cruz and its citizens have given me. I've had the honor to work and serve with some of the most dedicated and courageous people internally at the police department, across city departments, and externally with community stakeholders, many of which have become close as family. I know you're here to acknowledge my contribution, but still in my mind I've always been that struggling, seasonally employed kid that is still to this day thankful. I've had year-round work in the small tourist town I was fortunate enough to have been raised. For that, I thank Santa Cruz. Thank you. Thank you for your 30 years of service and we wish you the best of luck in your retirement. It's very well deserved and we'll be seeing you around Santa Cruz, we know it. Okay, so that then concludes our presentations for this afternoon or this morning session, so we'll go ahead and jump right into a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting and I'll maybe wait just a sec while we transition here. So today is a unique kind of day in that we have this as our last meeting before we take a bit of a break over the holidays and is a transition meeting in ceremonial in many ways and so we'll be concluding our afternoon session at a firm time around 5.15 and any items that still remain if need be will be heard in the evening. So today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television channel 25 and is streaming on the city's website at CityofSantaCruise.com. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left and it's my job to keep our meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside and outside of our city council chambers. So I'd like to ask now if there are any council members who have any statements of disqualification today. Seeing none, I'll go ahead and see if there are any additions or deletions to our agenda today. Brief announcement about oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to address the council on items that are not on our agenda and oral communications will occur at or as closely around 7 p.m. this evening as possible. I'll go ahead and turn it to our city attorney to report on closed session. Mr. Kandani. Good afternoon. Good morning. Thank you Mayor Watkins. Members of the city council. City council convened in closed session this morning at 9 30 in the courtyard conference room. There were four categories of matter discussed in this morning's closed session. The first was liability claims. Item A was the claims of James Giannopoulos, David Bruce Press, Denise Elizabeth Byron, Janice Ann Saria, Damian J. Ramirez. Those are also listed as item 10 on your agenda this morning. Item B was pending litigation. There were two pending litigation items in which the council received a report from and gave direction to legal council. First is the 1930 ocean street extension case pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. That is 1930 ocean street extension neighbors versus the city of Santa Cruz. Second is the matter entitled save our big trees versus the city of Santa Cruz. Item C was a conference with legal council pertaining to anticipated litigation. Considering initiation of litigation council received a report from legal council and gave direction. There was no reportable action on that item. Lastly, the council received a report from its negotiator concerning the city owned property in the city of Scotts Valley, commonly known as Sky Park. Council received a report and gave direction but no reportable action was taken. Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. I'll go ahead and see if our city council meeting calendar is going to be revised or if there are any changes to the calendar, City Clerk. Okay. Go ahead and move on. So that takes this right up to our consent agenda. And those are items 5 through 18 on our agenda. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who would like to pull any items on our consent agenda? Council member Myers. I just have a question on number eight but I don't want to pull it. Okay. Question number eight. Council member Brown. I have a question on number seven and question e-comment on number 15. Okay. Vice Mayor Cummings. Question on number five. Okay. Any other questions or items to be pulled? Council member Cron. Yeah, I would like to pull item seven and eight. Okay. All right. Any other items to be pulled or comments to be taken? I'll just pull five. And pull five. Okay. Okay. Let's see. If there's any members of the public who would like to speak to items on our consent agenda, we'll go ahead and have that after we have now just one question of item 15 because the other items were pulled. So item 15. Council member Brown, a question? Well, it's a question e-comment. It's really a comment. I guess the, so the item 15 is the Citywide Pedestrian Crossing Improvement Project, which I totally support. I'm really glad to see the map and see the locations where these improvements are going to be made. I think they will improve health and safety or safety, excuse me, for pedestrians along some of our more dangerous corridor routes, especially. And I just wanted to, because I've had, we've talked about the SoCal Frederick Intersection at the Regional Transportation Commission and I understand the delay in making the broader improvements to that intersection, but I just am interested in why that intersection wasn't included for pedestrian improvements, at least for now in the interim, and just again express my interest in moving that project forward. Do you want to come speak to that? Good morning. Chris Schneider, Assistant Director of Public Works. SoCal Frederick is a fully signalized intersection, already has pedestrian warnings and push buttons. The other H-SIP grants are all associated with unprotected crosswalks. Any other questions for item 15 or any other items on consent aside from item 5, 7, or 8? Question? Just comment on this. I'm 15. I'm 15. So earlier this year, a member of the public reached out to me about the intersection of Fern and Lime Kiln and then Lime Kiln and Ensemble and I was just wondering, because those intersections, the folks who live in that area said that it's been very dangerous with cars speeding through, kind of going towards the Costco area and I was just wondering if there's any update on what might be happening with those intersections as well and Schneider again. We are in traffic engineering staff is looking at those intersections or those crosswalks. The ones that are in the project currently are based on collision histories and data and that's how we got the grant. The ones over in the Harvey West area that you're referring to don't have that level of collisions or anything like that. But we are taking a look at and evaluating them and I believe Jim Burr responded to your email to that effect. Thank you. Seeing no other questions, we'll go ahead and see if there's any members of the community who would like to address the Council on our consent agenda. This is for any of the items on consent aside from item five, seven and eight which have been pulled and will have an opportunity for public comment at that time. So is there any other members of the community wanting to address the Council on consent? Okay seeing none we'll go ahead and return back to the Council for action. I'll move to consent. I'll second. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor coming seconded by myself. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay that passes unanimously. We'll go ahead and start with item number five, five which was pulled and I think there was also a question on item number five and was it? That was me. I just had a question because it came up when speaking with some members of the public around the final motion that was made when we were discussing the camping ordinance and sending it to the catch and when it was returned to return in at the end of January. I just wanted some clarification because I wasn't sure if that specific date of January was actually in the motion or if it was suggested afterwards. I did respond to your email and upon rewatching the video it was part of the motion because I actually had it up on the screen and I was adding to it and it was part of the motion then so it would be our understanding that that was the intent because nobody said anything at that time. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilor McCrone? Maybe you got back to me also but just a question about directing council when someone speaks. You guys have a copy of a red line at your Epidias right now and we will edit it to add that direction. Thank you. Okay. Oh yeah, okay. Any other comments on this item? Item number five of our consent agenda. Is there any member of the community who would like to address the council on item number five in our consent agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for action. I move item number five. Okay, we have a motion. With the amended. With the amended language. We have a motion by Vice Mayor coming seconded by Councilor McCrone. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. We'll go ahead and move right along to item number seven in consent agenda and I believe that was pulled by Councilor McCrone. Yeah, I just wanted to get more of an update on what we're talking about. Are we only paying the taxes on these properties should we ever acquire them? And has somebody I'm assuming done the math and like which properties exactly and why just 200,000? Yes, so the state law puts forward the sort of general process for the sale of tax-defaulted properties. The owners currently have up until the date that the city or any other agency would close on them to pay off that debt. But under the state law, public agencies can acquire those properties for just the outstanding debt and any other like transfer taxes and things that would go on it. So the prices that you see listed on the property profiles page, that's the outstanding debt and those fees estimated by the county that we would pay for each of those properties. The amount requested in the budget adjustment is enough to cover those total costs plus some ancillary unforeseen costs that might be related to quieting title or other actions. So you've actually worked with the county and they've told you this is what it's going to cost for the properties? That's when they published their list out to all the public agencies that's the amount that they expect to get from us. Thank you Mayor. Customer Ben. Yeah, so I see that the auction is scheduled to be held in March 2020. I'm just wondering if we could get a report back on the outcome to the council so we know what happened with these properties and the action the city took. Absolutely. I can't say exactly when the city would wrap up its process supposing that the properties aren't redeemed by the owner. But as soon as we do get a determination from the county I would be happy to put a report back together. Great and it could just be a FYI memo or something. Thank you. Any other questions from the council on this item? All right. Is there any member of the community who would like to address the council? This is item number seven on our consent agenda. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay we'll go ahead and return back for council action. I'll move approval. Okay, council member Matthews, a motion by councilor Matthews, seconded by council member Myers. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay that passes unanimously. And then last item on consent that was pulled is item number eight and I believe there was a question or comment on that by council member Myers and then it was pulled by council member Kern. Do you want to ask your question? Yeah I just had a question. I'm not sure if it's for finance or I just had a question regarding really the city attorney costs and from what I can tell it looks like the top two things Cheryl would be adding up to those services and is that specific to us? I guess I'm kind of looking at Tony and Cheryl both at the same time. Could you speak to a little bit of that overrun so far through the mid-year budget? I think I could do that. It's specific or I'm not quite sure. And Cheryl's more familiar with the numbers but I'm more familiar with the work so I think that would be appropriate. Can we refer to the thing that you sent us? The itemization? In general I will refer to that. Okay. So beginning with the 2017-2018 year the contract was amended to provide for up to 260 hours of general legal services per month for a flat rate and a blended hourly rate above that of $210 per hour which is very well below even what a junior associate would charge from an outside council firm so the blended hourly rate means management partner junior associate are all charged that same amount. The workload has increased significantly over the past few years and in the 2018-2019 fiscal year we modified the agreement to increase the number provided at the initial flat rate to 275 hours. That was done in recognition of some of the budget concessions that were being made citywide due to a lot of increased mostly pension and healthcare costs. However the amount of legal services provided to the city over the same period of time has continued to increase significantly. I would say the most significant user of city attorney resources in the city is by far the city council so it's both many actions responding to changes in state law that have necessitated a lot of work putting ordinances together a lot of work developing those working with staff working with the council. One of those is on your agenda this afternoon the small cell wireless facilities ordinance that has just required a lot more time and frankly also one factor is the meetings are going longer so it just takes more hours out of the month and so that's that's in general what I would say also I think the same impacts on public works on planning with regard to many changes in state law that have had a major impact on the way the city does business. Also the water department has been gearing up for several hundred million dollars in infrastructure upgrades and we've been working extensively with them in developing the contract templates and documents necessary to move forward with a very aggressive capital improvements program so in general there's just been a lot more work. Thank you. Did you have additional questions? Just wondering so that on the attachment you gave us there was 1.2 million is that what we approved for the budget for the year? Like Cheryl answered budget question. All right the budget was lower than it should have been what we discovered was it should have it's increasing each year and for some reason this was lowered from the previous year so we needed to put more appropriations in it but it's increasing each year as we go we did an analysis of it and also legal services is needed so we're having to put more and more in the budget. The 2020 budget reflects an amount that's more equal to what the services are being provided. The differences between 1.2 and 1.7 what is that 1.2 is general fund and 1.7 is overall from enterprise and general fund these are all general fund so it's basically it's 1.775 million that changes hands from the general fund to the city attorney's office. Tony sent that schedule is that the one you're talking about that's a summary of total billing over the course of the fiscal year for general legal services special legal services and litigation and what was the amount budgeted for this year for the city attorney I have to look that up I'm not sure what it was but it's the difference between what the the difference is the 300 something on it so I can get that information for you but I don't have it readily available it's it's increasing each year by about two to three hundred thousand dollars and maybe a question for the city manager how do we where do we get this money from uh where do we find it in the general fund how do we deal with that right so it's not first of all it's not unusual that when you adopt a budget then as the course of the year progresses that the you know changes occur not everything is exactly as estimated and so there's always variations and so typically what we do is we look at what are their offsets are in the budget they can adjust for that and in this case that's a lot of that some of the other adjustments were where there was less spent in the appropriated budget so that offsets that if that's not available then we come to council to do a budget adjustment in which case it would come from fund balance so we always have to balance our budget so it's pretty typical that you know throughout the course of the the fiscal year we make adjustments based on the you know what's actually happening versus what was actually estimated so this is a we do it now we kind of combine everything into one supposed to doing a piecemeal so we have changed that in the past we used to do it you know every time something happened now we combine it to either mid-year adjustment or end of the year sort of adjustment I'm just trying to understand how unusual it is for it looks like a 35 percent increase in the city attorney's budget for the 2019-2020 year is that sound right yes and I think it just reflected as a city attorney pointed out the fact that the services have just gone up and they've continued to go up and so it's it's basically just reflected on that we've had just a lot more legal issues even if you look at just the just this year this calendar year the the increase in legal issues has been pretty significant and for the reasons that the state attorney noted so that's just reflected in and what the budget is and so how much should we be worrying about that I mean and just putting out some concern that's all I mean if you can remember another 35 percent increase in a department's budget in the past five years has that ever occurred in one calendar year I can't recall off the top of my head however and certainly what we do is you know there's a difference between things that we have the ability to control and other things that we don't so we you know we definitely monitor it and if it becomes an overall issue in the budget we would you know alert the city council or make the adjustment at the appropriate time but I think we have enough flexibility in the budget at least we felt at this time to be able to to make that adjustment but certainly I think you know if you'd like us to look at you know we do work with the city attorney pretty regularly on monitoring the budget and we meet on a regular basis to go over issues and track it so that if there are significant deviations or issues that are sort of inconsistent that we would alert the council to do that so again I think we were just we were pretty aware of the changing issues and the needs some of the costs do get allocated to the enterprise funds as well like for example the water work is really the enterprise funds it's not all general fund so the increases are not all in the general fund they're they're both in general fund and in the enterprise fund so it just gets allocated so the overall impact of the general fund while it's an increase it's not to the point where it's having a detrimental effect in terms of increasing our ongoing budget deficit moving forward sorry I thought you said all 1.775 million is from the general fund because I had asked I believe so and that's where the 35 percent increases so well the problem is the appropriations were much lower than they needed to be for fiscal year 2019 they were I believe they were somewhere around 200 to 300 thousand dollars less than 2019 so we weren't following the trend and the hours and I'm not I haven't done enough research to see why that that appropriation was too low but that was part of the problem yeah and Tony is that all the money that changes hands from the city to the city attorney's office 1.775 or is there enterprise funds as well to my knowledge that's the total sum so I'm confused because you just said about enterprise does the enterprise fund reverse the general fund yeah so we do in this case and share you can correct me if I'm wrong but the city attorney's department is in the general fund sort of and then we have a cost allocation system that then goes and looks at how much was allocate was spent on the various funds and then there is an adjustment that happens and that this is the total budget is this does not reflect the the adjustments that happen we can provide that for you yes so this isn't the the actual net cost to the general fund it's the total cost of the department which is in the general fund just like the city manager's office just like the city council you're in the general fund the way you're structured in the budget but obviously some of the the costs are out of the city council of the city manager of the HR department of the administrative functions of the finance department are allocated to the through the the enterprise fund so the net cost is lower so I don't have that number in front of me but it is a net lower than this this is not the the total cost of the general fund it's the last question I don't mean to be a nudge but people have brought this to my attention because this is the only thing we had we got in our packet about the overtime it looks like about seven almost eight hundred thousand dollars in overtime where is that coming from the overtime this is fire and it's actually reimbursed if you can you know a lot of this is it's the overtime is they do let's see they they go out on strike teams they have they we have a revenue offset to this so it's just that it because of the fires it exceeded yeah so exceeded what we we had originally budgeted right it's just responding to the wildfire season and typically the we have mutual aid agreements and so the state reimburses municipalities for when they need to have firefighters go out and help with fires and we've had you know pretty significant fire seasons the last a few years and so that's reflected here but it doesn't have a fiscal impact on the city a direct fiscal impact thank you mayor customer brown just a quick comment and thank you for the additional information because i i too had questions about both of these and you know we speculated a bit but it would just be helpful i think in when we get these especially when they're or in the case where there are significant overruns just a like a brief explanation of what that's about in our agenda report could kind of help clarify so knowing that in advance we could probably move through okay thank you see no further questions at this time we'll go ahead and see if there's any member of the community who would like to address us on this item this is item number eight in our consent agenda packet and go ahead and see if there's anybody here wanting to speak to us okay seeing none we'll go ahead and return back for council action councilor matthews second so we have a motion by councilor matthews uh seconded near tithe but i think vice mayor comings um all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed no okay so that passes with councilor brown matthews vice mayor comings myself councilor meyers glover voting in support councilor crone voting against councilor matthews i just want to know that we did get some um information after the published agenda that specified the city attorney um breakdown of hours and also something from finance um explaining some of the adjustments so for members of the public who are curious there is later arriving information available okay thank you for that specification and it seems appropriate if there are interested members of the community who would like that could maybe potentially reach out to our city manager's office or something like that to be able to find access to that okay councilor it seems like we might consider at some point an item on the agenda that would discuss you know where we're going with city attorney budget and are the council are we on board do we want to temper ourselves in what we ask for it's a pretty significant 35 percent it's pretty significant so i just bringing that to the council at some time in the future putting it on our agenda and i think if i could my understanding is sort of there is an interest in kind of understanding a little bit more about when we're going in this direction some of the costs and so i think that maybe some open communication could help that as well i think it is also reviewed annually as part of your budget process okay and i'm happy to have that discussion at the appropriate time okay as well as mid-year so the mid-year and the budget process is are the two also opportune times to discuss that okay thank you okay well that concludes our consent agenda portion of today's meetings agenda so we'll go ahead and move right along to our general business portion of the meeting and for those in the audience the general order is there will be a presentation by our city staff and or and or by the council members who may have brought forward an item council will then have an opportunity to ask questions for clarification we'll go ahead and hear public comment and then return back for council action and deliberation so our first item in our general business portion is our admissions tax ordinance and we have economic development team here welcome good evening or actually good morning council and mayor and members of the council my name is Bonnie Lipscomb director of economic development and the item before you today is some clarifying amendments to our admissions tax ordinance this is something that we've been working on in collaboration with the city attorney's office and the finance department and it really is clarifying just some challenges that we had working with the business community to make sure that there weren't unintended just challenges as far as making sure that people were paying their admissions tax and we didn't have others unintended being billed inappropriately so with that i'll turn it over to rebecca unit our business liaison good morning mayor and city council to provide you with a little bit of background on the admissions tax it was first adopted in 1986 as a five percent tax on the price of admission charged including a season ticket or subscription for the privilege of admission to any event or in or out of facility the taxes charged to the patron or attendee of an event and collected by the operator to be paid to the city the tax defines an event as any entertainment amusement or recreational activity for which an admission charge is made and includes a long list of event samples examples in 2013 the city council considered the first substantive amendments to the ordinance since its adoption which exempted charges for membership or participation in or use of health clubs athletic gyms martial arts studios yoga studios and physical fitness facilities which advance active bodily health and and fitness and for which payment is made on an annual quarterly periodic or advanced basis this amendment was intended to clarify terms to improve compliance and enforcement and support activities advanced bodily health and wellness based on recent enforcement efforts by our finance department as well as some trends in new business operations economic development and finance staff as well as the city council have received a number of inquiries from businesses and individuals based on the application of the tax the tax currently has six exemptions that can be requested by operators and must be approved by the finance director the item we're presenting today is intended to clarify these exemptions to provide definitive answers to businesses and individuals who have made inquiries about whether or not the tax applies there are three proposed amendments to exemptions for council consideration today first the proposed amendment would explicitly reference meditation studios pilates studios massage facilities health spas and other physical fitness facilities which advance active bodily health and fitness in addition to the currently referenced health clubs athletic gyms martial arts studios and yoga studios it would eliminate the requirement that the health and fitness exemption only applies when payment for use of the facilities is made on annual quarterly periodic or other advanced basis as referenced in the staff report this provision is unnecessary because all health and fitness facility users ultimately pay for the use of these facilities in advance and this adds to the confusion for businesses and organizations and should be removed the second proposed amendment seeks to clarify that the ordinance does not apply to businesses or individuals who offer academic tutoring music lessons art lessons dance lessons and craft lessons as defined in the ordinance the tax applies only to costs for admission to an event and an event is defined as any entertainment amusement or recreational activity for which an admission charge is made lessons of this type do not fall within this definition meaning the admission sex ordinance does not apply and this proposed amendment will similarly serve to clarify this point for these businesses and individuals and the final third amendment is proposed to clarify that when an operator obtains a certificate of exemption which absolves the operator of tax collection this that certificate of exemption also applies to the operator subcontractors and employees so the recommendation before you today on our staff report is to introduce for publication and ordinance amending so as to clarify section 3.36.040 of the Santa Cruz municipal code entitled exemptions and pertaining to the admissions tax and we're happy to answer any questions about the site thank you for your presentation do any of the council members have questions on this item councilmember crown thank you I'm pretty okay with the changes that are being made here but I guess it'd be nice to get some background on one and two on our report 19.3 the following charges shall be exempt the charge to play or operate an amusement ride amusement device or amusement game where the total cost to play or operate is less than 30 cents I'm not sure what year that's from and number two the charge to play or operate any coin or token operated pinball machine or electronic game how I know these aren't how do these get in there I guess it's my question and what does it mean so like I can answer that because I looked into it over the weekend the item one the charge for amusement rides that are less than 30 cents was part of the original ordinance adopted by the council in 1986 I'm not sure what the policy basis for that was but given that the seaside company is such a large contributor to the admission tax revenue stream and my guess is that in 1986 most amusement ride tickets were more than 30 cents each so so I speculate that that was intended to get at the kind of thing that when I was a little kid they used to have out in front of supermarkets and that sort of thing like the little rocking horses and stuff like that but that's my speculation the second item with respect to coin operated pinball machines and arcade games was adopted by the council in 1997 I think in January and I've not been able to dig up any reliable information on what the impetus was for that modification but as I looked at the ordinance over the weekend I think an argument could be made that it merely clarified what was already the intent of the ordinance if you look at the definitions of admission and event in the beginning of the chapter it seems to imply that the charge is intended to apply to entrance to a facility or entrance to an event and and so I think the question is does putting a coin in a coin operated arcade game constitute participating in an event in an event and so that's my speculation but but again how what initiated that discussion and why the change was made in 1997 I haven't been able to track down any reliable information do we know if the boardwalk is paying admissions tax on number one now they on all the the rides that they generally pay that the boardwalk is certainly paying admission tax for the tickets that it sells for admission to the boardwalk yes and you see where I'm going with this is because it just seems like we're doing apples and oranges like we're talking about meditation studios pilates health spa after school tutoring and then we have this electronic games it just doesn't seem to be in the same category that's that's why I just raise it to your attention I mean I can comment on that too it seems to me like the admission tax initially as drafted was very broadly worded to encompass things like movie theaters boardwalk tickets certainly entrances to concerts that sort of thing and over the years if you apply it literally it it it just goes well beyond what I think anyone ever envisioned when the when the tax was adopted such as admission to a health spa or admission to a yoga studio for a yoga class and so the exceptions have been carved out over time this this wasn't something that started out as I mean it started out as a revenue mechanism and the exceptions were carved out because of what was perceived as the redeeming social values of these different activities for which exceptions were were written sure thank you any other questions from the council at this time so any member of the community who would like to address the council on this item this is item number 19 in our general business portion of our agenda please see them we'll go ahead and return back for council action council member or vice mayor coming so I just want to thank the city staff for taking this up because I know a number of people in the community who reached out to us with concerns who were music teachers and tutors and how it was starting to impact their business and so I just want to thank you for for helping to clarify these exemptions and I'm more than happy to move the item okay so we have a motion by vice mayor coming seconded by councilor Matthews any further discussion uh councilor crone I mean councilor glover thank you there was some correspondence that came in yesterday I believe from a institute called the seven directions institute addressing concerns their stem institute apparently the focus is on teaching art biology astronomy physics engineering and many other valuable subjects to children and they were their plea essentially is to take pity on small education facilities like our own and please amend the tax not to include businesses that offer educational or teaching services I was wondering if there's any staff member that could speak to that or if there's been any communication with the seven directions institute of art and science we haven't to my knowledge we haven't specifically contacted them but we will do so after this meeting and the exemption that's being considered by you today would cover that great thank you councilor Matthews I also just want to express appreciation this is something I'm asked about periodically in response to questions that have come from the community a whole range of generally small locally owned businesses so I'm really pleased that this is a common sense and contemporary update of the ordinance here here okay um seeing no other comments at this time we'll go ahead and take the vote so we had a motion by vice mayor coming seconded by councilor Matthews all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously thank you all right we'll go ahead and take maybe a short recess and then we'll return at 11 35 okay we'll go ahead and come back now to our next item um this is item number 20 in our general business uh council meeting for the afternoon session and this item was brought forward by three council members so we'll go ahead and have the presentation by the council members who brought this item forward to bring context we'll then go ahead and see if there's any council questions at which time we'll open it up to public comment and then return back to the council for action and deliberation so I will look to any of my colleagues who brought this item forward to introduce the item let's council member uh crone, glever or brown council member brown and then council member glever and then crone and then council member Matthews I just to have a question if I could ask it at this point is it before the presentation about the presentation it's relevant because we've had a request for continuance so at what point do we continue do we consider that we have a procedural question by council member Matthews before the presentation with the question for continuance if that were to be brought forward the matter could be continued by the city council at any point in the proceedings okay so we'll go ahead and maybe have the presentation and I'm just asking the question procedurally okay thank you okay council member brown I just have a very brief comment by way of introduction so this is a consideration of a referral to the historic preservation commission consideration of and recommendation on the properties designation as a local historical landmark and that involves uh the historical preservation commission historic preservation commission reviewing the historic report that has been conducted and so I just wanted to say by way of introduction that this came based upon uh requests from the community members they have been uh from what I understand trying to uh get the historic preservation commission to review this for some time now I believe members of the historic preservation commission have also uh made that request that they look at the historic report officially and that because that has not happened through other channels they have come to us asking that we make that referral and so that's why it's before us today um and it was it was a request that came from the community thank you yeah so this was a result of many statements over a period of probably a couple of months of community members coming to public comment or oral communications in the evening sessions to express their desire and as well as providing petitions and letters signed by litanies of surrounding neighbors to address the issue of sending the decision as to whether or not to mark the building as a historical site to the preservation commission something that was troubling was their communication to myself specifically about the difficulty that commission members have had in getting the agenda on the item to be able to address in general saying that they've been obstructed by the process and some of those uh by by the process in general specifically of the representatives that have been overseeing that commission so that was really problematic to me for a lot of reasons especially the whole point of the commission is to be able to analyze and look at potential historic sites uh also it's important to have that opportunity for democratic process in these development projects so um in bringing it to the you know and with regards to the request for continuance uh these representatives from the neighborhood that want to see it go to the historic preservation society have come continuously to ask us uh to prioritize it now if there was a concern from any individuals that may have been observing or seeing that they were more than welcome to write and or come to city council meetings in opposition to it being referred to the historic preservation commission and in us uh referring it to the historic preservation commission that no way precludes those that are interested in expressing their perspectives especially those that are asking for the continuance to participate in the historic preservation's meat commission's meeting and express their perspectives and it's important to acknowledge also that the recommendation from the historic preservation commission in no way binds the city council from taking any action it only acts as a reference point for us to make more informed and democratically inclusive decisions so this in my opinion is an item that could just have gone on the consent agenda but since it's here for us to be able to discuss I think it's really important for us to be able to provide that opportunity for as many people to participate in the discussion as possible and especially take action uh in order to make the conversation happen before there's any potential issuance of demolition permits or they're able to move forward with the destruction of this historic site or potentially historic site thank you um i'm gonna repeat what councilmember browning and councilmember glover said um it just seems to me that we're the city council we are approached by a group of people consistently over time and this is sort of our job the items coming back to us uh regardless folks want their day in court and i think that's what's what's being asked from the council today um i believe councilmember mires had a question then i have a question yeah i just have a question i think for the planning director my understanding is um once the applicants would have um would would complete their application with regards to planning department process this project would then make its way through our planning commission and ultimately to the city council is that correct that's correct thank you mayor and council members leave out there i'm the planning director and um the application um as proposed um requires a planning commission uh recommendation and then a council final action and so the so once so and at planning commission or city council either of those bodies could refer refer the question of the the historic significance to the preservation to the historic preservation commission which could then uh make a recommendation or review the materials is that correct the council can certainly do that i believe the code also specifies that the planning commission uh can make a rec a referral uh to designate a historic site and i'm going to land spec i'm getting a head nod yes the planning commission is also listed the municipal code spec specifies which um individuals and bodies have the ability to do that and so with this step we're doing today this step would still would have would would happen as we go through our approval reviews with the two uh approval bodies being the planning commission and and uh city council ultimately so this step could happen as part of that yes um we uh as staff would not be including that as part of the agenda um for those items that would not preclude the planning commission or the city council from doing so as part of their deliberations the historic reports that have been prepared um that and the peer review have concluded that it is not an eligible site and so that wouldn't be um a recommendation that we would include as part of the um the recommendations to planning commission or to council however it is completely within the purview of the planning commission or council to um make that referral to the hpc okay yeah i'm just trying to understand a little bit um i guess i'm also just curious with regards to my colleagues did you meet with any of the applicants regarding their the property or the project at all thank you so uh none of the applicants have contacted us with their perspective or their um concern except for the letter that came in asking for a continuance which those concerns and questions can be addressed either at the historic preservation commission when they're making their recommendation or uh when it comes back to council for the discussion i think also to be pointed out here with regards to the process and you know lee i might have a question for you here is if this is not done up in the forefront then is there potential for let's say that later down the line after it goes to the process that you delineated or laid out that it does eventually get found out to be a or decided that it's a historical relevance then is there the potential that the applicants could have spent a considerable amount of money in the preparation and the application process fees and permitting to get to that point only to find out that there would be a historic preservation kind of roadblock if it was found to be a historic preservation commission site that's the case either way i mean where they're at in their application process is very much towards the end they are close to being ready for planning commission if not if not ready they were working through some last stormwater issues and so what uh what ultimately could happen um just to um let the council know about the the process and the public understand the process is if the um if the item is referred to the hpc for potential designation on our historic register um and then the count it comes back to the council the council decides whether or not it is um it should be identified as a historic resource if the council says yes it should be identified as a historic resource then that would mean that the proposed project and which includes demolition of that structure would represent a significant impact under sequa and so then an environmental impact report a focused environmental impact report would need to be prepared that would um that would involve a fair amount of time just procedurally there's a fair amount of time that's required even though some of those technical reports are already available the the process does take a good chunk of time and then when it comes back having been listed it would then go to the historic preservation commission for a recommendation on the project then to the planning commission for a recommendation on the project then to the council and the council would have to adopt a statement of overriding considerations recognizing that there would be a significant environmental effect as a result of the project and yet there are overriding considerations that still um warrant its approval should the council want to approve it if it is listed thanks yeah because one of the things that i've noticed uh that's kind of a pattern is that the the argument that things are so far along in the process and planning applications that it's hard to change direction or change the course which is why i'm dismayed that this hasn't gone to the historic preservation commission prior to this point because you know uh it gives us the opportunity it gives us the opportunity to make an informed and inclusive decision hearing from the neighbors in the process not just on who has the most amount of money to be able to purchase the property and move forward with plans but also to be able to give the voice to the surrounding neighborhood that are going to be impacted by the project not in the resistance of the development of housing because i've spoken to the people that have requested for this to be on the agenda and they are in no way in opposition to the development of affordable housing in some way or shape you know on the site or in the area but it is uh i mean there's multiple things to this not only and we're not we can't talk about the proposed development in question because that's not what we're talking about today but uh that we could make a more informed and holistic conversation or decision with more community input if we had moved forward with this sooner so if we were to wait even longer and draw this out and wait through all the planning departments and recommendations and it's not even guaranteed that it will go to the historic preservation commission through that process as was uh mentioned by director butler uh now is an opportunity for us to take a second and pause address what's going on with the community that we're hearing from which is something that's very consistent over and in different neighborhoods but especially in the dufort neighborhood in the uh now in the arid circle neighborhood where they have come out with a litany of signatures on petitions and letters that have said from the surrounding neighbors hey we need to hold off and reassess the situation and i think it's our responsibility as council members to act on that request from our community so we had a few more questions uh council member mires wasn't finished and we'll go to council member brown and vice mayor Cummings i kind of wanted to answer council member mires last question okay i can wait till and answer them all in turn that's fine okay i'm sorry director butler i'm so i just want to again clarify this referral could occur during our approval process as the application moves forward correct it could it could go through the process now it could be continued it could happen as part of the future approval process that's the the purview of the council and is i understand that the applicant has prepared i think i know at least one i may i think possibly two of the reviews the dpr process and those are on file as part of the that that would be distributed to planning commission and and moving forward through our process correct that's correct there um there was an earlier report um that was prepared and a subsequent report that was um prepared by a different firm that second report was um peer reviewed the the three uh the two reports and the peer review concluded that the site is not eligible for designation locally at the state level or at the national level and those are available on our website for review and so when you say that when you would bring this forward to planning commission first and then city council based on planning commission's um process the staff report would say based on the the materials presented that this would not be referred to hpc um but planning commission or council could direct that correct that's correct that's the process just want to make sure thank you this and this is an alternative you know the council does have the purview to to do it through this manner or it typically it would go through that standard process and and usually when there's a report like this you know it it wouldn't um it wouldn't necessarily wouldn't get referred um you know there's nothing in the code that specifies that we need to refer this action at this time it would be an action by the planning commission or the council that um would refer it and that could be now or through that review process so thank you for the time and I am um I would be I would do want to put forward a motion to continue the item we received a letter from the uh applicants yesterday um I don't believe they sort of really understood what was happening except that they were going through the process and I have met with everyone on every side of this question and um I think we have to honor our process there will be opportunities for referrals and these questions that come up but I think um with respect to the applicants uh I will put forward a motion to continue the item there's a motion to continue the item public comment item um would you like to reserve that until after public comment okay so we have council member brown brice mayor Cummings and then council member crown so to answer your question council member mires know um I did not meet with the developers before bringing this forward the developers have never contacted me I wouldn't even know how to reach them without you know moving that through our city planning staff I um uh move forward with my colleagues to bring this to the agenda in response to community members who have contacted us um I did not reach out to them they reached out to us um as well as members of our historic preservation commission um and I believe that they had a significant enough interest that it was our responsibility to consider that request so I so that's a response quickly to your question I believe we that we here are here to represent the public interest and in the case of community concerns um that are seem to be significant bring that to this body for consideration I have a question related to the um the timeline and the process I um I just want to be clear because I thank you for clarifying the process for making that referral I don't know why making a referral later on in the process is it would benefit and I'm not sure what benefit that would be if we're going to do it we ought to do it and then keep move down that road um and then the question I have related to this process because I I do have concerns about the potential for a demolition permit being issued in the interim so that's another concern I think a sense of urgency was coming from the community so can you clarify um where that is at what at what point um and how that um would would occur and would that be um potentially happen before getting to the process where we might make make a referral down the road so they would need to come in for the uh the project approval and um that would come through the council in advance of issuance of building permits and associated demolition permits I will verify from a commercial building perspective that's the same yeah we I'm aware of provisions that specifically relate to residential and I'm getting confirmation that the same provisions are in place for commercial um and and so the project needs to come through the approval process before even demolition permits could be issued um and uh that would then trigger building permits and demolition permits at the same time following those council approvals so just just to confirm council approval would be required before the zoning administrator can issue any a demolition permit before the building official can issue a demolition yes building official sorry it's okay staff yes yes vice mayor Cummings and councillor Crosby I just have some questions for my colleagues so my understanding is that the intention is for the reports that were created by the developers to go to the historic preservation commission correct that's that as well as any other pertinent information analysis research or data that would associate the potential need to registered as a historical site um my other question is when is the next is does anyone know in the next historical preservation commission meeting is taking place they're held on the third Wednesday of each month so with this item potentially it's be able to go on this month's agenda it can't go on this month's uh you know so it requires public hearing so there is um roughly three weeks lead time in advance of uh any historic preservation commission actual meeting date roughly three weeks in advance would be the the soonest okay thank you and I'd just like to say that you know one of my concerns because I met with the developers I've met with um the folks who are from the west side who want to protect the circle church um and one of the big concerns I have that came out of the meeting I had last night with some of the developers was that they didn't feel like they had enough time in advance to actually um have some of their um legal team and and other people come out because they found out on Friday and this uh came on this week's agenda and so many of them worked during the day and didn't have enough advance notice the issue that I have with continuing this item is that if we continue this into January that means that if it's going to go to the historic preservation committee that wouldn't happen until February and then it would have to go through all the steps of going to the planning commission and coming back to the city council and I actually think that if the intention is to have this these reports reviewed which it seemed like um folks were pretty okay with the reports going to the historic preservation committee um I think that it would make the most sense to have this go to the historic preservation committee so that we can actually reduce the amount of time that it's going to take for this process to unfold um I do understand concerns from from the folks who have been working really hard at trying to meet all the goals and deadlines for applications and the development but part of our job is to um meet the needs and the concerns of the city and um a lot of folks have been coming out over the past couple weeks if not months wanting this to go to the historic preservation committee and if we further delay it's going to substantially delay this project let's remember code um I would since I didn't hear a second for council member Myers uh and our rules do say that you can make a motion before after it goes to the public I will make a motion to direct staff to refer to the historic report for the 111 errant circle property to the historic preservation commission for review and to make a formal recommendation to the council as to whether the site should be listed as a local historic landmark okay well we have mr condom you will need to hear from the public before the council can take that action okay okay all right so why don't we just go ahead and do that this at this time and we'll see I'll second that motion just so that it's seconded okay okay well then I'll just as kind of for process acknowledge that council member Myers was prepared to make a motion after public comment but given that a colleague here now has made the motion before public comment we'll go ahead and revisit that motion when we return from public comment so all those who are interested in speaking on this item please line up to my left and you'll have up to two minutes to come forward and share your perspective with the council hello my name is Janet Brier I live two blocks from Circle Church and have lived there for over 35 years and I'm hearing lots of different sort of planning and sort of political kinds of things batted back and forth and I'm just coming forward as a neighbor as a as a person living in the in the neighborhood itself and want to really impart to all of you how important it is to keep neighborhoods cohesive and together and that our Garfield Park library is a historic site and I imagine that the little Baptist church that's in our neighborhood is also a historic site and so it seems to me logical that our church and that then that whole property would also be a part of that and to demolish it is to take away a long long history there long long history before even our houses were were there and that we need to keep neighborhoods intact and so I'm you know making a plea to please you know prioritize getting these reports to the historic society what are the preservation commission so that we can have your time your time is up next speaker thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today on this subject again and I wanted to follow that woman because I actually reached out to another company that's on the list of the planning commission that's authorized to do the historic resource analysis they're called interactive resources they're located in Richmond California and I talked to a historian Charlie Duncan to ask tell him what we were trying to do I sent him some information about the history of the circle church and it just so happens his daughter lives here in Santa Cruz and so he came down for Thanksgiving actually drove around the circle areas and when he we talked on the phone again he goes I think this can qualify as an historic district what he cited is he cited the original grid from the 1800s the streets with the original names of the pastors with the tabernacle he cited the original Garfield library the original stores and post office are still there they're on Eric's circle then we have these these uh also the historical market on California Avenue as she mentioned the historic Baptist church but he said most significantly are these the little tiny shoebox houses that represent the original tent lots from the tabernacle so to me it's even more imperative that we get this in front of the HPC and try to preserve the culture of this neighborhood because what's in the center of this potentially historic district is important and what's being proposed is kind of this um many country club that's very exclusive completely incongruent with the neighborhood so and again it's just like some of you had said we're just getting their input it doesn't hold you to any decision it's just doing due diligence just really being very careful about making this decision all right thank you so much good morning my name is Andrea from the law I live on 230 walk circle I inherited my home in 2005 when I heard the history of the neighborhood I was so moved and it seems that that property the circle the center of the circle is the heart of the west side and um from my perspective I would hope that the city of Santa Cruz would take a hold of that property and designate it as a permanent community center like you have Loudon Nelson in the center of town from the center of town all the way through the west side there's nothing there's no community center and what we need more than anything is to to build community to be more connected with one another and that is a perfect place for it that's all I have thank you I like that Bruce Thomas I live on due 4th street I'm across the street from a building that is considered historic so I want to point out well first of all I want to say I'm really sad to see this progress to a state um I really wish the planning department and maybe Lee could listen to this Eric as well could really engage the community more thoroughly and not let things get so far along when there's really serious concerns that's an endemic problem in the city of Santa Cruz that I really think should be addressed but this this place is the heart I live across the street from a former bank building that's deemed historic and we're still having delivery trucks with no loading zone in the middle of the streets so why is that a historic building and yet this other one there's a double standard going on and I really um think there could be a legal challenge since um this building is by all observations is of historic nature and it's it's older actually than the one that was across the street from my house so I really think out of respect for the community and due diligence really this should go to the historic preservation commission for further public comment and consideration hi I'm here on behalf of uh soup um Powell from the friends of the circle who couldn't attend today she asked me to read this letter so I have uh distributed it but it's important to get this on the record my name is Candice Brown and I'm from East Morrissey um the Historical Preservation Commission has repeatedly asked staff to allow the commission to review that the Eric Circle Project historic report at regular public meetings because they believe that the Circle Church and Eric Circle property could be eligible for historical designation the role of the Historical Preservation Commission is to advocate for the cultural and the historical heritage of our city to listen to community concerns and to advise the City Council about sites that merit preservation the Historical Preservation Commission wants to review the Everett Circle Historical Report so both parties want to do this and they want to hear from the community so that they can at assess the historical significance and cultural importance of the Circle Church and the Eric Circle site more than 1000 petition signatures neighbors and friends believe it is imperative for the City Council to respect the role of Historical Preservation Commission in preserving her city's historical and cultural heritage and to respect requests by the commissioners to review the historical report at a public meeting with input from the community we fully support this agenda item and we urge the City Council to refer the Everett Circle Project Historical Report to the Historical Preservation Commission for review which is before you today and I just want to say that this does feel like it is the part the heart of a community and I think it's really important to give it special deference we lost during the earthquake the um the Cooper House and for some people it's really never been the same and we're still searching for the heart of downtown so really consider the heart of the west side thank you hello my name is Freya Sands I live on Wilkes Circle and I just am here to thank you for your service and implore you to refer this matter to the HPC the property has been a spiritual and community center for over 130 years and we need the the opportunity to have an independent review of its historic significance please thank you very much I want to thank you for your service too my name is Ellen Bass I have a really deep investment in Santa Cruz County and the community and our culture here um I'm this year's artist of the year I was last year's poet laureate I started poetry workshops in the jails we now have six weekly poetry workshops in the jails and decades ago I started two non-profit organizations in Santa Cruz County Survivors Healing Center and Kid Power Inc for self-protection of children I've lived in Santa Cruz County since 1974 and I've lived on Young Love Avenue for over 30 years it's only reasonable for the Historic Preservation Commission to be able to assess Garfield Park I know how important it is to me we had our wedding reception there I think everybody in the area has had some really significant experience there and when I walk by Garfield Church I think about that I love Garfield Library I'm crazy about it I go in there all the time I love walking by the little church this is the heart and soul of our community and when I walk down Walnut Avenue when I walk a lot and those of you who walk down there when you see those houses that have been preserved it does your heart good you know that we are we don't want to just look like every other city in the world and we don't want McMansions where those Walnut Avenue houses are and Garfield Church is really important to all of us I didn't know about the history until we thought we'd lose it and I am astounded if you haven't read the history stuff you will just be knocked off your feet it's 130 years old and it has served us so many things after World War one maybe you know it was barracks for black soldiers it's amazing Good morning Mayor and Council I'm Ron Pomerance I'm here in full support of the staff report recommendation to refer the property of the Old Circle Church to the Historic Preservation Commission whether the site is a local historic landmark this is a very very reasonable request given the entire neighborhood was built around the church 130 odd years ago when my children were growing up in the area we spent a lot of time enjoying the open space of the church and the activities that took place there even though I no longer live near there this property has a personal and historic importance to me and my family I don't understand why this property hasn't already been evaluated and designated as a local historic landmark what's taken so long I would recommend taking this process a step further and establish a list of all potential historic Santa Cruz properties with this list the Historic Preservation Commission can review and determine if these properties should be designated historic landmarks this would help avoid this kind of confusion and delays in the future additionally once this historic landmark evaluation is completed for the Circle Church I hope you'll assure that an environmental impact report is done for innumerable reasons and I don't have time to go through it right now I want to recommend in a very small way that story polls are a small way to physically see and get a feel for the heightened massing of any proposed projects I hope that you will require it for this project as well as future ones and as Vice Mayor Cummings has said that I don't understand why you'd want to continue it it's just going to delay this thing for months and months I hope you'll support the recommendation you have before you today thank you for your time and consideration hello everybody thank you mayor and council members for being here and for listening my name is Caitlin Wilde and I'm part of the Circle of Friends the folks that purchased the property two years ago and I'm feeling very blindsided by what's happening we have followed the letter of the law all of the plans that have been set forth before us we've spent two years hundreds of thousands of dollars we have gotten not one not two but three historical evaluations one by Page and Turnbull we have a representative here Christina and the second one by Dudek as Mr Butler says and we've had meetings all summer listen to the community we actually did send out emails to all of the council members on October 19th asking to meet we feel like we've done our due diligence and that this is a very last minute move to to really derail our project and just want to say we are not developers this is really scary for us this costs us a lot of money I'm an outdoor guide for example and we are trying to bring housing and affordable housing to the west side we are not building a fancy country club we're not building McMansions we are locals we are teachers and like I said I'm a guide local business owners we're not destroying the neighborhood and I really yeah I wish we could get off that narrative because we're not removing any tact of this neighborhood and what what gets really lost in this is we're building co-housing we're building a co-housing community different sizes of homes ad use a community gathering space and we feel like this is a really great part project that's representative of Santa Cruz and representative of the west side so yeah thank you hi my name is Brett Packer I'm a member of the Circle of Friends and thank you all for hearing us so yeah we received notice about this this hearing just by looking on the council website on Friday by accident found that this was coming up on the agenda and feel that that's not that we should have been notified feel that we should have been notified that this meeting was happening now so that we could get our consultants here and our supporters and it feels very unfair that no one took the time to let us know that this was happening we've been working really hard for two years on this project we've met with several of the council members we've reached out to the other council members and didn't get responses we've held community meetings for most of the summer for several weeks during the summer where the entire community was invited and including the people who would not like to see this circle change they were there often and we're trying to bring housing by locals for locals to the west side at what is affordable we're all working people teachers outdoor guides and this is our way of trying to get housing for ourselves here and we're maximizing the amount of housing that's possible on that site with 16 units and with the ad use that we're committing to build to be 30 units of housing on that site which is considerable that we don't have right now and this move to send this to HPC is just adding another couple of months a few months to this process and a lot of money thank you hello city council my name is Ginny Stone and sorry this is Ginny Stone and I was born and raised here in Santa Cruz and I'm a member of the Circle of Friends co-housing project really dismayed at the vilified nature that some of the locals around here are coming across and presenting us as developers I'm also dismayed that we got no notice to attend this meeting therefore a lot of us who actually support our project were not able to make it to this meeting today and these people do not want a loud and nilson they do not want a repeat of the checkered past that this property has had and we would request a continuance at this time thanks good afternoon thank you mayor and council for the opportunity to reconsider demolishing this property my name is jan chaff and I have lived in here at circle since one of those old original cottages 1890 across the street it is of course to the heart of the community it was the intention of the original creators of the property to always serve as a community center for ceremonies if you google the property you will find over 3000 references in the sentinel if this is not eligible for a significance under the criteria I can't imagine what would be I don't want to vilify anybody for trying to create more housing I I completely applaud and commend that that opportunity what I don't feel the community was given was an opportunity to respond to purchase that purchase was somewhat sudden and surprising not a lot of response and I'm not sure the community was actually listened to during some of these meetings please please please please please don't take this opportunity to reconsider once it's gone it's gone and if this church isn't worth saving what is thank you hello my name is jennifer smith I belong to the group called the circles women's coalition which developed from another group of people who have been involved with engaging the city council about this issue moving it forward to the historic preservation commission I've also been a person who's had numerous conversations with members of the friend of the circle of friends including before they went through their escrow process and I'll let them know that this this site was highly used and at the time of its purchase it may have been representatives being underutilized but I illustrated at that time that it was actually very well utilized it was the home of numerous sports events sports teams high schools and middle schools throughout the community that don't have places for their own basketball teams volleyball teams fencing teams there's AA meetings have been held there for years I taught Waldorf children on that site I keto I'm an I keto instructor by passion and trade I've also taught Ellen's children and I go back a lot or a child a long time I keto and I go back and my my investment in the community is also deep and what I see is something that I feel without with all due respect and please don't I know this can feel very personal it feels personal to us too but it feels like a greenwashing that what looks like a co-housing project is really something that can't be defined when we met with Ryan Bain and asked him well what's co-housing he says well it's not really defined and when we looked at the plans they were you know 10 or 12 separate parcels with such back set backs that they could each be sold separately they could be sold at any price they could be sold to anyone at any time and there's no plans in place for those buildings there are people in this community who are teachers who are teaching there one or two of the people in the circle of friends is you're telling but you get the idea thank you next speaker hello my name is robin stone and I have lived and worked in this community for many years I've raised my children in this community and one of my my daughter is part of the circle of friends and I'm really sad right now to just hear what some of the some of the things that are being said about this circle because I have taken time over the past couple years to really get to know some of the people and actually pretty much all of the people and I have seen a lot of people come together and work really hard to try and create a vision that looks does not look like a mini country club to me it looks like a community housing project that would really add a lot of benefit to the community where they're really taking environmental consideration considerations into how they proceed and I also am aware that there are some structural and code issues around the church and these people bought this property in good faith knowing that the way the church has been is not able to be sustained because it would cause probably too much to to be able to do the repairs that are needed so I just want to make a plea to honor the request for a continuance so that the circle can have enough time to just gather what they need to do to make their case and I really just I really hope that somehow this community because what really saddens me is that there seems to be a lot of divisiveness so my name is Joseph comes and part of the circle of friends I just want to point out a few things that in addition to the two non-biased historical reviews that we had and the third party review of one of those the last historical survey was completed in 2013 for the general plan of the 2030 by leslie dill historic art tech and local historians including jessica coose who is on the historical commission or presbyterian commission and this survey was defined the historical properties in here and they did not list error 111 error circle the historical status of 111 circle has been thoroughly researched and defined as not historical so I feel like this is a direct attempt to block our project and doesn't really have to do with the facts I we're definitely not there to make a country club we're trying to build the community I grew up here in sanikers it's hard to have these kind of community hubs and with the time that we've been owning the circle we've had maybe one or two events over the two years of the community coming in any doing or even requesting anything to be done there it's basically been using more as a dog walking park right now besides people who rent it from us and we want to in addition to create the center circle with us we want to open that up to the community at least four times a year there'll be more events happening there than are happening now I just wanted to say that I'd like to request a no vote on this for our continuance thank you Marilyn Garrett I have friends who live in that neighborhood and the historic preservation really needs to be a top priority I think I the history is fascinating and I often wish I could step back in time and see what it looked like then and before all this huge contamination we have of chemicals and radiation and car pollution and I appreciate and applaud all those who spoke up for the character of their neighborhood and maybe having it like a park or community meeting space I also think of sea rise going on and how this more projects near the ocean I think they're going to go under I was here in 2006 when we were talking about another historic site the Palomar Inn and the incongruent nature of having cell towers on top of that building and it never it was going to go to the historic commission but somehow it didn't but I think it's very important to do that and any neighborhood anywhere throughout the city and county is going to be facing this 5g microwave on slot which is on utility poles and light standards everywhere every few houses that isn't with the historic nature or the natural attraction of Santa Cruz and that's the next item I hope people stay your time is up and we'll have public comment on that topic after this item next speaker please hello my name is leis casby and I'm here to speak as a community organizer and activist there's two parts to what I want to say today the first is about access on a private piece of land which the church is and the second is about justice and the process that we go through in our system whether we get justice in the end there's a process that helps us all feel that we had a voice so okay so the first thing that I want to just start with is we are as beings historical beings when somebody loses an arm or a leg they often have a phantom arm and like for a long time somebody talked about the loss of the cooper house that's a phantom that hasn't gone away yet and part part of the reason that we still feel is because there's nothing quite like it that we've found yet in downtown so here in the circle area um we have a space that actually has public access as the neighbors are talking about who are not the circle of friends who want to build a private enterprise there largely about housing in their homes still private while it's a church it affords access I want to say that during the civil rights movement it was the free spaces in the churches that provided the space for people to be able to come together to organize that was the public space the churches because it was free they could freely organize in there so a church that brings in soccer teams and games and has open space for children to play is different than a bunch of private properties that maybe they'll open up their space a couple times a year if you send this to the historical preservation commission they're going to go through a process as a communicable organizer i've seen the process before it may not get designated but the problem but the point is it will go through that process in the neighbors and all of us will be able to collectively heal and so far thank you my name is uh john sears and um um so the way i understand this motion this is a motion just to have you refer to the historical preservation commission to get and they work at your pleasure um to come up with the determination and i understand yes uh maybe uh someone could help me hear when was the last time a developer paid for a report that didn't support what they wanted to do is a something julian green site brought up in a her blog in the end of october so i think it's i can guarantee you that if this goes forward and you decide in the end because you're going to be the ones that decide it to approve the demolition this neighborhood is going to be in grief it's going to be devastated so early intervention sending it to the historical preservation commission getting some their question getting questions answered is going to be part of that process of healing farther on down the road so i don't see any reason to delay it i think it's it's going to uh need to get done and a lot of the things that were brought up here today are things that are right correctly addressed uh by the planning commission it's they're not a question in terms of this motion the uh appropriateness of the property and the proposed development for the neighborhood that's plenty planning commission makes those decisions this has to do with history uh our neighbors have been uh i've spent almost a year on this trying to get it this analysis done by a board that we have charged with doing that and serves at your pleasure so i don't know if any of you are aware of this you can get it at the library thank you your time is up all right please come forward are there any other members of the committee wanting to address this on this item okay you'll be our last speaker hey um as a member of the catch i really appreciate uh that you are listening to everyone's views and making sure people get heard that for us is sort of the same kind of thing um i just came from the board of supervisors and i had to speak about our intake site being uh at the jail and i'm going to go ahead and pause are you here to speak to us on item um 111 errant circle and the reference i'll come right back to it in a second okay um and i had to speak and i you know i've known naysayers of people not wanting things in their community and that's something that you definitely have to analyze in this conversation about whether you're talking you know it's a it's a historic thing or it's just a naysayer thing or what that's actually used for like that's something that you have to decide i just had to speak because i just thought naysayers was about the housing well it's about staff too who they all the staff over there didn't want it in that jail because they didn't want to deal with the people the homeless people around like it would be dangerous to staff or they'd lose their parking so just trying to separate that of getting people's needs met making sure people are heard it's people definitely want to be heard and that's something we need to move forward with santa cruz and that's a nice tie next speaker hi everyone i live at um 1139 walk circle i'm one of the in one of the oldest houses in fact it's the um first house that was built at the corner of pendigast and walk circle um my husband and i bought the house in 94 all of our kids went to santa cruz high school one of our daughters was married in the circle church but the circle church is everything that these people that want to say it is it really is the heart of our neighborhood and it does draw each other to one another and that's really important to me and i think it it could be improved but that's what we need to do we need to stand behind it and make it pump like a heart for this part of santa cruz it's unique it's the center of a cake what do you put in the center of a cake you put the cherry in the center of the cake okay and i'm not against affordable housing whatsoever it's very difficult to find housing here but not in that historical site and if there's a purpose for the santa cruz historical preservation commission then it will address this there shouldn't be any delay and if it doesn't meet the criteria so be it but if it does then that's why we have a preservation commission you see this is what it's for we need to look at this and i really believe that it meets 130 years of history uh Amy Semple McPherson a fiery woman was in that place you can look at the history there our house was part of those small tracks you know we're in the circle so please no continuance let's have this let's not delay thank you everyone okay thank you so it seems that will conclude a public comment on this item thank you for being here and sharing your thoughts i have a question for you um uh lee in regards to process because um although there was a indication of a motion and then there was a subsequent motion made um had that process ensued i i would have likely seconded because i feel that it would be fair to have um notice if an applicant was to go to have their specific pro project go to be um referred to the historic preservation commission would that be general process although this item was brought forward by council members with the planning department notice the the applicants as well as the sort of surrounding area if this was the direction it was going to go in or how does that process work this referral itself is not a public hearing however the um typical process i guess around if this were to be your your your approach to wanting to move in this direction would there be a notice to the applicants as well as others or how would you so i guess usually something like this um would come about with an individual requesting it um you know a property owner could request it or you know when we did our historic building survey for example there were a whole series of properties um so the latest version was uh 2014 or so 2013 and um there was a large um you know community conversation because there were um you know many properties that were proposed to be added um so the uh this this doesn't require public noticing um there was an indication that um it could um occur um i understand that confirmation didn't occur until the the agenda was published for this item so it wouldn't necessarily require public noticing but you wouldn't likely notice the person or the owners of the property or the the potential designation or no not at all right i mean if there if if something's involving their property yes there would be a conversation with them surrounding it okay that's i guess i thank you because that's sort of where i am hearing kind of um that process not necessarily ensuing and if they're not in a rush to have it go through then i wouldn't i wouldn't mind continuing it for the reasons that they could actually have notice of it and i did hear from certain folks that were teachers and otherwise that couldn't make it so absent that it seems um it doesn't seem to hurt to not necessarily have them weigh in at a certain time in my perspective um councilmember Glover and then thank you yeah so uh wonderful i really appreciate all of the perspective shared both from those that are uh in support of it going to the historic preservation society as well as those members from the circle of friends that came to speak um i was going just did a quick search in my uh emails and i couldn't find any correspondence on october 18th so um would love to connect with you after this so that we can chat more about what's going on also uh i do want to just express my um apologies for if you felt blindsided which is of course not the goal with this because with this process it would allow for y'all to be a part of the conversation throughout the process of it going to the historic preservation society uh not necessarily you know which i would hope it would go through anyway through the process regardless of third party or outside uh consultants that were brought in from whichever party to do the analysis we have the historic preservation commission specifically for us to be able to refer these kinds of issues to them uh so the goal would be to what was in my opinion to open it up so that y'all would have the opportunity to participate as wholeheartedly as possible and prepare all of your arguments for the historic preservation society or commission rather as well as if it comes back to the council based on their um suggestion also for those on the dais here that are expressing concern about the notice that was given um seems a little strange uh personally because of how the agenda setting process is created um the three council members myself council member brown and council member crone submitted this agenda report on or before thanksgiving which means that those who build the agenda specifically the mayor who decides on what goes on the agenda itself um knew that this was an issue that we wanted them to see happen uh also and associated with that the agenda setting process is very secret so we as council members have absolutely no idea to know when or if an agenda item is actually going to come on the agenda so when that is decided i believe it's on the Tuesday or Wednesday before the city council meeting that would have been a fantastic opportunity for those on the council especially those involved in the agenda setting process to reach out to the applicants to let them know that you were planning to put it on the agenda so i don't think that is a viable or logical argument as for us to delay it um any further uh on top i just want to just mention with the timeline and the request for continuance one of the arguments or issues that was brought up was a feeling it would delay the project i think what we heard from the planning director as well as uh was expressed by vice mayor Cummings was that if we are to delay it or do a continuance if we come back in January and then decide after listening to the arguments to send it to the Historic Preservation Commission it will delay it at least another month if not longer so if we can do it now throughout the you know get it set up throughout the holidays to be heard uh in the January meeting then that could expedite the process assuming that your reports are correct and there is no need for historical preservation so it could work in your favor in general just to be able to have those kinds of things going on i can't talk about the merits of the project because that's not on the agenda but i'd love to meet with uh y'all from the circle of friends so that we can talk about your vision because we haven't had a chance to meet on that project in general um also just uh want to acknowledge the importance of the site and uh to the community you know i i'm not i'm not different i grew up in Santa Cruz i was born and raised here did some things there uh over time but i didn't hold as deeply of a meaning to me as some of the people that have spoken so i want to acknowledge that um so i have no personal agenda in the preservation aspect of it but i do want to make sure that there is an open and transparent process both in the historic preservation analysis as well as the opportunity for people to come on the record and share their perspective so just to give you an idea and respond to some of the things that were brought up during the public comment i'll just briefly clarify and then i know councilmember mires and vice mayor Cummings and councilmember brown wanted to add as mayor you do look at different items that are being brought forward and the assumption is that those items have been vetted either by the staff or the council and based on what i heard is that the three council members who brought this item forward uh did not meet with those on the opposing side or the developer side so that it it wasn't necessarily holistically included with all input as designed so there's that councilmember mires just a quick question um lee when when would this project be coming to the planning commission i know we have a lot of work a lot of projects coming um are we this months away is it just trying to get a sense of the delay part of this and if i could related to that it's i think it's part of the timeline question okay um i don't know what i see is uh if this goes to hpc uh hpc considers it either finds it eligible in which case it goes on one path or finds it not eligible in which case does does it die there does it come back to us so those who just to council member mires so maybe if you want to describe the process i'm really sure i'm really trying to understand the process and i and i completely understand the emotion around this building and around that space i lived on woodrow avenue for many years um been in the building a lot this is an emotional thing neighborhood change is is is emotional and um but i want to just recognize and most importantly state that change is hard for all of us there's risk on each side and so i'm just trying to understand our process a lot of what i'm trying to do here is just make sure we understand timelines in process we should discuss that in relation to what's on our agenda sure so i i just confirmed they um have finished the last they had one outstanding item that they were still working through and um that's been completed um so they would be able to they would be ready to move forward to planning commission um in the very near future i would expect you know sometime early next year um if um and so uh then to address council member matthew's question if the hpc regardless of their recommendation um the the code says refer that back to the council so if if the hpc recommends yes it should be listed it comes back to the council if they say no it should not be listed that still comes back to the council and then it's council's decision thanks mayor cummings and council member brown and one question in particular if this comes if the recommendation comes back from the historic preservation committee can we then send it to the planning commission for their recommendation as well as to whether or not it should be historic site because of my understanding is that they also have the authority to designate buildings as historic sites that's something that came up earlier so the designation is solely within the purview of the council and the code does not specify that the planning commission provides recommendations on that so um the the code says hpc recommends on designations to the council the planning commission would be in and is mandated to provide comments on the other applications so the tentative map and the plan development permit uh the design permits for example those um are required to go through the planning commission for recommendation to the council but the designation itself is just a recommendation from hpc thanks and then one other question um i know that members of the community it sounds like members of the commission expressed on a number of occasions wanting this to come to the historic preservation commission and i'm not sure if you or someone from the planning department can just briefly speak as to why because i think that when that when these reports came out we could have just had this go to the historic preservation commission and this is kind of this feels like the public's last opportunity because they haven't been able to get it on the agenda which is why it's come to us at this point and so are you able to speak to that at all sure so the the reports um do not indicate that the project qualifies for listing and the both the planning commission and the city council have the opportunity to make that referral as part of their deliberations the code does not state that these projects go to the hpc when they are not listed structures and in this instance when we've got reports that further support the indication that it is not eligible that was something that we discussed with the applicant team and there isn't anything that mandates that we do that there is the ability for the planning commission or council through their deliberations to make that recommendation that's one of the decisions that's that is the decision that's here before you today i guess i i'd just like to say to the public that um it's and i want to thank the folks who've been kind of working on this project because i know that you all have been very responsive to us with more you know increased outreach to the community and i want to say that you know that's it's really great that you all have been taking the time and going through the steps to really try to get community input on this um it's what's difficult about this is that um you know this spot in particular is so um kind of it's a i wouldn't say it's controversial but for the community it's a it's a very important site and major shifts to this obviously there's a lot of people with a lot of emotions and we're trying to balance all these emotions and these decisions that we're making and for the community you know they've come to us and what they really want is the opportunity for these documents to be reviewed i understand that there is a desire to move forward with this as well from the folks who are interested in developing the site but just kind of looking at the calendar um moving this to the sending this to the historic preservation commission will it's it would likely come if it's the third wednesday of the month on january 15th and so that gives about four and a half weeks for folks to kind of work together to plan to show up to that meeting with um all the folks who they want involved in that conversation and from my perspective um it seems like if we were to further delay this it might not come back until potentially february and then if it's to go to the historic preservation after that and continue down this route it could be much longer and so from my personal perspective i think that sending this to the historic preservation will actually save us time here um yeah so i just wanted to make a couple of comments responding to some of the concerns that uh were raised during public comment and in post packet uh production communications and writing um so in terms of the the timing and being blindsided by this i completely understand that that would that's a feeling that you might have by only seeing this when it was published on our agenda but um i just want to be clear that that's when i found out it was going to be on our agenda that's when most people found out it was going to be on our agenda um so it's it's it wasn't that the um the circle of friends was excluded in some way from learning about this and that we all knew in advance we made the request um after the last council meeting and then it moved through the process so i just want to be clear about that there was no intention for exclusion in terms of previous attempts to communicate i'm sorry if you did reach out and i didn't respond i have searched my email inbox and i haven't archived anything since august so i looked everything through since august of 2019 and i did not see um uh a request to meet or reaching out from you all i'm apologize if you sent something and i did not receive it with the caveat that our search engines sometimes miss things but i just did a quick search and i i didn't find anything i'd be happy to talk with you about the project moving forward my um interest in moving through this step of historical historic preservation commission review in no way is intended to be a commentary on the project the merits of the project or um you know at any attempt to prevent the project from going forward i believe as somebody in a public commenter said you know once this is gone it's gone and so we we do need to do our due diligence and i wish that it happened sooner um it was uh you know i i believe that in my attempt to be responsive to the community i mean that those requests came uh pretty recently because of the um their inability to get it on the historic preservation commission agenda in another way as director buttler suggested it wasn't required so it didn't happen um so i'll leave it there and um look forward to hearing from my colleagues right i had councilman matthews and then councilmember crown um i'll say just very briefly i was um supportive of continuance it's pretty clear to me that the the votes are here to send it to hpc for review um i was um uh concerned that there hadn't been uh adequate um time for um pulling together um from the applicants um uh support i understand that everyone apparently learned about it at the same time um i do also understand that continuance would just kick this ball further down the road um and that um really the outcome of the hpc hearing comes back to the council sooner or later in either form um and uh as others have said uh still to be determined are the merits of the project um uh it's clear as others have said um there's a prospect of change of use um i i have to be really honest um i think the um the hope of um the city acquiring this for community center uh is remote um and um it's important to focus on that i also i've i've had years of experience with historic preservation um endeavors of various scale here in santa cruz there are lots of possible outcomes of historic uh designation um and those all remain to be determined in the future um i think i'll let my comments stay there thank you mayor um thank you vice mayor too for your for your words because i i i do think i actually thought this was going to be a consent agenda item because why not give the neighbors there a time to talk to the historic preservation commission um it always was going to come back to the council uh i i'm just not sure what the issue is here and it's very interesting being up here and trying to peel away this onion administratively i did have a question for lee um i see one of my old buddies from education graduate school in the audience and we used to talk about teachable moments and i think this is a teachable moment for me how does something land on the the historic preservation commission if the if the council isn't put it on have they asked the planning department to have it on there and what is the um nature of putting together an agenda um i'm assuming there's a commission chair gets together with a staff member and they talk about putting an agenda together the latter process is correct the commission has not requested that this be on their agenda and um i would just add that um if if this site were deemed eligible by a um historic report that also would not be referred to the process that we would go through likely would not refer that to the HPC the way that process would go is if it is deemed eligible then from a CEQA perspective then it has the same protections as if it is listed and so in that instance we would go through an environmental impact report assuming demolition would be proposed and we would then um proceed through the hearing process and the planning commission or the council could um have it listed there could be an instance where we believe hey this uh this really does need to be listed and um we could refer that but if it was an instance where um for whatever reason there was staff support for that proposal there wouldn't just just to design just a historic report saying that it is eligible would not necessarily um trigger referral what does trigger referral as if it is actually listed if it's listed the code says that there is a historic alteration permit that's required and so anything that's listed if you're making some of the specified changes that's required to go to the HPC i do understand that there have been that there was one individual um at the HPC um who um at a public meeting requested that um this be brought to them but it's my understanding that HPC has not voted and has not made a formal um request to have it come to them thank you ma'am i have one um legal question that i know the vice mayor has a question as well as well if the um prior reports indicate that it doesn't meet that designation criteria but the historic preservation commission finds that it does and they're in conflict with one another what does that reconciliation process look like in terms of the legal extent of it well i assume it would come to the city council but it would have to be done in accordance with the standards that are applicable for that designation so you would have to evaluate the evidence okay and make a determination okay thank you vice mayor my last question um even if this were to be considered a historic site would it still is there still a process whereby it could be demolished and turned into this housing project anyway yes so the process uh that would trigger then um an environmental impact report so there are thresholds of significance under the california environmental quality act and one of the local thresholds that we have is uh designation of a structure if it's designated and any action that would be taken that would cause that structure to no longer be eligible to be listed in the inventory and obviously demolition would cause it to no longer be eligible so because it would exceed that threshold of significance that would be a significant unavoidable impact under siqua and that triggers an environmental impact report and so that's the process it would be an environmental impact report and then in order for the council to ultimately approve a project where there's a significant unavoidable impact there would have to be a finding of uh overriding considerations so essentially the council would recognize that yes there is a significant impact but we're approving this project anyway for x y and z reasons all right so um before we go ahead and take the vote i'll just maybe clarify briefly about this process for the agendizing process um this was brought forward to my attention by the three council members that brought this forward really requesting it come to this meeting and um and it's assumed that the uh report is holistically complete at that time so that's why it's on this agenda and that's why um we're hearing it today so that said we'll go ahead and uh revisit the motion we have council member crone who made the motion to move the recommendation as presented seconded by council member gliver do you need a clarification no i just didn't know if we meant now i'm gonna i i also can can see that uh i think we're we're we've got the continuation is is not going to be supported so i won't make a motion okay so all those in favor can ask for a friendly amendment council vice mayor come in this go to the next possible historic preservation commission meeting sure that's that's great that's what we want is there any consider considerations that we need to have before we make that into the motion is that possible i was just checking with the workload of our staff member that uh is working on it and and from our perspective i think you know we're we're able to bring that um at during that timeline okay okay so the motion is to have this on the next um commission meeting for the historic preservation commission so that friendly amendment was accepted by vice mayor Cummings okay any further discussion okay see none all those in favor please say aye opposed no that passes with council member brown vice mayor Cummings crone and gliver and support matthews meyers and myself voting against okay we'll go ahead and move on to the next item and that is our consent public hearing and that's for um items 21 and 22 and we'll give you a second to transition out 21 and 22 we're going to wait for the transition here so we'll go ahead and jump right into our consent public hearing that's items number 21 and 22 on our agenda um are there any council members who want to comment or to pull either of the consent public hearing items council member brown i see you going for your sorry no no um yeah i would like to pull item 21 pulling item 21 okay and that is the um the second reading of the small ordinance um any other uh comments at this time okay is there any member of the community who would like to speak to the council on item number 22 on our consent public hearing okay please come forward and you'll have two minutes hey the things is okay anyway gary philip this is health and all policies right yes okay the second reading okay i doubt wait a sec i doubt many people understand the significance of this policy no one doubts the universe around us affects our lives the question is always to what extent the government has the wisdom or the right to micromanage lives our founding fathers answered this question they chose the individual as the unit of sovereign authority and a limited government to service it instead of legislating behavior protecting sovereign rights this seeks to legislate an expanded redefined health and equity along leftist globalist dogma which has problems similar to for instance legislating morality equity should really be decided in the domain of courts ultimately and a general consideration of fair objective community standard of equity would be better your high up says in so many deceptive words i paraphrase all people are entitled to an equal life outcome because of our factors we define as unhealthy or an inequity in any way we choose based on loose correlations of this to that in the social studies which are not science and may confuse correlation with causation or it alludes to the right of people to achieve their potential being obstructed by again whatever you define as potential or causes of preventing potential that theoretically results as a definition of an inequity this is a sea change in american thought we didn't exactly vote on as a people and is actually blatant totalitarian will be used to decimate individual liberty and based on some really sounds good but actually very unsound ideas one such as the idea that you can measure someone's potential or know what it is and the government should then pass laws to ensure that it is fulfilled however potential truly is an unmeasurable abstraction at best unknowable and here is an excuse for abuse of power as the underpinning of this policy it begins with blatantly defective logic tell me what my potential is i dare you its purpose is really to establish a leftist globalist template not approved in the court of american public opinion to push all policy through warping priorities without acknowledging the infinite array of other considerations your time is up all right is there any other members of the community who want to address us on this item this is item number 22 of our consent public hearing second reading thank you very much i just wanted to um ask the council to please consider the that we've the way i see it um there's been a kind of a streamline stream lining of design policy that end up being built and manifest in our in our cities and neighborhoods and basically those are both uh rather bureaucratic and they definitely serve the greater good one is for example on the more um capitalistic side where you have development happening um and hopefully the city is correcting for things like affordable housing and so forth and then on the other side i'd really appreciate if any of the council members other than one or two would pay attention to me please um on the other side of this there's the kind of bureaucratic uh what you might call public interest side that tries to correct for public interest such as health and sanitation so i just want to say how much i really appreciate this um the health in all policies and that you're adding the word sanitation is interesting to me and my point today in speaking to this is to ask the council to consider that there's a third way and that third way was gaining um some light of day back in the 60s in the 70s with new designs that were being brought forward i really don't know why that happened maybe it was our affluence as a country at that time um but what i'm trying to say there are ways of doing real sanitation that are not as common or mainstream that have to do with things like composting and ways of dealing with our waste that are not very much visited and so i'm asking the council to please retain an open-mindedness because these designs have been buried and that they can provide a wonderful third way for us all thank you next speaker really appreciate this being brought forward um i think we all agree on health for our community for me it's the devils and the details um i don't i i have some sort of image of what it would mean when somebody is putting a report together but i'm not quite picturing what the health and all policies would be on the addition to any report that comes forward in the future um so i i think that maybe we should just clarify that perhaps saying that it would cover all the different populations for me i mean as you know i'm always talking about homeless stuff um to say whether if the addition of health and all policies has to include who like who is it referring to so that's just my my thought on that thanks any other member of the community wanting to speak to us on this item this is item number 22 under consent public hearing hi i'm my name is drew lewis um i uh this just kind of caught my attention i was going to speak on another issue but um one thing i'm we were talking about health and sanitation i would like to draw attention to the fact that historically human societies had been ravaged with uh disease and uh epidemics and stuff through the hundreds of years and that pretty much um was resolved the few years uh the last century when we started in installing public sanitation systems water treatment sewage disposal those diseases pretty much disappeared and i'm uh really concerned about the fact that uh this city shuts down and locks up public restrooms to the public to certain i might say certain sections of the public and i think that puts us all at risk because if we have a section of our population that is denied access to um clean drinking water uh toilets and that sort of thing that we are exposing ourselves to the very serious risk of uh contamination and serious epidemic epidemiological crisis by doing so i think that's really a big mistake and we did i believe have a hepatitis spike um last year or a year before because of that policy of shutting down public bathrooms people didn't have a chance the people were basically that were homeless were relieving themselves in the bushes and other places and i think that's really bad public policy so i'd hope that you would start thinking about that uh that we're being put at risk in terms of health and sanitation ordinance thank you okay well go ahead are you here for item 21 or 22 we're on 22 we're on 22 are you here to speak to that health and all policies and i agree with what drew louis just said it's essential to provide uh public restrooms available for everyone i have a card here i like when things are happening in reality that it's really health in all policies and not just words and all policies then not just some microwave radiation is a health hazard has known biological effects and the world health organization labors this radiation as a possible carcinogen same category has led ddt benzene you've all been provided with dvds and literature on the topic so when you talk or have health in all policies we need to be preventing and removing the sources of microwave radiation onslaught and i'm going to give you this card public health warning put out by stop smart meters that's another source this is one of the most unhealthy uh sources of you know damaging our health is this one quintillion times the radiation in the environment we're getting then it's natural that's one way that's either 18 or 16 zeros causing functional impairment harming firemen who have these antennas near or on their buildings that they can't perform their duties due to being in a brain fog coordination off slow reaction time there's a big problem here we need to remove the harm thank you and i believe you'll be our last speaker thank you satio ryan i really do appreciate this health in all policies initiative my friend barba river woman who couldn't come today was talking to me yesterday about the difference between equity and equality and what she reminded me of is in uh equality everyone has equal rights to the same services but in equity if there were three people of different heights the short person would get to stand on a box so it's just given me something to think about because i know equity is one of the pillars in this health and all policies so i can see how it applies to the issues i'm concerned with and others as well so i'm i'm sharing that for her too thanks okay we'll go ahead and return back to council for um action on this item council member or vice mayor coming in council member matthews i'll just go ahead and move that okay second it okay motion by vice mayor coming's council uh seconded by council member matthews any further discussion yes i want to acknowledge your leadership this this was your baby i'm excited about that i appreciate your work and your input to make it as inclusive as it is at this stage in its second reading so thank you for that okay all those in favor please say i i any opposed that passes unanimously we'll go ahead and return back to now item number 21 which is the second reading of the ordinance and i believe we have staff here if we have any questions is that correct or do you have any questions i am right here okay are there any questions from the council on this item councilor brown i i don't have a question right at this moment although i will just say that i've heard from members of the public who have concerns about um some of the change the proposed language changes um because they were not in the original published packet they were given to us after that um that packet went out or was posted to our city website so i think i'd like to just let the members of the public who are here i know there are a few speak about that and then i um i did want to try to propose just uh uh just a very small change what i consider to be a very small change but i'd like to hear from the public first unless there are any other questions before we hear from the public no seeing none okay we'll go ahead and open it who is interested in speaking to us on this item this is item number 21 of our consent agenda okay please come forward hello again satya ryan i'm speaking on behalf of emf aware so i'm here asking for your help one more time at the last meeting i submitted an item f for the purpose and intent section i was told that the item would be included which i was very happy about but not that my wording had been significantly changed i didn't find that out for until several days later it wasn't read aloud it wasn't explained to the council had i known at the time what the wording was i i would have opposed its adoption the current wording will discourage and prejudice a da accommodation request which is the exact opposite of what i intended so i ask that this be stricken from the ordinance and i also um i also want to speak about the five day time limit for a da accommodation request uh this was added just before the last meeting it wasn't published in the agenda online documents i didn't catch that at the time but i saw it later i've given you a copy of the original published version you know and i agree that request should be made as soon as possible but what i have since learned is that the city cannot legally refuse to consider a disability or a fair housing request for accommodation so whether the city does this or not is up to you but it's not cannot legally be done this really honestly feels like a step backwards to me from all the really good work that we've done together so my hope is that you will reconsider and delete that five day time limit we also need to include specific contact information for the city about where people send these requests that's not included currently in that item and i also have another recommendation regarding item number four under the applicability okay i'm going to have someone else read this thank you thank you any other members of the community wanting to address this this is our second reading for item number 21 hi my name is durluis as you know i'll also start with uh finishing what satya was saying she's saying she also like to recommend that item four under applicability section 15 38 0 30 b dean leated this is an exception of wireless facilities that are suspended on communication cables and lines these facilities are already prohibited in the aesthetics design standards i feel concerned that if this prohibition were to be removed in the future these facilities would be left unregulated i would also like to speak about support the removing the five-day limit for 88 accommodations i'd like to point out that the city to also like to like to put out that the city does not have the legal right to deter or prevent disability requests for accommodation and i'd also like to ask why or who this time limit was added one day before the previous council meeting without direction from the council i'd also like to ask that uh that you remove item f from the purpose of an intent of section which was changed to link a da agonization requests with fcc regulations we were told that this that it was approved but not that our wording had been significantly changed this prevented us from explaining why this wording was so damaging to a da accommodation request codifying a position by the city that the fcc takes precedence thank you hi my name's james i guess i got here right at the right time i had an unusual callback after a final inspection with the county of xana cruise fortunately using the scientific method got handled really well so i could repeat what i said before the first time i was here i'm not at this time what i am going to say is due to me being corrected about improper language in this maritime courtroom i believe that jurors prudence should be changed slightly and that people should be welcome to comment on whatever they want to comment at the seven o'clock time and i'm going to hold all of you to that thank you anyone else here to speak to item number 21 on our consent public hearing mera nat senem of nevada city council california states 4g 5g and the public right of way is a corporate and hostile takeover of our public right of way with no concern for public health and the environment as this costal hostile takeover progresses right now we are under continuous assault with microwave radiation warfare frequencies please view and review the dbd i provided each of you titled 5g apocalypse the extinction event for substantiation and thank you councilmember sandy brown for already viewing that liability issues and fire crown castle in berizon according to its 2014 scc filing does not have liability insurance for health effects if residents sue for radiation caused illness due to the small cell towers outside their homes in the public right of way cities like san accrues will be left defenseless the city not for eisen or crown castle will likely incur significant cause for liability damages and i will give you a picture of one of these cell sites that caught on fire in clovis california by entering agreements with a moral telecom corporations you are amand dating an intensification of the radiation destruction that has already taken place over the last 23 years with 2g 3g 4g no resident or child has authorized 24 7 bonley microwave you're welcome to leave your out we do not consent okay your time is up all right i think you'll be our last speaker here oh listen to dr carl mary at three at clock on the radio okay you're welcome to leave any documents with us are there any other members of the community who want to speak okay i understand then then you'll be our last speaker with the hat go ahead this is not my issue so i'm i just want to first of all say i remember uh mrs mayer speaking about the fact that she did not feel very happy about the federal government telling us what we could oppose legally or not when it comes to these 5g towers and i appreciated that statement because we are at a time when the type of dominance and exploitation that we are going through in terms of our democracy in terms of our ability to even sue which we are prohibited supposedly from doing on paper it's um as i can say it is very extreme and and these types of hegemonies happen in our time through laws through economic domination forms of domination so i just want to switch at this point to the fact that my nephew is suffering with a form of leukemia my sister was his mother was just diagnosed with breast cancer and she also suffered a divorce and lost her house and i found her on a go fund me website because we're estranged at this point so i just want to talk about the forms of violence that are being pervaded through all of our families through all of our networks and institutions at this point and we are just having such a difficult time standing up to these toxic policies so when it comes to cell phones and computers and so forth i was just told by somebody who knows about the minerals that go into all these gadgets and we are destroying the global south to get these materials and now we are going to destroy ourselves it's likely that my my nephew got a fat dose of radiation from Fukushima because of the way the weather patterns it they live in portland we don't know but i sure wish we did know and i think we should be very careful at this time thank you and you'll be our last speaker honoree miss walkins honoree council members yeah i uh you know show us the health and safety study fcc independent of the fcc um we already know overwhelmingly that um through scientific evidence that microwave radiation is dangerous to humans plants and animals and beings of such a biodiverse region as santa cru such a beautiful monoray bay which where i've grown up and lived my whole life um keeping that uh quality of life here is very very important for all of us i think 5g uh in public thoroughfares would definitely affect you know our overall our overall health of people not wanting to be exposed this constitutes a violation of the newmberg treaty being tested upon without the willingness of the citizens of the united states we do not want 5g in our neighborhoods we do not want new cell towers in our neighborhoods we do not want crowd control weapons used in iraq and iran that is now called phased array don't don't get it confused this is a laser okay this is not microwave this is new technology that hasn't been thoroughly tested so i would uh encourage as we have done already in carmel with a ban by the city council on 5g and a lawsuit against verizon in monoray county by the santa cru city council against 5g now they want to go to the planning commission uh the coastal commission but uh that's a whole other thing but we um there's there's nations all over that are stepping up including uh russia who's now going to fiber optics over 5g uh poland ban 5g many many countries have proven unsafe uh according to the tests that were done in the hag birds dropped it out of the sky with internal hemorrhaging um so there's many many things here including you know headaches insomnia dizziness thank you very much but i encourage a ban on the 5g till further testing thank you very much thank you okay we'll go ahead and return back to the council now for action on this item you know a doctor i'm sorry ma'am are you all done you're welcome to hand our stuff over okay yeah okay council member brown yeah um so i hope that we can move through this pretty quickly because we have spent quite a bit of time on it i wanted to ask um for clarification on um the requirements around uh second reading versus first reading were we to delete item f which came to us um late uh was not uh so as a member of the public suggested this was at the request of that um the emf aware group and with the amended language that ended up in the version that we saw for today um they're not very they're not supportive of that if we just strike uh item f under on uh ordinance 2019 dash 11 um chapter 15.38 f can with that require another second reading would this be a first reading you give me just a minute to ponder that and perhaps while the council continues its discussion thanks so um that is uh you know i my hope is that we could just do that today and and um take care of that um with respect to the request about the deletion of item number four um in 15.38030 of the ordinance 2019 dash 11 i um i understand that concern that if the prohibition on design aesthetic were to be removed then the those facilities um what the overhead line facilities or um uh yeah facilities i guess i'll catch all word for it if though that would be left unregulated and i think that um that is something that i i completely understand and i think that um that's something that we ought to monitor and should those um that other prohibition be removed in other elsewhere um that we could then revisit that um rather than doing it now because i do want to try to if we can uh resolve it today um with respect to the guidelines which um and the five-day turnaround um on guidelines i um i take it that uh that we are whether or not we say it we can't require the five days um under the ADA so i'm you know at this point if we leave it in there i i'm inclined to say let's just take it out but i understand we've had this conversation multiple on multiple occasions and if uh it is the will of uh the council and um based on recommendation from staff to leave it in we can leave it in and we will it will get resolved if and when the time comes that that such an accommodation request is is made um and uh if the law is on the side of not requiring not not limiting to five days then that's how we will need to proceed at that time so um that's all i was going to say for now so if the ordinance is altered after its introduction um then it has to come back for another second reading um there's an exception for clerical or typographical errors and i think the deletion of that paragraph goes a little bit beyond what i would consider a clerical or typographical error so um what i might suggest just given the extensive time that the council has already devoted to this topic um not to mention the amount of time staff time and city attorney time that's taken should that be the will of the council that you recommend bringing that narrow uh amendment back for introduction at a future meeting so you can proceed today with the final adoption and we could come back with an ordinance amending just to delete subsection f i would be supportive of that if that's the direction we want to go and i just want to appreciate and acknowledge your comments because you meant reference that a good portion of your staff time has and as an example when we were talking about the legal fees earlier on this item so hopefully we can although it's complicated and difficult it is in a difficult position local jurisdictions are in that we can eventually try to move something well and i i don't want to um i don't want to diminish the amount of effort that has gone into this both by council members and members of the public to what i end up with what i think is a is a very good work product um but it has been a long time getting here yeah okay council member crown and then what about the other two issues that were brought up here that council member round just said those would also have to be brought back so if you want to make that change today come back for a second reading in january or you could direct that those amendments be brought back for consideration as a separate ordinance and what about adding city contact information further for all requests where people can you know where they go to if i might i believe that's going to be provided on our website for small cell and at this point i mean i don't think that's something that belongs in the ordinance itself maybe the maybe the department perhaps but and does it matter if we take out the five day and i call my team up here to help with that good afternoon i first of all the five day public notification that's in the permit guidelines so that's not before council today but obviously we could revisit that um i believe that council member mires asked a question about the five-day public notification at the last meeting and i just explained that you know we had put that time limit with regards to the FCC shot clocks and before that meeting we had received several letters from verizon at and t suggesting that the city's proposed process perhaps wouldn't meet the shot clock so this was our recommendation for a proposed timeline to protect the city from that does it matter as council member brown and member of the public talked about five days i mean it's you can still make um still appeal it i guess if through americans for disabilities act or not so do you need the five days or is it kind of mood it's just what i what i would suggest is that that you consider um keeping it in there because really talking about two different things here uh and i think it's right that a person could bring an ad a claim um past the five-day period but what we're really talking about is the process for permitting of these facilities even a facility that's in place might be the subject of an ad a claim at some point and so um so i so i think the reason why it's important to have a limit is so that our process is able to meet the shot clock um should someone bring an ad a claim um outside of that process then that would just be handled as any other claim against the city would be handled thank you for the clarification so um given the direction that our city attorney has given us i'd like to make a motion then uh that we adopt ordinance 2019 this is the it's already established here in the in the staff recommendation that we um adopt ordinance number 2019 dash oh six amending title 24 of the sannikers muni code um as per uh staff recommendation that we to adopt a resolution authorizing and directing the city manager to submit the adopted amendments as written um in the agenda and staff report and three that we adopt the ordinance number 2019 dash 11 um as uh written in the agenda and four that we direct staff to return in january is that possible second meeting in january with uh narrow um ordinance revisions uh proposal an ordinance revision proposal uh to delete item f in ordinance 2019 dash 11 section 15.38 oh three oh no that's um sorry sorry 15.38 010 subsection 2 item f and um section 15.38.0 30 item 3 uh number 4 delete to delete those two narrowly to consider narrowly the deletion of those two items and that bunny uh just want to point out that there's also a resolution authorizing the city manager to transmit um why not the amendments to the coastal that was number two yeah the resolution yes all right so we have a motion by council member brown is there a second i'll go ahead and second that all those in favor unless there's any further questions you have a question could we divide the question um i have some questions on number four the the revisit on the on the bring it back for consideration yeah i have just some questions on that do you want to have those questions heard now or would you like to have those questions when they were brought back i think it would be great to have the questions but i don't know if we'll have the answers um okay i would like to just say that we will be providing comment and our recommendations on those modifications when we bring them back because i'm not prepared to do that today okay so given that information do you want to reserve your questions after there's preparation on behalf of the city attorney for comment on those potential changes i suppose so uh i'll just say briefly um my recollection is that there were real reasons for those the language that we have now i i don't need to get into it now because obviously the votes are there to bring it back um i will say an item for exclusion about the being strung between utility polls um it refers to um facilities um strung between utility polls in compliance with applicable safety codes it doesn't talk about a design issue so that's just one example i think um it will come back but by sending it for coming back i'm not at all certain that i'm going to support them in the end okay great i don't know if this is there correct time by i'm prepared to speak about uh subsection f in the purpose intent of the ordinance if you would like to hear our thoughts now or okay yeah we are running late and behind i would say oh i'm sorry okay well then but it's fine because this is just you know as a second reading and the amount of discussion that we've had subsequent on this specific topic um we weren't really allocating this amount of time for this level of discussion again but if we want to briefly have that answer i can i can be okay go ahead so this is in regards to uh section f we did add in section f in response to miss iran's uh comments which came after the agenda packet went out so that was the reason for that change but we did make some modifications as we advised city council and namely we just added in that the city was going to you know not limit an individual's ability to seek a reasonable accommodation under the ad a but we would still be in compliance with the law applicable law and we kept it very broad so that could be the telecommunications act that could be the ad a and as we've explained to council there's some disagreement among the courts as to whether the ad a preempts the tca or not and so our recommendation from our office has just been for council to continue forward that we need to comply with the tca but i don't believe that this language necessarily changes much it just says that council will comply with applicable law so i'm we felt like we kept the language very broad so that it would work um okay councilor brown i appreciate the uh comments and i i understand that it was a late request in the so i was there was no commentary on having not received it earlier i'm simply saying that given that this was never this was not proposed by the city by city staff or the city attorney's office to even be included in the ordinance it seems like a it shouldn't take that much conversation and you know deliberation to just remove it entirely we weren't going to put it in there so it's clearly not necessary from the city's perspective correct okay so given that do you still want to divide the question okay so then all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously we're going to take a 10 minute break and then we'll return back for item number 23 on our council meeting agenda packet all right we'll go ahead and come back if we can at this time so we're on item number 23 of our public hearing um agenda for the afternoon Santa Cruz City Council December 10th meeting and we'll just go ahead and jump right in what we'll have as a presentation from staff um any clarifying questions as needed from the council we'll open it up to public comment and then return back for action okay good afternoon and mayor members of the council Bonnie Lipscomb director of economic development and with me today is lee butler director of planning and community development and in the audience I have Jessica DeWitt and Jessica Miller who also have been working on on this item over the last two months we have a a short presentation and then we're open to answer any questions that you have I first just wanted to start with a very brief background of of how we got to this point this has been an 18 month process through the amendments and then through the additional direction that we've been working on recently through to the planning commission on November 21st and then back to the you know just the settlement that we had over the last couple of meetings and so without going into a lot of detail on the background we did agree and settled for a 15% citywide inclusionary amendment that was passed in the second reading at the at the previous council meeting we did go to the planning commission on November 21st they reviewed and recommend made recommendations regarding any additional proposed changes and they did at per council direction review and have a recommendation regarding the inclusionary percentage and I'll go through those briefly overall for this afternoon's meeting these are the items we're going to be reviewing with you and asking you to take action on today first is to review the planning commission recommendations then to review the staff recommendations and take action on the following consider amendments to the inclusion ordinance consistent with state law consider additional staff recommendations for future planning commission for some cleanup items related to any ordinance changes proposed today and then to take no further action related to the plaintiff proposed additional red line amendments and then finally and I think the main discussion is to discuss and take action on whether to increase the current citywide inclusionary rate from 15 to 20% and we'll take these one at a time so the first one is to review of the planning commission recommendations their recommendations are specifically to conduct a feasibility analysis by a qualified independent financial consultant to evaluate the effect of increasing the inclusionary ordinance citywide for all housing developments both rental and ownership prior to consideration of increasing the inclusionary rate they also recommend that we amend the inclusionary ordinance by making specified changes to reflect newly enacted state law um they directed staff to review and bring back any cleanup amendments related to identified inconsistencies created by um amendments to the ordinance back to the planning commission for further review and recommendations and then to take no further amendments um to be made to the ordinance in relation to the settlement agreement additional red line changes so um briefly those are the planning commission recommendations that are related to the staff recommendations and we'll go through those one by one as well so the first is review of the staff recommendations the staff recommendations are to uh the first one is to consider uh amendments to the inclusion ordinance consistent with state law and the specific law that we're referring to here is Senate Bill 330 which is the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 and I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Butler to briefly go over these changes thank you Bonnie so we are um recommending that reference to the new government code section that will be coming in to effect on January 1st of 2019 be included or excuse me January 1st of 2020 be included with the ordinance and that is because it specifically that section of the code specifically identifies when um we can add new fees and it specifies that if an applicant has uh prepared and submitted a complete preliminary review application that the fees are set in place at the time of that complete application submittal so for ease we would have to comply with that regardless of whether it's here but for ease of the development community and the general public understanding that or recommending that be added in here we've also included a couple of clarification items to um address what we thought may be some concerns from the appellants and also just to clarify for the council and the public that if we are using another um another provision we it would be something else that the council has adopted and not just another provision that's not a part of our code or something that hasn't been adopted by council um additionally um we recommend that council consider uh future planning commission consideration of any cleanup amendments following council direction and specifically the point of this is just to address any inconsistencies it's a pretty complicated ordinance and when you know you change we change certain things there are often linkages to other sections and looking through them we think there are a couple minor ones that we need to bring back we wanted to wait until to see what action you took today to see if we needed to make additional ones so we're just recommending that you have us once you make your decision today to go through to see identify any inconsistencies and then go back to planning commission to address those and come back to you for the for those and so we do recommend doing that as well and then finally um we recommend and this is also the planning commission recommendation to take no further action related to the additional um this is beyond the settlement agreement um plaintiff proposed uh red line changes and those are in your packet as um attachments five and six and specifically this is six which is the staff analysis um the summary of the proposed changes in the staff analysis and our recommendation on this is to take no further action on the grounds the changes would either in some instances violate state law and government code or have a potential or real adverse impact on this the city's affordable housing production so to recap the discussion and actions for tonight's meeting is the review of the planning commission recommendations the review of staff recommendations that I just went over and then finally to discuss and take action on whether to increase the current citywide inclusionary rate from 15 to 20 percent so the balance of the presentation really focuses on this third this third area um the recommendation the staff recommendation is to consider an increase in the inclusionary percentage citywide for all housing developments both rental and ownership after consideration of a feasibility analysis prepared by a qualified consultant evaluating the impacts of such changes and I specifically wanted to just go into why we're recommending this at this time we want to make sure that we're doing informed decision um that there is an informed decision based on credible analysis and market data we want to avoid any unintended consequences of negatively impacting affordable housing production and finally the most recent study that we did have um kaiser marston prepare in 2018 was for rental housing only we haven't done a recent study in a number of years um that has really looked at the impact of increasing the inclusionary rate for ownership housing we were intending to do that following the amendments in 2018 um but given what happened with the lawsuit the timing wasn't right to to do that until that was resolved you know our concerns um about increasing it without having some additional data as a baseline it's one data point so we're not saying that you know that that's the only source of information we look at but it is an important one to really um be aware of what market realities are in addition to the context of other policy changes at the city level um the the inclusionary requirements that we have significantly reduced income from rental units and sale prices for for for sale homes in our tight housing market compliance with inclusionary requirements may make many projects find financially um infeasible density bonus does provide one method for developers to improve the economics of their project but it may not completely address feasibility obtaining greater density can help the developer of any project bring costs and financing sources into line by putting more homes on the land reducing the per unit costs however developers need to make a cost benefit determination whether the cost of compliance is worth is worth the benefits it is not a foregone conclusion that all builders or developers will be able to take advantage of the density bonus provisions so that's just an important element to keep in mind as we as we move forward with this um in context as this has come up um we've looked at nearby jurisdictions we've actually looked at a much broader swath um across um across california of what other jurisdictions are really looking at as far as their inclusionary ordinances to put that in perspective and santa cruz is the third down um both monoray county san francisco and watsonville are specifically called out here because some there's some elements of their ordinance which does include a 20 percent um or greater it's also important to recognize that santa cruz when you're considering offsite does have a 30 percent so um that we have in comparison actually even though ours is is 15 um on the on the rental um it's important to recognize um that you can see the other three jurisdictions um whether it's a county or the city of of watsonville all have more flexibility on the area median income so you can have a higher income and qualify for those units you can sell them at a higher rate you can rent them at a higher rate because it goes up to 100 percent or even up to 130 percent in the in the case of san francisco additionally if you look on the threshold project size some of them only start for projects um in the case of san francisco for 10 units or more and then some have different uh flexibility for projects under 25 or more than 25 so my point in showing all of these um and just going back to the cities is that we have a currently a pretty inflexible program it's very tight and when you compare it to other jurisdictions it's not a clear cross the board apples to apples comparison when you look at our housing element because this also comes up frequently um and you go to the far right column um you'll see that the total remaining regional housing needs assessment numbers by income level that we still need to and we have you know basically four years left to not including the current year we're in to create 168 very low units and low units low units is 80 percent of area median income i think it's likely that we'll we'll be able to meet that during this period the very low is going to be challenging but i do want to point out that typically for those very low units those aren't created by private development those are generally created by publicly assisted projects affordable housing projects with city funding um other traditional combination funding of of financing sources so i do think we really need to look at what our goals are and how do we achieve that and what level of income we want to put on private development to achieve our inclusionary goals again if you go a little more closely and look at some of those neighboring jurisdictions when you really break down their 20 percent and look at they have a lot of flexibility so i've circled in green um at Monterey County um that you can see that those that are either at or lower than our AMI is actually a lower percentage than our 15 percent so it's 12 percent in Monterey san francisco it's 12 percent and 10 percent um when you get for projects larger than 25 units it's actually lower than our 80 percent at AMI so again the point in showing this is just that there's a lot of variability and it really depends on the community and i think there's a lot of options that we really could have as we go forward and look at what what our ordinance is. Watsonville um is also worth pointing out because they're you know our our neighbor they have a 20 percent but they have a lot of flexibility they have five percent of that is at 100 percent of AMI um and five percent is similar to our 15 percent and then they have five percent at low um and then they have a five percent section eight and that's really interesting that's based on um whether or not there are uh households seeking uh units at the time that a project is put on the market they have one month and if someone comes forward that can qualify if that doesn't happen then that that five percent gets waived so again i'm i'm just pointing these out to to to really share with you that if we are looking at flexibility i think we have um there's a lot of room that we can do to really look at um how we craft our ordinance but our current ordinance at at you know 15 percent at 80 percent of AMI is very restrictive and it's really hard to meet and if we increase that to 20 percent with a that existing 80 percent of AMI it really may be too uh infeasible for developers to move forward um to just sort of recap this i think if we're we really need as as a community as a city to determine what our affordability goals are for the city what are we trying to achieve with this ordinance ordinance are we trying to meet our regional housing needs goals you know are we trying to meet our measure o commitment and our measure o is um is looking at 15 percent at average income which is considerably higher than our 80 percent of median um create an inclusionary requirements that can be feasibly achieved you know i think i'll be looking from my perspective i want affordable housing to be built so when i just on the surface of it say 20 or 25 percent that sounds great but if we if it's actually not feasible because we're imposing this on private development um we're not going to be achieving our goals so hoping that we can as we go forward we can create inclusionary requirements that incentivize affordable housing development um that don't inhibit housing development and that we also can look at some of the smaller projects because you typically for those projects either under 25 or under 10 um have different financing and potentially different development expertise at some of those than the larger projects and they finance them differently so looking at those as well and then finally to look at other jurisdictions and to see what's working what isn't and why i'd love to sit down with the city of watsonville and really talk to them about their section eight um component that they have and to find out how that's working um finally um the last two points are just the i think one of the the goals of conducting a market feasibility analysis for santa cruz for rental and ownership for ownership as i mentioned we don't have baseline data for that right now um it's been sometimes since we modified or looked at our inclusionary for ownership and i really feel like we need to do that um and again to look at what is the range of how we could achieve if we are going to a 20 percent um if we're looking at 20 percent up to moderate income which would be 120 percent of area median income um are we looking at maybe trying to incentivize some of those lowest deepest levels of affordability maybe we want to provide some flexibility of how we get there maybe if a developer want is willing to go there or if we even have some funding to go there that we could look at a lower percentage if they're meeting those deeper affordability or maybe um we want to provide some flexibility or a combination of options of how we get to for example if we go to 20 percent um so just to recap the recommendation and i do have copies of that coming coming around um it's to introduce an ordinance today amending specified changes reflected of newly enacted state law recommend that council direct staff to review and bring any cleanup amendments related to those to any inconsistencies created by ordinance amendments back to the planning commission for consideration recommend that council take no further action on additional proposed red line amendments in attachments five and six these are beyond the settlement um and i should just add right here um that uh recommendation number three is also the planning commission recommendation and that component of the recommendation was a unanimous by the planning commission um and then finally to consider an increase in the inclusionary percentage citywide for all housing developments both rental and ownership after consideration of a feasibility analysis prepared by a qualified consultant to evaluate the impacts of such changes and um that's um i have some backup slides if we if we have a specific questions but that that concludes our staff presentation thank you for the presentation i have a question are there any other council members with questions or are we wanting to go straight to public comment um maybe is there any additional questions i don't have additional questions okay i just have one brief question just because i know that we have our superintendent here uh chris minneville for san akir city school i'm wondering how the ordinance applies to any type of workforce housing development and how it could be designed um to or modify to accommodate some of the interests around um different types of projects like they're proposing for workforce housing so when we were talking about typically 120 percent is considered uh you know uh workforce housing sometimes up to 150 percent is considered workforce housing so i think that would be part of the flexibility if we wanted to include a a variety of ranges of income that qualify okay okay great thank you i appreciate that okay unless there aren't any additional questions at this time why don't we go ahead and open it up to public comment and those who want to come forward please do and you'll have up to two minutes good afternoon i just want to start by thanking all of you for your service to our community i know it's not easy for council or staff and we just appreciate what you do for our community in on january first 2017 senate bill 1413 went into effect which authorized school districts to establish program aimed at helping teachers secure affordable housing um as a school district we've spent the last three years three and a half years investing gating the possibility of workforce housing projects there's a national teacher shortage and in the last five years we've lost 50 teachers because of the cost of living in our community that's a really significant percentage of our of our teaching workforce we um get young teachers here um oftentimes there are living multiple people to um apartments and or couch surfing or living with friends and um they can't get established here and our goal is really to help um young people get established in our community and we want to recruit the best and brightest people to serve the the children and youth in our community um we've also seen a high turnover of our support staff particularly our part-time staff that work in classrooms with students and serve in our cafeterias um and as you're considering your inclusionary housing ordinance i really want you to consider language that would allow a waiver to inclusionary ordinance for workforce projects our goal is to provide below market rents for all of our employees we want to build an 80 unit complex out on swiss street at the old arc monarch property um although our young teachers can afford to live here they make too much to qualify as low income under the i'm sorry i'm talking you know if we if we have questions if you are going to be here we can maybe have you come back up can i just really fast um so i know you know i'm pretty consistent let me let me just if you want you can leave it and then i think we might have questions so we will likely have you come back up if that's okay okay so we'll go ahead and keep going and then um we'll reserve maybe some further conversation or questions around your specific circumstance please come forward thank you uh good afternoon thank you mayor vice mayor and city council my name is jesse bristow with swanson builders i'm a development project manager and we did write a letter echoing uh support for planning commission's recommendation to um to review an analysis for that affordability increase but strictly with with the study that supports that uh currently we we feel at 15 percent and there's a certain amount of challenges when it comes to development with construction costs with uh with demand supply and demand lack of supply across this state in the region of the greater bay area and santa cruz monterey um bay area so we just liked further support staff for recommendation number four that there should be a feasibility study that justifies this increase from 15 percent to 20 percent because currently as staff said um it's it's very fixed it's very um it's not flexible in how we can make projects work and in the the increase the more we increase the affordable subsidized by those market rate and you're further pushing up market rate rents making it even more unaffordable for people who would afford it under 15 percent and so um we feel that you know current density bonuses right now that the 190 west cliff is a perfect example they took advantage of the density bonus where you were able to get 8 percent of um low i think eight units that were low or very low and those wouldn't have been able to be achieved if those extra units through the density bonus on the extra floor weren't uh provided so as you kind of shrink it on both ends it becomes more challenging to provide those units and those affordable units and just quickly as far as the study for the fore sale to just give you some perspective our phase one of aftos village we had five measure j units affordable and because of the government shutdown and problems with fanny may and freddy mac it took uh it took a year to close those so thank you thank you all right next speaker please hello uh my name is rafa you all know me from my work on homelessness um i'm speaking now because the lack of affordability of housing in our community appears to be contributing to a trend of increasing housing instability which is a significant contributor to homelessness uh that said i support the staff's recommendations on this item and concur that simply increasing the inclusionary requirement in our ordinance will not necessarily result in real life increases to the actual number of affordable units built um i think that the hope is that raising the inclusionary rate will force private developers to add more affordable units but at the same time doing so amounts to a tax on development that may lead to less development and thus less affordable housing if we're raising inclusionary rates we need to offer more incentives for developers to build affordable units perhaps things like raise tight limits for inclusionary projects uh the staff mentioned a few other things like looking at income limits as well um still relying on private capital to meet all of our affordable housing goals is just with wishful thinking we should decide what role private capital should serve in our affordability goals a few weeks ago uh councilmember glever hosted a community forum on affordable housing where lots of good ideas were discussed uh we talked about uh ways that we could uh bring in things other than private capital to meet our capital requirements things like municipal bank financing affordable land trusts were just a couple ideas that stood out to me um um which uh we should take seriously those ideas uh so that we're not so dependent on for-profit lenders and their loan risk assessments for providing the capital we need to build affordable homes thank you hi i'm evan siroki and uh i also like give jukler credit and thanks for having a good meeting on uh how we can create affordable housing and uh yeah uh raffa mentioned a number of good ideas that i think are ideas as well uh one thing though that really stuck out to me in uh glever's presentation was that there's a need for 12 000 affordable homes 12 000 so here we're today revisiting a measure that is potentially going to get us towards that goal of 12 000 i hope that's the goal for for everyone here and so so apparently the goal is to get us towards that number so i want to know like how many of that 12 000 is this particular policy that we're gonna get us there and i did some some thinking of like you know we've had that 190 west cleft project and then that was uh there's 10 units there so like maybe if this was like 20 percent maybe we would have gotten three more in there so like three homes is 0.025 of 12 000 so then that uh pacific in front uh let's say that despite you know an expert saying that the developer probably was gonna have a financially invisible project if they did you know 15 percent let's say they still did it with 20 percent and so that means like you know let's say it was 300 units and with the 15 percent that would have been 45 and so this policy changed 20 percent maybe up that to 15 additional formal homes so 18 homes is 0.15 of 12 000 so i don't see how this particular topic really gets us close and i hope you just spend time doing something else that does next speaker good afternoon mayor and council i'm ron pomerance i think all council members are in strong support of increasing affordable housing and the question merely is how do we do it some believe the private market can achieve this i do not more government involvement is essential and there's a number of ways to do it you have before you one of those the 20 percent increase just on the side to know the project that was approved by council at 10 10 pacific is charging 4221 a month for 692 square feet if you would require the 15 percent minimum requirement do you think the rent the rent would be any lower no but you would have 15 percent affordability there so government must have been to achieve affordable housing for many of our residents the state legislatively supports these goals state law allows for in lieu fees instead of building the units in the project themselves in your section 17 today in your ordinance the council way under charges developers for their in lieu fees i would hope that you would revisit that and do a san francisco does and the in lieu fees would be cost of developer more than if they provided the units themselves i also would encourage the city to hire someone to look at the in lieu fee options as well as research and apply many other state and federal pots of money for affordable housing additionally times of the essence of 20 percent inclusionary is essential to move forward with there was no minority report from the planning commission that persuasively talked about the need for it and how that could be achieved authorizing another study kicks the can down the road if you pay enough money you can get the results you want the karsten study said the project on front would only provide could only pay for five and a half percent well they got 15 and they can sell for it i hope you'll go ahead with the 20 percent next speaker mayor council members jillian greenside well obviously this is more complicated than at first site and i appreciated the presentation i remember when inclusionary measure i was first introduced and it seemed to me that every development since that time has not included inclusionary units but an in lieu fee has been paid and as the previous speaker said that is too low to achieve much i i don't know where the figure 12 000 comes from that it seems like an artificial figure the figures were presented were 168 new very low units are needed and we provided 12 30 low income units are needed and we provided 88 if i read it correctly so the need is for the very low i would strongly suggest that you raise it to 20 percent and uh that you not a feasibility study to look at the market because that is a changing variable but that you look into the take the time there's already been 18 months review on this that you take the time to look at in detail at what other communities have done including watsonville and see where their successes are and how many units they have been able to provide over the years compared to us and that that's where the research and effort be made and i would add to that that it's all very well to say that developers can't afford to build if we require 20 percent but the book should be open i'd like to see the profit margins and maybe that's just not public information but without that we have no idea whether the the um the profits that are being made are way high and they could afford to lower the profits rather than just raise the cost of housing thank you thank you all right next speaker after you mayor council members um just to speak on that last point if you want to see a pro forma analysis of projects that factor into your inclusionary study look no further than the studies that have already been done that looked exactly at proformas of existing projects and developers moving forward with projects to see exactly what those margins are and where the costs are from um really today uh is just a tale between different models of getting towards the inclusionary housing that we're needing um i would point you into direction of two different cities that have really recent uh trends in term in terms of two different directions one is portland uh which in 2016 increased their inclusionary percentage to 20 percent um in certain uh certain parts of the city they saw a net decline in the number of housing units produced both affordable and market rate whereas if you look at somewhere like san diego where in 2014 they increased the density bonus they said if you do deeper affordable housing at deeper levels will give you more of an incentive to do it and they've seen a 600 increase in the number of housing they've created of all types both affordable and market rate so if you want to look at the table of two policy approaches empirically in two recent case studies and jurisdictions that you know while not perfectly analogous to santa cruz are certainly suffering from the same construction considerations urbanization uh considerations all the things the main economic trends are still affecting these cities in the very same way they affect our economic market i would look at those two cities and make the decision for yourself the evidence is very clear we've been studying this issue for so long and i'm sure we'll continue to do so but we just made the change less than two years ago um i would say stick with it or reevaluate and look at it with a study but frankly i think the the empirical evidence is quite clear look at the two different cities look at the two different approaches see which yields the results you want more of if you want to see an increase in the production of housing of all types including deeply affordable housing i would say santa india is probably a better case forward thank you i want to take a moment to talk about people that are kind of stuck in the middle right now we have friends that one of them is a school counselor in live oak and the other one is a muralist who had to become a program manager uh so they could be caught they could afford their current rent they're trapped in the middle i mean they're basically right around the median income for their family of four right they're they're never going to get on the lottery for low income and they're never going to make enough to to get past the the current trap that they're in i i speak for them because if we if we don't increase the housing that's available and especially for the place that they live in right now if it's got problems and if if for a certain reason they reported on it and it got red tagged they'd be homeless and i don't want that to happen so in general i want to see more housing please thank you hi i don't have a prepared statement but i've gone to a lot of hearings and i've thought about this quite a bit um um first of all my name is canis brown from east moresy um porlyn is a study an interesting study but there were a lot of factors that affected the downward trend so i think that you know when you look at that you need to sort of look at it with a little bit of skepticism about what was just said um there's one consideration that's not really been brought forward which is when you reduce the amount of inclusionary housing or keep it the same you're also bringing in so much market rate housing that you're increasing the average am i and i've seen that trend in the last five years which i think is a really serious problem because basically people will never be able to grab the golden ring because that number is constantly moving forward because you're saturating the market with market rate housing you're also taking a city that it's built out essentially and then you're taking the best parcels for instance at laurel street that really should have been student housing and that's luxury condos and it was just at the d w c which it was said by a public official that 10 percent of our homes or vacation homes in this county um and that 90 percent of the homes that are being bought right now are from over the hill and half of them are second homers so who are we trying to serve here by market rate we really need to focus on affordability there's a lot of projects that will be coming in with preliminary applications and once they lock in we cannot change it and these are huge huge projects and so i would recommend sticking with the 20 because you can always go back and modify it watsonville is really a good example they've done the studies i'm a little bit surprised that that wasn't presented here today because that is a great example of what can be done and they are building you know 20 25 affordable housing in some of these projects in watsonville right now and of course in san francisco it's 25 so i think there's some adjustments and amendments but i think right now we need to stick with 20 thank you kim okay seeing no other comment we'll go ahead and return back for council action on this item um i can't make a motion but i will just sort of um put out my perspective i agree with the recommendations i think it's critical that we have to have data to substantiate any type of policy decision as it relates to the percentage of inclusionary um for me that is looking at an outside um consultant to help us get that information and to have that information to have an informed policy decision so that would be sort of my two cents on that piece i would also like to see and we can see where the council goes with this is some language in reference to what um superintendent chris minneville brought up with how we're going to be mindful of our ordinance language as it relates to workforce housing projects whether that be in the form of the waiver or if it meets the needs by having that range but definitely want to work to support um that project as best we can given obviously the concerns that she rose but um and then also in the future how we're thinking about our our policy applying to future workforce projects um so that said we'll go ahead and see where the council is council member brown then council member matt yeah so and i um i am prepared to make a motion i want to make a couple of comments i sent it to you um bonnie can put it up for us in a moment but i just want to make a couple of comments um with respect to the uh self presentation some of the comments we've heard and and kind of the the general um direction of the you know our deliberations and and just say you know i i totally understand the concerns i think that they're legitimate i i mean i understand the concerns of developers my goal here is not to suggest that we want to do this to shut down housing production in any way um but i do believe we need to do something now um and you know we've been talking about this for a very long time and and our more recent actions have been to reduce the number of affordable units required for from developers um i just want to just make a couple of comments about the things that i think we know i mean we know the private market is not going is not helping us meet our rena goals by any means um we know the developers will tell us that it's not feasible to do anything more than what's required that is standard that is a no judgment there that is just the way um things go um we know that increasing supply is not going to reduce the cost of housing in this community in the current under current circumstances that it's just not it hasn't happened evidence shows that is not happening it has not happened um and while i don't believe it's developers or the private market's responsibility to take care of all of our affordable housing problems challenges i think it's reasonable to ask them to do uh you know a fair percentage given the um you know the increasing landmark the increase in land markets and the increase in rents and sales prices um that we have seen this is really urgent i want to see more affordable housing get built in our city i in no way um want to try to preclude that to prevent that and i know we have a difference of opinion here about whether or not that will be the end result at this moment i feel that we need to we need to take a step forward and try and um because what we have been doing has not worked uh to achieve that goal and so i'm with that i would want to make a motion i i'm not um insensitive to the concerns and the need for some flexibility potentially to make this work um but i think that's something that needs to happen once we have said this is our baseline this is what we want to see happen um and it's our job as public servants to work in the in the public interest in the community's interest not in developers interests it just is and um as one former mayor uh just said the other day recently to me um and also to some uh a member of our staff who works in housing um in line for for a meal it's our job to push the private private market actors to do better and i think that to have those conversations and negotiate about how to make it effective can be done but i think that that needs to it's not going to happen if we don't require that it happened developers not going to come to us and say hey we'd like to get to increase you know to 20 percent affordability and here's how we we're going to try to make it work they're not going to come wholesale and do that so if we set the standard and we say this is what we want you to do now work with us to figure out how to do it i think that's the way to go and so um i'm going to make a motion and it is up um for you all to see those in the audience can also see it um i i'd like to do this actually in two motions i have a feeling that that somebody will ask to separate them um so um i'm going to make a motion to adopt the ordinance revisions contained in attachment to that increase the inclusionary housing requirements to 20 percent for rental and ownership units and return for a second reading at our next meeting on january 14 second again can i i had councilmember crone as the secondary the language would actually be to introduce the ordinance not oh sorry to introduce her okay okay so that's the motion on the floor that was made by councilmember brown seconded by councilmember crone and then councilmember matthews did you have your hand oh to speak i was prepared to make a difference to have recommendations okay um and uh your motions uh do not cover the waterfront of what's you do not hear no so some of these others will be possible so yours is really um in place of the staff recommendation of number four yours is to just proceed directly with the increased inclusionary percentage um i feel strongly about not wanting to rush into that before doing an updated study that would include the ownership units as well and i do have a question for staff i'm very sensitive to the kinds of figures you showed there that it's not just the percent of designated affordable but where on the affordability range they fall and how much flexibility is built in do you see that as coming back as part of the study that we would do so the market study whatever you're saying is how do we get more bang for our buck in terms of not just the percentage but also the flexibility and it gets to the workforce housing issue among others yes i see coming back with sort of a range of a range of options that would include different affordability of different area median income levels well i i see this is kind of a blunt instrument frankly and i'd much rather take a little bit of time to do that updated and expanded study that includes the flexibility of ranges as well and if i could just ask one more question how how long do you anticipate that kind of study might take um i think it could be done in a couple of months there is a question um which was we discussed briefly at a previous council meeting of whether or not council wanted to select if we did go that route the actual consultant so if there was a panel or subcommittee that was involved in choosing the consultant we'd have to work that into the schedule as well but i think the actual study could be done within two months um well those are those are my feelings um i you're correct i would want to separate those motions um i would propose a substitute motion then to which would be number four of the staff's recommendation consider an increase in the inclusionary percentage city wide for all housing developments rental and ownership after consideration of a feasibility analysis prepared by qualified consultant to evaluate the impacts of such changes so you're putting that i would like to propose that as a substitute motion okay i'll go ahead and second the substitute motion we can now at this time um take the vote to adopt the substitute motion which would then replace the motion to accept the substitute okay um i think for the reasons that councilor matthews brought up for the interest of i feel there's a lot writing on this and if we don't have data to inform it and sort of just go by what we know we all sort of really want and aspire to but don't necessarily have the outside kind of information to help us make an informed policy decision it's it's absent that for me and i don't feel comfortable and i think that it's um it's our responsibility to have that kind of information between before making this type of decision personally so i uh definitely support moving forward with a feasibility analysis so that we can better understand how to either get there or just the considerations um we should take into into play before we make this type of decision so that said we can go ahead and take the vote if we want on the substitute motion just very briefly i just wanted to point out that uh i believe that by um going ahead and moving forward with this it would impact the school's project i think we should maybe the timing is concerned i just want to make sure that that's that that's clear we'll make that in terms of yeah okay thank you i'm glad that that was specified yeah okay so all those in favor of adopting the substitute motion presented by councillor matthew seconded by myself accepting i'm sorry accepting i'm looking okay accepting um please say i i opposed no okay so that fails with council member brown vice mayor Cummings crone and glover voting against councilor matthews myself and mires voting for so we'll go back to the original motion which is to have the 20 also these additional considerations and potentially at some language that we can modify to accommodate the workforce housing project that correct well so these are two separate motions i want i i intentionally wanted to introduce them separately because i wanted to say okay and then they're also not included in some of the other yeah and i'll amend i can i can make a question item for the second motion when we're there okay okay councillor mires and vice mayor just have a question i guess for staff how are we doing on meeting our 15 percent as projects are coming in as proposed in terms of development projects that are currently sort of spinning up right now we have a sense of that at all so projects are required to meet the ordinance as it is in place based on certain timing um if there's a tentative map involved it's when that is complete as of january first um it'll be whenever there's a complete preliminary review application in place and so depending on which rules apply all projects are are complying with the applicable rules and there are different ways to do that we've seen land dedication as was the case with the pacific front laurel project and we've seen um incorporation of units into the project um along with um utilization of the density bonus as we saw with 190 west cliff for example so there are a variety of ways in which um projects can achieve that but the rules that are in place they have to meet them somehow whether that's through the provision of units on site or through one of the alternative means that's specified in the ordinance so and um well i guess i'll just um i'll stop there thank you thanks for that um so one other thing i i agree with with a number of my colleagues in this in the idea that you know having another study and gathering data understanding you know what other kinds of models we might be able to use and i also very much have been interested in potentially even creating a subcommittee around um looking at housing affordable housing incentives i've already had some preliminary conversations with councilmember brown about creating that that subcommittee for next year and really focusing on that um as i as i move forward is becoming mayor the one issue that i have which is why i voted against this was because um i think that councilmember brown brings up a good point and um one of the things that i think that we should do is while we're working on these things you know if we put this 20 percent in place we can see how well our community is able to respond and how developers able to respond to working on this and we can really try to work on what kind of incentives can actually help us get to this 20 percent and additionally as we kind of if we're going to move forward with gathering more information to understand how we can change our our ordinance and our affordable housing programs around at least we'll have this in place such that um we don't see for example um a lot of developments come out where they're just meeting the 15 percent and then it turns out months later we figure out a way where they could have reached the 20 but given that those areas are now developed we won't have that opportunity to have that increased affordability in those projects so um i'm very much interested in you know moving the 20 percent now but i if there's any um interest in either putting in language that creates a subcommittee now to come back in in january or um and in that subcommittee we can actually discuss you know whether we want to um have a feasibility analysis i think that that's a good place for us to expand on those discussions so i again i'm i'm very interested in pursuing that i think for the purposes of um allowing council members to vote um on all of them in ways that they would like rather than putting putting that together with this motion number one that we just moved through that but i'm absolutely i can make a motion about the establishment of the subcommittee or um councilmember meyers and then councilmember matthews yeah i guess i just um i i guess i just will state i'm i'm not gonna i won't be able to support the motion the first motion um i do think that our market is changing um i think there's some good models out there i think those need to be explored um i think the one assumption that i'm hearing is that private developers will somehow get there um and i think it's important to note that because you own something doesn't mean that you're ever going to change it so we can hope that someone holding a piece of land or an older building in town um is going to want to jump into the development market um which is right now really um a really volatile place with regards to um how much things cost to build the escalating price of um materials the lack of labor um it's a very unpredictable place and so if you're holding a piece of property in Santa Cruz right now um and you have a sort of vacillating policy framework that you're trying to understand as well as well as looking at your loans your actual construction loan that you'll have to get possibly um paying for you know people who are using the the building to move it's a volatile market and so um because we've lost the ability we don't have a redevelopment agency anymore we don't have that tool in our toolbox and so much of our affordable housing was built by our redevelopment agency um and so i i i'm not supporting the motion not because i i'm not in favor of trying to get as much affordable housing as we can i just am not i'm not assured that this is going to be a good tool in this period of time that we're in um if i held property right now i'd probably sit and wait and kind of see what's going to happen we don't know if there's a recession coming we don't know what's going to go on with materials i don't think this kind of approach is going to render the kind of response that we're hoping to get um and i appreciate my colleagues absolutely and and uh i don't disagree with your intent to get as much affordable housing as we can but i think we have a lack of information and i think right now we just have a really volatile situation with people who may be holding properties and uh not really willing to kind of maybe try this out and see if it pencils out so i won't be supporting the motion but i did just want to make those statements thanks i have a brief question and then maybe um if if the if we had an aspiration to get to the 20 could we direct a study to make those policy recommendations on how we could get there yes and and that would be our recommendation if if you are going to approve that today because we i do believe if we can build in some more flexibility we have a way of actually making it feasible um but still meeting the the the city council and the community goals so that would be our recommendation you know when i showed a few of those slides comparing to the other jurisdictions they all have considerable more flexibility than Santa Cruz if we raised it to 20 without doing some other adjustment we'll have the strictest policy in the area and i think as a result um it it really may impact development here locally as people wait to see what we do okay that makes sense to me okay council member matthews and council member brown so a follow-up to that and also to the school district's concerns if as anticipated motion number one passes uh i guess i should ask um council member that what's your proposal to deal with the school district's concerns multiple motions on the floor we keep doing that and no no i i'm just asking because i am very concerned that i know they've been spending three years on that and it's it's an absolutely critical concern and um part of our inflexibility is one of the reasons that it's so hard to to actually get the kind of returns that we want um so your anticipation is that that concern would be solved in second and then relative to the mayor's question is your thought that the first motion should have something about the um well i guess the first motion is just the ordinance revisions as contained right in front of us and then the um desire for greater flexibility is included in the intent of this question is that what's your no my suggestion is that tell me what your suggestion is well my suggestion would be essentially the recommendation but to say in the feasibility analysis to have the consultant aspire to get us to that 20 but also identify the levers we would need to pull or the flexibility in ranges we would need to have to make sure that that's possible in a at a more feasible type of model that would be my suggestion absent that right i i don't know comes from just on that no i'm not gonna support any more studies i think that the second part of the motion says it sends it to the planning commission and i'll i'll wait to see what they come back with but i think um during uh after another study no i guess i have a question about that because didn't this already go to the planning commission the planning commission may made a recommendation for us to do a study so the planning commission saw this and made the recommendation that we have a study correct okay that's correct okay um again i just want to emphasize that the timing the timing of the school project if you adopt recommendation number one may impact that project i know that there's an intent to with the second uh to to cover that but again the timing of my networks we might want to just because as i understand they want to get the project started within the next six months so unless you amended somehow so i just want you to understand that their timing is they want to move on this really quickly and it might so if i hear you you're saying if we as a council adopt this without any amended language that it would impact the project so yes it would be able to move forward with the project it comes from around indicated that she had some amended language do you want to go ahead and adjust i'm not amending the first motion um that is not my intention um i i hope we can just move through this one so we can get to a second motion i can i'll remind my colleagues that this is a motion to introduce the ordinance for a first reading today it was included in our packet with that language attachment to that will go to a second reading on january 14th and then will i imagine require 30 days for to go into effect so we do have some time in the interim to have more of that conversation and i think that with uh there may be some additional incentive with um you know i'm not a big fan of blunt instruments myself but in this situation i feel we are it is so urgent and so dire that perhaps a blunt instrument will uh lead to some uh more robust discussion among stakeholders in the community about how to make this work and if and if if we can move to motion number two um maybe we can kind of include some language to direct that process to include a discussion about the schools um so i'm not going to say project but situation so i'd like to just move forward with that councilmember glever and then councilmember matthews yeah i uh would tend to agree with councilmember brown on many points um also there's that classic saying that perfection is the enemy of progress so um i'm going to make a motion to call the question second okay there's a motion to call the question councilmember um glever seconded by councilmember brown all those in favor to call the question please say i opposed no i'm sorry no i'm sorry so that passes with councilmember brown vice mayor Cummings councilmember crone councilmember glever voting in support matthews meyers and myself voting against that ceases all conversation on this topic so we'll go ahead and take the vote on the motion before us um and that is to essentially have a first reading of this ordinance and and then we'll separate the second one out okay all those in favor please say i opposed no so that passes with councilmember brown vice mayor Cummings councilmember crone and councilmember glever voting in support meyers matthews and myself voting against so this will be the first reading for the 20 inclusionary do we want to go to the subsequent areas my understanding before we do that is one through three um is part part of the recommendation as well that we'll need to take action on is there any um hesitation or changes to those at this point those seem to me as pretty straightforward and i'd like to just move all three of those okay i'll second this okay just to clarify so number one on the recommendation handout in front of you was actually included in the attachment two of the second ordinance option as well so it's really only two and three that you need to address so there's a motion by councilmember matthews for two and three seconded by myself any further discussion on those i thought we're going to take up the second we'll do that after that's after so we're just covering the recommendation areas i do have a question on two and three on two and three on three okay do you want to do you want to say that no yeah i'm i mean i'm i'm i'm fine with taking no further action on those proposed amendments but i'm not sure uh that i'm prepared to recommend that we take no further action um if that means that all just future discussion will be curtailed about those amendments number three well i think it's just for today that's the if we're not going to take action we do we need to by motion not take action i guess this is my question i guess i'm just sorry i was clarifying the previous motion so can you so numbered so items two and three um on the recommendation that you provided that can go up there is with that we direct staff to review and bring any cleanup amendments and then also recommend that council take no further action so do we need to we move to take no further action we do on the because those are on the remaining action that we agreed to in the settlement which was to bring forward to you to take an action on those red line uh proposed changes to the ordinance so you do need to take an action on that um because that was part of our agreement in the settlement agreement and then the other one um depending on your action today we'll we'll go through it and identify any inconsistencies so we'll come back to you at a future time anyway okay but it would be great to have direction that you support that okay so given that information are we clear on two and three or do we need further discussion i'm just going to ask about if the maker of or is we made this and matt consular methods um can we just take the take no action can we take out further because it just to me um suggests that we as a council are saying that no further action will be taken on those um proposals i don't really want to foreclose the possibility of that happening in the future if there is discussion for example in the process is that word particularly i think if the language or take no action i think that's fine i think it's at this time i mean i think there may be other changes at a later point um but at least we could put this particular set to rest now would be would be the recommendation so that seems that the maker of the motion as the seconder i agree we can go ahead and cut out further okay okay no problem any further discussion i'm not going to support that just because i think that i do support some of those and so if we're not going to you know continue to explore those um is that that your sense that they're going to continue to explore it or they're not going to continue to explore those five red lined um well i'm hoping to get to the second motion that i intended and you know that that could be a space where there's potential for it to be discussed in we will hopefully become a process of engagement on this issue okay okay so are you uh we'll go ahead and then take the vote on two and three we've struck in the word further from three okay all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed no okay so that passes with councilmember crone voting against so then we'll go back to the second recommendation that councilmember brown brought forward and they're going to be different well i'm hoping it won't be too different um but it will be different do you want to restate the motion or the the next version of the motion at this time okay so um i'll make a motion to refer the revised inclusionary housing ordinance to the planning commission and direct the planning commission and staff to work with community stakeholders to consider options for making the ordinance more effective including one provisions to streamline its operation and to increase incentives for developers to meet the requirements to uh discussion regarding possible exceptions workforce housing projects sorry i have to write it to be clear um workforce housing projects intended the the needs of the housing needs i want to necessarily make it exclusive to teachers intended needs of the local workforce second okay so there's a motion by councilmember brown seconded by councilmember glover do you want to see more i was going to add the establishment of an affordable housing subcommittee to be initiated in january 2020 by the mayor second second about that i'll just if unless you guys want it separated let's go ahead and separate oh yeah we'll go ahead and separate that so we'll do that as a separate motion but that will have that as a documented motion that's been seconded by councilmember glover i um i have a question before we move forward because i have concerns in regards to the timeline and if we're referring it back to the planning commission in the second reading and we don't have any exceptions in place and we're in a window of time that appears that our local school district is really trying to apply affordable housing project for teachers i i guess i just have a question maybe for you chris and if you want to come forward or if you feel comfortable answering and um i appreciate the council allowing me to do this i think it's a lot riding on this to not have this question answered if we move forward in this direction and given sort of the six month window our city manager brought up and sort of the window of time that isn't necessarily clear in terms of us having something in place for you do you feel you can bring your project forward i think it could potentially delay us getting something going and i i am really concerned at 20 percent in questionnaire that we're not going to be it's not going to serve our our um employees and we do want to provide below market rents to we're looking at is it 10 percent of our our um employees with this project so um i think it's it would serve our community well and um i'm hoping that there can be some look at this ordinance i know we we have tremendous need for affordable housing in our community and we also need workforce housing so okay so if anything if what i'm hearing is just a delay potentially if and i'd rather not see it delayed because we if we go to as soon as we have to make this pencil out so it doesn't take any money from kids and the way that this project doesn't take money from kids is we get it designed and built quickly so that we get rental revenue to pay the the loan that we're going to take to make this work so i'm hoping that it won't be a long drawn out process okay no i appreciate that and i um i don't know what we could have in place but i would love to have that fixed before um today or however it seems um counterproductive and counterintuitive to not have something in place that would further delay teacher housing i was just going to point out that a carve out for workforce housing wasn't examined by the planning commission to my knowledge and so if that's the direction of the council you would have to refer it back to the planning commission before any action could be taken anyways okay so you could move forward um as proposed um but if the council were to add language to the 20 inclusionary that exempts workforce housing you'd have to refer that back to the planning commission for comment okay thank you okay councilor matthews i think that kind of answered my question because uh my question was how do you legally make this kind of exception for this particular project um this is a huge obstacle to my mind and we will have a second reading and we'll see if we go forward with it where the chips fall there um um another question i had was if we have our second reading in january it was pointed out the 30 days before it goes into effect um we could delay the implementation date of an ordinance i believe that's possible to give direction to do that um i guess my question to the school district is how close are you to completion um and you know would a few months um delay of the implementation be helpful or is it still not quite cooked to that well we are we have a contract that's coming to our board next week to hire bridging architects to do the design our hope is to take it out to bid with for a contractor in the spring by march that's our goal our employees want us to make this happen as soon as possible it's helpful to have a sense of what your timeline in that's our hope and and the other reason i asked that is we just did a first reading on something that the inclusionary requirements um for a project uh are those that are in place when i think it's a project is deemed complete is that correct but they are not yet that's correct they are not they are not deemed complete and the the state law specifies um that even if a preliminary that if a preliminary review application is deemed complete it's actually silent on the um the complete application of a formal submittal however there's some provisions that uh state it needs to be interpreted in a manner that um is as um supportive of the production of housing as possible so we would apply that to a formal application being deemed complete for a preliminary review being deemed complete those that would fix the regulations in place as of that time do you see this as a path to letting the school districts project forward certainly if they if they have a complete application anyone who has a complete application um in place um in advance of the effective date of this ordinance so it wouldn't just be the school district it would be yeah but it sounds like the proposal to sign a contract with bridge housing and then go out a bit i mean that it's not their project is not to the point of reaching that threshold i i guess i have a question if i may i we i'm interested in making an amendment to the motion or a funding amendment hopefully to the motion that would have direction that this be heard before planning commission for a carve out so that we could have that in place as quickly as possible is there another path to be able to accommodate workforce housing given the new direction around the 20 percent so the fastest way i mean i would say there could be a carve out that generically states something along the lines of a project applicant may present alternative means to provide an equivalent or a greater number of affordable housing units although we already have a provision related to that in the code i'd have to reference that but certainly we could evaluate whether or not that may work for this particular project because it may say equivalent levels of affordability and what i'm hearing from the school district is they're looking at doing a higher percentage but also higher levels of affordability so a hundred percent of area median income or 120 percent of area median income and not focused on just the 80 percent of area median income so we could look at the provision the exception that's already included in the ordinance see if that could work if not the fastest way would to come up with some would be just propose some generic language that says alternative workforce housing affordability proposals can be presented to the council for their review and consideration and leave it up to the council as to whether or not that percentage that they're providing is adequate okay i'd like to make that a friendly amendment in terms of the language that you suggested if it doesn't necessarily fall within existing exemption language around affordability flexibility that we add a provision as soon as possible to allow workforce housing projects to be brought forward to i guess if i'm hearing you correctly it would come to the council for consideration for waiving requirements correct right we would run it through the planning commission is that accepted by the maker of the motion yes i have a just a point on there before you move on can you restate that sure so i mean you can you can correct me if i'm if i'm wrong but essentially if they are unable to identify area within the existing ordinance language to have flexibility around the affordability components and a wave or sort of essentially an exemption if there is a met affordability within the existing or ordinance to meet these workforce housing projects then they would make that work if they didn't they would refer to the planning commission a waiver that would come before the council for consideration for workforce can't pause it can you say it simply or i would could i make just one comment here and it's absolutely related to this i think if the second item number two here simply says priority regarding possible flexibility for workforce housing projects it may be that we already have it and that would also give direction for i don't like the idea of doing waivers or whatever whatever however we're going to get us there i don't care about this language should be kind of rather than exception yes that's fine entirely different flexibility and i would just say priority regarding possible flexibility for workforce housing projects does that get us to the place that we can meet the immediate needs do you think within the language yeah okay that sounds fine thank you no problem thank number can i just clarify yeah that number so and two uh as a priority discussion um at the discussion regarding uh possible flexibility for workforce housing projects intended leave out the discussion in the possible just priority regarding priority regarding uh flexibility for okay so does the city clerk have that so now then the friendly amendment is to have under number two priority regarding exceptions for workforce that possibility i'm sorry regarding possibility do you want to your friendly amendment or no it's been edited by it's your it's your your yours to accept in mind to accept council member Matthews okay so and i accept okay do we got it my second except yes okay thanks for asking council member crown i'm uncomfortable um with the notion of workforce housing not being defined um the various levels of affordable housing is actually defined by HUD you know housing and urban development and i know HUD doesn't define workforce housing do they and is there a definition for workforce housing well i think we have a couple of options and one thing i since we're talking specifically about Santa Cruz City Schools is um the superintendent Monroe gave me a copy of of their performer that they're that they're working on and we'd actually also discussed previously when we were working on ab411 of actually setting aside some funding for them so there is a gap if they were to meet the 80 percent uh the 20 that 15 percent so i'd love to sit down with them and they have you know their salary schedules for their teachers and to really look at what their needs are as far as their performer but typically what you do see because there are different definitions of workforce housing you know the moderate definition is typically up to 120 percent of AMI but for workforce you often will see in certain communities particularly those in high cost of living areas and we would potentially be one of those that it goes up to 150 percent of AMI again um with our existing ordinance even with that you still take certain percentages of that so it's not something that i could say exactly at this point exactly what that would be we would need to go through our current ordinance and how you calculate that and come back to you with those numbers but i think having the opportunity to sit down with Santa Cruz City Schools and go through that um we can pretty quickly sort of clarify what the needs are for the project i have a question for superintendent Monroe um can you say what percentage are you are we working with up to 150 percent the AMI i i couldn't i'm sure it is that high we a lot of our kind of the conversation among our young teachers is how many of them are paying more than 50 percent of their income and rent and i know that's a reality throughout our community but in i think it was march USA Today came out with a study Santa Cruz is the worst place for a young teacher to work in the country it is the least affordable with salaries compared to cost of living and um we have to do something i'm really happy that you're going forward with this project i'm the only concern i have is if we don't put any kind of affordability on it what what are the covenants involved in like okay the first teacher gets it what what what does the next like up at UCSC they have strict um ways of limiting the sales price and how much you know it's not a market rate thing so if the first teacher gets it you know it's rentals and our goal is our goal is to to put people we're working without bargaining units to determine term but we're thinking seven to ten years with the goal of supporting people with below market rate rents so they can save money to work we're working with another program in the county called landed that helps education employees with down payments on homes so our this is kind of it's that other step because we've we've had i think six or seven teachers so far by homes through landed but it's getting to the that they're half of the down payment they have to come up with half of a down payment to make to get into the community and that's that's the part that we want this rental housing to support um a percentage of the housing will go to our teachers and a percentage of the housing will go to our classified support staff based on our total number of employees we have about 800 employees great and will the school district be overseeing that rental or do you contract it out to um we're gonna hire someone to manage the the property for us but it's totally up to the school board how the rents will be set then too or it's up to the we are the rents are going to be set based on how we can pay for with there's there's formulas set out for workforce housing projects um where that cover the cost of rent and then the cost of um management and the cost of maintenance so we need to make sure that the rents cover that cost thank you okay thank you okay so i think we're um we have the modified language at this time is unless there's any further discussion did you no just there's obviously a lot of work to be done between now and january whatever it is so that we have i think a comfort level that we're meeting a very real need and opportunity here that people have been putting a lot of effort into and um that is not just a one-off we've got some basic principles that we're clear on um and for me building in the flexibility um is kind of a compromise to the the first action that we took all right so unless there's no further discussion we'll go ahead and take the vote on this motion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed okay that passes unanimously councilor brown do you want to make your other i'd like to make a motion to direct the mayor to establish an affordable housing subcommittee of the city council or affordable housing committee subcommittee committee of the city council in the new year in january beginning in january 2020 does that work for you that was seconded by councilor glever did you have for that question i just had one question just a little bit about the housing blueprint and all the work that was done that was my question i'm just a little bit i'm not quite sure what what will the subcommittee because i was i know like for example the inclusionary was one of the projects for that from the i believe from the housing blueprint so i'm just i'm just trying to get clarification on what the subcommittee would do my turn oh well i mean do you want to answer that question i do well yeah if i called on i'll answer all right well why don't you answer the question then we'll have councilor matthew so the intention in our discussion was to um as a first order of business to um take a look at the housing blueprint subcommittee recommendations and begin to implementation work on an implementation plan for those so i can include that in the motion if you'd like i think i think just based on some of the um some of the comments we've received for the public i think um you know this topic of affordable housing is something we all say i think it's it's very hard to understand exactly what that means and i i think several people have mentioned and other colleagues have mentioned this idea of you know trying to bracket that outside of the rena goals possibly so instead of sort of maybe if we could provide a little bit more framing around the subcommittee's work i'll make it i mean i guess i'll make a friendly amendment to have the first order of the subcommittee do a kind of an implementation approach to the year of housing that count that may or chase at the time and then subsequent housing blueprint recommendations established um for implementation that accepted okay okay councilor matthews this is an alternate thought um i want to put out the possibility of a working group which could include um two or three council members but also we have so much talent in affordable housing in this community both private and non-profit housing developers um and i think i mean i'm just throwing it out as an idea that has people that are hardwired to understand this stuff rather than let's face it lay council members trying to figure it all out and and you know people in finance i mean there are a whole lot of people that are really really professionally capable and experienced in this field and i think including them in a working group i throw it out to you guys might get us a more productive recommendation at the end do you want to make that into a friendly amendment or do i would prefer that given the hour and the what we have coming up for the rest of our agenda i'd prefer that we because if we do that in a motion now then we have to think about who would want we'd want to have on the a working group and provide direction about the you know the composition of that i would prefer that we include consideration of the establishment of a broader working group including community stakeholders um for the subcommittee to bring a recommendation to the council about that because hashing it out now we're i agree we don't have time okay so that's including that consideration that sounds good well yeah i mean if we could just include in the motion including the uh very real possibility of including community members as part of the endeavor well yeah okay great it sounds like that okay great did you catch that okay for the most part they're going to include some stakeholder input into their work okay all those in favor of the subcommittee being established in the new year please say aye i'm any opposed okay that passes unanimously okay thank you very much we'll go ahead and move on to our next item which is the introduction of the child care impact fee ordinance um and the um impact that could have thank you i hope you don't mind if i'm up here thank you hi everyone hi i'm sarah daily own principal management analyst for planning and community development i'd like to stand here so i can see all of you um so this is my first formal presentation to you guys you guys might be familiar with me through the budget process um i was excited to do this particular topic just because of the lots of different aspects i got to consider and different folks i was able to speak with so it was quite uh quite fun uh whoops make sure this is do i use the clicker bonnet sorry okay i apologize while she's working on the technical difficulties there um i'll mention that this was an item that the council um provided direction on in august to come back uh within the next four months it also stemmed from housing blueprint subcommittee work um which was to establish a um child care impact fee and um then it also stems that direction stems from the general plan their actions in the general plan so there are a series of policy frameworks that and the council direction that got us to here today exactly yes thank you lee so um a part of my presentation is i really wanted to explain the journey and path as to why the recommendation is what it is um the first part of that recommendation actually introduces the ordinance to to get the child care impact fee um the second part of the recommendation where you guys are basically being asked to um delay the actually implementing resolution which why identify the fee rates as well as the fee management to the meeting where we'll introduce the public safety impact fee another fee that you guys have been discussing through the action labs um i'd like to provide the next few slides to kind of give some reasoning and background as to why that delay is important um today so so first an overview i know some of you are probably really familiar with impact fees especially the subcommittee that dealt with action labs um tiffany wise west actually presented on the public safety impact fee and probably went over many of these points but i think for the public and the general journey i took through this process it's important to reiterate um impact fees are our fees on new development essentially they are not meant to meet our existing deficiencies they are to serve the new population for new or expanded facilities and as i just learned to maintain existing facilities um they're not a new fee since prop 13 and prop 218 jurisdictions have really required to diversify their revenue sources with those changes and as part of that change and moving towards impact fees a lot of lawsuits to be honest came from that transition which gave to light our mitigation fee act which basically outlines all of this stuff as to where these fees how they can be used how they have to be implemented the nexus studies required as well as the accountability for jurisdictions which includes five-year annual reports where we describe the nexus and relationship of those impact fees and annual reports as well so so our main issue today is like i said we cannot address our existing deficiencies however with population growth we could potentially have that gap growing so the south county of santa cruz has actually identified a 30 percent shortfall of child care spaces and if we don't do anything today essentially that gap for new population will continue to to widen that brings us to some of the goals and actions required as of our general plan that lee has mentioned as well our general plan for the city actually identifies child care as a community concern not one that's private as you may have read in the staff report we have an entire goal dedicated to accessible high quality child care services and facilities we even mentioned specifically that one of our goals is to implement the child care impact fee as part of supporting the regional state and federal efforts for funding those services our city general plan as well as the needs assessment that i attached provides other information as to the benefits of early child care education economic education reduced public costs if you had a chance to read the assessment any part of it then i just wanted to kind of pull out those important pieces so i did a lot of coordination with the county i spoke with i hope i don't get her name wrong emily bailey i want to see pl li and they did a lot of work they've had a child care impact fees in 1991 they recently completed a nexus study to update that fee and its rates i really appreciate what the county's done with this study they actually intended the study to be used by incorporated areas within the county itself really great and fourth thought for that i think it really identifies their point that you know child care needs are are not stopped at our jurisdictional boundaries sometimes county residents are working in our city and dropping off their kids there and vice versa so i think that was really their intent of of putting that line in their nexus study for other cities to adopt it and become part of the solution overall their study basically analyzed the demand on non-residential and resident residential development spaces for child care i did take a look into their methodology and this is one of the biggest points as to why the delay in the methodology in this nexus study the data that was used was actually specific to the unincorporated area and because of the law related to this fee and just general due diligence it's important that we're accurate in the data we used so i did a quick calculation based on what they're doing with our incorporated data and our percent of children is which is a number they use in their methodology is actually a bit higher than the county's so it just i i didn't go through the full analysis just yet but i think it does open the door to the fact that additional analysis needs to be done and our data should probably be used so we really understand what our fee range should be that's point number one if there are no questions to this point i can go to fee management okay um i know it's there's a lot on the screen this kind of resembles my thought process and all the scattered thoughts with all the options i'm in your staff report i gave you alts one through three i'm basically alternate one provides the most control for the city also the most work all the way to three utilizing the county as a resource and very limited control with the setup they have now which will go into the two is really just the middle ground that i'm hoping as i go through this you can see what it provides and it's number two is also going to be my recommendation so some of the thoughts i had to go through you know what would make us most effective essentially in trying to implement this goal how could we provide city input i imagine council would want to make sure that in somewhere form you guys are providing input as the applications the county receives i had a legal question to our attorneys as to whether the county could even complete five-year an annual reporting for us the answer was that they could the law is broad enough to allow for that so that's fantastic i couldn't ignore the as much you know as we're in the same county itself there are obviously differences between the city and county and so that triggered that incorporated data and the methodology number of bedrooms all those sorts of differences and then also thought processes came up as to what our existing impact fees are so that's what kind of those questions is what triggered the alternatives before you i wanted to go over the county program i did not provide their procedures in there so i'll go briefly over that for you they do have an annual application process for the funds that they collect for their existing child care impact fee those applications are open to all licensed child care child care centers to expand or maintain their existing levels of services and they award their funds through low interest deferred loans they create agreements between the provider to make sure that they are providing services for a set amount of time and then if they do they don't have to pay back the loan which is cool if they don't they have to pay it back they also have some borough responsibility written up in their procedures as to how the county is holding the provider is accountable making sure they have their insurance requirements their licenses are still active and so on this doesn't at all go into the detail of additional workload they have they translate their applications from the english to spanish there's a number of outreach annually and forms that they're reaching out to those providers to complete but i wanted to at least give you a general overview of what they're doing and the general overview to their approval process so emily bolly is the deputy director for human human services division this information so first with these applications every year the human services commission which is the subcommittee of that commission made up of a grouping of these folks bulleted here is what helps create the application review committee for these child care projects the application review committee goes through all of those and essentially brings those back to the full human services commission for approval and then essentially straight to their board so flag went up that i was like oh well city would have to be somehow you know connected and through there but broadly this is important important slide because as part of the development of these management options specialize expertise i do not have children number one um i do not have a social services degree or background so really relying on the experts of the county and their connections i thought was important to see this slide right right here um i did have an opportunity to email google google search providers within our city jurisdiction i came up with about 14 and that limit number is limited because it doesn't address family child care homes we exempt them currently through our business license process it would be very difficult for me to to find those in some way this is at least focused on the child care centers within our jurisdiction and in talking with the six of the 14 they all actually had the same response housing concerns for their employees keeping people there concerns with existing maintenance costs was huge a lot of them aren't actually intending on expanding because they can't maintain their own facilities as they are today and even if they were the you know high costs to find a new facility and just in their existing where they are now there's just limitations just no room to grow out i did speak with barba griffin she's the executive director for campus kids connection and she was so kind to provide pictures of the photos or the photos of an application she submitted i believe last year that helped her expand with the child care fees a portable as well as playground services at santa cruz gardens elementary um so point being that the process is working with the county um she did mention you know additional outreach and maybe some additional time but that's all things that i think could be worked out i also spoke all right didn't but lee and i believe sarah fleming had a developers roundtable meeting where they discussed the child care impact fee um and they had their concerns as well which you've been hearing about inclusionary and etc so i won't go too far into that um but they had concerns about the sheer number of fees and everything they're doing to the cost of development for them so in hearing what i have and considering you know local data to understand our needs with our demographics and population hearing what i have from the developers and hearing what i have from the child care providers the first piece for the delay of the recommendation is to not continue to create this fee in a silo um the child care impact fee and the public safety impact fee that you guys have or will be discussing hit the same group of people um so i think it's important that we look and provide the time for that next study to be done so you guys can adopt those rates together to understand a more comprehensive view of what fees we're adopting for against the development um on a side note as an analyst in trying to figure out what impact fees we have it was challenging um water impact fees it was really hard to search so just from a sheer administrative perspective and i actually tried to draft the ordinance this way unsuccessfully but we could try again um an impact fee program that actually lists the fees that we have and our administration and management of those fees i think is important um just one from an understanding of the public to know what impact fees we charge we're not putting them in separate codes it's kind of all together the state law is broad in general so we can write less ordinances which would be nice if you just put all the broad stuff in the beginning um so that's another reason for doing them together and comprehensively just the administration generally and looking at the rates together um for in what what i heard from the child care providers this facility plan idea came up one because i saw it in our general plan it's an actual action that's called out for developing a facility a child care facility plan i think that would do several things to help our child care providers and ourselves and planning for the future um guiding them to the areas best for expansion i think the campus kids connections a great example because they use existing facilities that we have schools across the county and to expand in the facilities they're in share so i think it's a really nice public-private partnership there i think a facility plan could help us guide that further within our city i mean also just better assess our local needs as to where our workers are a number of workers etc so those in totality brought me to the recommendation of that alternative to for city counting collaboration um i think this no matter which you decide i would highly recommend that we do a memorandum of understanding with the county to really situate city council's approval process um to provide us some certainty for the procedures that they do annually for their application planning um and before all of that that we the first recommendation if you guys are to adopt that impact to you for child care is to first complete a facility plan with those funds and then once that's complete join the county with their existing program after all they are the experts at that point we would have our localized data informing the methodology and the and the fee rate and then we'd also have a plan to help guide where those facilities should be that was it well i want to thank you for the presentation i for one i'm just really excited to see this come back to us this was something that was in the housing blueprint um subcommittee recommendations um we heard briefly a little bit about how hard it is for teachers it's even harder for early childhood uh providers and facilities is a huge issue and this is one way jurisdictions can play a role and developers really in supporting um our population in our community as a whole so this is a really a really big deal i also just want to give you a shout out and appreciation for the health and all policies reference and then the acknowledgement that it fits within this broader general plan so thank you for the presentation thank you for the work on this this is really great to have before us at this time so any questions before we open it up yeah um could you go back to the fees page was one of the more recent ones that one yeah um this is one of the questions that has come up for me in earlier discussions is what's the totality the fees because we also have park fees i mean right and i'm sure there's more so yes and so i think when we bring back the actual fee recommendations we can bring some sample projects that show here is everything that this project would be um required to pay from to the city and also to outside agency i mean the school district for example has uh impact fees that um we don't collect but are still a requirement of the development so we can have that comprehensive um uh look at here are all the fees for this project for this type of project and that type of project and here's what it would be for the proposed child care impact fee as well as the proposed public safety impact fee and the council can weigh those collectively well i yeah i think that's just really important each of these uh in and of itself has a very clear rationale but collectively it is a huge amount of money so um yeah that will come back to us um on the facilities um plan is that what you're calling it facilities plan my impression and those more familiar with the field can correct me um my impression is that facilities for child care are somewhat opportunistic someone has a home they decide they're going to do that's their home they don't say oh i'm going to buy a home in this area or rent a home in this area because that's where the need is is that a correct um i would think so in the the the action in the general plan is so broad and i'll be honest i don't have the expertise in that facility plan type of area so when i read that it sounded more to me as an understanding of where existing expansion could go using our existing public facilities like schools um like um i'm sorry uh the boys and girls club um to help guide you know potential areas where expansion could happen a little easier as opposed to doing it in your home um i personally had some hesitations with private homes until i heard from the county that they do those contracts of services because i was like well you you just renovated someone's house how do you know they're providing services and sure enough that loan agreement resolved that concern but i thought similar things but it's more of a guiding of using existing facilities because the idea here is impact fees typically help other public facilities so why don't we you know compound that help by putting the child care facility in the other existing park public facility for example they have their own parks fees so that we're improving even more you know that that area two birds one stone i guess well this will be a future discussion okay i just had a question about the ordinance um the fee adjustment section is that something that um is is kind of used used in other jurisdictions is that sort of correct as well as dictated by state law as well and we have to have certain options for for flexibility so great thank you and i guess my other question um because you're looking for direction tonight on the um sort of the administrative structure yeah i'm really looking for you don't have to make the decision today it took me some time and answering further questions to even gather my own thoughts on the recommendation but i'm very interested into your input and where you want to go with that we can bring that all back together as well if you so decide that's okay and i appreciate the the logic to have sort of this mix kind of um alternative to integration because i we do want to leverage systems we know that we're a small county there are a number of people in the field you know i'm sure that we can make it work for our city and for other jurisdictions and that was my other question when i was looking at the alternatives because it does seem like alternative to might be a nice kind of model or you know thing to pursue um but i noticed that for example it looks like the county was had a significant ask last year i think it was 450 some some odd thousand dollars worth of request for their loan program um so when we're pooling pooling together the larger population of need um you know whether or not we get a sense of how that may impact either the success of um you know centers here and within our jurisdiction versus but i but i think just based on some of the the things you've outlined here uh it's it's it's compelling to look at that partnership also on this really important topic and work with the county who does have additional expertise with regards to evaluating these facilities as well as is really documenting the need through their work um so you know i guess it was do you see any issues though with you know the the the amount of pooled resource versus we get into any issues with the jurisdictional boundaries there or not i know i'm assuming most child care centers would they uh they pretty much house kids you know from all over the county so if you live in san q's but you're in watsonville for work right those centers would be servicing any kind of kids from any parts of the county i think this is where that memorandum of understanding really comes into play um and at least outlining responsible parties from each jurisdiction because while i can stand here and say that we will ensure we will communicate turnover happens and you don't know who's left sometimes um but i have no problem in regards to your capacity question if they are overwhelmed it doesn't mean that staff over there won't reach out to us to say hey here's your applications for your jurisdiction can you help us develop the report um so i don't see a problem with capacity as long as communications open and responsibilities outline in that memorandum um additionally in speaking with the deputy director over there in regard they were agreeable and excited about us potentially joining the program for that pooled investment um and they also stated that i know i noted in there that maybe there'll be administrative costs from them but um from talking with emily if we can keep it consistent with the reporting they do now which is they provide the application or you know the report on consent and there's no heavy workload then she's like most likely that's a mute point so just fyi right thank you happy to hear unless there isn't other questions at this time we'll go ahead and see if there's any members of the community who want to address us on this item please everybody um thank you for your community service i really appreciate the work you do my name's donna saffron i own midtown Montessori and it's a small child care center 25 families and i'm the recipient i note the center is the recipient two times from the um child care community development fee from the county and i am located in the city so i just wanted to say that they actually sprinkle it around um the reporting is really easy for child care providers i am a center-based program i didn't just open my home oh my gosh i can't imagine can you imagine never going home from work um but i have a beautiful center that serves those families and they commute over the hill they come my staff comes from Watsonville so the original topic that i heard about that i didn't come here for was the affordable housing and i mean my staff sit in that traffic every day coming back and forth from Watsonville so i just want to give a shout out for affordable housing as well in any way shape or form and that i believe that child care does need it needs a little extra i it helped me when i was building the center they gave me a sizeable grant it's a forgivable loan and they also helped me when my heater was broken and it's too grand that i couldn't come up with in a second and they were able to help with that so and those are just like really tangible things that um help on a human level so thank you okay seeing no other members of the committee we'll go ahead and return for council action on this item um thank you for your work on this i think this holds a lot of potential and a huge huge need in our community and is a great first step to getting us to helping meet that need so um okay councilmember Matthews and then councilmember Myers um when this idea was first proposed it wasn't clear to me where will that money go however much it is um because we have heard over the years so much about the need for fair salaries for child care workers as well which is a huge deal but this i as i understand is aimed strictly at capital improvements for either expansion or renovation improvement etc so i'm very comfortable with that and looked over the list of the recipients um from the 2019 awards they're just really practical things that small either if it's a non-profit or a home take care would be as you say very hard pressed to just come up with to keep the facility appealing safe and up to date so um that to me is a a nice finite target for this kind of a program um do i understand that the awards for ours would go to child care facilities in the city is that that's fully fully the intent i was looking for it just didn't see it okay um well and then when did you think this would come back early next year with the public safety so glad you ask i have a timeline so assuming it's okay to pair it up with public safety impact fee um we're introducing today i would like some time to finalize and bring you know prepare the mo u for you guys to review as well um i provide put a little bit about six months in there that would be happening simultaneously as i'm working with the county to develop the mo u um the responsible party and police can be working towards their nexus analysis for the public safety fee um and hopefully with your recess in july introduction and implementation of you know each of those in august and the fees affected thank you that i'm happy to make a motion for approval of the recommendation second okay oh i don't know okay so that's true so we'll go ahead and have a motion by councilor matthews seconded by vice mayor coming and the recommendation includes alternative to just for clarification okay great any further discussion councilor brown i just want to make a quick comment and say i really appreciate uh the work that you put into this and the clarity of the presentation was really helpful to see i also think that um working with the county partnering with the county is is really going to be uh make this very effective um as we move forward i know i've worked with the local child care planning council in the past and others those other entities really do have the expertise and they have had this program up and running for decades now so um i i think that that is a great way to approach this so i wanted to thank you also i i loved your enthusiasm and the sort of just straightforward manner you brought to the presentation it was um really well done thank you yeah and i just want to thank you and also actually just um thank the county publicly as well for the partnership i think this is a great example of um you know just local government working together and really solving a really important problem for for folks who are taking care of our kids so um please express our appreciation of the county as well and we'll do that too personally thanks definitely i'll echo that i know that they created this report in a way that would be inclusive so to encourage other jurisdictions to join in and just recognizing how critical it is that we collaborate and this i also appreciated the reference to health and all policies because i think this is what that's about in terms of collaboration in regards to having our mutual interest in community well-being met and although a small um potentially not huge way to influence child care it really the the costs get carried over generally to the um to the clients which is then the families which then it contributes to the imbalance of affordability in our community and this as we're seeing a demographic shift this is a way for us to offset that um using a very practical tool and um and hopefully the developers know that they're contributing something much bigger than than just a fee so with that um we'll go ahead and maybe take the vote so all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously thank you okay and we have one last item before we conclude this afternoon's agenda and that's ad use and maybe take a two-minute pause if we could sure for a restroom right sorry thank you all right okay let's go ahead and get started we are on the last um item for afternoon uh council meeting agenda we have an adjournment time at 5 15 so i'll just go ahead and remind the council that we'll be adjourning this afternoon with uh around 5 15 um and we'll go ahead and try to get through it all and we'll kick it right over to our our staff to start the presentation thank you mayor and council members lee butler the planning and community development director and i've got sarah noisy with me the senior planner she's been reviewing uh the many state bills that were adopted this year as they relate to accessory dwelling units and um we have a series of changes proposed for you this evening or this afternoon that include both an urgency ordinance to um have our regulations take effect immediately and um also first readings for two other ordinances one which would go to the coastal commission and one that we can have an effective uh date without having to proceed through the coastal commission so i'll turn it over to sarah good afternoon i'll try to keep my presentation to about 15 minutes um this i apologize in advance there is a lot of minutia included in this so we're going to keep it high level if there's anything that um council members want to dive into we absolutely can make time for that um but i'm going to start by assuming we're going to take a high level view of all of this so just really brief background the city of Santa Cruz has been a leader in ad use for decades we actually had an ordinance that led the state in creating ad use um and then we just have made a series of updates to our um local codes uh that went that were last heard by your council in february of this year that um removed parking for ad use um created different standards for conversion ad use and then allowed um family members immediate family members to qualify as an owner occupant for the purposes of our owner determining owner occupancy in our code and then we also adopted a whole suite of changes that were required by the state law at the time so um the state is very concerned about housing there were over 100 bills this session introduced related to housing and land use this is just a sort of overview of the ones that existed as of april some a subset of these has passed and we are now grappling with how to implement so uh related to specifically to ad use there were three bills that were um that were passed the based on the way that these bills become laws the relevant section that we read in order to draft our ordinance was um came from ab 881 um and we worked currently from section 1.5 and section 2.5 comes into effect five years from now and basically that's just about um the remove the prohibition on owner occupancy standards then there are two other sections from the other bills um ab 68 contains the standards that apply now for junior ad use and then um sb 13 contains language that requires jurisdictions to delay the enforcement of um certain building of any building code provision under certain circumstances for ad use so we're going to go through this legislation it's broken down into um really five sections and then an urgency ordinance so we're going to start with development standards the state law says that um ad use attached to single family homes can be limited only by being 50 percent of the home to which they're attached we can't also have another maximum size limit other than that so um then it also says the the bill says later that site standards can't limit an ad you to anything less than 800 square feet so what we end up with is essentially for attached ad use um they can be 50 percent of the habitable area of the main home or 800 square feet whichever is greater for detached ad use we can keep our 10 percent of the lot size as long as it's 10 percent of the lot size or 800 square feet whichever is greater so this does represent an increase in size that would be allowed on many of our single family lots in the city um we're also recommending that we adopt a size standard for conversion ad use this matches our existing policy interpretation that we've been allowing um if there's an existing structure that is um you know larger than what we would allow a um new construction ad you typically to be constructed um we're all the only size limit we're placing on that is the maximum allowed under state law which is um 1200 square feet so we're um recommending that we codify that at this point and then um the lot coverage standard um for ad use has to be eliminated because it's inconsistent with the language in the state law and it wouldn't allow these um site standards to apply on the lots where they have to apply so also in the legislation um ad use can't be limited in height less than 16 feet we can't require a replacement of any parking that's removed for an ad you and um this is a little bit of a controversial read but they the the state law deleted the only reference to two-story structures that was in the state law um and we did get a letter from assembly member Ting's office sort of arguing our read of this um section and this was a piece that we struggled with a little bit and you'll see when we get to our height one two-story ad use we do have a I think we have a little bit of we've taken a little discretion there we're making an interpretation of the law um so you know this is the place where you know there could be different opinions and different standards adopted in other jurisdictions so um you know the change in height limit is not a big deal around here it went from 15 to 16 feet our setbacks remain at three feet for single-story structures um there's this piece about uh for attached ad use we have this piece in several of our code in our um zone districts where as the building gets taller we require the setbacks to increase and um that makes sense when you're doing you know like a multifamily structure that's like up to three stories tall and it's um more challenging when you're talking about a single family home that's kind of that's built on a multifamily zone parcel to kind of hold it to that standard it creates some kind of awkward building envelope so we're recommending that we delete that in the case of allowing ad use um we're just adopting the piece about parking and then when we get to this piece about two-story detached ad use and the setbacks that we're going to require um we so we struggled with this a little bit um the we don't get so I sit in advanced planning and I don't review projects and so I don't get complaint calls about projects very often when I get complaint calls about projects this last year they have been about two-story ad use that are five feet from a property line from a rear property line like those are the ones that get to me where I sit which is so um based on that based on a few conversations that we were able to have with you know a couple of designers um we feel like this is the right place to land where we would say when an ad use is two-stories tall and it's facing an alley we can have this reduced setback four feet which is you know what the state law allows um for an interior lot um if it's two if it's two stories tall that portion that's over 16 feet um we really feel that should be setback 10 feet from the rear property line based on the correspondence that we received from assembly member Tang and rereading the law and kind of you know hearing out their logic argument um they're arguing that you could do a two-story ad use in 16 feet so we're willing to add that to our code that if you do an ad use in 16 feet you can keep it to four foot side and rear setbacks um as would be sort of which is the text of the law that we have to allow a 16 foot structure in talking with our um you know building folks that's hard to do it would have to be concrete construction it would have to kind of have a flat roof so we're not really expecting any of that but I do think that will allow us to be in compliance with hcd a super quick question yeah the 16 feet at the half point of the um so for ad use we measure to the peak okay yeah for other structures we measure to the midpoint so um further pending legislation um we can only use ministerial building permit processes um so that's essentially a building permit only application and then there's a whole list of situations that the city is obligated to approve and so that includes with a single family home an attached ad u a conversion ad u which we discussed um we were already locally allowing an expansion of conversion ad use in the state law we could sort of offer the state that idea and now it's state law um and that the amount of expansion changed a little bit uh the state created a junior ad u which i'll actually which i'm going to talk about a little bit later and then we also have to um approve a new construction detached ad u up to 800 800 square feet so we've added language to our ordinance to be explicit that we are only requiring a building permit for all ad use um there are a few limited circumstances where well for all ad use um and then in certain circumstances if um a site would trigger would under normal circumstances would trigger the need for um say a watercourse development permit because they're too close to a creek or a slope variance because they're too close to a 30 percent or greater slope um we have to allow them to build an 800 square feet square foot unit even if they are within closer proximity than we would typically allow so we've written an accommodation into our code to allow them to go up to 800 square feet um if the project applicant for whatever reason isn't satisfied with 800 square feet and really chooses to go to you know their maximum that they're allowed a thousand or 1200 and then they're choosing this um you know site plan for other you know for reasons that are not clear to us then they have an alternative site plan that wouldn't require this other type of permit um that's the only situation when we would require them to get uh any kind of discretionary permit so that's kind of complicated and tied in knots but I promise we worked with the um city attorney on drafting the language and the crux of it is there's a very few situations where we might require um an ad you to go through a discretionary process and that would be at the election of the applicant that would only they have a clear path to building an 800 square foot ad you with only a building permit every every residential lot in the city now has now will have that um opportunity um and then we also um so expanding conversion ad use um previously that was our expansion limit was 120 square feet and now it's going to 150 and then um we are adding a sort of a clarifying amendment to a code section and this is in your replacement pages that you got um that we had had in their language that said uh that the you can expand your conversion ad you but it can't exceed the size limit of a new construction ad you so we're deleting that because it's the size limit of a conversion ad you because it's a different size limit and then um based on the correspondence that we received yesterday kind of pointing out this um you know this allowance for expansion and you know there's this debate about whether we can have a size limit at all for um conversion ad use we believe that we can we've cleared that with hcd um so we've added a clarifying amendment about how you use that expansion area um in a conversion when it's close to that upper limit we're all having fun yet that's minutia this is really what we're this is like we're deep in it I apologize so um also further with ministerial permits multifamily structures so now family multifamily parcels that are zoned for multifamily that are developed with multifamily you can now also add ad use so you can add ad use that are conversions you can add up to two new construction or detached the state law says detach new construction ad use staff is actually recommending that we just say two new construction ad use especially with some of these smaller multifamily projects that are you know duplexes or triplexes existing places it might make more sense to attach the ad you to the part to the existing structure rather than build it as a detached so um we don't see any reason to not allow that as an option and then we've just added ad use are now in allowed use in any zone district that allows residential uses where there is another residential use on the parcel so um and then this is the other part of the replacement pages I've handed out this is about removing the date that's associated with existing structures we can talk about the ramifications of that if you want to get into it but we're just deleting the date from the ordinance so um allowing mixed use on multifamily mixed use properties and now creating a junior ad you um these are so the remainder land use policy amendments so junior ad use are small units initially they were created to be they had to be an existing bedroom that was being converted now it can be um this sort of range of options that includes from anything from an existing bedroom all the way up to building a new addition to the house to become a junior ad you but they can't be more than 500 square feet they have to be attached to a single family home um they have to have you know they have the standard for an efficiency kitchen they can have their own bathroom or share a bathroom and right now the way the state law is written junior ad use we have to require owner occupancy and then a junior ad you and an ad you can exist on the same parcel the same single family parcel and then lastly um in the state law they're prohibiting jurisdictions from requiring owner occupancy on parcels with ad use that get permits between the first of 2020 and the first of 2025 so locally we are adopting the um junior ad use standards some of our concerns or curiosities that we had had about junior ad use in the past have been addressed by the state law we shared those with the state and they made changes in the state law so now we're happier adopting what their standards are um and it is this sort of spectrum of options that you could have to be a junior ad you um that could provide like real options for property owners to create something at a lower price point because it could be as simple as adding essentially a wet bar to an existing bedroom and an exterior door they can continue to share a bathroom if they already share a bathroom but maybe somebody has a master suite that already has its own bathroom and already has maybe even an exterior door and then you're talking about putting in some counter space and some outlets it could be very cost effective in terms of creating a separate sort of rentable space in a home um and then we'll allow a junior ad you and an ad you on a parcel with a single family home and then um no owner occupancy between um the dates specified in the state law when we discuss this with the planning commission they um they were really they were really interested in um being more proactive than the state and um given the timeline that we were on there was no time for staff to be proactive this year and um one of the things the planning commission recommended is that we do uh the city consider doing retroactive removal of existing owner occupancy requirements on permitted ad use so um that is their recommendation to your council that we lift owner occupancy requirements on all ad use that exist and all ad use that might be built anytime in the future so other things that are in the legislation there's a reduction in fees we are working with our um other fee charging agencies to work these into our fee schedule um in the timelines allowed um we're also now um figuring out we're updating some of our building code our building permit applications and finalization paperwork to reflect this um right that uh applicants would now have to delay the enforcement of a building code provision under certain circumstances and then lastly the state law does contain language that um renders our our entire ad you regulations null and void if we're if we're not in compliance on January 1 so that's why we're bringing an urgency ordinance for your council okay so um I did want to I want to talk a little bit about owner occupancy so in February when your council considered ad use last year um we talked about options around owner occupancy and lifting that requirement and at the time we were considering it in exchange for maybe affordability or at um after some period of time you know 10 or 15 years of owner occupancy then we would consider lifting that provision and I think there were good reasons that we had those thoughts at the time and I and the situation is different now you know the the state has sort of removed our ability to be concerned about what this may do to the for sale housing market um you know in terms of looking proactive looking um looking forward um at new ad use coming online so the planning commission has recommended that we remove that requirement for all ad use past and future permitted and unpermitted and staff is recommending that we conduct the community outreach that your council directed us to do at the beginning of the year we didn't do it at the beginning of the year because the state law was changing and it looked like we were gonna you know they were going to take owner occupancy away wholesale and we thought why have this big dramatic conversation and then have the state take the option away so um so that continues to be our recommendation is that we go forward and do that that work this next year um the other piece that we are bringing forward this at this point is um this consideration of a provision in the code that requires ad use to add an additional increment of green building points we we have a spreadsheet and um we call it a matrix and points that are assigned to various green building features and ad use are having to have a higher standard to reach than other residential uses um we conducted we did an analysis of the affordability which was what your council directed us to do last year when we discussed this and we don't think it's very likely that um a property owner would elect to be relieved of the green building standard in exchange for providing a deed restriction the payoff period um it's um it's too much of a hit for not enough of a gain you know the price point of meeting the green building standard is not high enough to be to have the relief of that standard create an incentive for affordability um that's our analysis of it and um did we have a recommendation on this I can't remember recommendation is to lift it the recommendation is to have it um remain the same as what is applicable to other new construction so a single family home that is 2000 square feet is actually required to get fewer points than an ad you that it may be 500 square feet so we're looking at um making as basically having a level playing field for the smaller homes which are inherently um going to be using fewer materials and less um energy and and so forth already so that is our recommendation on that um okay so then as I mentioned we weren't able to do any proactive outreach on this um this year given the timelines we were working under and we would like to engage with that in the future so some of the things that we already know we want to talk about with the community are here on the slide like are there more options for junior ADUs what if we allowed more than one per parcel what if we allowed three in a single family home would that be undesirable are there challenges with that would that be desirable maybe that's creating a type of housing that we're not providing elsewhere in another manner in the market um I mean I think these are just interesting questions to ask should we allow them in multifamily housing it seems like you could allow a junior ADU in a town home and that might work in some situations could we allow the ad the junior ADU to be attached to the ad you rather than being attached to the home things like that so there there might be other options around that we're also interested in talking about um we've already had an issue come up with short-term rentals on multifamily properties so currently we would allow a short-term rental permit on a duplex but um we don't allow a short-term rental permit on any property with an adu and this just raises some some new questions you know if you have an existing duplex or triflex that has an existing short-term rental permit are we going to ask them to choose between their existing short-term rental permit and whatever business they're running and building an adu because that's essentially the way our code is written now is they would have to choose one over the other so i think that's worth a conversation and then we would be issuing we would be um working through the process with housing and our department and um whatever other agencies need to be involved to implement ab 587 which allows us to do um tenants in common where there's a property with an adu if it's developed by an affordable housing developer which is a model we have used in the city in the past um that actually was not in compliance with state law so now it can be in compliance with state law the state law has changed so we want to adopt that into our code um and we just we have some working out we need to do about the you know definitions and some stuff with some work to do on that but we our intention is to bring that back for your council to adopt so um our next steps we will be after um adoption by the council will be doing our community outreach both to cover what we have just done what's changed about the regulations and then doing proactive outreach to begin on other sort of policy items as mentioned starting in the spring of 2020 and then the new legislative cycle begins january 7th and i have just done inkling that maybe there will be other stuff about adus coming in the next legislative cycle so i think we'll get to see each other a lot again about this topic which is great so and then we have a portion of the ordinance today that would have to go to the coastal commission for air review so here's our big long recommendation that is printed in the packet i won't read it but it involves adopting an urgency ordinance and then publishing two ordinances for um introducing for publication two ordinances that would be a regular ordinances uh that would come into effect that so the urgency ordinance would go out of effect when the regular ordinance came into effect um and now we have q and a and here's an 800 square foot adu so this is what it looks like and what the floor plan you could get well thank you and i know i know it's we know it's a lot too and so um we'll go ahead and see now if there's any questions from the council in regards to um some of the recommendations so my understanding in simple terms is how are we kind of bringing um up to date some of the state legislation that now needs to be in on the books as well as some of the specific modifications to our local policy um so that's sort of more or less what's before us okay councilman matthews yeah could you go back to your previous one that one so this is all bringing stuff up to current code consistent with state code correct it's it's consistent with state code and then also what we've had in here are um any additional modifications to the green building standards right um which are but then you don't have a recommendation here but it was implied this whole package of other things including uh eliminating the owner occupancy retroactively that would all come as part of some future discussion is that correct yes that's the intention i just have a question we received a letter um yesterday from californians for home ownership did you guys see this letter um and i'm assuming with the urgency ordinance we can't can we make further changes or what i'm just curious what your what your initial thoughts on some of their comments are yeah so we did spend some time this morning um reviewing their letter and kind of going through it point by point and um unsurprisingly we don't agree with them on everything um there are a few there were two things that they brought up that we felt we needed to change and those are reflected in the replacement pages that you have in front of you so they they brought up this um understanding of the term existing as it's used in the state law they talk about you can convert an existing structure um and we and many other jurisdictions had interpreted that to mean existing as of the date that the legislation passed um and consulting with hcd that's incorrect that it should be understood as in the colloquial way so existing as of the point of application so someone could build a garage six months later come in and say i want to convert it to an ad u um so be it that's the state law and um and then the other piece was about size limits for conversion ad use and um i also talked with hcd about that this morning and um they they disagree with this letter they think we are able to set a limit on conversion ad use um we could set whatever limit we like as long as it's not less than 1200 square feet so we're starting at 1200 square feet if your council thinks it should be higher um you're welcome to make a different motion uh so so we did add a little bit of a change about how you how we're applying the um 150 square foot expansion to those larger conversion ad use and that's as a in response to that letter there's the comments that they made about permitting are just incorrect they didn't read our ordinance correctly okay yeah because we do have a building permit only process every parcel can build an 800 square foot ad u with only a building permit every residential parcel in the city so the first part of the letter yeah you you don't agree that their reading is yeah they're looking for a certain structure in our code that we just don't have because we have had essentially building permit only structure for two years already so it's we're just we're not creating that new today and so they're i think anyway that they're looking for a certain structure in the ordinance and not finding it because everything is already that way for us so yeah i think they just misunderstood so that's the these changes reflect this yeah that those reflect our understanding and consultation with the city attorney about the things that we need to address okay thank you for clarifying them nice mayor come in i said a quick question i know that we're mainly just trying to bring our ordinance up to state code um i was wondering if there's any opportunities potentially in the future to um like increase or incentivize you know pro um ad use that would be listed as affordable or if there's opportunities for having um ways that we can incentivize affordability i guess with the production of ad use and junior ad use yeah um there probably are i mean i think that so so one of the other bills that passed this year was um maybe 587 which requires local jurisdictions to put programs in their housing elements that address creating affordability in ad use specifically um and we are fortunate in that we are not coming up on this first cycle so the state has different cycles for housing elements and different different regions are on different cycles and um the abag region which is the san francisco bay area um their cycle is coming up and they're gonna have to comply with that so we'll get to kind of see what they suggest because it's it's hard with ad use i mean especially because we essentially have they've like taken away anything we might offer as an incentive in terms of a site standard it's like really not much left so it then it's so then it's really about money and um that's great if you have it right if you have a source of funds to provide sort of i don't know a revolving loan fund the county has a forgivable loan fund um that's wonderful and you know then that money in case of the forgivable loan you know one of the disadvantages there is it's you know $300,000 and then that serves you know maybe eight to ten ad use and then you're out of money um so they're just the trick the the issue with ad uses there's just no economy of scale like every project is really individualized so um it's tricky and i am glad that we get to kind of see what other jurisdictions come up with first before we have to write our own standards in or policy ideas that's definitely something we're thinking about and looking for you know we some folks are looking for you know maybe pre-approved plans or some kind of you know modular construction can bring the cost of construction down but then how do you tie that into an affordability restriction that comes from the city it's it's a tricky one you know like i think there are lots of things we can do that can bring the cost of construction down and then that would allow people to charge lower rent and still cover their costs and i think those are worth worth doing and i don't know if we can necessarily tie those things to an affordability restriction and an income qualified you know deed restriction that's then enforceable by the city it's a tricky one thanks yeah no thank you we there's something we've we've been talking about and thinking about as well so it comes from brown this is uh related it just occurred to me um let's follow up to that question from vice mayor Cummings um so we talked about the affordability level of ad use and the kind of identification of a trend that maybe they're not so affordable in terms of their where they sit in the market rent uh uh scale and i'm wondering if that are you are you conducting any further analysis of that i thought i remember called that that was happening and because it would be interesting to just um get a handle as we're moving through all this adu uh ordinance revision process kind of get a handle on what's going on with the house the adu market and santa cruise yeah and also i think um for this particular agenda item because we are now because the state is now kind of requiring if they're taking it out of our hands whether or not we can require owner occupancy um to see what the effect is over the next five years i think would be really helpful to have some baseline information so is that happening yeah so i did actually i did a survey of of adu owners this summer and i am still processing the data and when we when we bring back whatever package we bring back in like the summer i will include that analysis with their sort of so my initial read on it is that um adus create like lower cost market rate by virtue of simply being smaller units um but i am not seeing that there's a massive difference in um the rent for like a studio apartment and a small adu it doesn't it that's not jumping off the page to me the one thing that i will say that has jumped off the page and looking at that data is that there are quite a number of people who own adus who don't charge any rent so it's providing housing an extension of the primary household so that's a family member that would otherwise be in the rental market and that is like a significant percentage so just as follow-up i'm to that um we so i know we've received as that survey went out um we've received some messages from uh potentially affected uh people about their unwillingness to uh participate in the survey and so i'm just wondering have you found that you've been able to get a pretty good um response rate i yeah i mean you know you sent out probably like probably 550 surveys and i have 250 back so that's i mean pretty decent response rate i mean one of them came back and said none of your business but that was really only one out of 250 like a lot of folks were willing to answer our 10 little questions so yeah it's unfortunate that people don't want to participate and um it would be great if we had better information about the rents that were being charged or not being charged or how they were being charged and um i'll bring you what i have when we come back other questions can you say what conversion adu is again yeah sure sorry um so a conversion adu is uh create an adu that's created out of um any existing structure so we have an existing garage on a parcel and someone you know adds the kitchen and the bathroom and the um installation and firewalls and now that's a conversion adu okay thank you and um what can you just sum up quickly the why we're at why this is an emergency why we have to have an emergency ordinance um yeah so is this an emergency it's an emergency in that um the state legislation says that if we're out of compliance on january one and we don't have a local ordinance so that would eliminate our local standards for um you know height and setbacks and um you know we don't have a ton of other site standards but we do have sort of standards about moving you know the stairways to be inside basically we don't have a local ordinance as of january one if we don't if it's not compliant with the state law and what i understand is the staff recommendation is that we only go for five years um on the owner occupancy on the owner occupancy um yeah so that's what's in the ordinance right now and um we will be discussing that with the public um when we go to do our proactive work here in the spring um that's one of the we already have kind of that direction from the council to discuss this with the public about you know what are the pros and cons about making it retroactive um so that's what we intend to do that's not before us then tonight right uh no i mean if if there are strong feelings about that i mean the planning commission had very strong feelings about it and made a recommendation to your council so um you know the council has that option but that's not in the staff recommendation that's not in the proposed ordinance unless there aren't any other questions we'll go ahead and open it up to the public at this time are there members of the community who would like to address us on this item item number 25 um and our 80 use please come forward and you'll have up to two minutes thank you i'll confine my comments to the owner occupancy issue and i'll cut to the chase i strongly recommend that you just do what you have to do with regards the state requirement which is that five-year period and not extend it beyond that and not take it for further review because your initial impetus for that was because you were looking at the affordability issue that's not on the table and to open up this can of worms i don't think would do anyone any good this five-year lifting of owner occupancy is going to be a sea change and i think it would be better to just limit it to the state requirement the recommendation from the planning commission was not unanimous and i'd just like to say that i've been here since 1983 at the seven hearings for ad use and staff has always said that it's a balance and the restrictions and limits and size it used to be 500 square feet so the market rate is going to go up if they're now 800 square feet the balance was the most the sort of the what maintained a balance was owner occupancy so what we've had over since 83 is a sort of a slow progression of ad use that have become incorporated in the neighborhoods and they have had an impact but it has not been dramatic 56 percent of our houses in Santa Cruz are non-owner occupied and it's only money for those folks and i predict that with owner occupancy lifted there's going to be quite a dramatic impact on our community i think that speculators will buy up houses and i see time zoning out but the main point is that a property with an adu the value goes up which makes it harder for first-time home buyers to buy that property had a lot more but i hope you won't do the owner occupancy beyond the time next speaker please i'm Cindy Forenzi and i'm actually a big fan of ad use we have one and i i think that the the issue with the owner occupancy requirement has changed because the state has changed that so it's not the same conversation that it used to be so i think we do need to have a revisiting of that because it has created the situation where you have two different sets of ad use you have existing ad use and went through the whole process of being legalized and then you have new ad use now that will be either built or will be converted from illegal ad use that exists right now into newly permitted ones that don't have that owner occupancy requirements so the state has already taken that into its own hands out horses out of the barn so in terms of speculators they have every opportunity to come in and buy up either a single family residence right now add an adu or a single family residence with an existing illegal adu and turn it into something that is not owner occupied so i think that it's really a very different situation right now and i think you want to look at also why did the state do this they did this because they're trying to increase supply they're trying to help renters you know as part of their whole packet of new laws to help renters and what the planning commission was saying all but one of them was that if you open up existing ad use that are legal to owner occupancy you know where it's not required then you'll have more rentals available because people would be able to move out of the state if they needed to for family or for job reasons and they were saying immediately we'd have some more rentals and that would help renters so i think it's yeah i think they had a good point there and also what the state was trying to do was trying to get local governments to lift some of the barriers to ad use and i think that it's a good path to follow i support them on that thank you hi my name is kandace again from east morcy um i live in a neighborhood that has larger lots and we have a lot of ad use but it's all owner occupied and it's a very civil environment and there's alleys and there's you know access on both sides of the parcel so it kind of makes sense sometimes to have a single family home and ad you but in most cases i don't know the statistics for our neighborhood but i know for citywide it's over 50 of the ad use are for friends and family and the tendency and i remember this and previous analysis and this discussion that there was on i don't remember the percentage but there was some discussion about the percentage of lower rents that are seen and you mentioned it's even free so um to discourage that in any way by encouraging anybody to sort of buy into our market from anywhere from anywhere in the world essentially and to buy in you know and competing with single families that want to actually have basically an enclave for their family which is essentially what's happening for a lot of our properties in some properties i have three and four generations living in the same property that's actually pretty common now in my neighborhood so um i think you don't want to discourage that one concern i do have though is the height um it sounds like there's nothing we can do on that but there is some concern between the neighbors now and some discussion about solar access if you have solar access and also they build does that mean they can take that away from you that's a question i have and i know that there's not an answer right now but that is a consideration and moving forward with climate change a lot of people are thinking about that so thank you good afternoon i'm scott graham um i think it's a good idea to make it possible for uh homeowners to create ad us that are affordable and one of the policies the county has is that all the permits if somebody agrees to keeping their unit affordable for 20 years they don't have any permit fees for creating the ad you and but if at any time they start charging market rate rents they have to pay those fees so i think a program like that would be helpful to creating more affordable units here in town and i i hope that you can do something to create these kind of units thank you right seeing no other public comment we'll go ahead and return back for council action um vice mayor comings brown matthews i'm just prepared to move the staff recommendations without um including the making sure that we don't include the the planning commission recommendations i'm prepared to second that okay so we have a motion by vice mayor comings seconded by council member matthews essentially moving the recommendation which isn't actually including the planning commission's recommendation but more so involving the community before making that consideration correct yes that's correct um i just want to clarify the one thing that um that we talked about that is not reflected in the proposed ordinance is any change to the green building standard so as the as the ordinance has written it reflects today's code so uh sorry if i could just get clarification so you're suggesting that the in your recommendation do we need additional language in regards to the green building yeah i mean your your council needs to make a choice about what you're going to do about green building are you going to keep that additional increment that applies to 80 use um if so that's the motion you've made that that maintains our existing standard on our existing code um or if you'd like to um delete it then that needs to be part of the motion also i just want to make sure you're doing that intentionally okay i my understanding is that's in the recommendation um it's the bottom of here explicit about it or is that cover what you're describing that is that it's included in the agenda report but just for full disclosures are making sure that you all are aware that would delete that section that requires the additional points for 80 use okay which made sense to me so i support that if that's what's included in your is that what you understood as well as the seconder yes okay okay clarification on that lee or sarah do you guys need that in the motion language no no if everyone is clear then i'm fine i guess i was the only one that was confused sorry no no no problem okay councilmember brown and then councilmember meyers yeah i just want to make a quick comment i'm gonna support the motion i was prepared to make it um and just say you know i think that given that the state has um kind of taken control of this situation you know this is the responsible thing to do and to adopt as an urgency so we can maintain um our local ordinance and um and i also think that with respect to the um the five-year period i'm you know i understand where the planning commission is coming from and i understand the desire to have an ongoing community conversation about that but i do think that um we ought to ask ourselves the question i mean is that responsible public policy to incentivize um investment in our housing market in this outside investment essentially is what we're looking at here um and the owner occupancy rule i think has rightfully um appropriately and effectively provided some balance for that so i think that we should we ought to just go with what the state is requiring us to do now and see what happens um as a result of that and and what the state stops to do in the future i was going to offer an amendment but i don't don't think it'll go so i won't thank you council members um i just wanted to raise um the issue that scott graham mentioned which was a county's the county's program that to me is one of those issues that can be um dumped into the future adu discussions i also mentioned that remember the public who brought up the the um issue with height and blocking solar or blocking sun and properties because as we're going greener and we're you know installing more solar panels on houses if a house is to go up or what have you and it's blocking the solar the potential for another house to receive solar energy just taking that into consideration is you know how we might want to address that because it could cause conflicts in the future as it has in our recent larger scale development yeah that's a record i just wanted to follow up on what council member brown said i just um for the record this i think this action accepts the state mandate which um the record would really have profound impacts on this community i think we should not vote against any uh or not vote for an approval of the removal of the owner occupancy for all uh past and future adus until the larger community has weighed in which it seems like that's the direction we're going so i appreciate that okay great unless there isn't any further discussion we'll go ahead and take the vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously okay we're going to go ahead and adjourn the meeting at this time we'll reconvene here at 7 p.m for oral communications and the evening session it was that have not been on today's agenda um oral communications is about a half hour so we intend to conclude oral communications approximately around 7 30 p.m i just want to thank the community in advance for um the flexibility this evening i'll go ahead and maybe wait for a little bit of attention i'll go ahead and i just want to thank you in advance for uh your flexibility this evening tonight's meeting is quite unique in that we are generally on this final meeting for the year um have reserved the evening meeting for ceremonies as it relates to the transition from mayor to vice mayor and mayor incoming and this meeting today is unique in that we had a lot on our agenda we've been um meeting since 9 30 a.m this morning we wanted to make sure we were able to capture all of the items and um have a limited time allotted for um this evening's item and i appreciate in advance your respect and um awareness of the kind of the unique circumstances of tonight's meeting i also want to thank you in advance for your adherence to our rules of decorum we feel strongly and i feel strongly that everybody regardless whether or not we agree with their opinion has an opportunity and right to speak to us and it's my job and it's the job of the mayor to ensure that no matter who comes before us that we allow their opportunity to speak to us without threat or intimidation or disruption i want to remind those that if i do see our um observe and have to issue a warning because of um disturbance in our proceedings in our ability to move forward with council business i will go ahead and issue a warning if i see that continue i will ask you to leave i don't want you don't want to do that and so i hope and um appreciate your respect in advance for not um putting me in that position and hopefully allowing our decorum to proceed um so at this time we'll go ahead and open up oral communications for any item that has not been listed on today's agenda please come forward and you'll have up to two minutes hi i'm james the person i want to ask a question to is not in the room it's the city attorney but that's okay here he comes i just want to say it's been a pleasure to witness everything that's gone on gone on in here it really has been a pleasure but my question that i have it can be answered at any time is why is it that a citizen cannot ask a question during this time in regards to what was on the previous calendar that's it thank you very much thank you okay next speaker my name is lee broca and i would like to call the council's attention to the respectful workplace conduct policy all employees volunteers and council members enjoy a positive respectful productive work free environment and it goes on to talk about how the council members as well as employees come under the respectful workplace policy after the last council election council members Cummings and Glover were elected and that ignited a little spark in the Matthews builder wing of the party that wanted to call a recall but they needed to wait six months before they could do that legally and they chose council member crone instead of council member Cummings and council member Glover we had just a little bit of a spark and hardly any smoke until the perception speech which poured gasoline on the ember with the allegations of perceptions of bullying and i think that um it would be good if the person who perpetrated that speech would make a public apology because the bullying that went on as that speech went on was that she did not allow either council member that were called out in the perception speech an opportunity to speak and to defend themselves that to me is bullying from a position of power and a violation of the respectful workplace conduct policy and should have been dealt with that way the problem that was expressed in the perception speech was a personal problem next speaker my name is Antonio Mendoza and i'm here to represent the constitution at a stage i took a note to protect it means it's my it's my duty not my right and i see a lot of criminally saying politically correct things going on here in america especially santa cruz whether it's the constitution rights and politically correct police brutality police military militias mayhem and murder okay hypothermia is not a joke health and safety and sanitation is a matter of life and death not only people die in hypothermia they're dying of heat exhaustion because you closed politically correct closed area you can't use a tree for shake i see you're all guilty of treason crimes against humanity and violating the constitution of the state of america i am take back the constitution of the state of america to the people in the united states plus santa cruz you're all guilty of treason and crimes against humanity next speaker okay maybe i'm talking about him too but anyway as the end of garret santa cruz as the end of the year approaches i don't remember anyone thanking the entire city for closing ross camp one and two thank you it is not too late this year for those awful public activists who are outrageously accused council members of being fascists or personally responsible for the deaths of homeless people or interrupted meetings without bursts to apologize and make a new year's resolution not to do it again next year there are those who believe their goals are so noble it wrongly justifies mischaracterization lies and smears of others going back to the last meeting i see now i didn't make it clear exactly how i was mischaracterized by what's called framing by one of the recall council members i'm not going to go through all those mischaracterizations like being right wing as i don't itself identify that way or any diversity whatever because my views are kind of a cerebral and if he didn't get it before he's not going to get it now i understand it was to mr rex support away from the legitimate recall reasons but it's beneath the public office to misuse the bully pulpit and offensive to me the truth is i am a centrist and the progressive left the self-identified progresses left this views of some of the council are the extremist views the only injustice of the recall was that the council member brown wasn't included if you wonder why i say what i do since i really don't ask for anything as the special interests do it's for me really all about the fact i consider leftism and socialism the two most serious threats to our nation today the propaganda of which several generations have fallen for now one more generation and poof goes our excellent nation otherwise happy holidays next speaker please well justin i hope as a mayor you allow a little bit of democracy in these chambers unlike what we've had for the last 12 months we can see the suffering that resulted from the manipulation here by for instance diana who is struggling next to a wall next to ross camp because she has no place to stay and she was sexually assaulted uh four days ago or you could talk about the 14 people that uh with joey who are forced out of the parking garages into the rain in the middle of the night or the police raid the santa cruz police department did this afternoon over a paradise camp and the fact that you can find people living in every doorway because of the manipulation and the corruption of this city council during the last 12 months and particularly during the period of uh since walk and spend mayor so we're really hoping that since i supported justin comings in that election and paid my own money to put out information to get you elected my belief was you might actually stand up for homeless people this is a critical moment in history to stand up for the for tenants and for homeless people and so it's it's um i just hope that you uh start to act a little differently than you have during as vice uh mayor and uh you know just a shame that we have to see this kind of suffering day in and day out and i i urge you to support a resolution to reopen camp phoenix and let people manage that successfully as we were for five days we were the only a d a compliant to toilet in downtown santa cruz for five days so you you can make history as you said in your post this morning by actually doing something on human rights day to help the human rights of the people that live on our streets in our community thank you good evening um at at the last city council meeting the vice mayor was chosen on the basis of an appeal to honor to the honor of a strong tradition of mayorships and vice mayorships being passed to council members receiving the most votes in recent council elections after the council meeting i felt bemused witnessing council support for a declared tradition by council members associated with the recalls of two colleagues from childhood through my voting life i understood that the recall process provides recourse for the electorate to the electorate to remove corrupt elected officials from office this is an understanding widely widespread among the citizenry at home researching the history of local recalls i learned that a recall fever is sweeping the united states in the words of a past executive director of the united states conference of mayors an organization so concerned about the abuse of the recall process they decided to make a film about it like the recall now underway in santa cruz quoting in most cases recalls aren't based on any allegations of criminal wrongdoing end quote reports an article in governing magazine which describes itself as the nation's leading media platform for state and local government leaders to honor another strong important tradition i look forward to the new vice mayor and each city council member declaring their opposition to the frivolous recalls the traditional purpose of recall law is to keep crooks out of office not to suppress legitimate political representation hi i agree with that last gentleman um these these two men just were defending the homeless people with a lot a lot more concern in their hearts than everybody else that was listening at that point and maybe they raised their voices a little but it was not sexual harassment i know it's sexual harassment in fact i was almost killed in a parking garage and i do not like parking garages at all and i do not want to see our library turned into one and no one has ever told me what's going to happen to those trees that are over 200 years old in that beautiful parking lot over there that houses our lovely farmers market which is the best thing we have in our community if you ask me and uh as far as maybe that building in the middle of the pogo nip the last time i hiked in there and still had schwarz and agar's name in front of it you ought to check it out but i'm worried about the ticks and and the poison oak which i always seem to get when i hike in the pogo nip for very long i guess i get them for my dogs but um that building by the um the uh the tennis courts out there can we maybe somehow renovate that and turn it into a homeless community home and give our people some place to live the winter is going to get nasty climate chaos is upon us it's all trump weather now until we get rid of them so we got to get on it and give the people something to look forward to something to hope for a beautiful place to live and i bet the drug and all of the needles and things will go way down if we give everybody happiness thank you next speaker members of the community and the city council there's a nasty new normal setting in around us today Lancaster city council votes on outlawing free food distribution banning groups like food not bombs on the sidewalk same old nimby pretext you know obstructing the sidewalk litter visual blight and undefined hazards to public health the real reasons those unsightly tents and the unsightly people sleeping in them that seem to be in the vicinity of food not bombs groups next friday the reactionary roberts court trump supreme court will consider whether to reconsider the boise versus martin decision that case and the realities of santa cruz's rich folks only rents has forced cops and rangers to dig deep into their pocketbooks their ticket books actually my apologies for other laws than camping it's our pocketbooks they're digging into to drive away visible homeless people interfering with property value and christmas business the traditional reasons for driving them out of sight as rents and real unemployment have worsened their numbers have grown and new myths have become accepted dogma people outside our best are now viewed as addicts alcoholics or loonies required to label themselves as such to get services survival tents in selam oregon so city council there trots out a new homeless ban which they call a camping ban like in santa cruz with no shelter option provisions at least there's more brutal honesty there here we saw in may vice mayor comings and the watkins majority by the suzio hara megan bunch plenty of shelter lies same fake narrative was used to close camp phoenix at ross recently and to duck any winter shelter action tonight but your eyes tell the tale each day elderly and disabled women and men on the streets friendly police driving homeless out of parking garages into the rain night after night and the news titans on all of us or most of us anyway as the cliche goes as the cliche goes if we do not hang together please do not interrupt my last sentence if we do not hang together we will all hang separately thank you next speaker this is a i'll just remind those that are here this is for oral communications items that are not on today's agenda if you're here to speak to the evening item you'll have an opportunity to do that a public comment so this is for not items that are not on today's agenda please pat pitles and a cruise i have a habit of saying things people really don't want to hear i mean all different kinds of people and i simply say if i'm wrong show me where i'm wrong because calling me names and making threats short of killing me is not going to shut me up where do i start robert norris just told us as did many people homeless advocates here what we need to do for the homeless i have previously suggested what the homeless can do on their own behalf that would greatly enhance their welcome to everybody else and that is simply clean up your own crap don't leave it in the forest don't pretend you care about trees when i've been in the forest doing forest work and i've seen what you've done to the forest so please clean up your own mess clean up your fellow homeless person's own mess if they won't clean it up where else do i go uh dug drew clever you got a 1619 thing there that refers to slavery which of course white people are uniquely guilty of which is not true furthermore if white people uh massacred the indians when they came over here which they did which they did uh shouldn't immigrants at least from overseas not come over here uh now that the white people have done the dirty work for them i mean think about that don't criticize white people if you're going to come over and displace the native americans yourself plus all the kids that you have when you get here where else do i go okay let me say something on behalf of muslims muslims did not do 9 11 jews did 9 11 if you go to i told you you'd be mad at me show me where i'm wrong wiki spooked that organ you'll see what i mean your time is in all right i'll i'll just go ahead and remind those that are here for oral communications this is for items that are not on today's genders but this is also for items that we as a city council have jurisdiction over so i'll go ahead and ask that we come forward and speak to those related type topics for another 10 minutes before we move on to our evening session so oral communications will conclude at 7 30 why don't we go ahead and the next speaker please you'll have up to two minutes that was quite an act to follow um my name is sarah minnilday and the reason i came is i wanted to strongly express my support for jr. Glover and chris crown and how much i feel concerned one gentleman here made a lot of sense to me he said what's bothering me the most is that these this recall process i voted for both chris crown and jr. Glover and i respect their stuff but even if you don't this idea of just recalling them is so bad because i think it leads to a new authoritarianism and that is what is bothering me and i i see a lot of problems with that and um i mean i ranting doesn't help privately i rant but this is just really really awful so i encourage anyone who's listening anywhere here on tv to please um when it goes up for a vote in march to vote against the recall please do um that's why i work the elections and um why it doesn't make me some expert you have no idea how hard gale pelerin and all of us work to keep broadening the base keep opening to everybody you don't have to have an idea in santa cruz to vote you can vote at all sorts of polling places you can do this and at the same time avoid voter fraud and it is such hard work and it's so like this and then this and this and we work from six o'clock in the morning to 12 o'clock at night we're volunteers and that gives me a very great sense of americanism again because we're losing some of this this intense hostility between those of us who are poor and people who have money in this county is appalling to me my family it we're the old menelty family in so-called they've been around since god was a pop you know and santa cruz didn't used to have this hostile atmosphere and i don't feel that we need that and lots of political diatribes don't help but i do think that we need to vote we need to have our vote respected i feel like it's somebody said well sarah i'm sorry you voted for drew and chris because we're taking that away from you thank you thank you and the woman with the blue vest will be our last speaker go right ahead hello um this year it may cause your comments surge if you're interested in speaking i advise you to line up to the left and you'll be our last speaker and um and if that's if we get to if we are able to get to you'll have a chance to do that so why don't you go right ahead okay go ahead hello um so this year in may of 2019 it was estimated that anywhere between 2000 and 3200 people are home experiencing homelessness on any given night here in the county of santa cruz um making santa cruz one of the highest in in the country and that was a quote by abc seven news um i'm just here to say that we will accept nothing less than a roof over every houseless person in america we are here to end homelessness um and we are asking for your help to help get us some type of housing before the people have to take it upon themselves to figure something else out again such as the phoenix camp and eventually that's what will happen and we'll be back again just like drew had stated before and we'll be talking about this uh and you know future meetings um and so i just really asking for your guys's help we all are we're all asking for your guys's help that's what the community is saying to you another thing alicia couldn't make it here tonight she has um she's a guest speaker on on a radio station so she'll be here at the next meeting and that's all i wanted to say tonight thank you next speaker and those and those interested in speaking on the evening item you'll have an opportunity at public comment and that's the community advisory um committee on homelessness so this is items not on today's agenda oral communications go ahead hi my name is jim i've been around this community for about 30 years i want to speak on the issue of decorum in the 30 years i've been around this county the quorum in the council has been pretty much friendly for most of those years i had took exception with chris in his first year running or his first term spoke with crick key sugar multiple times back then and didn't really have a problem but after his last term you know heard from staff members that they weren't necessarily comfortable with interacting with him what's been obvious within the last couple years is the decorum is declined and that's the point of the recall it's how people get along it's the attitude you show towards others it's how you interact with staff those things you know getting back to people in the community you know we've heard multiple times over multiple weeks that people message chris and actually chris ever since the recalls come about it's actually been much more amenable to the community and that sort of thing glover not so much um so that's been obvious and i think that's kind of one of the key points of the recall is how people treat each other and going back to decorum and decorum in the community you hear that people in the take back community or the people that don't necessarily like finding needles are you know anti homeless anti this anti that no you know they don't want kids stepping on needles in parks they don't want homeless communities right near their house when crime spikes up they raise these concerns they're attacked by the activists sorry for looking back you know it's decorum it's a communicate conversation Cynthia knows that you know i'm not always the best in email and you know that's gone to Bernal and kandadi have seen that as well you know so i've got my own issues but as a council working with staff working with the public that's important thank you okay next speaker i was getting nervous um i'm chris lilson i come in peace i just want to um uh say a couple things i wanted to ask why um there's no vouchers being handed out when it's rained for five days in a row and people are soggy i want to know like if it gets become freezing is anybody going to get a hotel voucher like i it's my understanding that um it was said in court that you guys would make sure that people have a safe place and um the Ross camp saved me like in all honesty that is what saved me thank god for the Ross camp last year and i don't know i'm nervous sorry i just want to say that like what is this 2020 like where's the compassion the hate is so old school like if we could just have a spot where we can put the homeless so that everybody's safe my best friend died she was a firefighter she wasn't she was somebody and um it means a lot to me to see you know people out on the streets in the pouring rain for five days um i'm blessed i got into page today that i'm in a house but um that comes with difficulties as well as bedbugs and um other things um just trying to move forward and i hate seeing my people i don't want to see anybody else die sorry thank you last night i saw a movie the title of the movie is good night and good luck my name is alise kazby i'm a community activist here the title good night and good luck was a reference to edward r merrow one of the greatest journalists in the history of the united states of america he's quite thought of as a hero and the reason is is that while he was at cbs he was a television personality he was a newscaster and um he took on joseph mccarthy during the mccarthy era we are seeing mccarthyism right now right here in santa cruz same thing joe mccarthy did over and over again he would take people apart making up accusations making up claims he did this from the senate actually and he got amazingly far with this it's known as the mccarthy era most of us have at least heard of it and i don't think i'm being too strong here is not a law the term is behavior i could be somebody who couldn't walk and i could try to crawl up to the microphone to speak i could be dirty some people might have a problem with that that does not matter i'm a human being i'm a citizen if i'm a citizen here i have rights and those rights have been under assault ferociously since barack obama signed away our constitutional rights with the n d a day n d a a national defense authorization act a lot of people don't know that please look it up technically we do not have habeas corpus and other rights we need to stand up to this mccarthyism like edward r merrill the only way that this is going to stop this accusations in here say there was feces there was blood there was this there was that we need evidence solid concrete evidence good evening i think every time i get up here i talk about the same thing essentially my first time ever had to do with becoming a sanctuary city and having homes for people and i'm back on the same subject as i often am as many people are and i want to talk just a little bit tonight about the resolution that cash is presenting to have a second camp in addition to the river street camp and as we know we're asking for something very very hard it's not going to be easy there's a lot of nimby there's not a lot of other problems so i want you to put yourself in a certain position first of all last meeting or recently you all voted for health in all programs i think it is and don't forget what people told us over and over again that night that homelessness is one of the major causes of ill health and so that's something we've all along with you because we voted for many of you that's what we wanted you to remember the other thing i want you to remember is when those rains hit after thanksgiving and maybe you were in your car maybe you were running from your house to your car maybe you didn't have to go out at all if you were lucky but just remember how how great you felt knowing that there was a dry place maybe a warm place and that you were going to be able to sleep dry i hope and um i did have my roof leak on my bed one night so it doesn't always last but usually it does so please keep those things in mind because we are here trying to speak for many people who will never come to this mic and so we get up over and over again and we know we're getting through to you but then you have your own other forces going on so i beg you thank you thank you i had something else but i'm just gonna make this super short on the person who spoke before and right at the end started making the anti-semitic comments i think we should make some comment that that was not okay because i don't think the free speech allows for any kind of comment because you've called out people on sh i t so just as a as a city and as a city council that wasn't okay thank you all right we'll go ahead and conclude oral communications at this time um we have uh two items on our evening session so for those that are here to stay for our evening items we welcome you and we also particularly welcome the members of the cash and our co-chairs so tonight's evening item is the community advisory committee on homelessness and it's our initial status and action report to city council for members of the community i'll just go ahead and remind you about procedurally of how this will go we'll have a presentation from our cash um co-chairs we'll have an opportunity for staff to answer any questions that the council may have following that presentation i'll ask that our council please reserve their questions until the presentation has concluded at which time once we have our clarifying questions answered we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment for members of the community who want to address the council on this item and then we'll return to the council for action and deliberation i asked that you uh respect our uh present presenters um i just want to say um from the very beginning thank you uh thank you so much for your time uh for your volunteer hours for your commitment to serve our community we've given you a lot you've rose to the challenge you've dedicated hours you've created subcommittees you're here before us this evening and we have only gratitude for your service to our community so thank you very much for taking the time to present thank you thank you we have a question council member come did you get a sense of how many folks are from the cash that are here tonight sure they could raise their hand for those who are members of the cash that are here tonight and want to be recognized we extend our gratitude and thanks to you as well absolutely thank you for that i'll go ahead and turn the presentation over to you though thank you mayor vice mayor and members of council my name is kandace elliot and this is taj lehi and we're the co-chairs of the community advisory committee on homelessness and the committee has 11 members six of us have a lived experience of being on house and we would like to thank you for the opportunity to be of service to our community uh additionally we would like to thank both city and county staff community members and service providers for their help and dedication in this work that we've been doing houselessness and living outside our complex social issues our work has required us as a committee to bridge differences of opinion and to find alignment and solutions that meet the needs of our community and just a little background on what we have done so far and so the catch has met every two weeks since the later part of july of this year and community engagement has been an integral part of our work so there have been opportunities for community engagement at the beginning and the end of each meeting that we've held and then after each item and that we have we've also held meetings all over town not all over town but in various locations throughout town so we've been in the vet's hall the harbour high louden nelson and the community police room tony hill tony hill so we're trying to provide the community with many opportunities to come to us on this issue we have created different subcommittees you can see public health and hygiene safe sleeping in campgrounds and public engagement or community engagement and the members of our subcommittees have met with a lot of different service providers including you know 1220 river and salvation army housing matters we've met with business owners and housed and unhoused community members and tonight's recommendations are the beginning of our work so we're coming to you tonight with our immediate recommendations and we'll be coming to you twice in 2020 with our mid and long term and i see that that says march of 2010 which is in the past so it'll be march of 2020 all the recommendations that we bring to you tonight have been vetted by the full catch and you know despite differences of opinion and real disagreement that we have and and have had we've been able to move almost everything by consensus so that that tells me that the diversity of opinions that there are in our community which i feel are reflected in the members that were selected for the catch you know that there is some hope for us to move forward absolutely okay so i'm going to turn it over to taj and we have nine recommendations for you tonight all right we'll jump again thank you again mayor thank you council members thank you staff for your support so here we go so we're recommending to the city council to continue to help fund the 1220 river street um shelter program being that it's a working program so let's continue to do the same thing um there's not enough capacity and current shelter programs we'll talk about that more later um so that's pretty much the end of that just continue to fund that particular program kind of the second recommendation is to create an additional or multiple additional managed low barrier ada accessible emergency shelter programs to be opened this winter either inside of the city limits or with shuttle service to the city if the shelter program is outside of the city limits and there are a lot of different um types of shelter that there are that could be fulfilled by this recommendation we also recommend the shelter program to include ongoing feedback with regular meetings between the management and the community um and you can see you know the the estimated cost of this type of program and revenue source as well and the community engagement that we have done so far a note about that particular item is that the shelter program including ongoing feedback with regular meetings between management and the community it's it's basically to get at this sort of contention so that there's one oversight and also um that there is an opportunity for people to adjust accordingly whether it be community members neighborhood um people um or people that are actually in their services so that everybody's voice can be heard um okay so recommend we recommend relocating the shuttle pickup site for the Laurel Street oh shelter program this has happened i believe it's going to be moved to the um sheriff's office is that correct so yay win already fantastic thank you yeah uh next recommendation is for two additional ada portable toilets with hand washing stations uh in the downtown area um we recognize that there is a need for a larger number of um toilets and hand washing stations throughout the city and this was in reference to the Loudon Nelson restrooms and trying to kind of manage that situation just in the downtown um also you'll notice that these are open 24-7 we've had a lot of dialogue about what this would do for anywhere that it's at and we've gone from having them open at night time or having them open just certain hours of the day but it came back that maybe having them open um 24-7 sorry my kids in there yeah thanks uh is that me okay so and we're recommending that the Loudon Nelson Community Center restrooms remain open only to patrons such as the council has moved already we're just sort of saying we back that up currently yeah we talked with um Tony Elliott and various members of staff and found that it would be cost prohibitive to open them up to the general public uh the last kind of immediate recommendation that we had is to expand the catch by one individual this comes from kind of a wanting to expand our capacity place um i think that you know if we could have more than one that would be great but um one would be excellent did you want to add anything there thank you so our mid and long-term recommendation so the first one is uh related to creating new shelter programs that there be input and feedback between management the community and organizations resent representing homelessness when you're creating and implementing and sustaining shelter programs and the next one is that we recommend that City Council fund a comprehensive community engagement program to include facilitated meetings across the community and across demographics and constituents with an independent or especially designated facilitator so we have a public engagement subcommittee but we only have so much capacity to do this work and we think that it would benefit our city to have a real comprehensive deep dive into this um issue across all segments of the community and so at our last meeting we did a small process like this which was basically getting people into small groups and having people that wouldn't normally talk to each other actually talk to each other um and the the vibe in the room to speak a little hippie sorry um it was palpable it was it was a good moment and I think we all feel like it was necessary and and moved us as a community forward and with a small notch so this is why we're thinking let's do a bigger version of this that's what this item is and then the the next item recommending creating one RV sewage dumping site this I believe has actually already been completed and um won't be able to be opened for another year um but has been built um the last item on this slide has to do with the camping ordinance um which we will be returning um to you about in 2020 okay so we're asking that you uh approve these items please um which are the additional portable toilets downtown um again backing you up on what you've already decided about the Loudoun Nelson restrooms continuing to fund the 1220 river street um camp um additional shelter be open this winter if possible that would be wonderful um the covered pickup site we already have that going which is great and another seat on the catch would be fantastic um yeah and participation in discussion of new shelter programs and the facilitated community engagement the RV dump station we think we've got that handled so thank you so and then additionally to indicate additional high priority issues um that you have that you would like the catch to address and then to schedule items to return for deliberation with specific target dates and again we would like to thank you for having us here this evening and giving us this opportunity to work for you and with you and with the community and we'll give it back to you now thank you very much yeah thank you and on a really quick personal note I want to thank the incoming mayor um thank you for your service thank you for your commitment thank you current mayor for your service and commitment and thank you everyone on the council for your service and commitment to our community thank you thank you both for your presentation this evening but beyond that thank you for your dedication and your commitment to serving our city and for your work and countless volunteer hours I also also want to acknowledge we have um former assembly speaker pro tem fred kealy who is volunteering his time um here with us this evening as well so thank you mr kealy um and all of the cash members that are present we're going to have an opportunity for public comment and so I'll go ahead and acknowledge that then um I want to thank you for the presentation um at this time we'll have an opportunity for the council to ask any questions not only of the cash members but also of our staff as well as mr kealy if we have additional questions for the presentation but again thank you for your recommendations in your work are there any questions from the council at this time councilmember brown and then councilmember clever thank you for the presentation thank you for your work I'm really impressed with the amount of work you've done in this pretty short amount of time the um the time that you have all spent and and really putting together uh process for community real community engagement on that note I um wanted to ask you to get your thoughts on the on item seven the recommendation to create and implement um oh no that's the wrong one I'm sorry the recommendation it's number eight sorry recommend that the city council fund a comprehensive community engagement program so um it would be great to hear if you all in your developing this recommendation had much of a conversation we don't get that in your action minutes which I did look through um but uh what you all talked about in terms of how we might go about uh structuring that um it'd be great to hear from you about your thoughts yeah thank you for your question and so I'm on the public engagement subcommittee and we've had kind of a lot of talk about what that could look like um I have recently gone through a public engagement session with Puma the progressive urban management associates who are looking at the downtown business improvement districts at which included meetings with key stakeholder groups there was a survey and so this type of formal public engagement I think would be a great way to go I think also maybe to get a little more to what you're saying as well um it would be a pretty comprehensive and widely publicized meeting of the minds if you will um as we've all seen there's there's a lot of contention just to call it what it is um and we feel like one of our jobs as the catch was to kind of um harmonize all the forces in our city and so this particular item personally might be I feel like might be one of the most important things that we do and so it's going to be pretty large in scope um yeah maybe if I could just briefly say is this also one of the um and I'm looking to you city uh city manager and routine or not the roles of the new incoming kind of position around the homeless manager position sort of facilitating the engagement process etc oh yes of course I think uh the role is would include assisting in regard and also uh really being out there in the community uh involved with the various uh stakeholders around this issue I would say yes that makes sense okay thank you councilmember clever thank you yeah so thanks for the presentation catch reps I know it's been a long road since July with all the different meetings and I'm sure more work than maybe some some of the representatives or members were anticipating um so really excited about some of the recommendations uh there are other ones of course that are a little less awesome but that's just my personal opinion and I think may be shared from others just curious you mentioned in the beginning that um the decisions that you were making were able to be achieved through consensus which is really great um were all of these recommendations achieved through consensus no can you tell me more about them I don't have those I don't believe either of us have those notes with us but we'd be happy to send them to you and to the whole council okay great and they are in the meeting notes that were attached yeah absolutely I was just curious because um you know and also just how has the experience been working through the process I mean your opinions as co-chairs do you think everyone's felt heard and engaged throughout that process um I think that's an excellent question and thank you for asking it um it mirrors exactly what's happening here in city council um at times it's been contentious at times it's been quite harmonious um and everything in between um we have as co-chairs we've tried to make sure that every voice is able to be heard and that everyone comes to the table partly because personally I feel if people's voices don't get heard they just get louder and so if we can um usually we try to get consensus but if if someone says you know what I don't agree with that then we vote on it and it's a democratic decision but it's usually logged that okay well somebody didn't agree with this and then we move forward and try to uh have a spirit of um corroboration there's a word in there somewhere synergy that's great and is it a 50 50 50 plus one voting thing or how do you what's the process with that uh yeah no it's just uh by um majority majority yeah okay so it depends if they're in our bylaws so it's either two thirds or a simple majority depending on the item that we're voting on okay that's wonderful um I just the reason I asked these questions there's a reason right Charles uh is I've been just contacted by uh multiple members of the catch uh with regards to concerns expressed about the uh process as well as uh feeling heard specifically and one of the troubling ones most recently brought to my attention was the decision or recommendation on the Loudon Nelson bathrooms so was that a 50 50 vote was that a two thirds majority vote so I don't again have that information in front of me and you can find it but I would like to say that that was not one of the items that we moved by consensus so we did have a vote on it right yeah um it was just I was contacted um by a concerned member of the catch who is someone who I believe is currently having the experiencing homelessness and uh they had expressed that they had been outspoken verbally and physically providing props and other kinds of things to push for the reopening of the bathrooms but had felt so disregarded by the process and unheard in the in the body that they had decided to stop attending the meetings which is when yeah the vote was held on the Loudon Nelson bathrooms and it's my understanding that if that person had been there and voted against the recommendation that came forward then you would not have been able to achieve your two thirds majority uh and that recommendation to keep the bathrooms closed would not have come back before us on the council so it's uh it's it's a little disconcerting um just to have that experience shared with me from someone who is currently experiencing homelessness who are the voices in my opinion that we should be centering around this process um so I'm dismayed about the Loudon Nelson I understand the logic and the arguments that we heard from the staff from Loudon Nelson as well as the director LA its perspective and the costs associated with it but uh understanding this process understanding the purpose of the catch and then also to have not only that member but other members as well come to me and um express concern about the process it it's I think maybe we could work towards addressing that in the future moving forward to make sure that isn't happening and ideally I've made sure to stay at my at a distance just to not interfere with the process but I think that since we're talking about it and you're here for a report today that we should bring that up and have it be on the record that we can maybe focus on that a little bit yeah so I think that there are two points that you're making the first one is related to the Loudon Nelson center bathrooms in particular and council can make whatever decision you would like to make related to the bathrooms the other issue of someone being a part of this committee and not feeling like they can be engaged is something that we're aware of and endeavoring to work on and and we we hope to be able to reconcile with this person great and there's multiple people on the on the body that have approached me about it but hopefully it gets addressed thank you as you I think may understand from the deliberations that happen on this council that we're not always in agreement absolutely and you know sometimes our votes go one way and sometimes they go another way and that is the process that we have decided to participate in in this country as our as our process of governance that absolutely I don't think we should be discounting the importance of democracy but also in a body that's specifically made up to address the issues and needs of people experiencing homelessness to have those on the body who are currently experiencing homelessness feeling like their voice is being ignored unheard and then what advocating on a specific issue and when they are not present to have that issue brought forward for a vote so just just put it out there and hopefully we can address that and I don't have to hear those complaints anymore from the members of the catch um so uh with regards to your recommendation to add a new catch member um who what where how what are your thoughts is it a person so we have asked that the catch be able to decide how and who and so we don't necessarily have a particular person in mind so what we would like to do is look at the makeup of the current committee and see where there is some lacking experience and then fill from that okay and um let's see here I guess uh there was a question that came up when I was looking at the agenda report was the the number cited at the 1260 per month for the two porta parties is uh it's my understanding that's for both bathrooms I'm sorry say that again please the $1,260 per month that would be allocated for the opening of the 220 for our bathrooms and sanitation stations those will be for the two do you did the catch talk about locations for those yet uh we have talked about locations but we thought that might be better put in your court also I want to say about this particular thing is that this is a it's a bit of a pilot program because partly whenever we have thought about putting a restroom in a particular location you can imagine the amount of feedback negative feedback that would come from that and so you know we kind of want to let's let's get one let's get it happening first see how we can build it as a good thing because of course it will be and then do more as as that one gets started so again so this is sort of a pilot program just the beginning it's a start wonderful I'll stop there for now but thank you for those wonderful answers sure thank you any other questions councillor meyers did you have a question uh councilmember gleber asked most I just want to thank you for your service though and um also just I know this is a huge barrier committee members and it's a really really tough hard subject to dive into um I'm really impressed with the work that you've done to date and um just want to thank you for all your time and your effort and uh hope that we can you know move forward and keep up a productive focus on our houseless population for the next few months and some ideas uh solidified and activated thank you did you have a question councillor yeah thank you um yeah I hear it's more you bit off more than you could might want to chew uh people have been telling me there's a lot more hours involved and I appreciate your service as well um question I wasn't going to ask but it just came up was why are some of the um votes majority and others are two-thirds how does that work I misspoke and us can speak to that better and Fred could speak so they're all two-thirds sorry do we have a member of staff who is here who would like to come up and speak about the bylaws thank you Megan thanks Megan thank you hi um Megan bunch city manager's office we um the catch put together a set of bylaws and I believe the it is two-thirds majority we can look it up and confirm for you guys and um you're welcome we can give you access to it it's on the website um and there is bylaws for the subcommittees as well um so we've got two separate bylaws associated with the catch and I believe it to be two-thirds as you stated thank you thank you Megan thanks and um picking up on what councillor Glover the the 1200 and six I'm glad to see that these two porta potties are ADA because the ones we have out right now are not necessarily ADA uh accessible um why 1260 a month what I checked in with a couple contractors and they said they're paying between 125 and 168 a month for the porta potties why are we looking at two porta potties for $1260 it looks like Megan's coming up to me okay the um then those numbers came from the um the rate that we are currently being charged for the that service and it includes I think the difference in price is the service so if you're getting service daily it radically increases the the cost the total cost and so that's where that came from and we chose to put those numbers in there as a service daily based on the existing porta potties that are 24 seven um that are in the parking lots currently and the um after speaking with parking they made it clear that we need service if we're going to put something out for 24 seven we need service daily because they won't be usable um if we're not servicing them daily so I'm assuming that's where the cost differential probably comes in thank you I appreciate that um sorry I'm just going to go ahead and pause I didn't see who made that statement but I'm going to go ahead and ask that you reserve your comments for when we're going to have public comment at that time we'll be able to hear from the community we do have limited public comment but that will be your opportunity to speak to us and if this time it's now for council to have thank you very much okay we're going to go ahead and continue with council questions going back to um the porta potties at loudon nelson I heard from a member that it was eight to four eight votes in favor four against uh one vote would have decided to change that um did um and I heard about the cost from uh tony elliott did you all talk about volunteers possibly picking up the slack and using a volunteer program rather than um having you know letting the cost you know win out yeah definitely that's something that I specifically spoke about on multiple locations um when traveling out of the country I've seen that model in other places specifically in restrooms so something I brought up um there are various channel challenges to that as well as financial challenges as well this is um this was the recommendation that our subcommittee put forward forward at the moment and again these are just our beginning recommendations we want to continue working on some of these issues this is not the end of the story I'm sorry it was such a close vote um on the one about 12 20 river street uh I'm understanding that we're going to start moving people February 15th I mean do we have another place for that and how's that you know how what are you thinking in in those terms looks like city manager martin Bernal wants to speak to that if you want right so the river street uh I believe it's mid march that is sort of the deadline for uh the water department to be able to start their project there so we're currently working on an alternative site for them but that has to be obtained by mid-march when do we have to start thinking about like asking people to change locations just so folks are aware of that we've been doing that for some time so yes right now we're working on that right now thank you and why do you um the one on uh adding a member what's the thing about what do you think about adding a member why is that why do you need another member I didn't understand that exactly and I know the workload is heavy so we we had two members who have decided to um leave the catch and we have added an additional two members one of those members um that we added is a person who has a lived experience of homelessness which we felt was a very important voice an additional voice to add um but we feel that we've also um that there could be capacity for us to bring on someone who has a little more experience with um policy development and you know navigating um different levels of government and this kind of work so that would be 14 members or 13 members 13 13 total right now you have 12 yes thank you um so going over to the um uh sewage dumping and it looks like if I could pause you mr. at council member chrome looks like we have Megan sorry we have 13 members currently so it would be go it would go up to 14 14 thank you thank you um what it sounded like you said you kind of like glanced over oh another year we'll have a dumping area for RVs I mean what why are we waiting and why can't we have a dumping area why can't we use that even during construction why can't we use that particular site looks like we have run around a couple plumbers and they said that that doesn't seem like it'd be a difficult thing we'll go ahead and invite up run prince to answer that question feel free come right thank you mayor um yeah run prince city manager's office I'm working with the water department and I've talked recently to the project manager and we're going to try to figure out a way to actually create an access point for that so we're working on that I don't have a guarantee that we can pull it off based on where the equipment needs to stage on the site during construction but no I think you know I should have an answer for that in a week or two do you have any idea why we can't use the yacht harbor uh where the RVs dump now in the yacht harbor yeah they told us that they're they're at capacity and because we did check into that specifically and they said that there wasn't really an option due to I guess the infrastructure the size of the the lines they have and and whatnot so they're they're just keeping that for just a few RVs that I guess that park there or camp there thank you very much and I want to compliment you on the use of trying to get a more comprehensive community engagement program with the wisdom council and stuff thank you and thank you for your service yeah thank you mayor okay thank you unless there aren't any additional questions at this time we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment Mr. Keely please come forward do you have some additional comments madame mayor members of city council my name is fred keely uh it's been my privilege to serve as essentially the the presiding officer of the catch I do not have a vote the mayor council asked me if I would do this to help in essence manage through the catch's work I wanted to draw your attention to an action that the catch took that is not in the report to you but the catch asked if we would make you aware of their response and that is this this goes to the question of the referral that you folks made of the camping ordinance to the catch uh mr. kandadi the city attorney briefed the catch on the Boise case and the degree to which the county excuse me the city's ordinance is could be at odds with that it was a lengthy presentation then the catch at the last meeting that they had which was last week uh debated and discussed this issue at length about what you had sent to the catch with regard to the ordinance and asking the catch to return with their thoughts advice and council at a meeting in january in that regard the catch interpreted uh the information they've received both from mr. kandadi as well as folks who uh spoke to the catch during their meetings to essentially see that the Boise case which precipitated your desire to have the catch look at the ordinance uh the catch is convinced that there are essentially two aspects to that one is any ordinance this is a layman's interpretation so i'll try to do it that way and and certainly willing to be to stand corrected on it it is the catchest understanding that essentially this issue has two component parts to it that you can have a city ordinance or a county ordinance or local government ordinance which defines where and where not you can camp sleep etc the import of the Boise decisions seem to say that the degree to which you can regulate that camping activity corresponds directly to the opportunities truly available for folks to have a place where they can in fact camp or be outside sleep outside etc so the catch's interpretation and what they wanted me to convey to you is that they're pleased to take on any assignment that you send them their thought is twofold number one they would like to be able to come back to you with both parts rather than only on the ordinance with both parts which is to say if you're going to have an ordinance with with restrictions and limitations then where is it that you can be uh that that's what the Boise decision was about secondly that in order for the catch to do its due diligence in that they are requesting to be able to come back to you in february rather than january because from their view we're sort of they are sort of finished for the year in a sense and we'll regroup so if they could have a bit more time that would be helpful thank you madam mayor thank you members thank you mr kealy okay well we can go ahead and revisit any kind of action that we want to take after we open it up to public comment unless there are any additional questions at this time we'll go ahead and do that i'll just um remind the community that we have a sort of a unique uh evening tonight and it was advertised on the agenda that the public comment on this item is going to be limited considering the fact that tonight's um evening is really dedicated to the transition of mayor to mayor from mayor to the incoming mayor and vice mayor and we really want to acknowledge the ceremony of that um you will have opportunities to speak to us on this item in um future uh meetings and we respectfully ask that you um um remember that and um and we'll go ahead and maybe reduce the time to 90 seconds tonight so that we can try to get as many people as we can in um be within that half hour time frame and we'll go ahead and open up public comment on this item for uh for a half hour and then we're going to go ahead and close that and return back for council action and deliberation and then move on to the ceremony of the transition from mayor to next mayor so um we'll go ahead and invite those who want to um speak to us on this item councilmember guver motion to um kind of bring time back to two minutes and and have public comment go until there's no one left that wishes to speak second there's a motion by councilmember guver seconded by councilmember crone any further discussion yeah oh okay councilmember yeah just uh to speak to it it seems inequitable wrong undemocratic strange um and just inappropriate to be cutting public comment on issues that are incredibly important and that we're going to be taking action on there's people here obviously there have come to speak to the issue and I think cutting it prematurely without even knowing how many people are here to speak is rather insulting to the public that came to address us on the item so that's why I think we should at least give them the opportunity to speak all those in favor to extend the public comment time please say aye opposed no so that fails with councilmember crone and guver voting in support brown Matthews vice mayor Cummings myself and Myers voting against so we'll go ahead and stick to the time frame that was originally advertised in hopes that also the community could reach out to us in advance we'll go ahead and conclude public comment on this item at 845 and we'll try to hear from as many people as we can within that time frame we do welcome to hear from you at additional times and um definitely recognize that this will likely include recommendations to have additional comments for further items that will come forward councilmember brown if I could just make a quick comment because I didn't make it before the vote um I just want to say that um this item obviously is of critical importance and deliberation on it and uh the the council's actions about how to proceed on these items is also critical um however we did receive notification that um tonight the agenda it's agendized as receiving this report and that um action to be taken on these items will come to the council for discussion and there will be opportunities for people to to weigh in at that point and and I hope that we agree to move forward on this community engagement process so that where there will be ongoing opportunities so that was my reasoning for for um not supporting extension in general I really think that people should be able to have their voice heard especially on this issue and we need all voices at the end right and I appreciate you providing the additional context okay so we'll go ahead and start at 90 seconds um feel free to go forward thank you um I just wanted to show you guys that while I was standing here someone brought me up some donations of ponchos uh for the unhoused community and I'm very grateful for that but I'm still disgusted with you guys and your lack of um action uh you're getting ready to take a six-week break it's my understanding and we still have people that are vulnerable they're out there on the streets their stuff is getting swept on a daily basis we have no alternatives for people to go um I heard someone say adequate shelter alternatives should be discussed at the same time as the ordinance I want to stress adequate like um opening up the vfw providing another 40 beds or something that's not going to work that's not going to fly that's not adequate if you want to criminalize everybody for acts of survival you need to have some sort of alternative you need to have a place for people to go shame you know shame you guys are getting ready to go and enjoy the holidays you had a lot of time you had a lot of time to make sure that people wouldn't be suffering on the streets and and they're still going to be suffering the bathroom proposal was for six restrooms it wasn't for two Keith with food not bombs even found people to pay for them and he only asked for a permit process to allow them to be placed we know where they're needed um so you know not to irritate anybody but we've known that for a while that's already kind of been established I feel like you guys are backtracking you can do better you owe it to this community to do better meanwhile I'm working really hard but I feel like you guys aren't thank you should I just start yeah um so I'm on the catch I'm in the community engagement subcommittee my name is Amy and I just wanted to add a couple of items to the report one of which is that one of your instructions to the catch was to look into the wisdom councils and that's an ongoing process it's taking longer than we thought it would take and so that's part of the recommendation that we've made to look into facilitation both in terms of like a contracted person to do community engagement and possibly also a wisdom council so we're still looking into that I wanted to let you know um my understanding I mean this is a life and death kind of a situation that we're talking about for the population that is sleeping outside at this time and there's so many assumptions and so much vitriol flying back and forth that I think the community engagement part is really super important and the staff person that's coming on board um would probably spend according to a police department staff for about 20 hours a week on an extensive say six session community engagement process I just want to give you a sense of that piece I also want to say that on December 17th our next meeting we have another community engagement like active session on camping and safe sleeping and so eventually you're going to get to sighting and that's when you're really going to need the community engagement piece and I think I just want to reiterate how important I think that is on this issue um and it's sort of like everyone's thank you thank you next week good evening my name is Catherine Herndon and I just want to read four sentences from a new book I'm reading from the library called how to be an anti-racist by Ibram X Kendi K-E-N-D-I it is outstanding and I've read many books on this subject this one it's brilliant and very engaging I highly recommend it these sentences do not refer specifically to racism they are relevant to what we're talking about right here Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy it's a pretty easy mistake to make people are in our faces policies are distant we are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people please change your policies thank you Phil Posner um I just came back from Mexico in Mexico in front of or next to every uh toilet area bathroom and they offer paper and they get a few coins there's so many opportunities for catch not I admit I think you did a lot of work but there's so many creative things that catch could have considered in terms of the porta potty issues the bathrooms I for example very puzzled why porta potties 24-7 but not a loudened bathroom where you could have someone be monitoring it lastly I'm here especially to thank Drew Clover and to wonder how many of you from catch and this city council read the impassioned committed statement that he wrote out of his own personal experience you are about to as you have to so often deal with issues of suffering in order to know what suffering is you need to feel it you need to experience it that man did and we owe him a great gratitude Nicholas Whitehead an earlier city council signed on on behalf of the city to the universal declaration of human rights which definitely states that in any country in the world people have the right to shelter health care and such so um we should be adhering to that I believe advice was given to certain city council people tonight that making any decisions important decisions about shelter might violate the brown act the brown act is a human creation I think we have to act on higher principles than that you know there was a building available in in the town for shelter space but a very high official in your city government told me that that was not going to be used it was not going to be opened in the middle of these storms because it was too small to meet the demand that's a very strange argument to hear large shelters are inherently dangerous I I've been helping a homeless disabled woman and she was attacked in one of the principal shelters in town and her leg was slashed open you see it's to do with size you can't monitor the safety of everybody unless it's real small another homeless friend of mine Rory was arrested three times in one day for trying to seek shelter from the storm under under a parking garage that's incredible that's incredibly crazy all right I'm going to go ahead and ask our next speaker to come forward you'll have up to a minute and a half I respectfully request that those who are in the audience just remember that you'll have your time ideally and to give the respect to those who are speaking before us at this time go right ahead you have 90 seconds okay I'm gonna talk really fast and thank you guys for doing your presentation and Fred that was awesome and you're super clear about stuff and I know you guys are a little nervous so there were a couple things that yeah you are a little nervous and so I'm gonna do add a couple of details on it the bathrooms our committee actually did talk about a spot and one spot by Loudon was something that we had talked about not particularly voted but it was sort of a conversation we were having um and the 1260 doesn't include damages but the damages is part of what's being considered for Loudon and the so that number starts getting inflated but the bathrooms are stored to seeing clothes small so just to be clear on that and it's just a pilot program of two to see what sort of damage happens so maybe we'll do more um and the cost for Loudon is the 80 000 for cleaning it at lunchtime that the library uses for an external person but Loudon has their own maintenance guys it wouldn't actually be a cost so just putting out those numbers are a little interesting um the you guys never voted to actually close the city the Loudon bathrooms and it was something I tried to explain to the catch sort of repeatedly and as somebody said today with being nervous and stuff that they still think that and that wasn't something that you had said before um please direct so we would ask for other uh citing and another program so we actually need you to direct staff to find it so that it actually becomes happening your time is up and that's it thank you next speaker please come forward you'll have up to 90 seconds all right how you guys doing today I'm seeing a road show I'm on the catch committee um I've been slack in the last couple of weeks I've been having some personal issues when the catch first started uh you guys brought up the uh opening up the Loudon Nelson bathrooms and I distinctly remember that I brought that up a few times in the catch and I see that it was not dealt with the way that it should have been dealt with and so there I proceeded to go ahead and bring in a sign so the bathrooms were closed and brought in pee bottles for everybody and I understand that was probably not health-wise but I mean that's what happens when you can't go pee you have to go pee outside in a bottle and I supplied everybody with a bottle and it's really simple open the bathrooms it would not have been an anonymous uh or not anonymous but uh an anonymous vote had my presence been there had I known that it was going to be voted on at that meeting I would have made my presence there um I'm going to stick to opening up the Loudon Nelson bathrooms there's no reason it they shouldn't be open whatsoever why can't they follow the protocol of what the library is doing it's really simple just open the bathrooms they have they have people there that clean already you could have somebody standing there holding their ideas why they're using their restrooms or their personal property long enough for them to take a leak not get loaded but take a leak it's not difficult open up the Loudon Nelson bathrooms for everybody period that's all I got members of the community thank you and members of the city council catch offers no survival assistance as the worst weather hits just ideas for the city manager to put on a future agenda after the winter toll of suffering when council returns to second tuesday in january catch says two portable toilets we say and I suspect I speak for huff open the dam bathrooms in parks Loudon Nelson and set up immediate porta potties at survival encampments common sense as nimbies use cops and rangers to chase homeless around the city stealing their survival gear as they go move the porta potties as well to each encampment so that you keep things as clean as possible catch says continue the costly river street campground I say spend 99 000 per month on 1000 to 2000 homeless people outside not just 60 people catch says open a winter shelter I say more talk and a little late winter is here and councils retiring to its warm bedrooms catch says relocate shuttle pickup site to an indoor sheltered location we say open the parking garages for shelter throughout the winter demand the police layoff and stop moving people into the rain catch says one rv sewage dumping site we say sure and stop harassing rvs whose only crime is parking on public streets for anyone who really cares support direct action groups like food not bombs warming center day near shelter and the santa cruz homeless union give directly to homeless people themselves keep your ears perk for the next mass survival encampments and support individual camps now no we know your time is up and we thank god for that okay next speaker had to remind the community that this is an opportunity for us to have public comment um we may not agree with anything that and frankly I don't agree with some of the things that are said but we have an opportunity to hear and we will respectfully listen to them because that is our democratic process I'm going to go ahead and ask that you adhere to our rules of decorum whether you agree or disagree with the person who's speaking to you speaking to us we're going to go ahead and conclude public comment at 845 you'll have 90 seconds and we'll try to hear as many people as we can within that time frame please I Brent Adams of the warming center program I love the possibility of community engagement a community study group um you are from the community community but it's really hard for me to meet with you all and present what we're up to I'm a citizen and we looked at the void of homelessness and people dying outside and I started the warming center program we're six years we just did 90 people I'll say it again 90 people slept on our floor last week that's 90 people who didn't have to sleep out in the pouring rain that's what community members did we had 25 volunteers the night before 25 volunteers the night before that 20 that's 75 volunteers that's community another need storage we have 250 people on our shelves right now we place that in a neighborhood when we talk about the difficulty of siding porta-potties I think we're experienced in how to site things so we have a lot of community engagement but what I want to reflect is this group seemed seemingly a fixture of the city manager's office there's city managers in the room I've been trying to present to this group for months I've been denied I'm not quite sure why as somebody who runs a nonprofit serves homeless the population sure they're meeting with all the major players who are city partners but when we want to really look at what's happening within the community what the community can step up and do here the community members denying community members I so I really hope that we can make an honest presentation to this group about something that's really happening in the community thank you next yeah I'm one of the little people around here homeless and that man has done an amazing amazing thing for me and I appreciate it um the city council here I don't know about all y'all you ever slept on the street try it one day from nine o'clock to five o'clock figure out where you're gonna get your starbucks figure out where you're gonna get a pair of socks figure out where you're gonna take a shower one day I challenge all y'all to try it one day the things that you're used to figure it out live one day in our shoes just one day one 24-hour day and please be kind because all of the homeless people we can all get it together and pull our money together and get a place to live and whatever but you people are just like kind mighty in whatever one 24-hour day figure it out it's hard and that could happen to your child your child may end up homeless someday you one paycheck away from homelessness and thank you drew you're amazing thank you Brent next I agree with everything she just said but being vile and having social media bullying like the homeless union is here does not do anyone any good for any homeless person so if you want to stand up for the homeless people be a good person and do not speak bad put pictures of people's homes and family you've got to be a viable person so you want to get our support be a good person that's all I have to say Alicia Kuhl needs to watch what she says what she does on the internet everyone else all these people you cannot put us down you think just because we own homes and we own businesses and we own things you think we're rich we're not rich we are struggling just as hard as you are and if you get online and you post pictures of people's families and their children you are no one to look up to next speaker next speaker okay we'll go ahead and we'll go ahead and see if our sergeant of arms wants to go ahead and interrupt that this is not an opportunity for any of that okay okay why don't we go ahead all right we're gonna go ahead and ask that we adhere to our rules of decorum you'll have an opportunity okay all right Alicia I'm gonna go ahead and ask that you keep your voice down you're gonna have an opportunity to speak to the council at that time okay well we'll we'll we're gonna go ahead and count that as a disruption we're gonna go ahead and ask that you have an opportunity your next in line you'll have your chance you'll have your 90 seconds oh you already spoke forgive me never mind you already had your opportunity to speak so we're gonna hear from anybody else within the next 15 minutes all right you'll have your chance to speak in 90 seconds I'm gonna go ahead and ask that we respect our fellow citizens and speaking to us at this time I want to thank the members of the catch I think that they are really working hard to to address complex issues they said and to bring a lot of very different opinions together I'm going to go through this pretty quickly because of the time limit so I just will speak rather relatively fast Mr. Fred Keely is great facilitator however he has said he is not supposed to address comment content he is absolutely forbidden to address content and in fact he was here tonight addressing content in front of you all the reason I'm very concerned about this is that we need to have an absolutely neutral facilitator a lot of times assumptions are a way to bring in content two-thirds of a vote is a super majority this is very hard to get is actually quite undemocratic I prefer in terms of democracy a straight 51 percent majority to 50 percent public comment should be in the minutes of catch because it is a community group the group was created to bring in the community public comment has been pushed to the end to make it more difficult for un for sheltered people excuse me people in shelters to attend not that that was the point but it makes it difficult for people who need to get to back to shelters to attend and it also leaves the shelter people in shelters out staff person should not this new staff person should not be another volunteer I want to say that a person whose homeless needs a sleeping bag like this nothing okay thanks Elise okay all right they also need a mat and they also need a tire please come forward hello I want to just sort of bring something out that I think gets ignored in these conversations because everyone sort of spends their time trying to get people to care about people who are homeless and in situations worse than them and frankly frankly appealing to human decency doesn't always work I just want to remind everyone that with climate change and natural disasters anyone could be homeless at any moment so even if you don't care about other people out of self-preservation you might want to start thinking about long-term survival shelters in the city Mr. Graham please come forward good evening I'm Scott Graham I'd like to commend uh councilperson Glover on actually going through the challenge and spending a night outdoors um and coming to an understanding of what what the struggle is that people are going through um when the catch first uh you were first talking about this before you voted on it I recommended that this group go through the other commissions that have been brought together on homelessness and look at the recommendations those groups had and pick one or two of them and implement them immediately well that didn't happen anyway um as far as more shoulder goes there's the uh guard the armory I ran into Joe Hall at the Thanksgiving dinner and he told me that there's not even a reserve unit in Santa Cruz anymore so I'm not understanding why the armory is off the table he told me that Gavin Newsom could open it so I'd like Fred because he's probably got Gavin's phone number to call Gavin and ask him to open the armory thank you thank you I'm here in Watkins I was the one who yelled the loudest for you at the women's march I thought you were progressive I apparently you're contra contra progressive and I wonder if Koch or you have thought about criminalization America has 600 more women prisoners than the world's average 500 overall so have you considered releasing 80% of city and county prison prisoners before you make one more law to criminalize people ask Angela Davis she says we should get rid of all prisons the county jails are not humane they're cruel they're unusual they can be torture you lose weight you're cold you're mistreated you're not loved warrants for people for sleeping is contra progressive ask Angela thank you all right next speaker city council members mayor thank you um and thank you for your time um I was super optimistic about the catch program being able to bring together all these disparate um our population and I'm uh it's really distressing for me to see the personal attacks that are happening and the pointy of the fingers and there there seems to be a lot of the same things that I heard a year ago being discussed that are still on the table and still not resolved and I get it that it's like super complicated and there are no easy answers but but I agree that the emergency shelters really need to be at the top of the list people should not be subject to hypothermia in any community especially ours we have we have such a wealthy community and so to have people sleeping on the streets you know in every doorway like has been said it's in my opinion it's unforgivable and as a housed person I don't have the answer I feel extremely fortunate that I was able to get in when I did and I'm hanging on just barely I would have been at the catch meetings if it wasn't for like health issues but I really I feel like that needs to continue to happen and to expand and if you can bring in more community members I would suggest maybe having the meetings at the homeless shelters so that people can be involved and um and I would ask the public to stop being hostile all right are there any last members of the community who want to address this on this item who haven't already a few more minutes for public comment okay seeing them we're going to go ahead and return back to council at this time for action essentially what I understand and I'll feel free to have our city attorney clarify any further is our our sort of the choices before us are essentially to receive the report as well as the presentation from our chairs co-chairs thank you for being here and doing that as well as to direct any additional items as it relates to some of the recommendations to be placed on a future agenda those actions will not be taken at this time is that correct city attorney kandadi yes the agenda description is very specific maybe counter to what people would like to happen at this evening but the brown act requires a brief general description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed the two items of potential council action listed on your agenda this evening are receiving a report and oral presentation by catch co-chairs kandace elliot and taj lehi and two direct the city manager to place catch action items on one or more city council agendas for action as appropriate and as soon as possible so essentially what that means is the council can't take action that a member of the public having read the agenda and considered what actions were contemplated would not be on notice of this evening okay thank you for that so once we have our deliberations and we're concluding this item I will just sort of for process I want to explain to those in the audience if you're sitting in a one of the seats or sort of the rows there that have a reserve sign on it we're going to go ahead and take a five minute break after we conclude this item I'm going to go ahead and ask those who are sitting in those two front rows to move back if you'd like to stay for the ceremony portion those rows are essentially reserved for family members as it relates to the next item which is our ceremony and the transition of the mayor so just kind of wanting to give you a heads up about that we'll have a five minute break after we conclude this item right now we have a directive to take action as described by our city attorney we'll go ahead and hear from councilmember gleva and then I'll go ahead and acknowledge councilmember rem thanks you know something struck me this afternoon when we started our afternoon session because for those that aren't with us normally on afternoon sessions we start by reciting the pledge of allegiance which I have mixed feelings about for various reasons but uh one of the the the last few words really stuck out to me with with liberty and justice for all and I thought it was really interesting because especially because we were going to be having this conversation tonight around homelessness and really asking this body as well as the community what do those words mean what is the point of starting our meetings with making this pledge if we fail time and time again to achieve liberty and justice for all or even seemingly make any movement towards that now this report tonight can totally be perceived as movement so it's wonderful and I thank the catch again for their time energy and volunteerism to make it possible but in the agendizing of this issue why and this is a question I'd love an answer to why would it be agendized for us not to be able to take action on it it seems especially as we are as has been said in the very beginning of winter which we've already seen our first big storm and that the city council is about to go on a six-week vacation where none of us are unhoused so we're all going to go and as was mentioned sit in our warm homes while people literally struggle on the street why is this agenda item not up for action and then you know the the woman that came to speak to the at the at the podium that thanked me that was because she called me the Saturday after Thanksgiving she's 62 and retired soaked to the bone huddled outside of the subway on pacific avenue calling me literally sounding like she was about to die without any access to food or shelter or warm clothing to be able to transition into there was a distribution by food not bombs which this city has failed to support consistently and the homeless union and the warming center so i called all three of those representatives and through their leadership we were able to get her up out of the rain into alisha cool's rv taken over to food not bombs where she was able to get fed and donated warm supplies but why on a saturday after thanksgiving props to them so why on why is it that i as a council member on a saturday after thanksgiving am i receiving phone calls from 62-year-old women in the freezing rain because we don't have adequate shelter to be able to provide for her that is abhorrent and unethical and immoral in so many ways and yet we have this agenda item with a committee that's been working since july to bring us these recommendations and yet we know what the recommendations are going to be because they're provided to us in the agenda report but instead of having an agenda item that we can move on we can't move on them and then additionally we heard you know this was like the icing on the cake and i love that he did this so props to rick martinez i don't think he's here right now but props to rick martinez he for those that weren't watching had his retirement speech today because he's leaving the city after like 30 years of service and he's a good guy i really appreciate him and he used that time at the podium to encourage us to break away from the nimby narrative and stop using political self-interest that has stopped provide uh stopped us from providing necessary resources to people that need it so again i ask for those that built the agenda for those that wrote the agenda report and decided on this item tonight why are we not able to take action on it whose idea was that well i mean i can go ahead and see if there's any city staff here that wants to speak to that or if any of the um city mem city uh staff who's been staffing this process want to address sort of the process as to why it came forward in this way my understanding it was to be brought forward as an update and with sort of a summary of recommendations that we can accept and then we can agendize for action if we so choose and agree with the cash and so um for me in terms of the process that's sort of how it was described to me but if anybody wants to elaborate more from our city manager's office you're welcome to sure uh that's correct the purpose of the item what was scheduled was an update from the cash that's what's been on our uh items for council uh agendas for some time and they had uh scheduled that and they had worked hard to to bring forward an update to you uh and in recommendation so that was the intent of the item and that's been the intent of the item for for some time uh now the report uh believe was written uh by the the cash committee members and with the assistance of staff uh so there was the report was written by them um and uh but again i think the purpose really was to provide an update and also recognizing that some of the items or recommendations require additional work and so to be able to really move on them requires that they come back to you in any case so i think that was there was the other consideration was sort of a practical consideration uh in addition to the fact that it was an update i just think it sends a very troubling message uh and whether i don't i don't know whether this was the catch's intention i mean maybe you or the staff members associated with writing the report can kind of enlighten me as to why uh this was not written for action of any so for the immediate access to for example the immediate items which are the things that need to happen right now why are those not agendized for action well it seems that you've heard the response no from the city manager i appreciate that mayor but i'm asking that because that was deferred to the staff in the catch that wrote it so now i'm curious to the catch and the staff why why are we doing this well it looks like we have fred kealy who wants to speak to this i this process you'll have to excuse me it's just uh it is incredibly troubling that i some of these recommendations i brought forward in february so the fact that it's gone through this whole process and now we're at the last meeting of the year before a six-week break and we're not even able to move on them so can you explain to me fred madam mayor uh members of the council council member clever uh thank you uh the catch serves uh at your wishes uh you establish them you asked for reports uh as quickly as possible on those things uh that you may want to take action on and in drafting the report the catch wanted to bring to your attention a large number of items absolutely it is really the view of the co-chairs and the catch and i am simply as you know i'm trying to process and help on facilitation it was the intent of the body to get those in front of you for your consideration and deliberation how you as the council choose to operationalize or not operationalize any particular recommendation is beyond the purview of the catch so what they were trying to do uh i always say they because it is the catch rather than than myself is what they were trying to do is respond in a timely manner to exactly what you had asked how things happen in in essence for action in front of the council if you will if i can use this phrase is above our pay grade if you will so what we were trying to do is get well thought through or what the catch thought was well thought through set of recommendations for you how you handle those uh is your business is how we saw it rather than us presuming that it was the catch's business so that was how that report was structured that way and presented to you that way absolutely i appreciate that friend thank you for your volunteering and helping to facilitate it um i think it doesn't seem like i'm receiving the answer to the question is that why is it made and written in a way that we can't take action on it tonight i get that the catch wrote their report with that inclination but what is it that stopped those that were reviewing it because i'm not involved in the agenda setting process because we have a very closed and restrictive agenda setting process and this is the second time that's come up this evening or this during these meetings but why were the people that were involved in that process not proactive in making sure that we could take action on these items even if it was putting together another agenda report saying to analyze and move on catch recommendations i guess i see our city attorney ready to speak on this i will just say this is the opportunity to make a motion to agendize whatever you want in terms of the direction you want to have in terms of action in six weeks and or to schedule a special meeting if you like it depends on how you get the vote so that's how that works um do you want to speak to the process beyond that you're welcome i was going to say that i um it would be speculation for me to uh opine on why the agenda description was written the way it was i suspect um that the intention probably was not to restrict the council from taking any action tonight i don't i don't know that but um but i have to deal with the technical uh compliance with the brown act and making sure that the public has adequate notice of the actions of businesses that are going to come before the city council and just to echo what the mayor just said um how quickly the council moves forward on one or more of these recommendations is really up to the council and so we're at within the constraints of the brown act so we're at the time now we're really to um either to receive the recommendation we we thank you for bringing your work forward to us at this time and this evening um to consider some of the recommendations that you're proposing we have before us come at a future meeting for action and now's the time to receive a motion if we'd like um to move anything forward Mr Bernal and just just add a little bit more the many of the recommendations that are before you are things that we're actively working on as well so they're consistent with uh so it's not going to hold up like for example we're working on additional alter shelter capacity we're working on uh river street shelter uh and so uh we will continue to work on these things and so the delay you know there shouldn't be a major delay in implementing some of the major implementations and others require the cash's work as well okay thank you okay it's to be a council member brown and then council member browners thank you um so that was a thank you uh um martin for bringing this up because that's actually a question that I wanted to ask get you know I am very concerned about the fact that we um are not that we have not expanded our shelter capacity and um we are looking at a cold and probably very rainy winter I mean the deluge began as we were finishing our last council meeting and it went through that that whole weekend and I thought about that every day we did nothing and um people were left out in the cold and in the rain and you know we're not taking action so it is very much on my mind um and so I wanted to ask the question and maybe you can just tell say a little bit more about what may happen in the interim before we are able to take action again with respect to shelter capacity I know that there have been some discussions and I just like to to better understand what might happen between now and our first meeting in January with respect to that um another question I have is about if I could just put them out there um are um I made a motion to um include to to fund the warming center to provide some uh interim or some you know funding to some immediate funding to allow the warming center to operate its program as Mr. Adams suggested they are um preventing hypothermia and by providing a indoor place for people to be almost all volunteer and I know that that kind of morphed into having a discussion with the county about um jointly supporting the program um my intention there was um not to cause any undue delay in this from the city's end and so I'm wondering if you can just say something about the you know the possibility of moving forward with what I believe was the intent of my uh my motion to get that funding to the warming center so they can operate um this would be $10,000 for like now or whenever we can release the funding uh pending some obviously um dealing with the logistics through April through the this is the time period so if we wait and to sort it all out the winter's going to be over and the intention was to just provide some funding so if I could get a response on that and then thirdly um thank you Mr. Keely for representing the position of the catch on our recommendation regarding the um how to deal with the camping ban and um because that is exactly what I have been hoping that this body would do and we'd love to have the catch's help in helping us move forward in that way and so I'm wondering given that was kind of a request and our last direction was to come back in January um we had initially initially said just refer it and then based upon an inter discussion with staff staff said you know we really need to move forward as quickly as possible um if the catch is telling us they need till February can we act on that net tonight and just say yes fab you know we can is that possible to do what you may do is direct that an item be placed on a future agenda so you've previously directed that the camping ordinance be brought back to the council for consideration at your second meeting in January um you may modify that to direct that it be brought back at a later meeting thank you okay great right did you want to speak to the sure with respect to um your other two questions so uh the staff per council direction has been feverishly working on identifying and trying to put in place additional shelter capacity and the direction from council was to work with the the county uh requests made of the county they responded with uh an interest in assisting and working with on doing that and so we have been really spending the majority of our time really doing that looking at uh essentially options that are available to us including the bfw the armory and doing all the due diligence that's required to make those things happen so that is our focus and uh we are proceeding in hope to have something open up as soon as possible so we feel like there's uh some uh options that are available to us and we're working on uh figuring out all the the options for that and we'll bring that back to council um as as soon as we can and as soon as we have the the uh information and everything that we need to be able to move forward so that has been the priority and I think we we definitely feel pretty confident that we get something going here during the winter um session uh this this winter uh with respect to uh the warming center council also did ask us to look to work with the county on whether they would be interested in helping to fund that um I believe um we are we reached out um but have not uh and then council also said uh that if uh the council isn't interested you wanted to move forward uh as well and so we would have to bring that back to you as well council member mires and then council member lever um tony correct me if i'm going to go off the wrong direction here but i'd like to make a motion to direct staff to move forward immediately with item number four and the cash report number six number three and number one with number one um reporting back with proposed locations and conducting necessary outreach and to request the catch provide their input regarding the cap camping ordinance on date certain the february 11th council meeting and i direct staff tony versus to move forward on bringing those items back to the city council for action that's right that would be that would be that that was the i mean yes okay i'll go ahead and second the motion motion it's a member lever and then councilor matthews and just regard member lever and thank you uh so just to understand that motion was it all of them because you went through different numbers but is there one on there that you don't want staff to agendize or bring back at a future meeting you want to repeat your motion yeah if you could just repeat the numbers right so for the immediate which i would place as our next council meeting um but in with the understanding that staff is actually working on many of these items actually number five i believe was completed today as far as i understand from the board of supervisors um and then i believe number two is sort of a decision point um so that leaves us with number one which is the ADA toilets toilet portable toilets number three number four and number six and with the addition of um camping ordinance coming back as well okay um in terms of number seven um and number eight i'm understanding that um the subcommittee has some additional work to do so i'm i'm i believe the cash is supposed to come back to us again in February is that correct i believe it's mid january mid january okay so if there's more if there's more um direction in terms of especially number eight a proposal then we could move that forward in mid january unfortunately i think that's part of we're sort of in this framework tonight so um i'd like to see something move forward i know it's i think you could direct staff to put in place or to put in motion um a process necessary to bring those items back for council action so and if i could essentially what i'm hearing um as the proposal which is um mirroring a lot of what is before us on this screen yeah and for the communities uh if if we want to just display that so i put in in terms of putting in motion i would like to basically that staff should actively and immediately begin working on these and bring them back okay well uh thank you for that clarity um in that case then i'm going to make a substitute motion to uh approve action and provide guidance uh on the nine catch recommendations save the ones that have already been completed or are no longer relevant to come back at the first meeting in january what my motion was no well excuse me i believe i uh miss or let me rephrase that what i understood you say was that there are some in here that are important but maybe we should push like seven and eight or eight and nine back i'd really like it to be holistic where all of them are going to come back for action and implementation uh on the first meeting in january and move the um and move the conversation of the camping ordinance to the second meeting in february or something like that because the way that you at least well do i heard it and the way it was framed was that it was kind of unclear as to which ones are coming back the first of january so i just want to either you can confirm that that's in your motion they're all supposed to come back the first meeting in january save the camping ordinance in february or i'll make that alternative motion substitute motion can you confirm that if i could maybe interject my understanding is i think really the um there's a lot of alignment uh with interests by councilmember gleaver and by the proposed motion councilmember meyers made the exception is essentially incorporating nine as to um kind of the higher priority for feedback or response to is that and an eight given but i think that was referenced as an interest area knowing that there still needs to be a little bit of work done so i think we're really close to seeing eye to eye here yeah yeah that's why i just want to if uh the motion can specify that all of them are supposed to come back in the first meeting in january for us to take action on except for the camping ordinance in february then sure that's great otherwise we want to put forward a substitute motion okay and you can confirm that um it looks like city manager martin brunel wants to speak a little bit i just wanted to clarify i think i think the only reason why they wouldn't come back in july is simply because the catch needs to do some work before they i'm sorry in january is because the cash needs to do some work before they come back to you i think that's the that's the constraint it's not i think the immediate ones would come back in january because that's what they're recommending but the others they want to do some work and then bring back bring that back to you and that is their recommendation that was my understanding was that which is why would be based on the report tonight from the cash that eight eight specifically and it sounds like nine is in process it may or may not be ready but it it certainly is if it is ready we could we could hear it but i just want to make sure that i'm not creating a report back that says we need more time i'm trying to just respect what the cash said tonight which it sounded like eight the subcommittee was still working on the the actual community outreach approach number nine initially was described as having potentially it being a year away but we got a report from staff that that might that timeline might shorten um so my intent is to try to move what i think is the most immediate recommendations from the catch and make sure that our staff does not stop working on these but that we are able to receive these um and accept them or provide further guidance at our at our first meeting in january so um especially um with regards to to citing and and other outreach as necessary to make these things as successful as possible i hope that's clarifying clarifying a little bit about the intent sure yes specifically with regard to item number eight and we were looking to have the funding allocated and so that could if you are comfortable with the catch deciding the method of community engagement and can allocate the funding to us then you could move forward with that item at this time if you would like for us to present to you what the community engagement would look like then yes we would need more time for that my intent would be the ladder in my motion okay okay and that I think reflects what I think is brought before us as well okay councilmember matthews uh vice mayor comings and then councilmember brown um I too think number eight is not right for allocation and some of the margin notes that I wrote down are um how to structure it um um what's the end goal who are the audiences engagement can just mean a whole lot of things and there will have to be engagement on many of these individual proposals as well so I would like um comprehensive deep dive is still vague in my mind so I think work on that and really what's the purpose who's engaged what's the process and what's the endpoint um regarding number six which is recommending a catch um add a member with cash determining determining the nomination criteria it's been interesting to see that the whole catch um uh advisory group has morphed quite a bit from what was originally designated by council um there was a whole selection process by council looking for a certain range of diversity and then after that two more individuals with lived homeless experience or experiencing homelessness were added and then this is another one so it I mean personally I would rather to take a step back and you said a couple of people have left you know who they are but we don't so I'd kind of like to see given the original intent of setting up cash uh who's serving on it now what are the attributes that they bring to it certainly what do you feel you're missing right now that you'd like to fill in some blanks but I would frankly like that to come back to the to the council if there are going to be added members I think it's the council's decision frankly that was the that was the um original impetus for setting up the cash so it's kind of a midcourse adjustment so I would prefer to not um give that one the sign off that's number six um it does seem to me that number nine if if amazingly we are that and that's the um the uh sewage dumping site if that is miraculously a week away from a solution it seems ashamed to have that wait a really long time um and I don't know city manager if you feel there's um possibility of taking action on that in the interim question which which item that's a sewage dump oh um I think that's maybe Ron can answer that question I think it may be a surprisingly near solution and yet it may not but for the interest I think in general we're definitely very interested in doing that there is a need for that so I think uh you know I think from the staff perspective trying to do that is something we're very interested in doing so we would proceed with doing that as quickly as possible for sure Rob before maybe you go ahead and give your response in the interest of trying to get us moving forward with this there was maybe a potential no no no I just want to ensure like so there was a potential to maybe have a friendly amendment to the original motion that instead of the cash identifying an additional member that that would come before a council subcommittee for consideration is that correct or correct characterization of what you're suggesting was it was a council subcommittee that said it was yeah and I would accept that yeah I I do think it's important to try to continue the the breadth of okay okay so that's a friendly amendment that's been accepted by the maker of the motion okay please run go right ahead I was just going to say that I'll be working actually we're working on all these simultaneously and almost every one of them with an exception of perhaps two to in order to be successful are going to take some public engagement some of it's going to be small and quick some of these will obviously take much longer so we are working on every one of these so with just a couple of exceptions and certainly the the RV dump station I'll be able to find out quickly about that and the intent of the catch was if this didn't work out they'd like to have some other location so yeah I'm working on every one of these with catch but public engagement is critical if it's going to succeed sure thank you okay great vice mayor Cummings and councilor Brown I think one thing that maybe we're not really you know reflecting back on in the recommendation is that the second part of this recommendation is to direct the city manager to place catch items on one or more of the city council agendas for action as appropriate and as soon as possible and I think that what might work is whether it might be good for the mayor to work with city manager given that you know we have there are a lot of items that we previously wanted to come back at the beginning of the year and it's hard to really think about right now in this moment what items are coming back on that agenda and given that we've been trying to do a better job of you know like managing the time of our agendas that putting all these items on the first agenda in January and given the fact that some of these items as well need more outreach that by creating this flexibility by having these items come back as appropriate and as soon as possible that we are working within the spirit of trying to get all these the the items that need to come back immediately on the next agenda the ones that need more outreach providing enough time for the members of the catch to do that outreach and then with respect and I think with respect to the item related to the camping ordinance I would wonder if there might be a friendly amendment would be to have it come on or before the second meeting in February which allows the flexibility for it to come either earlier but no later than that second meeting in February so there's a friendly amendment to incorporate the ordinance language and cash input on that as well as the SOPs that accompany that to come back before the council on or before the second meeting in February just really want to respect the intent behind what Vice Mayor Cummings had just said that within the recommendation is to work with the city manager to place the cash action items on one or more city council agendas for action as appropriate and as soon as possible and that might vary depending on where we are with things and so for management of meetings and opportunity for really trying to access those coming forward as best appropriate that makes the most sense Mr. Keely did you feel like you needed to add to this thank you madam mayor I would call the council's attention the following concept the report each one of the items is presented in a in a very uniform format what problem are they trying to solve what is that solution how much might it cost and so on one of the reasons that the catch structured the recommendations to the way that they are is this that although folks experiencing homelessness happens in the city it is the catch's view that not all issues associated with that are the city's responsibility that some of the city some of the county some of the state government some of the federal government and what they're trying to do simultaneously is get up to speed about which belong to whom and so one of the ideas about when you schedule it is that you could see from the catch's report here is an issue that may solely be the responsibility of the city well then that's going to follow a certain path to get to you with analysis and so on many of them however are the catch views are joint responsibilities if you will city has some county has some standing in the shoes of the state government health and human services and so on so that's why partially why the recommendations are structured that way but also why you may need I'm sorry I don't mean to tell you what you may need to do it may be important to then collaborate with those other levels of government so you're doing your part but they're doing their part so when items come before you for action you get your share of the responsibility in essence so thank you very much thank you very much okay I think we had a did you I think we had a clarifying question everybody and I'm trying to remember who I had to come around did you have additional and then I had Councillor Myers and Councilmember the question about the camping ordinance return was clear I accepted that yeah okay I think councilor Myers and council I had a question about recommendation number four which is additional low barrier ADA accessible emergency shelter there is a an estimated cost so I think one of the things I'm we've got both action items and then within those action items we also have budget estimates so I'm it's it's sort of a little bit of confusing the presentation in terms of how to so in the my intent in the motion would be that if a shelter did become available assuming that this cost is within our budget this year that we wouldn't not open that shelter for six more weeks so I mean I I mean I think that's our intent correct I mean we if we can get a shelter open then the next couple weeks we will get that shelter open is that is that Tony is that appropriate do I need to make this is a very kind of difficult situation because we sort of can make a motion but we can't really make a motion but you know let me just if I could maybe Tony if I if I can you know two weeks ago we actually did prioritize that right so I don't know if that this is complimentary and it's encompassed in here but you've already had direction from the council to move forward with seeking out additional winter shelter so we've already made that motion and given that direction is that correct okay so that's the direction that's already been provided I just want to clarify for the public so that it's clear that if a shelter opportunity was to be able to be negotiated sooner before you know we reconvene in January that that shelter opportunity would be pursued is that correct yes although I want to point out that as mr. Keely pointed out that particularly for with this one we have partners that we have to work with also so right so they have their processes we have our processes and so yeah that would be the that's the other sort of factor yeah I'm sorry I didn't yeah clarifying that you know that's this could very much be a county city yes but the council has been clear let's get something going as soon as possible that's that's our intent and our desire but we have to work within the constraints yes council member clever and the council thank you I was driving on river street today uh 415 f river street is vacant it's the old antique shop across from bay federal and the gateway shopping center so that may be something that y'all can look into I can't give direction but just so you know 415 f river street and I just want to speak briefly to what the vice mayor did said I can understand and appreciate where you're coming from or trying to do but the language is very troubling as appropriate and as soon as possible now that was where a lot of the conflict in February started was because of this claim that we didn't want meetings to go too long we didn't have time in the agenda to agendize all these topics going to take a long time to talk about and it really sounds like we're going down that route again brother to say as appropriate and as soon as possible I think we've heard from people in that are living the experience that right now is appropriate and as soon as possible is literally the first meeting in January unless we do a new meeting so or a special meeting so and even if it's just the report back about the process that's been made thus far so we can give additional direction or understand from the community where the catch is coming from as we move into this new year and no matter what happens with this agenda or this motion it's very troubling that there's the possibility that other things we prioritize outside of human rights that's I get city has a lot of things to deal with water trash you know all the other kind of stuff transportation but I don't think that those should take priority over some of the people that are suffering the most in our community so I implore you when you as mayor this next year are building the agendas you do not subscribe to that excuse of the meeting will go too long when dealing with issues of human rights and then also you know I'm a little troubled by the the the removal of number six I believe which is the addition of the new catch member because I do agree that the catch serves at our direction and we were involved in the original appointment process but we were involved in the original appointment process to ensure that there was diversity of representation which is achieved now with six members currently having lived or currently experiencing homelessness and it seems that we should give the catch some form of autonomy to be able to decide on the direction they want to go with new people they want to bring on without having to go through the council process because that'll only slow them down I mean if they meet what do you mean next next week okay so they meet next week that means that next week they could have the conversation of adding someone new that will take some of the workload and help with their policy direction to move things forward and this is the problem that I have with this body is that we start with these great recommendations and then they slowly get whittled down until we have something that we can't take action on and even the things that we can support them taking action on we remove from the motion so I'm just I just have to say that I want to put a word of hope for the vice mayor as he transitions into the agenda builder and point out that I think that we should be supporting them and adding a new member and not restricting them to have control over it okay councilor matthews vice mayor coming okay councilor matthews councilor brown and maybe we can go ahead and take the vote oh councilor to that particular point I think it would be entirely appropriate for the cash to consider what qualities they might like to add to their membership and individually convey those suggestions either individually or collectively convey those suggestions to the council committee just think when we appoint all of our commissions planning commissioners parks and rec water all of them if someone is forced to resign we don't ask that commission to replace them it comes back to us to replace so and then in terms of the cash comments on the any revisions to the camping ordinance at the time that we directed that to go to the cash for comments we also directed that it go out to the community at large I think when you remember when that was on our agenda we got comments from every direction that people wanted time to think about it and comment so I think the we we want to make sure that we are inclusive in our outreach for comments certainly to the catch but to others in the community who are interested yeah great just to keep that in mind yeah I want to agree with council member Glover on the point about allowing the catch to appoint as another member it's a request they're making to us this council will recall that when we set up this committee I actually was very determined to have the council consider additional representation of from unhoused people and at that time it was argued that we ought to leave that in the hands of the catch and that is what we did and so coming around now I would say that I think given the work they're doing that and the request has been made by them that since that was insisted upon in the past we ought to be consistent and and respond to their request by allowing them to to make that determination and they also could do that without having to wait until January I think I'll just comment a little bit on that and see if maybe I can see if we can so for example there's one one one position on the catch that was expressed by the council motion was someone who works with homeless youth and I don't know that that's actually a member member on your committee right now there's others that there's other categories of membership and so I think it is important that council did create the cash there was intent around the membership there was intent around the various sectors there was intent around frankly the expertise that could be born in a group a diverse group of people and I think that that's I think more of the intent is to make sure that you know the original working intent of the committee is kept and is you know consistent through from the beginning to the end of the process it's so I I'm not gonna I'm gonna continue to to keep number six out of the of the motion currently I would offer that we could break that out and make a motion to direct the cash to review the intended membership list and to work with the staff to review that review our existing applicant base and potentially also do targeted outreach to fill some of the open open seats that were described in the original in the original intent for the committee that might be and to bring that recommendation back to council if I go ahead and then we'll go ahead and that's very different than saying the council subcommittee is going to appoint another member for the catch to say that the catch might actually work with the with the city staff or to try to come up with a candidate that's a very different thing than than just cutting them out of the process entirely so I'm fine with that great so it sounds like we have a compromise which is great thank you for that I want that as a separate motion do you feel comfortable with incorporating that as I'm happy to incorporate in the that was a friendly amendment to the main motion made by councillor mires to work with the cash work with the city staff to identify those areas and then come up with a recommendation and my intent really is the to not disrupt the cash's work I mean it sounds like your your group has been ebbing and I think it's important that we not lose additional members I think it's important that you keep doing your work if we interject and I really think I want to express the importance of actually really honoring that list and looking at that list very intentionally it's an important list that was thought out both by the council as a whole in our discussions and also the subcommittee so the intent is really to have that diversification on the committee and so I hope that you know we'll you'll take the time to take to relook at that list to do that work so yeah do you want me to restate the motion we'll go ahead and acknowledge if councilor crone had anything else that he needed to add and if not we'll go ahead and then move to the motion to be restated and hopefully take a vote thank you mayor so if I understand right then they can work on that at their next meeting work on selecting another person or is that what you're saying is that I'm sorry we are deliberating can you repeat what you said so I'm just saying if council members saying that you all can work on getting another member at your next meeting okay great thanks I thought we were waiting for a motion we're kind of watching to see what happens I think essentially what if I could maybe interpret my understanding is essentially saying we acknowledge the interest of adding membership and we're also acknowledging the original intent about about having a breadth of experience and representation given that we're hopeful that the catch can take that into consideration with any kind of recommendations or outreach for additional membership in consultation with staff is that essentially cover it okay is that clear if I if I may not mean picking a member at your at your meeting next week I think we're all seeing eye to eye here we want to have a diverse diverse voices on the catch period I think what why this actually was brought before you was because we felt like we needed to ask you permission in order to bring another person in there was a lot of deliberation about okay well we want another person but oh wait we might actually have to ask so that's the only reason why this is before you right now and we we want a diversity of opinion and thought and resources thank you for that the other issues I have you talked about funding the warming center what are you going to include that in the motion or it's not my motion so I was not intending to include it I was planning to recommend another motion after this is okay and what about the Loudon Nelson bathrooms it's pretty she's moving the cash recommendation recommendation not to open reopen this it was an eight to four vote and the one person just came to the podium and said they missed the meeting so it was a nine to four vote they would have been recommending that they open the bathrooms the five million dollars from the state uh the cash was talking about um we all gonna wanted to recommend some I guess the application is due February 15th are you all gonna come forward with recommendations for that do you need direction from us are you directing a question at um the cash at this okay do you feel clear about the question Megan or Ron okay yeah please absolutely you can do you want to repeat your question but I understand if there's um five million dollars available in state funding but we have to get our applications in by February 15th and I was wondering if the cast wanted to you know input on that councilmember crone if I may um talking to the county they haven't actually developed the process they're not sure if they're doing RFPs what they're doing so it's too early to understand the glide path on that we do know the February 15th date looms but until the county decides what kind of process they're gonna implement um you know I think on your list here are things that would qualify for uh to include in an application but I think we need to see you know how they're gonna go about it last year they did the big elaborate RFP process and we just don't know if that's gonna play out the same way this year okay thank you okay we'll go ahead and maybe take the vote at this time do we feel the need to repeat the um motion before us no okay okay so um thank you again cash members for being here and sticking with us as well as Mr. Keely we'll go ahead and take the vote motion by councilmember Matthew I mean Myers seconded by myself all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously councilmember brown I'd like to make a motion that we agendize for the first meeting in January consideration of an allocation of $10,000 to the warming center for second so there's a motion by councilmember brown seconded by councilmember Glover to have that as a future agenda item for consideration for allocation councilmember crown would you be willing to add a friendly amendment to put the Loudoun Nelson bathrooms on there too um I think not at this time I I think that that's a longer conversation we have to have I I did want to clarify that the fifth the other vote that would have the basic it wasn't a vote to actually open the bathrooms the additional vote would have blocked um because they wouldn't have had a two-thirds majority so there was not a majority um uh view on the the catch that we move in that direction at this time I think it is a bigger conversation about the budget and I'm absolutely willing to have that conversation I don't know that January 14th um is the time given that we didn't we we referred it to the catch and and they said don't do it so I I'd want to honor that for you that correction okay okay any further discussion seeing then all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes with councilmember matthews voting against okay thank you very much and um before we go ahead and um we're going to take a five-minute recess I'm going to go ahead and ask that those who want to stay for the presentation of the um outgoing remarks from mayor incoming remarks and swearing in of the next mayor and vice mayor you're welcome to stay if you are family and um connected to uh either of these folks that uh need to have some reserve seating those are available for you in the front if you're not here for that process I invite you um at this time while we have a brief recess to um leave and we'll reconvene in about five minutes from now okay thank you of this evening's agenda um so we have two presentations and they are um first the remarks um by myself as outgoing mayor and then we'll go ahead and move right into the swearing in and remarks by incoming mayor and vice mayor so we'll go ahead and just jump right into it okay um so I um as mayor we'll just take a few minutes to make a few remarks but before I do I have to display my derby girl mayor name and um mayors who uh uh are during their term are given a derby girl uh name or derby person name depending on your gender for me it's a derby girl and so my derby name was mayor swatkins so um this is just a recognition that I will answer by either as former mayor Watkins or former mayor swatkins depending on the uh location um so in in in all seriousness I I really just have a few remarks that I want to make and then I um will graciously hand over the gavel I really want to say thank you and I want to say thank you that to the people of Santa Cruz I am so grateful um to have been your mayor this past year it's been a privilege and an honor to serve um the city and I uh thank you for making our city so wonderful I want to thank our city staff uh for the commitment and dedication in serving our city we have a stellar staff whether it be at our city manager level parks and rec planning scpd uh fire public works who am I missing water all of them every single one at all levels I thank you you know we are one of seven that are part of hundreds who serve our our community and our city and I thank you for your service as well um lastly I want to thank my family and um my husband Brandon who's here um our daughter is Evangeline and Winnell um who are five and nine um my parents Michael and Anne my brother Justin my in-laws and um all of our village and I I say them and I mean it when I say that I hold them here with me every time I'm here because it truly takes a village for me to be able to serve and I acknowledge that and I am most grateful for that um I really do try to balance adhering to uh governance and try to be a leader who listens to members of the community um who is reflective and um demonstrates to community members and to our children that we can lead and govern from a foundation of respect I have a few reflections from this past year I'd like to highlight and I was reviewing some of the comments that I made in the incoming year and I'm really I'm really proud of these highlights so this past year I had an opportunity to meet with community members coalitions youth seniors nonprofit health education business and environmental partners to create a vision for a healthy sustainable and equitable community and as I sure everyone in this room knows the issues facing our city are extremely complex whether it be affordable housing we just heard an item on homelessness climate change transportation social mobility aging infrastructure you name it and it all requires collaborative and upstream solutions and I um want to say I am so proud of our commitment to move the health and all policies initiative forward which we had the second reading this afternoon of that ordinance because it holds really truly unlimited opportunities to integrate preventative policies to increase government efficiency and to factor community well-being into every single decision that we make and I will continue to champion that initiative moving forward and similarly we had the children's fund and also earlier today we adopted a method to move forward with the child care impact fee and that's a really great example what of health and all policies in action and I cannot wait till the day comes when I get to see the children who are able to access our parks and rec programs who may not otherwise have been able to or had early childhood development opportunities for the same reasons those are the types of investments I'm so so proud of this past year I have to say that I um have I have experienced incredible strengths of the city and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge our observed challenges as well and the tenor of some of our council member council meetings excuse me at times really does parallel some of the national political atmosphere and our work is to passionately advocate at all levels for things that we care about and at times sure have some of those contentious conversations yet I feel we undermine our commitment to a thriving community if we allow caustic discord to dominate our meetings and discourage our community members from engaging in public discourse participation in service and moving forward I encourage all of us in the community and on the dais to seek compromise and I say you can seek compromise without compromising your values because we know that unyielding positions will always hinder forward progress and truly frankly that's foundational to our democracy so as we transition it's my hope that we can recalibrate and affirm our common purpose we live in an incredible city and we all play a role in contributing to the community well-being of our beloved community whether it be we're celebrating a business opening or supporting a nonprofit or seeking collaboration with a community partner it's these moments that always remind me and keep me grounded of the strengths of our city and at this time leave me feeling truly optimistic for the future of Santa Cruz so I will say in conclusion it's been my honor to serve a city the city it's been my honor to serve as your mayor and as I move from mayor to councilmember I commit to supporting a successful transition and as I in a moment hand over our gavel or this gavel here to our incoming mayor Justin Cummings and then future mayor incoming vice mayor Donna Myers I want to remind us all that their success is our success it's a shared success and I implore the community I implored this council to support them I commit to supporting them as we now transition transition into this next chapter for our city I thank you all for your service I thank you all for your support in me as mayor and I wish the next chapter to be successful and it's my pleasure to now hand over the gavel to our incoming mayor and vice mayor thank you thank you thank you please we'll go ahead and now introduce the next section of this item which is to have the swearing and remarks of the mayor and vice mayor and I'll go ahead and hand it over to our city clerk I don't know who goes first is it the vice mayor sworn in first I donna Myers do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend I will support and defend the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear that I will bear through faith and allegiance through the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the great state of california that I will take this I will take this obligation freely without any without any mental reservation or a purpose of evasion the purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon discharge the duties upon out which I'm about to enter close enough hi justin comings do solemnly affirm do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend that I will support and defend the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies against all enemies foreign and domestic foreign and domestic that I will bear that will bear true faith and allegiance true faith and allegiance to the constitution the constitution of the united states and the constitution constitution of the state of california that I will take this obligation that will take this obligation freely without any mental reservation without any mental reservation or purpose or purpose of evasion For purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully. And that I will well and faithfully. Discharge the duties. Discharge the duties. Upon which I'm about to enter. On which I'm about to enter. Where's your mayor one? I guess we'll start by remarks from our vice mayor, Donna Myers. Well, it's late in the evening, and I want to really let Justin enjoy his first few minutes as mayor. But I do want to just say a couple of things and a couple of thank you's. It is an incredibly exciting and terrifying thing to become a city council member. And so your first year has really spent learning in so many different ways. And you really learn how quickly you don't know really what you're doing. Even from minute to minute sometimes it feels like. So I have many thank yous to offer tonight. And I just want to run through those very quickly. And I just also just want to close with one little statement. I really want to actually thank council member Cynthia Matthews, who's been in these chairs at different parts in her career here. I think I have learned a lot from her in terms of. She's always seeking to try to make something work. And I've seen her work on motions over and over here in her chair and tried to teach the rest of us how to make a quality motion. She's also bold enough to tell us very directly what she thinks is going to work and what she doesn't believe is the right thing to do. And I've learned a lot from her honesty. I've learned a lot from her mentorship. And so I just want to thank my colleagues here also tonight. I've learned a lot from all of them. Everyone brings a different perspective to this, to these seats. Different family perspectives, different economic perspectives, all kinds of, you know, and differences is the wonder of the world, right? So as a scientist, that's the thing we respect the most when we study nature is the amazing diversity of nature. And we don't always understand the purposes of that diversity, but we just know that that's what makes nature special. So diversity is incredibly important for all societies, whether that's nature or other cultures or whatever. If we lose diversity, we will lose humanity. So it's incredibly important that we always keep that in mind as we work together. And I just really appreciate the diversity of opinion, the diversity approach that we've been able to experience this first year. I want to thank our staff. It's been an incredibly trying year in so many different ways. And I hold our staff very, very high in my heart. And they work really hard for all of the citizens of Santa Cruz. And they do their best. And I believe that truly. And we demand a lot of very intensive work from them. And so I truly want to thank all of you. I think your leadership and our community and how you try to help us solve some of the really hard problems that we have that we're facing right now is really meaningful to all of us that, you know, try to do this day to day. I want to thank my amazing wife of 34 years. And many, many dear neighbors and dear friends, my brother and his wife and my three nieces that live here in town to the people who come up and give me a hug in the grocery store as well. And I just really only have, I just have one hope for the year ahead. And really that is if you see someone you think you may not agree with or hold the same values with, that the first thing you do is you first reach out to say hello with a smile and a meaningful handshake and that you sit down over a cup of coffee or tea or a beer or a cocktail or a meal. And you get to know one another. And then you talk and listen to one another. Because if we lose those basic principles of humanity, we're never going to fix anything in this town or in this nation. And it's too important right now. Make this decision tonight. Stop calling each other names and start getting to work. Don't get to work. It's going to change anything. So Justin and I are going to make a great team. We're both scientists. And we know there's no, we know there's no assurity in the things that you do because science is always a mystery. But if you don't try to at least diagnose and get things done, it's never going to change. So I really look forward to working with Justin. I look forward to working with all my colleagues. And thank you for being here tonight. Congratulations. It's a hard one to come behind. Well, I'd like to just start by, you know, thanking friends, families, member of the community for being here. I'd like to also thank my mother, my brother, Kenneth, my cousin, Colinda, and my three-year-old, Nephew Carter, for making the trip here for this historic occasion and for everyone who was able to come here tonight. And also for those of you who are tuning in from their homes, it's an honor to have the opportunity to serve and represent the city in its highest civic capacity. Next year, we will be entering not only a new year, but a new decade of great importance. For those of us who are millennials, generation Xers, and baby boomers, 2020 was a distant future that we could only try to imagine many years ago. For the children, teenagers, and young adults of our community, their future will depend on the decisions that we make today. And as we enter 2020, we should all take some time to look back in hindsight, to learn from our successes and improve from our failures, anticipate what is to come, and use this information to help inform our decisions which will help shape our future. During this past year, the city council at two retreats, this body, I'm sorry, this body had during 2019, there were at least one session during each of those meetings where we discussed what we loved about Santa Cruz and our vision for the future of Santa Cruz. And when the council members and the staff reported out, there was overwhelmingly a shared vision. We all wanted to see a community that was age and family friendly, it was environmentally sustainable, affordable, safe, inclusive, economically stable, and embraced people of all races, genders, ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, among many other descriptions. And as the mayor of Santa Cruz, I'm committed to working with you, the community, towards continuing to make this vision our reality. The work to achieve this vision will require patience, dedication, commitment, collaboration, and sacrifice, and it will not happen overnight. It's going to require considering new and sometimes even radical approaches, adopting strategies implemented by other communities, and sometimes taking a chance by trying something new. More importantly, it's going to require listening to different perspectives and working with people who you may not always agree with to find common ground so we continue moving forward. Santa Cruz is not alone in the many challenges it faces. Having traveled to the League of California Cities meeting this year, both in Sacramento and Long Beach, attended the Democratic State Convention as a delegate, met and worked with numerous regional representatives and represented Santa Cruz at regional meetings. The two most common challenges the communities were facing throughout California were homelessness and affordable housing. Communities throughout California are also trying to do their part to become more environmentally sustainable, and we're all concerned with trying to reduce our carbon footprint to mitigate global warming. However, we all face the challenges of not having enough financial resources to do everything we would like, which is why, although we may not be able to do everything, as your mayor, I intend to work with our community members and regional partners to do the most and best we can with the resources that we have. To me, collaboration is the key to success and the more diverse the collaborators and collaboration, the greater the potential for success. It is an opportunity to share ideas and gain perspectives that you may not have previously considered, and by listening to one another and trying to find common ground, we'll be moving one step closer to bringing our community back together. There are going to be many topics that come up in 2020. As we continue to address homelessness in our community, we must strike a balance between compassionate solutions and public safety for both our unhoused and housed members of our community. This is going to take members from all sectors of our community to come together to address what is one of the single biggest issues at the state and national level. As we continue to address affordable housing, our affordable housing crisis, we must work together to create programs that keep tenants in their homes and off the streets, while also allowing landlords to get fair returns on their investments. As we create more dense housing, we must create policies that incentivize the production of more affordable housing so that we can maintain housing for our current residents and our city workforce. More importantly, we need to focus on creating policies that keep Santa Cruz on track to becoming a more environmentally sustainable city. As a biologist, I'm deeply committed to working with our staff to bring forward a climate action plan and work on policies that keep us at the forefront of environmental sustainability. As we move into 2020, we must also take the time to stop, listen to one another, and find ways to work with one another. We must stay focused on our shared vision of a safe, environmentally sustainable Santa Cruz in a diverse place where everyone is welcome. And finally, I would just like to say how much this community continues to inspire me. In a town where less than 1.6% of the population is African American, you elected the two first African American men and the first open lesbian woman to the City Council in 2018. This truly reflects our commitment as a community to electing officials not based on their race, age, or gender, but based on the content of the character. As I follow in the footsteps of our first multiracial African American woman mayor, as the first African American man and millennial mayor, I will continue to support the creation and implementation of policies that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and civility in our community. And I encourage all people of Santa Cruz, especially those of the younger generations, to apply to be on commissions, to participate in community engagement, speak at city council meetings, and to be a part of our local government. I would like to thank our city staff and city employees for all that they do to keep the city functioning. I've learned an immense amount from working with all of you this year, and I'm really looking forward to learning so much more in this year as mayor. And I also want to thank everyone in this community who continue to work towards our vision for diverse, equitable, affordable, inclusive Santa Cruz. And let's be an example for the rest of our country. I'm looking forward to working with all my fellow city council members. I've learned an immense amount from working with you all and want to find as many ways to continue working with this body. So with that, I would like to just say as the incoming mayor, I wish everyone a happy holiday. Thank you all for coming, and we will adjourn until January of 2020.