 capital city council. Can we have a roll call, please? Yes, Councilmember Bertrand. Aye. Councilmember Botsworth. I do that. Here. There he is. Okay. Councilmember Story. Here. Vice Mayor Brooks. Here. Mayor Peterson. Here. Please join us for 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. Individual with liberty. Justice. All right. Let's start with my monologue here. In accordance with the current shelter in place order from Santa Cruz County Health Service and executive order in 2920 from the executive department of the state of California. The council meeting is not physically open to the public. Limited staff are present in the council chambers and council is participating remotely via video call. Members of council can use their reaction choices and zoom to indicate that they would like to speak similar to raising a hand and also raise your hands in the participants bar on the button that says raise hand. As always, this meeting is cable cast live on charter communications cable TV channel 8 and is being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Wednesday at 8am and on Saturday following the first rebroadcast at 1pm on charter channel 71 and Comcast channel 25. Meeting can also be viewed live from the city's website and which is zoom meeting also available on our website. Our technician tonight is Benjamin Thompson Benjamin. Thank you as also as always rather. Despite being physically close to the public participation is still possible public comment can be emailed or called into council to call in comments before the item you wish to comment on call the phone number now displayed. Enter meeting ID 821-09-02-6541. Press the hash or pound key when prompted for a participant ID to raise your hands and make a comment press star six on your phone. Wait to hear that you are unmuted and then make your comment you'll have up to three minutes to speak. If you're watching the meeting via zoom, you can use the participant option to raise your hand and make a comment when unmuted by our moderator. To email comment, identify the item you wish to comment on in your email subject line. Email comments will be accepted starting now up until I announced that public item excuse me public comment for an item is closed. Each emailed comment will be read aloud for up to three minutes or displayed on a screen. Emails and calls received outside of the comment period outlines will not be included in the record. Moving on to item two. Do we have any additional materials for tonight's meeting? Yes, there were four emails sent in favor of the beach grading and the closure of the lagoon. Are there any additions or deletions to tonight's agenda? Staff has no changes. We're going to go on to city council and staff comments. The staff have any comments tonight? No. We're going to move on to city council comments. If there's any member of the council that has any comments, please feel free to use your reaction or raise hand button. I see that vice mayor Brooks has her hand raised. So we'll go to you. I thank you, Mayor Peterson. I just wanted to I'm not sure if anyone has been able to visit the village today. But clearly we're seeing many people not obeying our county health officers public order regarding the beach closures. And it worries me that there are mixed messages being sent to the community regarding the reopening of Capitola and its businesses and restaurants in conjunction with our beaches still being closed. And it seems impossible for our PD to manage. So I ask that staff contact our county health officer to update her on the issues we're facing here locally and report back at the next meeting with her response. And also I just wanted to take a moment to address that there are some catastrophic happenings taking place in America right now. And I just don't want to take another day to state publicly or to wait to state publicly that black lives do matter. As a leader in our community, I feel it is necessary to use my voice to express my support and sympathy of the many lives that have been lost. As a community, we must practice anti racism in order to shift the paradigm. Our county and local police officers have done an exceptional job and have participated in implicit bias trainings and other trainings. But however, racism is real and it exists everywhere, even in Capitola. So therefore we must take actions to be part of the solution. I will continue to exercise my privilege as an elected official to speak fearlessly and with cause. And I will continue to remind our community of my message at every meeting from here on out until the riots have ended. When I look back on this, I want to be proud of the history and changes that were made and I want to be part of the solution. And I hope our community does too. So thank you for giving me the time today and the city of Capitola for this opportunity. Thank you, Vice Mayor Brooks. That was very well said. And I will join you in the commitment to speaking out at every meeting from here forward to make sure that action is taken to make a better world. And on that note, I wanted to just take a quick moment in my comments. If anyone is interested in learning a little bit more about how we can commit to not only being better citizens, but to being anti-racist in our actions in our lives. This is the book that I am currently reading, How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kennedy. And I highly recommend it. One of the things that I'm learning from it is there is no such thing as not racist. It is either racist or it is blatantly anti-racist. And that's what I'm committing to trying to strive for in my life as we move forward as an individual and as an elected leader. So thank you very much, Vice Mayor Brooks, for bringing that forward tonight. Any additional comments from Council? Seeing none, we'll move forward to general government and public hearing. The one item on our agenda tonight, hearing on the implementation of the SoCal Creek Management Plan. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm going to share my screen here. I have a short presentation. Thank you, Council, for coming together tonight to hear this item regarding the SoCal Creek Management Plan. And it's whether we're going to implement it this summer or not. Just to give us a little background on why we're here tonight. If the city moves forward and is preparing the budget for the next fiscal year, which starts in July 1st, the city was facing a $4.5 million deficit in funding. It's pretty historical and not something that we've ever gone through before. In addition, local health orders require Capitol Beach to be closed from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. So due to these impacts and the beach restrictions, the financial impacts and the beach restrictions caused by COVID-19, the SoCal Creek Management Plan, which involves the beach grading and the dune closure, has not been completed to date. To address the funding deficit, the draft budget, which is currently being considered by the City Council, cut all discretionary funding such as the SoCal Creek Management Plan. We have a hiring freeze on all vacant positions and all bargaining groups as employees are making concessions. In the Public Works Department, some of the items that we have significantly reduced or defunded have included the summer beach shuttle, which is now unfunded for 2020. Private litter removal contracts, which we usually have during the summer, have been unfunded. Janitorial services, which help keep the bathrooms, both at Esmont Park and on the wharf, and at City Hall cleaned in the weekends, especially, have been severely reduced. And, again, the reason we're here is the SoCal Creek Management Plan itself has been unfunded. Tonight's special meeting has been called to discuss whether to allocate personnel and funding resources to implement the Management Plan at this time. So, quick little reasons for the Management Plan. The work permitted through the SoCal Management Plan was first adopted in 1990, and it was required by several federal and state agencies to allow the City to close Laguna. The City had been closing Laguna since, I think, since the 30s, 40s, something along those lines. And for the first 50 years that they've been doing it, they did what they wanted and weren't really, and it was before there was a lot of the resource agencies in place. In 1989, I think it was, the Fish and Wildlife and other resource agencies came concerned with our practices. And so we adopted the Management Plan, which they have also adopted and continued to close Laguna since 1990 under that plan. Public Works typically completes the closure and grading work prior to Memorial Day, although there certainly has been two times in my history with the City and many before that where it has occurred after Labor Day. The main reason for that is for late season rains to lay the closure. Under the permits that we have from several agencies, monitoring is required from the time we start working on the closure until the time we open it up when it starts raining in the fall. And, you know, the monitoring isn't just something that these agencies came up with. It's necessary work because we're dealing with where we're impacting a native habitat that has protected species in it. And by monitoring it, we can make sure the work that we do, as both the letting nature do what it might usually do, doesn't negatively impact these resources. I'm going to get into that a little bit more in a minute. So if authorized to complete the grading tonight, we want to try and complete it before the Junior Guards Program starts on June 15th. So at this point, if we receive authority to move forward, we will be starting work next Monday and hope to have it done by Friday. Just a little more on the implementation plan. So it encloses it again, builds the levy around the ground, puts all the water coming down the creek, then goes out the slum, and it creates our summer beach. It fills in the low channel on the Espanol Sea Wall that you see today. And that riverbed frequently could become fouled with stagnant water and possibly produce odors. Ecologically, the creation of the habitat of the steelhead, it creates an enhanced habitat. It creates a fresh water habitat, and that's very good for the young steelhead. It doesn't require them to swim upstream. It's the biggest beneficiary. Even in monitoring from the fisheries biologists, we are able to monitor the creek, and he advises public work staff on potential issues that have impacted habitat. We can manipulate the height of the water in the flume and where the water draws from, which helps us resolve such things as salinity, temperature, oxygen levels, and clarity. So these are things that get monitored regularly during wild closures in place, and they are continually moving up and down boards on the flume and adjusting it depending on what those monitoring results are. From a recreational standpoint, the closure of the lagoon does raise the lagoon, and the water level on the lagoon, and the upstream creek a little bit, which is still, say, paddleboarding and kayaking. Quick word about enforcement. As Council Vice Mayor Brooks indicated, COVID-19 has created several self-tapey orders, such as closing the beach and social distancing, that are proving very staff-intensive doing force. Closing the creek and grading the beach will likely marginally increase these challenges. We're creating attractions which are counter-intuitive to the health orders that are in place. With or without the closure, the following remains in effect until the county health officer changes them. The beaches will still remain closed from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., whether we grade it or not. Shelter in place, order remained in place, and so do the social distancing directives. So looking at the finances of moving forward with the management plan. So the management plan spans two fiscal years. We start work in May or June, in this case we move forward, which is in the fiscal year that's ending at the end of this month, and then it continues until the fall when we open it. So when we funded the management plan in the 2019-20 budget, which is our current year budget, we included funding that was to be used right now in May for the closure and for the monitoring to start. So that's current fund balances of available funding, and the current budget is $19,600. To move forward today to close the beach at this time, we need the rent equipment for $15,000, and the monitoring is estimated to cost just for this summer, not for next year, for $21,600. I'd like to commend our fisheries biologist Don Alley who's gone through, and we've pared down this because of the financial problems to by 47% of our usual costs. This is a one-time reduction. So all the monitoring is required in our permits. It's not something that we do just because we like it. We have talked to several agencies and told them of our intent to reduce the monitoring. They have indicated their willingness to cooperate with that, so I think we will move forward with the crew. If we do move forward tonight, we will be sending the monitoring plan contained in the agenda to all the agencies, and we anticipate their acceptance of that. So if we look at the cost to move forward today, we need $36,600. We have $19,600, so we need $17,000 allocated tonight to move forward with a closure. Looking forward to May of next fiscal year, a year from now, or 11 months from now. I estimate we'll need $26,000. I realize that's a little more than the $19,000 that we have left over at this time. The fund balance this year is actually a little artificially low because our opening was delayed. It was not until, I think, the very end of November that we did the opening. That's about a month longer, excuse me, than it is in a typical year. It's usually in October. We are at the end of October. Every week that we're closing is more monitoring we need to do. So these are not six costs. So that's why I've estimate that $42,000 total, $43,000 total for doing the plan is pretty typical given that we have a reduced monitoring for part of it. I think my intended goal for budgeting for this year before the COVID-19 pandemic was $55,000. So looking at the budget, its implementation has approved amendments to the proposed 2021 fiscal budget which is still being reviewed by the council will need to be implemented to fund the work after July 1st. As we already said, $19,000 is existing, $43,000 to fund entire fiscal year, $17,000 to move forward just right now. If the council directs implementation, you may find just the 2020 costs at this time and then when we do a budget review, either mid-year or quarterly prior to the close of this budget, we can add the 2021 costs at that time. Some of the funding options available to put funding toward this project is to transfer from CIP projects. And in the budget report, we listed Capital Avenue because it had a rather healthy fund balance this time, the sidewalk project there. But it's also come to, I realized that we have some funds left over in the Park Avenue sidewalk project, which recently is I would say 99.5% complete. We're just waiting for some signs to get that up. I do believe we'll have a fund balance there with about $54,000. Another option is to do a fund, a loan fund, from the Consensus of Emergency Refunds Reserves, which are, because the funding is down, our percentages are down, so there are some available money there. But as the funding returns, we would need to replace those funds in the future budget. So our recommendation tonight is to provide direction on implementation of the SoCo Creek Management Plan for the 2020 summer, which involves the Lagoon Gate, Lagoon Closure, and Beach Grading. And if the work is directed to proceed, provide direction to the finance staff on the amendments to the proposed 2021 budget. That is my report, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much. Let me pull up the Participants tab so I can see if any of our council members have any questions. And it looks like a council member story, and then we'll come to you, Council Member Bertrand. Thank you, Mayor. Steve, and also you, Jamie, I guess my principal concern is about enforcement if we were to create the beach. And so my question goes to the current order, the public health order to have the beach closed from 11 to 5. Do you have any indication of how much longer the health officer is going to impose that order on us? And if not, is there some indication that that may be lifted by Jolanda first? And I think my last question, and maybe this goes to the chief, is how much more difficult is it going to be for us to be able to enforce the closure of the beach if we remove it and close it again? Thank you. Council Member Story, I'll take a crack at the first part of this, and then I think Chief McManus can answer the second part. So the health officer has been asked, I've been on a number of calls where the health officer has been asked this express question of how long the beach rules are going to remain in effect, and at this point, the only thing she has told us is that she anticipates that they will last through the summer. I don't know, I don't know. So I don't know beyond that. That's what the information she's given to us. So I do know, well, I'll let the enforcement question. I think that Chief McManus can probably talk to the enforcement challenges and then also your question that you raised. Terry. Thank you. Evening Mayor Peterson, Council Members, I'm hoping you can number one hear me and that my video is on the screen and I can't see from my end. Thank you for the question, Council Member Story. And just as Vice Mayor Brooks mentioned, there's a significant number of violations daily. Those violations are increasing, which means it's becoming increasingly more difficult with our limited resources to properly manage the violations. We're making efforts on an hourly basis to get down there. And as is often the case, when we're down there and when we're present, people choose to leave. Some people receive citations or receive warnings. But just as soon as that presence is gone, then the violations continue. And so that's not news. I think everyone is aware of this challenge that Steve mentioned with the creation of the lagoon and the increase in the size of the beach. There's also a related increase in the attraction to capital awareness, which is going to increase the need for police resources or additional presence as best we can down there in the village. The benefit, however, is that we can more easily access the sand when the creek is no longer running through the middle of the beach. Currently, as you might imagine, the officers have to access the largest portion of the beach from the work area due to some enforcement or some proactive patrol over there. And then they have to exit the beach, walk around through the missions into the village, and access the smaller portion of the beach from the opposite side. And so certainly that creek grants presents some challenges. The other thing that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this is what we're talking about the village, which is a high priority area. But there are also, in my opinion, high priority areas throughout the city. We need a police presence. We need resources, not to mention resources that might continue to be needed to support others in the county with regard to protests and potential riots. Absent that resources needed for now that we're transitioning to a higher level of stage two in the state's road map to the village city. And the open retail outlets. There's more presence required from all property. There's continued presence required up in the 41st Avenue quarter. And then this kind of year, as is always the case, more calls for service, more demands for police services, as it relates to some of the traffic, ongoing traffic violations and speed concerns throughout the city. So that's a difficulty. And in the long run, I mentioned the question comes on the shore. That's a difficulty in managing the PV resources as it relates to going forward. I'll end with this. However, we understand what our role is. And I think it's a good idea to provide those resources, as best we can, given the current challenges. And some of them have been discussed with regard to the public health policy position currently on the restricted access to the beach and whether or not there will be an adjustment to the restrictions in their future. I have no more information on that piece of it than has already been presented by the City Manager. I hope I answered your question. Yes. Thank you, Chief. Yeah. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Council Member Bertrand, you also had your hand up at one point. Do you still have a question? No, I lower it. My question's got answered. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. But if they are booked, do you have your hand up? Yes, I do. My question is, some of the emails we receive address safety for the Junior Guard Program. And maybe our City Manager can answer this. Is there, if we do not do this, is there really a, will there be a safety issue for our kiddos who are out there? I think Steve's prepared to address this one. Steve, do you have a feedback? Yes. Five more breaks. The primary reason we do the management plan is to fill in the crate and create the lagoon. Safety is an adjunct of it. We do sift the sand. We were planning to sift the sand and clean the sand without the closure. I don't think safety is a primary reason for doing this. And I still think there would be a safe beach without doing the closure. And then my follow-up question is there was mention of smell. If we do not close the lagoon, that many businesses who are on the Esplanade were worried that there would be smell. Regarding the odors. So odors are created when kelp is along the bottom of the lagoon or bottom of the creek channel going out right now. And the water dries up or the water so shallow that the sun bakes the kelp and it starts to rot. It will release odors. We get that even with the lagoon sometimes. I think the chances of it occurring are higher if we do not close the lagoon than if we do close the lagoon. But in either case they are possible under both circumstances. Okay. Thank you. And I just have one last question. You mentioned there was money from the park avenue project. Did you say there was $54,000 available in that project or left over from that project? And whatever that number is, the follow-up to that question is what were the intentions, what were your intentions of using that money for next year? So I do not have the absolute final costs yet. My estimate at this time is we're going to use some of the contingency fundings but yes we will have a fund balance very close to $54,000. Typically when a project has money left over when it is completed, we either allocate it to another capital improvement project or return it to the general fund and that would be the direction of the city council to make that decision. Thank you. Those are all of my questions. Great. Thank you. Steve, just to clarify, do I understand correctly that even if we don't close the lagoon, we are going to be grading the beach, sifting the sand? Yes. That is true. We will be removing kelp and sifting the sand on the beach. That is the intention of the budget. There is no definite effort between the extent of the flim toward the chedi at this point. We will be cleaning that as best we can. But be aware that that is still in a title influence area. So we may remove the kelp at 6 in the morning and at 8 in the afternoon or 8 that morning the kelp may be washed up again. But we are going to try. Great. Do I also understand, if I am reading it correctly, that even if we agreed to close is that my understanding? No, our intent is if we get direction to close it again, we will start next Monday and be done by next Friday. Okay, there was there was something on one of the slides about funds the work after or was that for the next part? Yes, that is the funding for the continuation of the work that needs to start on July 1st. That makes sense. Okay, great. Thank you for clarifying that for me. I appreciate it. Are there any additional questions from council members before we go to a public comment? Seeing none, I'm going to turn it over to our moderator, Larry, to call upon any of our attendees here on our on our Zoom meeting or via phone call. If you have a comment, a public comment, now is the time, please either use the raise hand feature, or if you were on a phone, dial star six to unmute yourself, and I will leave it to you, Larry, to go ahead and call on those that are wishing to speak on this item. Mayor Peterson, I see one person right now with a dial in number, and I will allow them to talk. Is someone keeping time, Larry? Yes, we are here. Thank you. Great, thank you. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm a Capitola resident. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, great. I'd like to see an alternative other than focusing on recreation, something that upholds the responsibility of the management plan in regards to protecting the species mentioned in that plan. I just think anything else that supports recreation in any ways in conflict, as you guys have said, with the shelter in place order in conflict to what enforcement has been saying is already a problem. And just in general, it's, you know, the intent of beaches and recreation. Right now, our shelter in place is closing it off to the public, and I'm concerned about the message that we are giving by saying, well, it's closed to recreation, but for this special group, it's going to be open. You know, we have kids in places without backyards that can't go to the beach at all right now. So I'm just concerned on the world stage that looks like for our small and wonderful town, might I add? So I just wanted to put that out there. It seems to consider with everything going on in the world today, and would hope to see a special meeting, perhaps, focused on, you know, what we are doing with policing and the culture of policing for our own community. And just a side note, you guys' meeting IDs are online. It's a little different. So it might be the only reason if I'm the only person called in. Thank you. We'll definitely have to look into that. Thank you for your comments. Are there any additional public comments on this item from anyone on the call or on the Zoom meeting? So Steve, I think you need to stop sharing your screen and then I can check the email, unless there's another question. You got it. Great. Oh wait, I have another dial in person. Okay, let's go with that. Thank you, Larry. Julie, Kenny, need to unmute. Oh, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good. Um, my husband, I sent a couple emails as well, but my husband and I own a duplex in the village, and we have owned it for almost nine years, and just the presence of being in the village and it being unkept and safe. Even during that, the non 11 to five hours just for locals and people who have homes there, you can't even safely walk from one side of the pier to the beach. And it's just we bought in, um, Capitola because of the charm the businesses and just feel like when we're there with our kids just to be able to not to enjoy the beach or even walk on it safely. It's a it's a big it's a big concern. So, um, even with the kelp, you know, cleaning it up, if you keep the lagoon open and spending all that money and not having it insured that it's not going to be there a few hours later. And I also think that if it's going to be open for one group like the junior guards, which I'm happy it is, but, um, what about other people who want to just enjoy the beach or play football or or whatnot at all those locals. And then also, um, I was very happy that you guys are opening up for the outside dining. I think that's going to help the businesses a lot. But it is very interesting to me that diners can be sitting in a small parking lot area enjoying dinner. But then there's a big, beautiful beach that cannot be used right now that's full of kelp and lagoon and even looking at it, um, for the businesses like Zelda, the Margaritaville, it's just not as pleasant as it used to be. And I'm actually very, very happy that the budget was also brought down by 47% because even 80,000 was what we all pay in taxes and the TOT's and all of that and what the businesses pay for rent. I think it's the least you can do to help try to bring some pride and beauty to to the village during this during this time, especially everything that happened in the last couple of weeks. We we need to see the BH. We need to see its beauty and being reminded of why we should all want to visit Capitola in the future as well. That's all. Thank you for your comments. Julie appreciate it. Do you have any additional comments, Larry? At this time, I do not see any other hand raised. Great. Thank you. With that, we will go to our email comments. Uh, City Manager, do we have any comments via email that have come in since we started discussion on this item? Yes, we do. So I will share the screen and we can start at beginning. Can you guys see my screen at this time? We can. Hey, Jamie, I wonder if you can give us some guidance here. I know that in public comments in person, each person gets one three minute comment. It looks like we have four or five from one individual and two from another individual. Can you clarify how we're going to address this tonight? Well, my recommendation would be to treat it just like we treat oral communications in general, and then we take one from each person. Um, as a result, maybe what we will do here is it looks like you're correct that we have one, two, it looks like there's, yeah, we'll give this person a chance to send us one, one, their final comment. Otherwise, we'll just take it from the top. Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you. Okay. So here's the first comment and I will read aloud. Good evening, my family and I reside on review drive along the Soquel Creek. We were made aware that the city is considering not closing the lagoon this summer as they have for many years. This decision to not proceed with the management plan has many negative impacts for local businesses, wildlife and residents. We feel that since this work was already budgeted for the fight 19 to 20 budget, this work should proceed. I've spoken too many of our beloved neighbors and business owners and every one of them are in favor of keeping the management plan. We appreciate you meeting to consider this item and we hope you make the decision to move forward. Thank you because you're a family. Okay, that's the first comment. And then it looks as if we have the rest of the comments are just perceived here. Huh. So it sounds like somebody's suggesting that the people read it as a comment. Hello, maybe we can correct your information, your meeting ID for your special meeting going on now is wrong. The ID is 821 6450 to 0793. The public cannot enter with the ID provided on the site. I only figured it out because the right ID shows in the link you provide. Okay, so then we've received, um, it looks like B and J Kenny said that they already read, sorry, said the comments. So I guess we will go with Sylvia Winsby and let's take just the first one they sent. Does that seem like the right approach, Madam Mayor? Okay, I think that makes sense. Yeah, is the rest of this going to be included in record or as additional materials when we do the minutes or? Yeah, we can include it as additional materials. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Well, actually, I think that there might be a challenge there because if you don't actually see it, I don't think that suggesting that it was part of the record when nobody actually saw it before voting. I don't know that that would be very appropriate. So I think we would only want to include the ones that were actually entered into the record. Okay, let's just enter into the record, the ones that we read then and maybe in future agendas or as we open future public comment will make sure to notify the public that only they'll only have the opportunity for one of their emails to be read similar to if they were in public. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so we will start with this first comment received from Sylvia Winsby. Dear Mayor and City Council members, thank you for the opportunity to publicly comment on the issue of lagoon creation to expand the beach. I am a 20-year resident of Capitola and each year when the creek dam is put in to create the lagoon, I've been sorry to see the water become completely stagnant. Each year, the lagoon becomes increasingly polluted and ugly, in my opinion, and several years the public has not been allowed to enter the lagoon area due to contamination. I was not aware that part of the rash I bail is to create the steelhead salmon growth area in the creek. I'm not sure how that translates to the steelhead population, but the water is so dark during summer season that one cannot see the bottom of the creek. Furthermore, it would seem that locally we have many waterways which naturally foster the salmon growth, e.g. San Lorenzo River, Salinas River, and Aptus Creek. Last Saturday, May 30, walking upstream a bit from downtown, I saw the kingfish are flying over at a creek and watched it catch the small fish. I also was able to view ducklings, an increased mellared duck population, and a young blue heron. If you've been near the creek this spring, you would notice that the water is running clear. One can see to the bottom of the creek bed, and the surrounding creek environment is thriving and beautiful. Please consider allowing the creek a year to recover and regain its natural species of wild life. The understanding that tourism is a major economic factor for our community, I see that having an uninterrupted stretch of beach is inviting to tourists. However, that's not what we need this year with the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to protect our population's health and maintain the beach, closure from 11 to 5 daily to curb the overcrowding that would likely ensue from a beach looking as usual. I thank the police department for the great job they have done in patrolling and enforcing the health department's stipulations. After 5 p.m., I've noticed many families enjoying the creek that is flowing down the beach, it provides a great place for children to play. In 20 years, I haven't been able to witness how low the creek bead becomes through summer, nor if there is any odor problem as mentioned in your agenda today. Have any of you witnessed this? Personally, the ugliness of the stagnant lagoon area, filled with bird feces by August each year is repulsive, even if it doesn't smell because you're putting chemicals in it. I encourage you to consider seeing if the high tides on the beach could do a better job this summer. Financially, I think the sidewalk project is more important this year than the man-made sculpting of the beach and damning of Soquel Creek. Our public residence health is more important than a possibly more inviting beach matter of personal taste in my opinion and the environmental health of the Soquel Creek area could thrive in a way many of us have never been able to witness or enjoy. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sylvia Winsby. Okay, so that, I believe, takes care of the comments. Alrighty. Thank you for those comments. That was pretty impressive, Sylvia. You got an email into almost exactly the three-minute comment period. Very nice. All right. So with that, we are going to close public comment on this item and bring it back to council for discussion in a vote. If I could start just briefly, I have a couple questions based on the staff report, but also based on some of the comments we just heard. So I'll try to make them very, very brief. One of the comments was about allowing the junior guards on the beach, as opposed to allowing others on the beach. My understanding is that junior guards will take place prior to the 11 a.m. beach closure. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. For beach grating, if we were to, do we own the equipment that we use to grade the beach, or do we have to rent that every time we use it? So I guess the reason for that question is, if we grade the beach and all the scene we come back onto the sand, can we just do it again the following week, or do we have to get rent equipment to do that every time? There's two points to this answer. First of all, when we do the lagoon formation and the big grating of the beach, when we close the lateral channel, we do need to rent it. Both those are for that work. The daily cleaning of removing the kelp is something we do with our own equipment. Oh, okay. So even if we remove the kelp, made it a little bit easier for the junior guards to get around on the beach, and it came back, we'd be able to do that again. Yes. Okay. And then the final one is, if we choose today not to close up the creek, do we have the opportunity, should this become an issue with the smell, do we have the opportunity to revisit this in the future? There's always a chance to revisit it. I will add, though, that the ability to flush out the the kelp that's rotting goes down as the flows in the creek go down. So, and the diminished daily right now, we're at about last time I looked around 16 cubic feet per second of flow, which is probably enough to flush it. By July, certainly by August, we'll be down to one to two CFS, and most likely, while we'll be able to bury some of it, a lot of the kelp will still remain at that time. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, council for allowing me to jump in there quickly. So let's go back to our council members for discussion and a vote. So please feel free to raise your hand if you have any additional comments on this item. I'm sorry. I'm just going to jump in before the discussion. And just one other point that somebody suggested in public comment that we put chemicals in the lagoon, and the city does not put chemicals in the lagoon. We're not allowed to do that. That's certainly not something the city has done, I think, in 30-plus years. Good to know. Thank you. Councilmember Bautour has his hand up. Thank you, Mayor. A couple things on this issue. I think it's a great idea to close and make informal lagoon. My concerns about that specifically deal with the wildlife, the fish, and making sure that we don't do anything to cause that imbalance. The second reason is I'm tremendously concerned about the smell. It would look very bad of us to get back on our feet, open our village, and then have the kelp do its smell thing like it does in August. The problem with that is that, as Steve just mentioned with the flow, if we get there in August and we have the flow, the smell, we don't have the flow and the ability to flush it out adequately to make that problem properly go away. This is kind of a one-shot deal. Either we do it or we don't, and we bear the burden of that. And that is to me, even though I realize we are almost $4 million in debt, I'm willing to spend $40,000 to make sure the lagoon doesn't hamper our recovery path. With regards to the grading, while the tractors out there and we paid the money to do the lagoon, it's not a big deal to grade to the beach. And I don't necessarily believe that, I mean, I report that it makes it more attractive. But my concern is, I don't want to save too much of them out there. I think it's great that Mickey and Recreation were willing to try to put on the Junior Guards. Pretty much she was going to lemonade out of lemon and use what she had. But it'll be a better program if it's graded. And the other thing I believe is that they want to be graded and make it a continuous beach instead of the hazard zone that it is now. I believe we may find ourselves getting, we may rent some kind of quad vehicle that we could get for our police department, which would maximize manpower and we could get them out there to the beach in a way that it would not be the burdensome process that they're having now. Sir, that may be determination for Santa Cruz not to open the beach. They've already not hired the license. So I'd say pretty much all in on that. I don't expect the beach to open. If it were to open, that would be great. I know it's not about closing. It's whatever the county health official allows, but if we do grade it and it does open, we're not in a bad situation. So even though I hate spending money that we absolutely don't have, and I need the public to understand that we don't have money, but I consider this a necessity. Thank you, Council Member Botchworth. I know that Council Member Bertrand had his hand up. Do you still have a comment, Council Member Bertrand? Sure. Addressing Ed's last comment there, I think from the businesses standpoint, this is a necessity. The issue for them is they're trying to recover from being closed for so long, and if residents, excuse me, and visitors don't come here because they don't see a beach that's attractive, which is very much a part of their experience, it's going to be much harder for our businesses. So I support this proposal. Thank you, Council Member Bertrand. Council Member Storey? I'm sorry, you're muted, Council Member Storey. How's that? Can you hear me now? We can hear you now. Okay, thank you, Mayor. Well, to start over, I wanted to thank everyone who gave input today, and really, I mean, it shows that people care about our creek, the lagoon, and the beach, and I just want to recognize that Capitola has been closing the lagoon for decades, and it's been done for both environmental reasons, and in addition for the benefit of the steelhead, the habitat, and for the tourists on the beach. And, you know, and I think the only downside or what we're trying to grapple with this year is how do we weigh and balance the public health orders and the closure of the beach from 11 to 5, and at the same time make the beach very nice and inviting. But for me, I think making more space on the beach is a benefit social distancing, and to me, that's part of the safety for the public of having more space for people to be able to exercise and be able to do that at their distance. Now, and since we've already approved the junior guards to be there, and there will be hundreds of them at any given time, I think that in addition to the other residents and the visitors who will be there, because we have to remember the beach is open to any kind of exercise for anyone up until 11 a.m. And I think that that's an overriding concern for me, that we need to make room for people to be able to use it and to be able to socially distance from one another while they're doing that. We already have difficulties with people violating the order that may get marginally more difficult, but I have confidence in our police department that they will be able to manage that the best they can in the relationship to all their other duties and do that in a professional and an appropriate manner. And I also anticipate that at some point in the summer, my sense is that the health officer is going to release the restrictions on the beach altogether. And I think that we need to be looking forward and anticipating planning that. I know that the city manager mentioned that there's a possibility that it may be closed for the entire summer. And I hope that that's not the case. And I don't believe that will be the case because we need to be able to, I think, balance this disparity between having outside dining with people sitting close together and which is going to bring in more visitors to the village, to the beach. We need to provide a safe place for them to be able to congregate and be able to have a safe distance from one another. Concerning the financial impacts, I think it seems that the staff has come up with a good solution for managing that. You know, it will reduce our current year fund balance by, you know, 19,600. I think that we will still end up with about $154,000 fund balance going forward even after that. And for funding for next year, with our contingency being overfunded, I believe that we could take that out of the 43,000 that is necessary. Additional 17th and then the 26th from the contingency fund. And then in future project years, we can address refilling that if need be. I wouldn't necessarily want to take it out of the capital projects at this time. The Park Avenue project is not completed yet. We don't know exactly, you know, what may be there. And there may be other capital projects that may come for us at that time. And so I also think that we should plan on the next year's budget, put it in next year's budget, to be able to continue with the living management plans at that time as well. So with all that, I'm supported or proceeding this year with the management program. And hopefully we can be able to not only manage the beach, but also manage, you know, the public health orders that are connected to it. So those are my comments and I'll support and maybe I'll go ahead and make a motion that we approve the implementation of the self-adopted and the good management plan for, you know, the summer of 2020 that we budgeted for also in the 2021 fiscal year. And that we take the necessary funding from the contingency that's overfunded at this time. I'll second that. And Madam Mayor, I have a question also. Yes, we have a motion to second. We'll continue conversation. Councilmember Bertrand? Yeah, this is the mayor. This is a question for Steve. So there was some discussion, Steve, when you did your presentation about we were able to truncate our normal monitoring and such. I just want to understand a little bit more about that. And if we continue next year with the same plan, which might be monitoring less than we normally do, would that be a problem? So I'll start with answering the second part first is that the changes we're making to the monitoring plan this for this summer, I think our one year shot at it. The permit conditions are to do more monitoring than we're proposing to do this year. But like I mentioned, the agencies seem to be willing to work with us. So when we go to do it next summer, I anticipate we'll be back at our full monitoring level regarding the any impacts of reducing the monitoring. I will trust our fisheries biologists to help us through that. He's produced, you know, some of the savings we have are reductions he's taken on his own and reduced his fee for some of the work. Some of it is we reduced some monitoring that he did not feel that we could do safely at this time. So I don't think we're putting anything at risk. And if we do run into problems, I think our fisheries biologists will let us know and we will work through those together. Thank you, Steve. All right. Any additional comments? It looks like our mayor has frozen on us. Mayor Peterson, are you still there? Mayor Peterson, if you're still there, maybe it's a suggestion you could turn off your camera, which might help with your internet bandwidth? From, oh, Councilor, can you hear me now? Yes. Sorry about that. Did you hear the suggestion to try turning off your camera and only running the sound? I froze for a second there. Can you hear me? Any better? Yes. All right. Vice Mayor Brooks, you had a comment? Yeah. So I was just trying to process Councilmember Story's motion. So am I hearing that you want to use a contingency reserved rather than using the sidewalk dollars for, is that what I'm hearing? And I guess my follow-up question's for save. I mean, it's all, you had mentioned that you're not worried about not having enough money. So this wouldn't be taking away from the sidewalk project. Is that correct, Steve? You're muted, Steve. Yes. I believe the fund balance of $64,000 in the park equity budget will be available. Okay. Yeah. I mean, because of the financial issues we're facing, I don't feel comfortable moving forward with dipping into our reserves at this time. It seems that there's money available in the CIT project fund and that we should utilize that because that's what we have now. I don't see any benefit in dipping into the reserve. So I don't know if Councilmember Story wanted to speak to the thought behind that. Mayor Peter, other shifts? Sorry. I cut out for a second there. Did I understand you were requesting Councilmember Story to clarify his motion? Yes. I'm just curious what his thoughts are between ending the reserve dollars versus the CIT dollars at this time. Got it. Councilmember Story, would you be willing to address that? Yes, Mayor. I'd be happy to do that. And, you know, I'm not invested in which pool of additional funds we may use. However, I focus on the contingency reserve because we're currently overfunded in that reserve fund because we made our 15% of total expenditures in 2021. Therefore, the contingency reserve is currently overfunded by $144,000. To me, that is the easiest place to get the funds for this particular project. I didn't, the Park Avenue project, Steve mentioned it wasn't quite complete yet. We don't have the final numbers in yet. And also, I mean, usually for capital improvement projects, and it's just my personal preference to keep them, you know, within that for that intended purpose because who knows what other inclusion projects may come before us in the next fiscal year. So those are the reasons why I focused on that. I'm not vested in either source of money. Both of them are available. But I hope that explains, you know, why I selected the contingency fund. Thank you, Council Member Storey. So then I would offer a friendly amendment to not utilize the reserve dollars at this time and to move forward with the motion. So with the amendment that we use the dollars from the CIT project. Yeah, I'll accept that. And those are, that's just enough to get us through until May. And then we'd have to consider where the rest of the funds come from or that covers everything. I can get a reminder on that. I believe the motion that was made by Council Member Storey was to fund the work for this year and for next spring. So it would be the $43,000 if I understood correctly. Okay. And Council Member Bertrand seconded that motion. So do you have any comments on the amendment? Yeah, I have no problem with the Vice Mayor's amendment. Do we have to specify which CIP project we're thinking the money's going to come from? We're talking about Park Avenue, but in the motion should we specify? Probably wouldn't hurt. As I understood the discussion, it was Park Avenue. That's where it would come from. Okay. Thank you. So I'll make sure. Okay. Council Member Bothorpe has his hand up for comments also. Thank you, Mayor. I'll turn off my picture because it was draining my damper. Hopefully I come in clearer this time. I'm glad the direction was going. I'm totally against invoking the contingency money. That's a very swift slope because if you got our budget forecast just dropped, it doesn't mean we're not going to need that money there. So I don't want to extend the illusion like that. It's money that's legally available to be spent, but it's not going to be spending at this point. I believe she's very confident about the access. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Bothorpe. Are there any additional comments from Council Members? Seeing none, Madam City Clerk, we have a roll call vote, please. We have a motion and a second. Yes. Council Member Bertrand. Aye. Council Member Bothorpe. Aye. Council Member Story. Aye. Vice Mayor Brooks. Aye. Mayor Peterson. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all for your time tonight. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Our meeting is adjourned. Goodbye.