 for the public comment, yes. Excuse me. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the August 10th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Clerk, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Supervisor Friend. We see him. He's online. Supervisor Coonerty. Coonerty. Supervisor Caput. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Thank you. Do you want to call Supervisor Coonerty one more time? Yes. Unmuted. Supervisor Coonerty. Okay, I'm sure he'll be here with us any minute. We'll just recognize that when he is. We have a moment for a time, for a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance. Is there any board member that wanted to make any special comments for this? Okay, we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. The Board of Trustees and the State of America. Public. Item number three, we have consideration of late additions to the agenda, additions and deletions to the consent and regular agendas. Do we have any additions or deletions? Yes, Chair McPherson and members of the board on the regular agenda. Item number seven, there's additional materials. There's a proclamation honoring Kathleen Malloy insert after packet page 24. And on the consent agenda item 38, there's additional materials. Assembly Bill 556, insert after packet page 344. That concludes the correction to the agenda. Okay, we have announcement by the board members of any items removed from the consent to the regular agenda. Board members. Okay, we will move to the public comment period. Item number five, Stephanie. Now is the time for public comment. If you wish to comment in our joining us through the Zoom link, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click on the icon to raise your hand. This will place you in line to speak. When it is your turn, I will call you by name and you'll see a pop up on your screen asking if you want to accept being unmuted. Please accept this and start speaking. When she begin the timer, we'll start. Ahora es el tiempo que la Junta de Yectiva de Supervisores recibirá comentarios público. Si gustaría dar su comentario en español, tenemos servicios de traducción disponibles. Si desea comentar y se ha unido a través de Zoom, busque el icono de la mano en la fondo de la pantalla y hazle click para levantar la mano. Esto lo colocará en la fila para hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por su nombre o los últimos cuatro dígitos de tu número. Y verás una ventana emergente en tu pantalla preguntándote si estaría activar tu micrófono. Por favor, accepte y comence a hablar. You're interrupt. If I can interrupt real quick, I'm sorry. We're having some technical difficulties in that the people on Zoom are not hearing the audio portion. They're seen and they're connected, but the audio is not coming through. Just one, wait a minute. For those of you that have joined us through chambers, please file in line with the distance of six feet. Please remember that the masks need to remain on for the entirety of the meeting. In advance, I would like to thank everyone for attending this meeting today and for respecting our safety rules that we have here in the county. I understand that not everyone agrees with wearing a mask, but we are following the guidelines to make sure that we are safe as possible. And that's been a decision by the county and I appreciate your adherence to those suggestions. Zoom to speak really quick, one of the remote. You want it? Should we ask for Supervisor Coonerty? I have Supervisor Friend. I've already messaged him, I guess. He wanted to know, are we getting them on Zoom? Yes. Okay, so we can proceed then. Is that right? We're going to wait for that audio. Thank you, Supervisor. I'm going to test. Correct, thank you, Supervisor. We can hear you. I'm hearing audio from us now. Yes. And Supervisor, are you able to hear my response? Are you hearing the room? I'm on this side. Okay, at the device settings. Supervisor Coonerty, can you hear us? Yes, now I can. Okay, perfect, thank you. Thank you, it has been resolved. Okay, we're ready to go now. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. Go ahead, please, thank you. Good morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman. You know, I admit I had some technical difficulties with trying to access what I now know is 70, 702 pages with the agenda. Wasn't able to download it on my phone. I don't know why. So I appreciate that we're all able to be here together because, you know, we are actually all here together, whether we recognize that or not. I don't really have time to talk in depth about all the various things going on, but I mean, being somewhat of a nerd that has high dexterity with his hands, I find myself reading a lot. And so I just see a lot of comparisons in recent history with gentlemen like Joseph Corbell and Edward Louis Bernays, who are both experts in creating propaganda that seems to be going on now. And I don't have a timer for how much time I have. Does that mean I can talk for three hours? I didn't think so. So my thought is a mistake does not become an error unless you refuse to correct it. There's so much misinformation going on. It seems like the most popular religion now is the scientism religion. And Dr. Anthony Fakie seems to be one of the experts on that in the last 50 years. What's going on in our society is really quite sad. I have 36 minutes, 36 seconds. We are being taken over by a technocracy and transhumanism. And it seems like there's gonna be a war between the people who are trying to help other people and the ones who have just said yes to things that they don't fully understand the full implications of. So I'm here as a witness and I'm not afraid to answer any questions or just be outspoken. So thank you very much for holding this again. Good morning. My name is Saul Onguiba and I live in Soquel. And I think I spoke maybe two months ago on Zoom. So I really wanna thank you. So I really want to come here to have you guys as a witness and hopefully look for your help. Hopefully Manu Kaning. So every year my wife over the past seven, eight years she goes, Natalia, she goes to Poland and basically for vacation to visit our three children to take our children and visit her parents for a couple of weeks. However, last year, May 2020, she flew to Poland and fortunately in July of last year, she informed me that she was not returning back to the US with her children. So at no time did I consent to the children remaining with her in Poland. And during the following weeks, I learned that her decision to take her children to Poland and not return had been planned. So after multiple attempts to appeal to her return with her children, I decided to hire a attorney both in Poland and US. So the California Superior Court here in Santa Cruz awarded me the full custody of children for the next five years. The challenge of a civil order that I took after talking with the district attorney office is that Poland did not reciprocate and basically they supported the police citizen. So after multiple communication with the DA office that have been in a loop since day one, July, May, 2020, you know, it's clear that the legal path for me left is a criminal charges that are started through police over two months ago. And if you remember, now I cannot even have access to my own police report that I submitted at basically in Scotts Valley. And right now the challenge is that I have not been able, the DA office has gone silent. The impact is my 10 year old now is being downgraded, it was supposed to be in fourth grade. Now actually is back in first grade in Poland and I feel being run around. So really I'm coming here to ask your help to help me with the DA office. Thank you. If you have a case number, I can give it to you. Good morning, my name is Anna Di Benedetto. I'm in the attorney for the applicants involved with Consent Agenda Item number 68. And I'd request that that be moved to the regular agenda so I can make a few brief comments. It's an application for a summary vacation of a right of way and Aptos. I think go ahead with your comments. I don't think we're gonna be pulling it off unless supervisor of that district wanted to, but. Very good. So I would just, I think, I'm hoping that the board has received all of the information that my office has provided. I don't know if you can confirm that or not. We've provided recent correspondence and my assistants sent an email last night resending that information. Sorry, I can't tell if somebody else is talking. The main comment I wanted to make kind of summon substance is that I don't think that the county council through the planning commission and or the planning commission has properly briefed the board on whether or not the subject right of way is private or public. So I think that the matter needs to be better brief before the board can even make a decision on this. These of these whether or not what we're requesting is consistent with the general plan or whether or not you can make a decision whether to grant or deny this application for summary vacation. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Co-Britain, Matt's Britain Architects. I'm also speaking here towards 68 consent agenda. I wanna confirm that information that I submitted last night was received. Then I didn't hear that there was any note of additional information that had been received on 68. But government code requires that all evidence be heard by the legislative body, you regarding this by putting this on a consent agenda, you're being asked to violate government code. What is particularly disturbing to me is that quite often the public's being put in the position of having to take the county to court for things that are put in place to protect them. And that we're relying on you all to not put us in that position. I'm in court over something that means that permits are processed in the appropriate timeframe. I get nothing out of it and I'm correct. But rather than the county going, yeah, you're right, we've got to fix this, they're just drawing it out in court. So this is another one of those situations. You're required to hear this. There's no harm, the client paid money that have you hear this issue. You're required by code, legislative code to hear it. So how can this be that it's not being heard? So this is one of just several of these type of situations that are occurring. We have a permit streamlining act that means that permits have to be reviewed in 30 days. Well, what the county's now doing is going, we're not gonna let you submit for two months because we can't review it in 30 days. I'm like, well, wait a minute, that violates the permit streamlining act. So you're creating all these situations where people have to take you to court to get things that are required by the legislation. Thank you. I pressed the green button. Yeah, pull the mic down too, you might, yeah, thank you. I think, yeah, she'll do it for you. Can you hear me okay? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Hello, my name is Rita Fairbairn. I am a representative for Eat for the Earth, also certified and studied plant-based nutrition at T. Cullen Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies. Thank you supervisors and everyone else here today to support the children to eat healthier in the schools by providing clean, healthy, plant-based food. And especially since diabetes is on the rise with children, young children, just like other diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and so many more. We all need to be taking this much more seriously. It's the food that's causing us so many diseases. And please, we need to be raising our awareness. You see, eating habits are set in at an early childhood. So choosing a plant-based diet and lifestyle can give your children and the whole family the opportunity to learn to enjoy a variety of nutritious foods. Healthy foods improve students' attitude and can impact a more positive mood, mental health, and our environment. Thank you again for leading the way on this movement of healthy school lunch in the cafeteria for our children and for all of our future. It begins here and we have arrived. Thank you. Good morning supervisors. Excuse me, my name is Sandy Rechenmacher. I've been living in Santa Cruz for 50 years. I've raised three children. Today I come representing the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. This is a non-profit out of Washington, D.C. that's been around for 36 years headed by Dr. Neil Barnard. There are people who are in Washington, D.C. who are keeping, doing a lot of things there in terms of nutrition and health for the American public and specifically keeping the USDA dietary guidelines in compliance with what is known through nutrition science. So I'm here to support supervisor, friends, initiative and would like to also thank you all for supporting, giving that a yes vote. But specifically I wanna give you the information that I've learned over the past 15 years participating with the Physicians Committee. And this is that the American public is comprised of Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and African American populations besides white Caucasian population. These other populations are now a majority of the American public. And these populations specifically are lactose intolerant which means they cannot effectively digest cow milk. So at this point, the Physicians Committee is now raising the question about racial disparity in what they are advocating to Americans to eat as the guidelines. This guideline about dairy milk has already been addressed and negated in Canada and we're glad that we have people to follow. Thank you very much. My name is Eric Hatchek. In 1992, I bought a piece of property and ever since I've been trying to figure out how I could put a house on. But I had a garage and it burned in the CDU fire. And at this point, well, the option of having the county clean it up for me was not viable because of all the stuff I had stored in there and some of it's still okay. I'm the expert when it comes to cleaning it up. So I went in there and I cleaned it up and I've been there four months. I've worked a little slower than people. I needed the support of an RV. I have fully self-contained RV up there. And two weeks ago, the planning department's inspector showed up, somebody complained and he gave me a ticket for camping and an RV on a vacant parcel. And suggested that I would have to mitigate the cut in the embankment where the garage used to be because it's gonna erode. I mean, I've done other things that will actually help clean the place up. Like I have either an option of having a dumpster there or a trailer there to get the metal over to San Jose. And if I fail to respond, I don't know what this means. Go ahead, just. If I fail to respond to the citation at the end of the month, I owe $500 in fines. And next month it'll be 1,000. And the month after that, 2,500. And this is not gonna help me clean up my mess. And of course, they also told me I don't have a right to build a garage anymore. Unless I get an acre there. Okay, complete your comments then, please, sir. I'm sorry? If you could complete your comments. Okay, thank you. Well, good morning. My name is Ellie Black. And first and foremost, I want to for all and for the sake of all that is good and right in this world, for God's sake, let's stop finding the people who lost their houses. My God, he's getting a ticket for living in his RV on his property. Are you joking? Okay, sorry, my blood pressure's a little high right now. But what I did come here today to share, this is news that just came out within the last week. And this is regarding Patrick King of Red Deer, Alberta. Patrick King was fined $1,200 for violating the Alberta Public Health Act for being in a group larger than 10 on December 5th of 2020 in Red Deer, Alberta. Excuse me, Patrick King represented himself in court after being fined $1,200 for protesting against the COVID hoax. He issued a subpoena to the provincial health minister for proof that the so-called COVID-19 virus exists. They were then forced to admit that they had no evidence whatsoever. I'll repeat that. The provincial health minister was forced via his request in court to admit that they had no evidence whatsoever that the COVID-19 virus exists. The virus has never been isolated and thus the government had no legal grounds to impose any of the punishing restrictions that they have inflicted on society and resulting in fines such as Mr. King received. Since this shocking confession came to light, the province has since rescinded all COVID-19 restrictions. And now officially treats COVID-19 as nothing more than a mild flu. So I ask you this, as above so below. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the board to address other like-minded individuals over Zoom and here, not specifically the board because you guys don't seem to listen to anything we have to say. I'll direct your attention to two vocabulary words. One is universal truth throughout human history, tyranny, unjust or oppressive governmental power, a person who wields power oppressively. Tyranny never lasts and despots are inevitably deposed. We are at a tipping point and we must stop consenting to this tyranny. The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government? The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action but from refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when people withdraw their support. It's time to withdraw our consent to be governed. While there is a litany of historical analogies that I can draw from, the most appropriate in my estimation is that of Horatius. In ancient Rome, Horatius, along with two other friends defended the narrow end of a bridge from an advancing and overwhelming army so that his brothers and sisters could destroy the bridge behind him and stop the advance of the invading horde. The abuse of our children by forcing masks on little tiny kids and the tyrannical overreach of government officials is what we'll make all stand against. Together with other parents and like-minded individuals, we will defend the well-being of our children. I will leave you with this final thought. As Horatius defended and faced the advancing army with friends by his side, it is said that he said to every man upon earth, death cometh, sooner late, and how can man die better than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods? There is no greater and more worthy fight to be had than for our children. We will face the odds and do what we must. We will not comply and we do not consent. You guys need to make your minds up. Take these masks off the kids. Hi, my name is Erica Sunojic. And about, I don't know, 18 months ago or so, we came up to you guys and said, hey, News Flash, the PCR tests don't work. And we knew because we looked at a bunch of studies and all the things and News Flash PCR tests have all been recalled because they don't work, they don't distinguish between COVID and the flu. They'll be recalled they labs have until December so that the crimes can continue to be perpetuated until then. So seeing as how, you know, those of us who are paying attention to various sources of information, including especially natural health news, earth-based information. Well, we're paying attention to a few more things. So a couple more News Flashes for you guys. News Flash, what's in the vaccines is graphene oxide. That's a poison. So what it does is it messes with people's immune systems. So again, News Flash come fall. We're gonna see a lot of people whose immune systems are completely compromised due to this graphene oxide. It's called antibody dependent enhancement. It is the phenomenon which stopped all, all mRNA vaccine things prior to this COVID-19 thing, which they had, which they've been able to speed up due to the emergency youth authorization. So all previous attempts at mRNA vaccines were stopped in animal trials because the animals all got sick or died due to antibody dependent enhancement. That issue has not ended. So that's just a couple pieces of information for you. PCR tests don't work. Antibody dependent enhancement is gonna be an issue this fall. And so all this stuff that you guys are pushing, all of these things are anti-health. And so it's gotta stop and have a good day. I'm gonna go fast. My name is Mondo Morlis. I'm a small media owner company here in County. Just recently, the city of Watsonville voted to allow multiple ADUs per large parcels. This is beyond the state mandated one regular and one junior ADU. They did this without an environmental review, without having to change their general plan or for properties to have a rare or expensive housing cluster designation. Over the since this time, we've lost 900 homes due to fire. As a result, rent has become more competitive. Labor costs have gone through the roof and the cost of materials has escalated as well. If we continue our policy of just allowing the state mandated minimum, this housing crisis is going to continue. Recently, this board voted to put on a ballot upon for $140 million to build relatively expensive housing. The public rightfully denied that. ADUs are the cheapest, fastest, most environmentally friendly housing option that we have, period. On large properties, these ADUs do not take up street parking. They do not put up 50 plus units on a small area that cause traffic. And we as a public will continue to recruit, support and fund candidates that will allow us to have housing that doesn't cause taxes to be raised on everybody else. This is a common sense proposal. I ask that we follow the lead of some of our other cities and make this happen. Thank you. Will we have a chance to speak on the, will we have a chance to speak on the agenda item specifically or is now the time? You can speak on an agenda item now if you wish, if you're not going to be here later, but then you wouldn't be able to speak on it later. Okay. My name is Phaedra Shock. I lost my home in the CZU fires. My parcel is located in the Riverside Grove neighborhood. I'm not located in a debris flow zone, but I am currently stuck in geology. The reason being I have a slope in my backyard that is 35 feet away from my proposed build site, which is actually moving the proposed site as further away from the original. My parcel is small at about 50 by 100 and moving the home build site away from the slope is going to end up encroaching onto County easements. So I am kind of stuck in a spot where I don't have any more room to go, but I'm still stuck in geology for a slope that's been existing predating the fire. And before I bought my home and likely for centuries. So why am I being subject to further financial burden and loss of time when my only option to rebuild is going to actually be safer than it was before? We're a year out and I'm terrified that I still don't have an answer whether or not I can rebuild. The proposed rebuilds will be vastly safer than what was previously existing. The more difficult the county makes this, the more we could see people building without permits. They are getting counting approval and this is not the goal when we attempt to safely rebuild. I also hope that you'll consider the potential future challenges such as adding to the homeless crisis, adding to the housing crisis. And I urge you guys to do the right thing. I urge you to keep your promises. Please consider directing the planning department and OR3 to allow us to rebuild our homes without evaluating and mitigating these geological hazards. When you go home tonight to your homes and surrounded by uncharted landscapes and things that are sentimental to you, think about us because we haven't been able to do that for a year. Thank you. I fully agree with Pedro. She lives across street from me. My name is Tracy Walker and I'm also a CZU fire victim. I haven't even had a chance to grieve this loss because I've spent the last year fighting and searching for answers that I just, I can't find. We are also fighting geology and we have been, we were apparently the first people to submit our GHA. We hired with our neighbor, John over here. We all hired a geologist to come drill our lots and he saw no reason we couldn't rebuild. But the county told us that because there's evidence of an ancient landslide, we have to drill a 100 foot hole now and do extensive searching or surveying of this ancient landslide that hasn't moved in a thousand years. Anything we build right now will be safer than what we had. Our house was 81 years old. We are already taking his recommendations and we're going to reinforce our house and build a retaining wall, both of which were not there before. So why can't we build? Anything we do is gonna be safer. Our next door neighbors on the other side of us who are downhill from us are still there. They are not being told they have to do any mitigations to keep their house safe. So why do we? This ancient landslide is barely on our lot. So why is it holding us back? My kids wanna go home. I wanna go home. I lost everything. Please stop taking this from me. My husband and I have also been, we've talked about maybe buying a new house, cutting our losses, but we can't even do that. I'm a stay at home mother and he's self-employed so that's not an option for us. We can't get financed. You guys are gonna create more homelessness. Is that what you want? Like really, is that what you want? Cause I don't wanna be homeless. Is there anyone else in the room here? Is there anybody at the atrium? Do we know? Atrium, do you have public commenters? I do have 11 via Zoom. So I'll start calling those. There's some down there, you said? There are none in the atrium but I do have 11 on Zoom. Oh, okay. Richard Reinders, your microphone is unmuted. Hi, my name is Richard Reinders. I'd like to comment in favor of agenda item 111242. I'm married with three amazing kids and they've been so resilient in all this loss and difficulty from the CCU. Wildfires, our family home burnt down. We've been working to rebuild this last year in 10 years or 10 days or eight years since our home burnt down. Lots of us are in this situation. We still don't have all the pre-permits cause every second of the way they've been placed in a house. And there are people in this county who are going to their home at night right now but they're not always finding ways to make it easier for us to go back to ours. We need to work on helping to get to yes. My family has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on county-demanded studies for soil, geo-adjusting designs. And we just wanna build a largely similar house in the same place our house always stood. I'll move the home over if that's what's needed. I'll put in a retaining wall if that's what it takes. But please don't tell me to figure it out though if the county folk and Santa Cruz can't figure it out today. If I could figure it out, I would. The way the situation is set, no professional will touch these issues out of self-protection. So I cannot get any help either. And if later the county gets facts that show that there is a potential issue that I'm happy to make adjustments. But we have hundreds of families in this situation and we can get out of this geo-health with a bit of prudent leadership. It's just been really tough. We wanna rebuild the home that we had with a lot more fire safety, that's true. And do it on the solid ground we have. And the rules in place were not meant for this kind of situation. So we should adjust the rules to be reasonable and meet the needs of our time. Policies change to meet the needs of the situation and then you adhere to them. Let's be flexible. I also wanna remind people of a pending disaster who do not stop putting unreasonable roadblocks and delays in. In a year, hundreds of families' insurance money for renting will run out or will have run out. They will not have a home that's rebuilt to go back to. They'll have to choose between their mortgage or paying the rent. They cannot afford both. A lot of so many in our community homeless are completely wiped out. Time is of the essence. It really is. People who want to read. HIP Admin, your microphone is available. Thank you members of the board and Santa Cruz community. I am Amy Mancia, Program Coordinator at the Health and Food Network partnership of Santa Cruz County. On behalf of our local community health centers, Santa Cruz County Health Centers, Santa Cruz Community Health, Salud para la gente, San Perro Marmonte, Sientes Comunitadentos, Janice and Santa Cruz and Encompass Community Service, we appreciate our board of supervisors support and recognizing August 8th through 14th of 2021 as National Health Center Week. Their support elevates the innovative quality care provided by community health centers locally. We're particularly excited about this year's theme, community health centers, Chemistry for Strong Communities. This theme highlights a strong role community health centers in our communities. We celebrate them and their long-standing history to serve one in 12 people nationally and one in five rural residents. Locally, our health centers serve one in three centers as a resident. Community health centers form the nation's largest primary health care network. We're embarrassed to help their access into geography, income and insurance that is to provide accessible, dependable, primary care and underserved communities. We thank our local community health centers for providing care to residents while fighting on the front lines of COVID-19 to keep our community healthy and safe. National Health Center Week 2021, we celebrated in person and virtually this year and activities range from our local community health centers for your heading individually and joining in on radio shows and putting forth more awareness to the work and impact that they make in our community. Thank you, everyone. Please join us in celebrating National Health Center Week. Carol, your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. I am here representing all of the boys and girls, young men and women that attend school in Santa Cruz County. Right now, the kids are gonna have to wear masks at school according to Ferris Sabah. Unfortunately, Ferris Sabah has no legal authority to make that requirement of our kids. So one of the interesting things that's been happening is everyone keeps talking about quote, unquote, mask mandates. There are no mask mandates. If you look at the actual documents that are issued by any governmental agency, it's always guidance. So for example, the California Department of Health, it has issued guidance regarding face coverings for school. They actually, when they issued this guidance in mid-July, they immediately changed the guidelines to say local districts could be responsible for creating their own guidelines around this. And unfortunately, Ferris Sabah has taken this to an extreme to think that he can tell all the kids in Santa Cruz County they have to wear masks. Masks are incredibly dangerous to kids. I don't even understand why I have to explain this, but kids, I mean, when you exhale, there's bacteria, there's things you don't want in your body. And to trap that in a mask right around your nose and mouth for the entire day makes no sense. In addition to that, the kids are not gonna learn facial expression, that there's more fear when people are masked and it's gonna decrease cognitive precision, it's gonna decrease oxygen in their blood and so forth. So I really look forward to working, especially with Ryan and Zach on this, because I know you both have school-aged children and I know you both want to change this for the benefit of your own kids and the benefit of all the kids in Santa Cruz County. So I'm gonna be sending you all an email, I'm gonna be working with you to get an agenda on the agenda. 915, your microphone is available. Yes. I applied the excellent information that has been brought to you. Morning, and I'm appalled to hear what is happening to the CCU fire victims that are trying to rebuild and are being thwarted. Remember hearing Supervisor McPherson ask the planning department last fall, how many estimated parcels will not be allowed to rebuild? And I clearly remember the answer was 260, 260. So the County really needs to look at this and you've heard this morning how it is harming the people. To that end, a consent agenda item 50 delays the board's consideration of policy changes that would help these people. Granted, it is until August 24th, but it is still a delay. And I would like a public explanation about why this delay is here now when you're hearing grief and suffering from those who are affected by it. On a different topic, let me just say that these policies will requiring people to change where they build, may trigger new road requirements by the Board of Forestry Regulations that are currently being put through. To another topic, Measure G, that has spent sales tax, your board approved and the voters approved in 2018 has no citizen oversight as was promised on the ballot. No citizen oversight. The auditor controller, Ms. Driscoll said it is those conditions are being met simply by having the budget on the website that is not public oversight. So I ask that you create a committee just as RTC has done for Measure D funds to create and fulfill. David Van Brink, your microphone is available. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you, good morning. By the way, the first 10 minutes of this meeting weren't on Zoom. I'd like to suggest or request that item 52, which proposes to add delay and expense to rail trail segments, 10 and 11 design work to be pulled from consent agenda to the regular agenda to provide further discussion and public input. In particular, it should be put before the owners of the branch line, which is the RTC and their staff. Thank you. The Lonnie Faulkner, your microphone is available. Good morning, can you hear me? Great, thank you. Hi, my name is Lonnie and I'm a resident of district one. I'd like to request that agenda item 52 be pulled from today's agenda and put to the RTC where this discussion can be brought before the public. I would also like to state that rail banking is not appropriate for our specific rail system since we as Santa Cruz County residents own the rail and it by no means is abandoned. I ask that any future efforts by the Board of Supervisors to add additional funds or changes to the rail and trail projects such as this item number 52, as well as Board's consideration of adding new members to the RTC who may be Greenway members or supporters must be brought before the public in the RTC meetings, especially since the Greenway organization has been taking actions that are not, in my opinion, in the public's best interest and are manipulative and shrouded in misinformation. For the Board to make decisions regarding the rail and trail of public asset without the public's clear understanding of the complex truth, which Greenway, I feel, has been working to diligently prevent, the public should be able to weigh in on these decisions in the RTC meetings. Item number 52, as well as rail banking are sneaky ways for Greenway to destroy our public asset, the rail and will further delay both the rail and trail. Thank you very much for your time. Mary Scott, your microphone is available. Thank you to the Board of Supervisors. I have a couple of items. I wanted to first call attention to a new petition that's out. It's called the Greenway petition and it seeks to rewrite the general plan to remove all mention of rail transit planning. This seems to me to be a terrible, terrible idea. The petition is not really clear and that is the effect, but the language of the initiative certainly is, removing public transit, removing the rail transit plans that we've had for so long that are part of a regional effort to take away the power of the Board of Supervisors and others by rewriting the general plan is absolutely unacceptable. I want to join Lonnie and David in requesting that item 52 be pulled from the consent agenda for public discussion and discussion by the Board. I don't feel it. I think that in the analysis, there seems to be a presumption that we're not gonna have rail transit, that the six to six vote by the RTC somehow is a green light to go ahead and look at rail banking throughout the now, it's gone from segment 12 to now looking at segments 10 and 11 to compare a rail with trail, the plan of record, the plan that we've all voted for and wanted for so long and that the RTC until John Leopold's seat was lost to the executive director of Greenway until that happened, we were fully on our way to continuing to study rail transit and in April 1st, we were at a point where we could have continued to look at the finer details about how an affordable system could be done to suddenly change directions away from public desires and contrary to the results of all of the studies that have been done to any kind of idea that would pull the tracks to do a shorter, cheaper, temporary trail only to have to come back and rebuild the trail in order to put rail back in. Well, it's just unacceptable. So I think this item should be dropped, tabled or pulled for discussion and taken to the RTC for a full, full public bidding. Thank you. Tina A, your microphone is available. Hi, good morning. Hello, can you hear? Good morning. Hi, this is Tina. Thank you. Firstly, I think please help the CZU families. It's heartbreaking hearing what they're going through. How about the wealthy Greenway backers? How about they put their energy instead of trying to pull the rail cord and help those families? I think that would be a great idea. And I don't want to lose anything. I don't want anything to happen to our public transit plans for the corridor. We can't risk losing the rail line. The anti-transit groups are disingenuous. I believe item 52 must be pulled from the Consent Agenda to provide public input and discussions. This delay is for four more months and it's costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars more. And then the Greenway and the anti-transit will say, look how much more expensive segment 10 and 11 is going to cost because of their created delay and their created additional cost. Federal and state support for passenger rail is increasing. Connecting Senators County and Monterey County by way of the Pajaro station to Amstrak will change transportation in our region. Abandoning rail when so many South County residents work in North County is privileged at its worst. Rail banking violates the spirit of the public process. Thank you. Michelle L, your microphone is available. Good morning supervisors and Bruce McPherson, your my supervisor. A shout out to a supervisor friend taking on the initiative for caring about our children's health. I hope this whole system will adopt environmental responsibility and sustainable healthy food as affordable value. For 12 years I sat on the ethics committee with your friend John Longwell and health is linked to ethical justice. Food is a preventable medicine and eat for the birth is focused on whole food and based diet. Sounds cute. It's not just we want in earlier we want money, but actually of this crisis here that we're now seeing in our planet which is influencing with the food option. The red in our healthcare has seen an increased type of food diabetes in children, which was already mentioned. Lewis Mitchell established food policy where she connected farms to hospitals can do the same thing. Connecting it for that increases but in the school teaching and also economy and justice. And I'd like to have it reset for a couple more minutes. If I may justice is seen in cancer as the second leading on death and farmers from the toxic chemicals 22 million tons of pesticides when used in the United States quarter times greater than the national average in California causing prostate, breast, lung, a non-Hodgkins process here in our community. So please focus on the preventative medicine and I will never be able to make sense on how we are the wealthiest country ever in history and yet our children are far behind France other countries for eating healthy. Community preventative illness is helpful. Call in user three or microphone is available. This is Marilyn there and we should really have three minutes. I applaud the previous speakers and a couple of years ago, I provided the board with copies of the international field to stop 5G on earth and in space and instead of taking action to protect the public, you are promoting this technology and there are 5G antennas all over. I want to bring to your attention of what I just received. I know the contagion myth by viruses including coronavirus and not the cause of disease by Dr. Thomas that's Callan and Sally Fallon more well. Inside cover says, are there really such things as viruses or are electro small toxic living conditions and 5G actually to blame for COVID-19? The chapter on electricity and disease as some info here of particular concern is the fact that some 5G transmitters broadcast at 60 gigahertz a frequency that is absorbed by oxygen causing the oxygen molecule composed of two oxygen atoms to split apart making it useless for respiration. On September 26, 2019, 5G wireless was turned on in Wuhan, China and officially launched November one with a grid of about 10,005G base stations. James A, your microphone is available. James A, it shows that your microphone is unmuted. Last call, Reverend Beth Love, your microphone is available. Good morning, chair McPherson and board. I'm Reverend Beth Love, the founder of Eat for the Earth, a local nonprofit that supports plant-based and plant-centered diet. I'm here today to speak about item 38 on the consent agenda. The board's endorsement of AB 558, the California school plant-based food and beverages program. If this bill passes, the state will offer grants to school districts to increase plant-based offerings for the state's school children. I want to thank you supervisor friend for your leadership in putting this item on the agenda and thank all of you for taking this small step to lift up the importance of promoting plant-based diets. As other Eat for the Earth speakers today have pointed out, healthy plant-based diets prevent and in many cases, reverse heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and many of the other leading killers and people in our community. A shift toward plant-based diets is also the most potent solution to the climate crisis and other environmental challenges. Yesterday's IPCC report underscores the need for government to take swift decisive action to avoid the worst catastrophes of the climate crisis. It also raised up the need to focus on methane. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and warming the atmosphere. But the good news is that it also leaves the atmosphere much more quickly than CO2, which might, some of it is still around in 10,000 years. Methane's gone in 12 years. Animals such as cows and sheep raised for food are the primary source of anthropogenic methane. So when we decrease our consumption of these foods, we draw down methane. Research has conclusively shown that we must shift toward plant-based or plant-centered diets to maintain the habitability of our earth. Eat for the Earth is grateful that you are endorsing AB 558 and we will be contacting you shortly to discuss some of the other requests we have made. We look forward to further collaboration with you to support Santa County in becoming a model of sustainable eating. Thank you very much. There are no other speakers on, Sam. Okay, thank you. We return to the board. Is there any comments? That'll close the public comment session. The action on the Consent and Items. Supervisor Koenig, do you have any comments on the agenda item? Yes, thank you, Chair. Just a few items I'd like to call out. On item 22, I wanna thank the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience for preparing this grant for FireWise with the state, applying for $175,000 to fund local fire safe council. We've seen a huge amount of interest in neighborhoods becoming FireWise with more than doubling 13 certified groups today and another 16 currently seeking certification and this money, which I think we have a good chance of getting, will help support them in that. On item 32, I hope my colleagues will join me in asking the governor to establish a new firehand crew site that would jointly serve Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties at the former Youth Probation Center at Camp Glenwood located in the unincorporated community of La Jonda in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Cal Fire has supported this site. We know how important hand crews are and also that we've, from Chief Larkin's presentation in June that we're currently quite short in the number of hand crews, which is two of the normal five at our Ben Lohman Conservation Camp. And I've also been in communication with Don Horsley of San Mateo County, a supervisor there asking him to submit a similar letter to his board so that we can coordinate our ask between the two counties. On items 33 through 36, I wanna thank Micah Scott, Lori Chatham, Dina Taylor and Chris Gunst for offering to serve on his first district commissioners on a number of commissions. And on items 54, 57 and 64, I wanna thank Public Works for preparing the storm damage repair on Laurel Road, Lower Highland Way, Mount Batchee Road. It's represents nearly a million dollars worth of storm damage repair. And it's fantastic to finally see it moving forward. On item 61 and 62, the Little Wharf Three-Miler and the Surfer's Path, both of these events, the applications for permits, both of these events center around East Cliff. And I think it's just an important reminder that public investments like this lead to fantastic spaces that we all wanna enjoy and also increase commerce and visitors to our area. And I guess on item 52, the update to rail trail design on segments 10 and 11, this item is in line with a vote that the RTC already took to consider the trail on the rail bed alternative for segment 12. And I think as was discussed then and staff has made clear now, it's important that we consider all alternatives in our analysis of how best to proceed with the rail and trail and the corridor in our county. And it's best that we can include this alternative in the study now rather than waiting for some time. That is all my comments. Thank you. Supervisor Friend. Any comments? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I'd just like to begin with item 52. Actually, I need to recuse myself from item 52. It's a rail line related item. My personal residence is within 500 feet of the rail line. So I have a financial conflict on that. So I'll need to recuse from 52. Starting back though, toward the beginning of consent, on item 38, I appreciate the speakers that came today and my colleagues support in this state legislation regarding the plant-based grants for schools. This board also supported an item that I brought forward a few years ago regarding funding for salad bars in schools that we were able to obtain through the Silicon Valley leadership group. This is just really part two of ensuring that there are healthy options for our kids in this area and it doesn't cost school districts anything through the grant program. Item 39, the Land Trust Conservation Easement Appreciation County Council for turning that around so quickly, a Land Trust as you know, does outstanding work to preserve agricultural land and keep it in agricultural use. That's what this is for. 55 acres of prime agricultural land in the Pajaro Valley requires the board though to submit a resolution of support. So I appreciate my colleague's support on that. Item 51, the final, final, final completion of the Selva Beach Branch Library, an absolutely outstanding project, generational project for that community and for the entire branch system. Thank you to Damon and everybody that worked on that because it really is an absolutely beautiful community-based library system there, branch there. On item 55, speaking of a once in a generation investment the Westbridge property, we are moving even closer toward really providing equity within South County and access to services as well as options for our employees that live in the mid and South County. This has been something that at least my constituents and I imagine Supervisor Caput's heard the same thing. They're very much looking forward to an ability to access services in the South County not needing to commute up. As we speak about climate change, we speak about equity. This is really one of the greatest investments that our County can make and I appreciate Mr. Plosios' work and lead on that. Finally, I'll conclude with item 63 with a great deal of gratitude on the Pinehurst Greenbrier and all the pedestrian improvements from Rio de Mar Elementary. Great deal of gratitude for Steve Wiesner, the Assistant Director of Public Works who's really taken the lead on these calming issues in that area as well as also obtaining significant funding from the school district in order to partner with us on this. This will be the largest investment in pedestrian improvements that neighborhood and that school has seen. And so I just appreciate that work. A lot of kids walk there from the neighborhood or dropped off nearby because there's parking impacts there and have to walk in and this will greatly improve that safety. So great appreciation to you, Mr. Wiesner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few comments. Item 60 through 62, just wanna recognize that we're reestablishing some of these public outdoor events that bring the community together, generate commerce and just celebrate the quality of life. And so it's nice to have those come back. And item number 65, I wanna thank Public Works for their work on rebuilding the Mill Creek Bridge and finding the funding to do it. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Okay. I have a few comments to repeat what Supervisor Koenig said on the fire resiliency funds. I also wanna thank the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience for pursuing grants to increase the county's fire preparedness. Also, we want to thank Supervisor Koenig for bringing forward a request to Governor Newsom for a new fire hand crew site to serve Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties as well as assist the Fire Safety Council. On item number 50, I would like to give additional direction that staff report back to the board on September 28th on this item. With the flood study mentioned in the draft or the deferral letter, as well as additional policy options regarding Code 1610 for the board's direction given on June 29th. It's been mentioned on the road repairs. It starts at 53 and goes into the 60s. I wanna thank the Public Works Department for doing a fantastic job with the funding we have. There's a tremendous amount of demand for road repairs throughout this county since the 2016, 17 storms that we had. On the fifth this week, I can tell the residents of Alba Road Creek, Bear Creek and East Siamese, they're gonna be thrilled to know that the projects are on their way there. So that is tremendous news. I wanna, the Public Works Department has done a fantastic job with the funds it has to upgrade our roads and repair our roads from those terrible damages that we had before. So I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the additional direction that I gave on item 50. I'll move the consent agenda with additional direction on item 50. Second. Thank you, sir. I have a first from Supervisor Koenig and second from Coonerty. And just for clarity, I'll call items 14 through 70 with the exception of item 52. And we'll call a separate vote so Supervisor Friend can recuse himself. Very well. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, Chair. The motion passes unanimously. Now for item 52. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes 4-0. Thank you. We will go to our regular agenda on item number seven, honoring our planning director who is retiring, Kathy Malloy. She's not gonna be able to be here today. It is my honor to introduce this item, honoring Kathy Malloy in almost 40 years of public service, 11 of which have been here at the county as our planning director. Kathy was unable to join us today to receive this special recognition signed by all supervisors. I would also like to speak about my personal experience in working with Kathy who has always approached the issues before with professionalism and really dedication to problem solving. Her work has been focused on several critical long range planning policies, many of which have completed after, will be completed after her departure, but it will bring many positive improvements that will serve the community well for years to come. I wanna thank Kathy for her service, a strong leadership and worth ethic, and congratulate her on her well-deserved retirement. I'd like to invite any of the other supervisors to make public comments if they wish. Then we will go to the county executive staff and members of the public if they wish to make comments. Any comments from the board? Mr. Chair? Yeah, so excuse me, Ms. Coonerty. Supervisor Coonerty. I just wanna take a moment and like you mentioned, I think Kathy Malloy's tenure was marked and approach was marked by a real commitment to problem solving by her and her team, none more so than over the last year, but also in streamlining the process of making it easier every year since I've been here, a real commitment to serving constituents better and more effectively, and I just wanna appreciate her leadership. Thank you. Any other comments from board members? This Mr. Chair, I'll briefly echo what Supervisor Coonerty and you said and also add on that when I started on the board, I guess it was about nine years ago, Ms. Malloy really did take a lot of time to ensure that I understood not to seek and land use decisions, but the history and context and really took feedback about important elements of change both within the planning department but helpfully ensure that I understood the complexity of the local land use decisions. I felt that she was always a very professional, very accessible and very knowledgeable person and I congratulate her on her retirement but I also want to just thank her for the time that she took, especially early on in my tenure to really ensure that I was the most informed decision maker on these policies as possible, time that I don't think people normally take with new electives, she really went out of her way to ensure that I have that time. So I just wanted to commend her and appreciate her on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Caput. It's been wonderful working with Kathy and I want to wish her no retirement and I want to thank her for all our outstanding service to the County of Santa Cruz. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just echo what Supervisor Friend said that in my first months on the board, Director Malloy has been extremely helpful in helping me to get up to speed quickly and providing really a huge amount of her time and I just want to thank you, Kathy, for everything that you've given me and preparing me to make some of these decisions and wish you the best in your journey. From the executive staff, Mr. Palacios. Yes, Chair McPherson. I want to thank Kathy on behalf of all of our staff and I would personally like to thank her for over 30 years of public service, many cities and with the County for more than a decade. She's a true public servant, very professional and dedicated and I really do thank her for all that she did in her work for the community. Thank you. Any comments from the public? Or did you have any comments from the public? Okay, well, we can move on to do item number eight. Oh, excuse me. Go ahead, sir. Hi, Mr. James Ewing Whitman. I don't know if I've ever worked with Kathy before. I appreciate all the work she's done. I've been doing work in this County with permits and codes for more than 25 years. There's just so much that's not really being addressed. If she's been here for 30 years, then she's pretty much familiar with the seeds project which was introduced in this County in 1993 and was passed in 1997. I know when I say the seeds project that may go over most people's heads and that's pretty much acceptable. That has to do with agenda 21 and agenda 2030. So I just wanted to put that in the public record. Thank you. She was not with the County the whole 30 years. Thank you, sir. Excuse me, Chair. I do have one speaker be assumed. Thank you. They've lowered their hand. They've lowered the hand. Okay, there's no comment from the public. We will move on to item number eight. Mr. Chair, I think we need to actually formally adopt that. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, we'll go to item number eight. Consider proposed ordinance adding chapter 5.53 to the Santa Cruz County Code to address litter and pollution reduction relating to single use food service wearer and take out and delivery of prepared meals, approve the ordinance in concept, schedule the ordinance for second reading and final adoption on August 24th, 2021 and direct the Department of Public Works to conduct a public outreach to local restaurants and businesses impacted by the ordinance before implementation starts on March 1st, 2022, as outlined in the memorandum of Supervisors Koenig and Friend. We have ordinance chapter 5.53. We will have, Mr. Koenig, do you want to present this? Yeah, I'll just share a few open comments. So as we all know, the COVID pandemic has unleashed a tsunami of plastic waste adding to an already difficult problem that our oceans face as well as on land. And so even today, many dining meals are being treated as takeout meals to avoid any perception of contamination. And we can see the evidence of this in stuffed and overflowing trash bins all over the county including the trash bin right in front of the county building often most days at lunchtime. This ordinance will take a step towards reducing the waste by making the stuff opt in instead of opt out. That is you only get things like straws, utensils, condiments and napkins when you ask for them, avoiding the situation where you end up throwing away a bag with a clean fork, napkins and unused condiments that you really didn't need in the first place. The ordinance also requires online ordering platforms like DoorDash to have a button to opt in for utensils. This ordinance is similar to one that has been adopted by the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco and San Diego as well as the city of Santa Cruz which passed the ordinance in April, 2020 and implementation will begin in March, 2022 at the same time proposed by this ordinance. I did present this ordinance to the Integrated Waste Management Local Task Force on the June 3rd, 2021 meeting and it was positively received especially because it will bring in line policy for the region in a collaborative effort. The proposed start date for actual fines and violation of this ordinance again is March 1st, 2022 and that will allow plenty of time for the Department of Public Works to do outreach to businesses. It also aligns with the implementation of our single use cup ordinance for synergies in that outreach and I'm happy to answer any questions. Comments from the board. Any other board member at this point? Mr. Chair, I'll just add a comment Supervisor Coenig for this, just briefly if this aligns with everything that this board has done and just a reminder that also that the board the actions here may seem like they're local or regional but have very often become state and federal policy within one to five years after our implementation be it from the shampoo bottles and hotels or be it single use plastic bags. So this is just one of the policies while one of our local jurisdictions are aligning with realistically we're setting the expectation I think that we can see this becoming a statewide policy as a model that's so appreciate the board's continued support on these model ordinances. I would like to say I'm very supportive of this item as well. I want to thank Supervisor Friend and Coenig for bringing it forward and I was pleased to co-sign with Supervisor Friend previously on similar action taken by the board relative to banning single use totalitary bottles provided by hotels and guests as was mentioned by Supervisor Friend. Any other board member have a comment? Comments from the public. Hello, my name is James Ewing Whitman while it seems very point and to reduce litter and waste. Seems like there's a great deal of information that such like the PCR tests are not valid they don't test anything. So what has happened to all the businesses not just in Santa Cruz County and not just in the state not just in this nation but in the world that have been closed down to the due to false pretenses. So yes, it's great that we're worried about litter and excess garbage but this is just kind of like the icing on the cake to look at one effect of what's going on and not taking a deeper look. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Bring the item back to the board for action. And there are now speakers on Zoom chair. I'll move the recommended action. Second. It's called the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Ferrisen. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We will now go to item number nine to consider directing the planning department and the office of response recovery and resilience or OR three to return no later than September 14th, 2021 with options for the board action including but not limited to code amendments, general plan amendments or existing code interpretation that would allow CZU lightning complex fire survivors to rebuild their homes without evaluating and mitigating potential geological hazards and that predate the August, 2020 fire as outlined in the memorandum of supervisors McPherson and Coonerty. And before we get a presentation from the planning department and our other experts on this, our analysts, I just want to thank supervisor Coonerty and his staff for working on this item with my office. Also, I want to thank the staff for the office of response recovery and resilience to planning departments and the other departments for their work on the fire response and recovery initiatives to date. We all know that the CZU fire devastated parts of both my district, the fifth district and supervisor Coonerty's third district and constituents from both districts have been communicating with our offices on how to recover and rebuild as fast as possible. And I'm grateful for all the time, our fire survivors have put in to making sure we are aware of how it's going for them and it's not going very well for some as we've already heard this morning. While we have heard good things from some of our fire survivors, we've also heard from others about areas that need improvement and things that are opposing significant barriers to rebuilding. One of the biggest challenges is the impact of our geological hazard ordinance, which is County Code 1610, which you'll hear reference to, I'm sure. The code has become a major obstacle in terms of the time and money that our survivors have to rebuild their homes. And to address this situation, supervisor Coonerty and I are asking the board today to support staff coming back in about a month with options to remove potential hazards that predate the fire and rather focus on our attention on the debris flow risk caused by the fire. We were fortunate not to sever debris flow that was caused by the fire previously. And I pray that we'll be fortunate enough not to see anything like this in the future. But we're working on a flood control study now that will provide more information about our debris flow and hopefully better understand who is at risk. But in the meantime, we believe the pre-fire risks that have existed for years in both of our districts shouldn't be addressed through the fire rebuilding process. We have to remember these are potential hazards, not certain hazards, and many may never come to pass. Many of our survivors are underinsured and already facing a difficult time making the rebuilding a pencil out. If we apply the code to the pre-fire conditions, we run the risk of making it that much harder if not impossible for some folks to rebuild their homes. We want these community members to be back living in their land as quickly and safely as possible. And in an ideal world, we would have all the time, money and infrastructure to address all potential and certain hazards. But that's just not a reality in this situation that we're in. The section of our code that discusses exceptions, which is 1610.100 states that an exception, quote, may be considered by the planning director or decision making body if the exception is necessary to mitigate a threat to public health safety or welfare, end quote. So I believe we already have a path forward and we just need to determine what it is. And I hope that we will send a strong signal through the community today that it is our intention to do so for the welfare of our fire for survivors. I'll have some questions later after public comment, but we'll leave my comments there for now and ask Supervisor Coonerty if he has any opening remarks as well. And then we will ask, we will go to the public and ask staff for their comments. Supervisor Coonerty. Sure, thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the fire survivors said it more powerfully than any of us ever could. People have been out of their homes for a year. They've been trying to work through the process. And right now there is no path for them to rebuild. Their insurance money is running out. They look at their homes that they were living in and but for the fire would still be living in that the county would deem to be safe and inhabitable. They look at their neighbors who aspired, whose home survived and see that the county believes that those houses are safe and inhabitable. And they're just looking for a way to get back and rebuild their homes and their lives. And so what we're doing today is asking for some options. We can't delay much longer. People are on a timeline. Finances are limited and the trauma is still impactful. And I appreciate your leadership and your office's leadership in bringing this together to try to find a path forward for folks. I think, thank you for those comments, Mr. Coonerty. And I think we'll have a presentation by the planning department now, are you all right? So staff today is mostly in a responsive mode since we're responding to an item that's been brought by your offices. However, I do have a couple of remarks, mostly aimed at making sure that we all have the same understanding of what the process currently is in the recovery permit center so that we can then all be commenting from the same knowledge. And just to note that staff can of course return on the 14th with options in whatever manner that we're directed. We have set up a pre-application geologic clearance process the purpose of which is to have the potential geologic hazards evaluated in a way that focuses on the subset of parcels that might need to be looked at more carefully and allows the rest of the parcels to go forward and make their applications without being delayed. So it's kind of a stepwise process with an emphasis on having as many parcels that can go forward be identified early so that they can go ahead and do that. The first step is we do an office review, check maps and consult the county geologist on each parcel that work is done without a fee and it's done by the county staff. We have done 259 of those geologic clearances and of those 53 have screened in for needing more review. So the vast majority at that step one have an approved geologic clearance. At step two, we evaluate whether any site work is needed in order to understand what the hazards may be at the building site. In some cases, it's clear that a site specific geologic investigation that would be done by a private consulting geologist is required in order to get the information that's needed. There have been 38 circumstances where a private geologic investigation has been called for out of the original 259. There have been 15 cases where it wasn't really clear whether that full geologic report was required. And in that circumstance, there's kind of a middle step where either county geologic staff or some geologic consultants that the county has hired to do this work go out and do a site visit to determine is it really necessary that there be a full geologic investigation or can we clear the site by looking at it carefully at this point. And of those 15, one has had to proceed to a full geologic report and the others actually we only did 12. We required 15, but we did 12. One needed a full geologic report and the others were able to move on with some basic recommendations to make application for their building permit. So that is sort of the stepwise sieving process that we go through so that we focus only on the ones that are in a physical location that have potential for life safety hazards. And the county geologist in making those determinations along the way is focusing on life safety only, not looking at property damage and is focusing on landslide hazards only. And in doing that, we are working within the confines of chapter 1610 to apply those rules as liberally as we can to move as many people forward as we can. I think I'll leave it there. That sets out how we're doing what we're doing. And our staff is here to respond to questions if you have any. Mr. Sting, can I ask, so there's 250 or so applications, but there's 900 plus homes. Is your sense that that proportion of about 20% would, will continue or will the properties are the relatively less complex properties, the ones that have come in for that prescreening? In other words, this is a sample as we have so far, will those numbers hold or will, or do you think that there's a disparity in types of properties where permits have been applied? Yeah. Our sample size is between 20 and 25% depending on how you count the number of parcels total involved. And we do think that this sample now skews toward the less complicated parcels. And that's because people with the easier sites have been coming in. We have a high proportion of sites that just don't have any slope stability issues. So I do think that the percentage that would need a closer geologic investigation would get higher the further into what we get. Okay, so I mean, we're talking about potentially hundreds of parcels that potentially are running into this geological challenge. Potentially, yes, but that's, yeah, I mean, it's very hard to say for sure, but we do think it would be a higher percentage than our currently, currently about 15% of the ones that we see have needed more geologic work. And I would expect that to rise somewhat, but it wouldn't be completely different. Thank you. Yeah, the question is from the board. Yeah, I think, you know, I appreciate all the work that planning staff has done to try to streamline this process as much as possible for applicants. With the steps that you defined, the pre-screening process, the hazards evaluation and determination, how long does it typically take for an applicant to get through those steps? Once we got organized and rolling, the pre-clearances are now taking about two weeks. We have them on a two-week schedule and by and large, we're meeting it. In the early weeks, maybe even month, they were taking longer than that while we were getting consultants in place and all of that. But our goal is two weeks and we're pretty much hitting that on the pre-clearances, the first part. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Questions from the public? Hello, my name is James Ewing Whitman. I've been doing professional business in this county for more than two decades. I've mitigated code compliance when needed more than two decades ago in the past five years. I've done some very interesting code compliance in this county. I guess I wanna draw the attention to something I shared on September 15th, 2020 in this board when we had three minutes and that had to do with the possible causes of these fires, not just in Santa Cruz County, not just in this state, not just in this country. I believe that's still part of the public record. It can be found, I believe, still on YouTube if you research James Ewing. It's really not my intention to just point out massive amounts of smoke and mirrors going on here. I really feel I'm trying to assist with a greater good, not just what's going on in the past year and in the next five years, but in the next 40 years in this county. I will remind the audience, they can do their own research that in 1985, CNN put out a presentation where 60 gigahertz in lightning can be used as weapons. I saw that on, I guess it was August 19th or 18th when those fires started in the early morning, early Sunday morning. I've seen the effects of directed energy weapons in this county with where I used to live on Alba Road in other areas in San Mateo County. So I guess I'm just gonna plug myself for going back into code compliance in this county because I was quite successful with work I've done previously in the past few decades. So it's just wonderful to witness all this stuff. Thank you. Hello, my name is Antonia Bradford. And before I begin, I'd like to thank the offices of Bruce McPherson and Ryder Community for hearing the needs of their constituents and putting this crucial item on the agenda. On August 20th, my family of seven lost their home to the CZU of Fire in the Fallen Leaf neighborhood in Boulder Creek. I will never forget the moment I found out my home was gone. I screamed in a voice I did not recognize. This last year has been the most challenging of my life in between losing my home, the devastating effects on my precious land, fighting with the SBA to get disaster aid as we were underinsured and fighting with the county. There have been many days where I just didn't want to be alive anymore. It has felt like the agencies that were supposed to be helping us recover from this tragedy were dead set on fighting against us where he'd trauma causing us over and over. For me and my family, the planning department more specifically geology has been the greatest place of unjust stress in dealing with the county. If I were to sit here and tell you all my experience with geology, I would go far beyond my time allotment, so I'm gonna be brief. My neighborhood is awaiting the debrief list that need to be complete so we can incorporate that data in our geotext recommendations. While I didn't agree with that necessarily, I can accept it at this point, but what I struggle with is that geology is requiring us to do a geologic report that is beyond what the county can do based on the code that exists that makes no exceptions for people who are victims of natural disaster. Consequently, the counties require me to hire private geologists, which will cost me a minimum of $6,000. This cost doesn't even include whatever mitigating factors they would be recommending, which everyone knows in Santa Cruz County are widely over-engineered. When this required geologists came to my land, not every single thing they wanted to look at was non-fire related. And while the county is not dictating what they look at, they are certainly dictating that they be here. So what they were looking at is a slope behind my home and also a drainage that has been there and was there when my house was built with permits back in 1971. It's also worth noting that it's never slid or moved in all the storms or earthquakes that have transpired. If my home hadn't burnt, but the land behind my home had, the county would not be coming in putting his requirements on me. It couldn't. So right now with his fire victim, it shouldn't. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Julie Lucia. Myself and my family lived at 112 Cypress Tree Lane, the Fallen Leaf neighborhood until our home was destroyed by the CZU fire on August 20th. Our home was built in 1973, fully permitted the first one on the street. We purchased the home only three years prior to the day of the fire. My husband grew up in the Salvia area and felt blessed to be able to buy a home where we could raise our kids. We put so much love into our home. It was the first home my daughter knew and my son described it as his favorite place. It was our sanctuary, our peace, and we miss it so much. Unfortunately, the fact that almost a year has passed and we haven't yet obtained permits to start building is entirely frustrating. We were promised a streamline process and I will say that it was going smoothly up until the geological assessment. We paid the fee to hire county geologist Jeff Nolan thinking the assessment would be a breeze. Our land is virtually flat with only a slight grade, a parcel very uncommon for Boulder Creek. This last April, everything came to a halt when we were told we would have to hire a private geologist. This caused many sleepless nights as we were told this would cost us thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars and even more depending on any mitigating factors. Then the county obtained funding to connect a basin study to assess debris flow. We were told they were concerned about existing geological features located above our neighborhood that have been there for hundreds of years, not fire related. Our geotech was scheduled to start drilling early June for soil samples he had since pulled the job. As many local geotechs have done stating that he would not move forward until after the basin study is complete. This has now set us back for many more months. We're up against the strict timeline put upon us by our insurance company. We need to start building as soon as possible. Dealing with this has become a full-time job. I had to take a leave of absence from teaching first grade for the sake of my mental health. I ask you if my house hadn't burned would I be going through this? The answer is no. This is not a new build. We didn't purchase a new plot of land to build on. We don't even want to build a bigger, better home. We simply want to build what we had. Next week we'll mark one year since we lost our home we still do not have a clear idea of when we might obtain permits. I'm here to ask the board to vote yes. On this item please help us get back home. Thank you. Evening again. So we have made it difficult to build here over the last 20 years. And what's not being mentioned is the lack of human capital as a result of that. Oftentimes our best construction workers, plumbers, electricians, et cetera, they've moved on to greener pastures. Colorado, Idaho, Texas. My heart goes out for these victims of this tragedy. But unfortunately those of us who lived here long enough know that there's another one coming down the road. We've had earthquakes, we've had wars, we've had terrorist attacks, financial collabonies, all that sort of thing. We have to work together to find common sense ways that we can help build housing so that when the next disaster comes we have the human capital so that we can recover. And we don't hear these dreadful stories of these people even when they have the money they can't find the people to build it. Now personally when I built here my geo report costs more than my architect, my engineer, and my surveyor combined. This was not in the fire, this was not an earthquake zone. That's just the reality of it is. We need to look at these sort of things so that we can help these people recover. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? There are two speakers on Zoom. On Zoom. Karen V, your microphone is available. Yeah, there's a gentleman in my camera. Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry sir. I realize now that I spoke earlier. It's okay, just take your time, it's all right, it's good. Take your time. I spoke earlier, I guess it's the wrong time. This is appropriate time. Are you gonna repeat your comments from before? John, I'm gonna concise it. Basically, I had a non-conforming garage and I'm now informed that I may not have it. And for that reason, I'm not allowed to be there to clean up the mess that is there. It's a conundrum. And so I just, if you could maybe just write to my office, that would be fine. And just with your specific situation, that'd be fine, I'd appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Now, is there anybody else in the public who would like to speak? We have two. I have a little bit more to say. As far as... Get your mic down just a little bit, thank you. As far as everything being expedited, I've seen anything but this. My husband and I, we hired private for our cleanup and our tree removal because we wanted to be ahead of the game. Our cleanup was done in December and we have hit nothing but roadblocks since dealing with the county. And then we had our property drilled in April. It took two months for the county to give us their denial. And now we don't know what to do. They're telling us to do this extensive testing that we can't afford. We've spent like at least $50,000 already, running out of money or running out of time. So please stop making us wait. I don't wanna wait another month because another month feels like a lifetime. So please consider what we're being put through right now. It's not just waiting. This is our life now. And it's getting ridiculous. Thank you. I want to ask more. Anybody else in the public want to speak? There's a couple on Zoom. Yes. Karen V, your microphone is available. Yes. I'm Karen Vitale and I'm helping my son who is the majority property holder of a house in the Four Springs neighborhood. We too are being held up by the pre-clearance requirements on geologic hazards. And we have tremendous concerns too that after we get, should we accidentally end up having a good result from this study that's coming out in mid-September, there'll be some other geologic hazard that's been in that neighborhood for God knows how long in geologic time to hold us up again. It's my son's dream to live in the Redwoods. And he purchased this home that had been there since 1930, untouched, undamaged to live out his dream. And he purchased this home in 2018 with an inheritance he received from his grandmother to live his dream. Now we're looking at a young man early in his life going to be saddled with this tremendous economic loss. If we can't get this to work again, he needs his life to be made whole. He's lost his job, he's lost his place to live and he's back home in a really lousy situation. We have to figure this out. So it's fair for the people who are trying to rebuild not only the mitigations, not only waving the mitigations, but doing it in a way where people will actually want to work with us without pages and pages of liability releases because they won't be complying with code. We have to make this practical and realizable and we got to do it soon because the insurance money doesn't last forever. Thank you. Michelle L, your microphone is available. Thank you. I am also a survivor of the CCU fire. I have a 5,000 square foot home still standing on three acres. However, the fire came all the way up to my home and it was a toxic fire. Five times I tried to go back into my home, five times I became severely ill and I pay $12,000 a year for my fire insurance and they're refusing to clear it safely. It's a human rights violation that they're using Serfro where a Latinx population is sent into homes without proper hazmat beer to clean it properly because pesticides and the asbestos you need to have it wet clean. You can't just have the Latinx people going and inhaling the asbestos without protection. I can't go in there. I've gotten sick five times. I feel like this is just spinning our wheels. Nothing's gonna be done. I have not had any information as far as fire preparedness. I don't have any place to apply for any of the things that you're talking about today. I listened to Bernie Sanders' revolution, our revolution as a mayor, he got so much done. Where's the planning? Where's the solution? What programs are you doing? Talk, talk, talk. That's all I hear. I don't see anything done. What the hell? I have $12,000 a year for the last five years and I can't live in my home and yet somebody with Nazi tattoos that holds a gun to me is protected by the white supremacist sheriffs. I try to talk to Jim Hart and Mitch Medina blocks me. I mean, what is going on in Boulder Creek? Other than talk. I can't even get home. There are no other speakers for the exam. No other speakers. Kate, we will return to the board for a possible action. I'll move the recommended action. I'll second. Move by Coonerty, second by me. Mr. Chair, just really briefly, I appreciate everybody coming to share this and I also want to just say that I appreciate planning's work. I mean, they have a real impossible job you're trying to not just balance with the catastrophe but also both local and state regulations on this. And so I'm definitely interested in it coming back in September. I'm also interested to see what it looks like though in September so we can give a sense of all the various competing interests but I appreciate you and Supervisor Coonerty bringing it forward. I also wanted to acknowledge planning department's work on this because it's a tough road for them as well trying to balance all these things. It's a good point. I know that things certainly aren't moving fast enough for many people, but I know that we have tried in various situations tried to move this along as quickly as we can. We do have a motion on the floor. All the roll please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. We have a scheduled item now in number 12 at 1045. It's just about 1050 I guess at this point. The Board of Supervisors will remiss recess in order to permit the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 7 to convene and carry out a regularly scheduled meeting. And we will ask the Co-Chair or the Vice-Chair, Nancy Bielicic to call this to order. Can we get her on? Mr. Chair, I actually can do this for the next, I appreciate that. Oh. I just wanted to see Madam Clerk, do you need time in order to promote people? I am good, thank you. All right, thank you. Okay, excuse me, go ahead. Supervisor Friend who's Chair of Zone 7. All right, so I will bring, I'll call to order the Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 7 Board of Directors for our special meeting on August 10th. We will begin with a roll call, please. Director Koenig? Here. Bielicic? Here, here. Caput? Here. Coonerty? Here. Culbertson? McPherson? Here. Lucas? Lucas is on the call. Friend? Here. Thank you, you have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now begin with oral communications. It's an opportunity for members of the community to address us tonight on the item today's agenda, but within the review of Zone 7, are there anybody that would like to address us today? There are no members of the public via Zoom. Thank you, all right. We will, we need to, on item four, we need to continue the minutes. Actually there was an error in the minutes that got caught, and so if, we're just gonna continue the minutes from June 8th to our next meeting. We only have one item today, which is a consent agenda item number six. Are there any questions from any board members on this consent item? There are none here. Okay, are there any members of the community that want to address us on this one out of one consent? There are no members of the public wishing to address the directors. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'll bring it back to the board for action. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion to approve. Second. So a motion from Director Billusich and a second from Director Conant, the roll call vote please. Director Koenig. Aye. Billusich. Aye. Caput. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Friend. Aye. Thank you, motion passes with attendance. Thank you, and confirming Dr. Strudley, there is no program managers report, and that is the only item on today's agenda. That is correct, Chair, thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for the fastest meeting in Zone 7 history, Mr. Chair. I'll turn it back to you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and Mr. Supervisor Friend. Okay, we will move to item number 10 to conduct, we'll probably have to wait a little for some, the presenters should we wait for a moment? Are they gonna be coming on Zoom? They'll be walking in any second. We're good. Okay, I'll go ahead and read. Item number 10 is to conduct a study session on addressing homelessness in Santa Cruz County to provide feedback and direction on housing for a healthy Santa Cruz six month plan and implementation and various other program updates direct human services and to report back on February 2022 to the housing for a healthy Santa Cruz six month framework implementation cycle as outlined in the memorandum of the human services director. We have a housing for a health Santa Cruz, attachment A, no unsheltered families with children, attachment B, emergency shelter units and unincorporated County, attachment C, housing problem solving and homeward bound attachment D, smart path, coordinated entry, attachment E and rehousing wave attachment one. And while our presenters are getting settled here, I'd like to make some opening comments on this if I could. This item today is really a study session on preventing and ending homelessness in Santa Cruz County with a presentation by our human services department housing for a health division, excuse me, staff will be providing an update on the housing for a healthy Santa Cruz three year strategic framework, specifically a report on the first six month plan and the progress on framework goals since it's an adoption last spring. In addition, today's presentation includes a number of progress reports on previous board directives that we've had which appear as attachments to the report and it's a thick report. With so many challenges in our County, our country, really the issue of homelessness ranks among the most challenging for sure. And I'm pleased that we have a framework and we're developing a framework now to guide our work locally and a new division to support it. The issue of homelessness is much bigger than a local strategic strategic plan and a new division to manage it. But because of this, I really look forward to today's presentation and to focusing on how we can work smart locally through this plan. At the same time, it will be critical that we also spend time advocating with our federal and state partners to bring local government much needed resources to move our plan forward as effectively as possible. I really wanna thank the city of Santa Cruz in particular that has been very, very concerned and it made some moves to really address our homeless problems in our downtown region but we have worked with the cities to coordinate our efforts as we go along. And there are really two critical issues that have such great concern to all of us that I'd like to highlight and that's affordable housing. Addressing homelessness will require us to create more affordable housing and I look forward to focusing on this critical issue with staff and our community this year as we go along and prevention. The issue in front of us is monumental and if we don't prevent more people from becoming homeless this next year, the problem will only grow much bigger. And with the end of the eviction moratorium, it's all the more critical that we expand our focus on preventing people from becoming homeless. I really encourage eligible local residents to get help with their rent and utilities through the California housing is key website. Again, California is housing key website and program before the current eviction moratorium ends and that's upon us very soon. So with that, I'd like to have our human services director Randy Morris make a presentation and follow up with some discussion. This could be a long one, I think. Thank you, Chair McPherson. As you said, I'm Randy Morris, the director of the human services department. Good morning to you. Supervisor Koenig and Kappa is good to see you in person and hello, Supervisor Friend and Coonerty virtually. What a surreal time to be here in a hybrid environment but it is nice to be back in chambers. I wanna start by acknowledging that this community like many communities made a decision to stand up an actual full division in the county to sort of move a big strategic plan forward to take on such a monumental issue and express my appreciation for RCIO and my supervisor Carlos Palacios who really has had a vision and consultation and under your direction board to really advance the work that many years ago was not prioritized in this community. And I also wanna thank your board for during COVID and the recession and the economic downturn you actually saw the priority and the importance and the economic uncertainty we had to actually stand up this division to approve the creation of a new director position that would report to me is now manifesting the form of Dr. Ratner sitting next to me with whom we would not be as capable of moving this forward. So I appreciate your vision and commitment to this and I'm humbled and honored and take very seriously the responsibility we have to help address this issue. I wanna say a touch more of some introductory comments and then I'm gonna turn it over to Robert who will go through the PowerPoint presentation itself first. This is really as a reminder but it's been some time and there's been so many things going on. I just kinda wanna level set that this is the first six month report in on the adoption of your board's approved three year plan that was the end result of a long series of efforts in this community for a long period of time. And in the report today we as staff are putting in front of you three very specific recommended actions. And I just wanna bring your attention to that because as you said, Supervisor McPherson there's a lot of material here but at the end we have these three actions that we're recommending you take. So number one, the action is to proceed with conducting the study session and to approve the next six month work plan. And what I wanna highlight there since it was six months ago plus that we adopted the three year plan. We know that the issue of homelessness is so complicated and the moving parts are so many and so many are out of our control federal and state actions that we agreed in the plan every six months we would reevaluate where our focus should be based on what has happened and what we're looking at going forward. So that is item number one, there is in your materials and it will be discussed in Robert's presentation what our recommendation as staff is for where we should focus in the first the next six month cycle and affordable housing as you said, Supervisor McPherson is absolutely the priority. Number two, you said in your opening remarks Chair McPherson that there are a number of attachments. The attachments item two is to accept and file multiple progress reports. I think in hindsight is a byproduct of the lack of a strategic plan that there are multiple one off directives to different county departments to address homelessness. What we have in front of us today is the consolidation of those previous one off directives and the six month report in. So ideally we start moving this all together and one consolidated strategic plan and report into you every six months but because we are not there want to request that you accept and file. And then the last one is we will take direction from you to be reporting back in February of 2022 the next six months. And if you give us any specific direction including on any of the attachments we'll make sure to fold that into what we report to your off to the board and to the public in February. So before turning over to Robert I'd like to just say a touch more about my experience having spent 30 years in working in the health and human services safety net but unlike Dr. Ratner who worked directly in housing and homelessness I've been peripheral to it. And it is really disturbing and shocking in a humanitarian crisis we're dealing with that is beyond the size and scope of any city or county. And there's a lot we can do but there's a lot that is complicated and we hope that in today's presentation we break these out. We focus where we think we can focus. We focus where we can advocate with the federal government and the state government. And I just wanna share a couple of reflections that I hope will resonate as Robert walks through the presentation. One is the temptation that appears to bring everybody to rush to find answers to very, very complex issues with something so large that end up not fixing any issue. And that is just a recognition that I think this happens a lot when they show up in at least two ways that I'd like to recognize. First is homelessness is much, much bigger than what's visible to the community. And just to put in context the encampment that is behind this building represents about one 25th of the number of people that are actually homeless in this community. But the amount of attention that gets paid to the encampment behind this building is much larger than one 25th of our time and energy. And I just share that to say we have to focus on having better encampment response and better services, but it is much bigger than what we see. And too much policy is spent in reacting to what is seen and what is invisible is sometimes as if not more concerning. And the second is we are attempting a staff to put forward to your board and to the public. What we see is the necessary complex moving puzzle pieces that we need to weave together to actually move the needle. And our assessment is that too often there are very reactionary and myopic solutions put forward that don't take into account the full scope of the puzzle that needs to be put together. This issue is not gonna be solved by just identifying a parcel, just identifying better outreach, just identifying one time money and too much of the work we have been doing has been based on that. So we hope that this report puts forward some solutions that weave together a better puzzle, a better plan that will actually address the issues rather than just reacting to specific ones. I wanna offer a little bit of candor to put in perspective the magnitude of this issue because I think the public deserves this and I think we need to be really frank with what is in front of us and the magnitude of this challenge. If you are not aware, if the community is not aware, COVID has created a lot of change in our community and as it relates to the crisis of unsheltered, we have received approximately $45 million of federal and state money that this community did not have to offer shelter to those who are unsheltered so that COVID would not break out amongst the unsheltered. That's $45 million we did not have before. It's about 10 times the size of the federal and state money we had before and here's the difficult and disturbing reality. Even with that much infusion of money, we still have behind this building a big encampment. So it's not just about a big infusion of money and temporary emergency shelter. It's much more complex than that and I would like to end my comments with saying we have some hope, we have some promise, we have some things on the horizon and we have some decisions that we as a community need to make that we as staff need to bring forward to your board so that we can make a decision that's informed and thoughtful and not just what I shared early reactionary and a concern that will just not move the needle. So let me share a couple of final thoughts. There are people who have spent much of their career working in housing and homelessness like Dr. Ratner and in that small circle of people who work in California, there are known solutions to this issue. The problem is they don't often get applied. Often what happens is the temptation to react to these emergencies or put one off solutions that get applied and the full plan doesn't move forward. So I feel good that this community before I got here put work together to create the strategic plan. And I also want to balance that with anybody listening to this who's frustrated with just hearing plan after plan after plan, we know the plan alone doesn't fix it but the plan puts us in a better position to figure out how to organize and strategize with what I will end with. We have a federal government, we have a state government and a governor who have made honest investments in putting money into local government that we did not have before that allow us some decisions that will position us to actually effectuate this plan. So we are in a better position but we have some choices to make. And we hope that today's presentation will put in context what we've done the last six months and what's in front of us in the next six months and what we see coming from the federal and state government so we as staff can inform you and we can make an informed decision that the community can appreciate and you can understand and we can all have a better plan and much more promise that what's in front of us will help address this issue. So with that said, I would like to turn it over to Dr. Ratner who's gonna walk through an actual PowerPoint and we are both here for questions and response to the public or anything from your board. Thank you. Thank you Randy and thank you members of the board and the Santa Cruz community. It's a real honor to be here to present an update on how we've been moving forward with the Housing for Healthy Santa Cruz plan that you all approved back in March and we're gonna provide an overview today of our accomplishments between January and June and try to address some of the questions that the board has had and some of the other attachments and the slide presentation I'm gonna go through is a high level overview and at the end we wanna save time for questions from you all and have a moment to clarify some of the items. All right, so here is an overview of what I was gonna cover today with the presentation just context of how we got here with the framework. Remind folks about the framework and its goals and how we've been doing relative to those goals. Talk about how we've progressed with our first six months of work in our new Housing for Health division and then there's some updates on areas where the board has established some policy goals and had some questions around program updates and then highlight some areas where we think we should really focus our efforts in the next six month plan and then time for questions and discussion and just building on of Randy's comments there's this quote on the bottom of the slide from Fitz and Van Gogh about great things are not done by impulse but by a series of small things and it's really hard to remain patient when there's such a complex difficult social issue that we call homelessness but I think we need to maintain the focus on sticking with our framework goals and watch out for impulses for quick fixes and make sure that they're not steering us away from long-term what we want which is ensuring everybody has a safe and healthy place to call home. So the framework itself identifies an overarching goal that will reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50% over the three year period in which the framework is in place and then we would reduce the overall homeless population by 25%. I think a lot of people get confused by the two distinctions in the work that we're doing there are programs that provide temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness and then there are folks that don't have access to any shelter at all. So we're trying to achieve improvements in both areas reducing the number of people without homes that have no shelter at all and then also reducing the overall rate of homelessness in the community. So you can see the numerical goals articulated here in this slide between a 2019 what we call a point in time count. So that's a one day survey of the number of households experiencing homelessness that was done back in 2019. We're gonna replicate that count every year in January to see our progress and then our ultimate aim is by 2024 to get to the numbers here or lower. Challenge is going through the slides. All right, so the framework itself has some high level goals that are listed and the thumbs you can see on the slide deck give us you all an update on where we are relative to those goals in the framework. So there are some performance goals for our programs in our community related to how quickly we're able to help people go from being homeless into a permanent housing situation and the rate at which people exit those programs into permanent housing. So overall, and there's some materials in our report to you that indicate our performance is not trending in the right direction. During COVID, we've seen an increase in the lengths of stay of participants and programs and we've seen a reduction in the numbers that are actually exiting the housing. I personally feel like that that is a reflection of the situation that we all find ourselves in with the pandemic. We heard earlier today during your hearing the impact of the fires on the housing stock in our community. And there've been a lot of challenges retaining staff and helping people to move forward with their goals during the pandemic. As the pandemic winds down, I expect that we'll see an uptake in our performance over time, but we have a ways to go to get to the goals articulated here. During the pandemic, as Randy indicated, we've seen a large influx in federal and state funding that has enabled us to meet our capacity goals in terms of temporary housing. So temporary housing in this context refers to emergency shelter and transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness. Rapid rehousing, which is a program model that combines services, help looking for housing with temporary rental subsidies. We've met our goals in terms of that capacity. We've also met our goals in permanent supportive housing capacity. And we've been able to do that using these one-time federal and state funds. There's an alarm clock on the slide because we're gonna run out of those funds due to the allocations we've received from federal and state government coming to an end. So we need to be mindful that these temporary increases in capacity are a result of greater federal and state investment. And as Randy suggested, if we need to continue that level of investment, we're gonna need to continue to get that kind of resources from state and federal government. I wanted to put our housing capacity into context. This slide may look a little busy, but I'll give a brief overview. It's a reflection of our capacity in our housing crisis response system. Every year we need to report to the federal government on something called a HUD Housing Inventory Chart. So this graph shows what's on that inventory chart from 2021. On the bottom of the graph are populations of people in households that are more likely to experience homelessness. So there are young people between the ages of 1824, people fleeing unsafe situations, domestic violence, sexual trafficking situations, families, so adults and children, SPD seniors and people with disabilities, veterans, and then folks who are of a working age who don't have children. What this chart attempts to show is how much housing capacity we have for those different populations. So the blue and the orange are reflective of our capacity with permanent housing programs. The blue is reflective of actual buildings where we have a physical location that someone has acquired and is managing to provide permanent safe housing for people who had experienced homelessness. The orange is what sometimes is referred to as a voucher or a budget of funds to help people close the gap between the private markets, housing costs, and their incomes. You can see that most of our community's permanent housing resources are in the orange category. What that means is that we're highly dependent on the availability of the private housing market to be successful in helping people to transition from homelessness into permanent housing. You can also see on this chart our temporary housing capacity in the gray bars. And we have the most capacity for families and seniors with people with disabilities. And there's this really large orange bar under seniors and people with disabilities. So that's the group that's at high risk for severe disease if they were to get infected by COVID. Seniors 65 and older and people with chronic health conditions. That's our bump in our shelter capacity that's a reflection of those federal and state dollars that have helped us to protect people from COVID. But those dollars will be going away and that capacity will be reducing over the next six months to a year. One of the major areas in which I feel like our division has made progress. The human services department has a wonderful business analytics unit. And we went through a process over the last six months of transitioning a data system that federal government requires us to use called the homeless management information system from a nonprofit to our county team working with the software vendor to manage that. And that's enabled us to get data that we did not have before on what's happening with our programs and our services throughout the county that are working with people experiencing homelessness. So I wanna make clear that this data is only a reflection of what's in the HMIS system. So to get in the system you need to be able to access services with someone who's actually using it. So this is not a picture of the full universe of people experiencing homelessness. It reflects the state of our system as a whole, the number of providers doing the work and the number of households coming in to ask for assistance. This particular graph is based on households. Our divisions really decided to focus on reporting on households because in the housing world we wanna encourage us all to think about people living with the people they want to. So a household is by definition a group of people who articulate they wanna live together. And so we're really trying to track how many of those household units do we need to try to help at any point in time. Overall, you can see that between July of 2019 and June of 2021, our community is hovered around 2,300 to 2,500 households experiencing homelessness. You can see a trend line between July of 2019 and April of 2020, some dips in the numbers. And then it starts to go up again. I believe that that increases largely a reflection of our increased capacity to serve people with our COVID-19 sheltering. And you see that number go up between April and October. And then it started to flatten out as our capacity to provide temporary housing and add new programming has come to an end. Below that graph line is a table that highlights our goals in the framework. So our goal in January of 2024 is listed on the left side. We wanna get to just over 1,000 households experiencing homelessness at any point in time. And the point in time count in January, 2019 is to the right, which is where we started. And then you look at the far right of the table at list where we are in April. And I wanna make this as clear as possible. The point in time count is one day. So it's one day where we look at who's in shelter and there's a survey of people who are unsheltered in our community. Volunteers and paid staff go out to do an organized count. And that's compared to what we see in a month. And it is fairly typical around the country that over the course of the year, the point in time count reflects between three and five, one third to one fifth. The number of households that actually experienced homelessness over the course of the year. So it's important to remember that those are just a snapshot on the day. What we have with our new data system is we're really tracking over the course of time and month by month what's happening. So in our first six month work plan, we actually identified 43 different milestones. And I was surprised when I went through the process of reviewing our overall goals, how many we actually either partially or fully completed. So all but one we really tackled over the six month period. A few that I wanted to highlight for the board and the public is the homeless action partnership is a federally mandated collaborative entity called the Contume of Care. The homeless action partnership is our local name for the Contume of Care. And during this last six month period, the current board agreed to reform itself and expand its representation to include slots for nominations from the board of supervisors and city council members and other key stakeholders. And that's been a project in the works for quite some time. So it actually may not seem like a significant event, but it was a really significant event for this community to agree to make changes to that government structure that are consistent with our framework, which talks about accountability, greater transparency. So I'm excited to work with you all and others in the community to implement that in 2022. I alluded to earlier the change in our data systems, the homeless management information system, switching who's operating that and getting to the place where we're leveraging some of the talent and resources in our human services department to pull together data dashboards. We also are partnering with the state. The state has something called the homeless data integration system. And we were one of the first counties to transfer our data up to that system. And we're helping them to pilot some approaches to making that data closer to real time because of the expertise in our department. I'm excited and there are some challenges with the rehousing wave that we launched that you all had approved some months ago. And this is our effort to bring together the core ingredients to address homelessness, the supportive services and the housing subsidies and efforts to work with the private rental market to help as many of our COVID-19 shelter guests to transition from homelessness to permanent housing. And there's an update later in the presentation on where we are with that. And then finally, I've been working in this area for 25 plus years. And I've been incredibly impressed by the partnership and the culture that we have with our local housing authority. They're a really committed partner to this work. And they've entered into several agreements with us to try to help us move forward with our framework goals. I hope to go into the next slide. So I'm gonna go into some of the board policy goals that you all wanted us to report on. This is a request back from February of 2021 for our department to use data and information and reaching out to our stakeholders to understand what it would take for our community to have no unchartered families by the end of this calendar year early 2022. So our HMIS homeless management information system data over the past two years indicates that on average there are 280 to 330 families. So that's adults with one or more children under 18 that are experiencing homelessness. And of that group, there's 30 to 70 that are typically unsheltered. The pace at which our system is helping those families exit to permanent housing is averaging five to 20 families per month. So there's really two ways that we can get to a community situation where we have no unsheltered families. One is we accelerate our efforts to help people who are homeless, get back into permanent housing as quickly as possible. The other, which is a quicker response to this issue is creating more shelter capacity. So based on my personal and other folks' interpretation of where we are with our performance metrics, if we were to want to get to this policy goal more quickly, I think the faster way would be to expand our shelter capacity. So the recommendation provides some very general budget numbers on what it would take for us to create 30 to 70 more family shelter units in the community. And it would require us to identify an appropriate location or locations for that type of shelter operation. We would need to secure some one-time funding to either acquire the land if it wasn't already publicly owned and to build structures on that site. And then we would need the funds to operate that shelter. So the slide has fairly wide estimates in terms of the cost because there's a lot of variables in terms of constructing a new facility versus purchasing one that exists. So very wide range between six and 42 million depending on the opportunities. And then on average for a high quality shelter program that helps people to exit to permanent housing, we estimate it will cost $80 to $100 per day per unit of housing. So there's a range here between just under 900,000 and 2.5 million per year to get us there. We'll go to the next slide. One of the other board policy goals in some ways that's related to the previous one was for us as staff to explore what it would take to create 120 emergency housing units and programs in the unincorporated parts of the county. Part of our report identifies for you all that we work with our geographic information systems department to identify parcels throughout the county that are zoned for public facilities. And those are parcels that because of state law, we were able to more quickly develop sheltering program there than perhaps other locations. So it's not an all inclusive list of potential opportunities, but it gives us a snapshot of locations in the unincorporated area where this type of development might be possible. For us to get a emergency housing program going, we need the land. We need the approval from the local jurisdictions. We need an operator who's willing to run the program and maybe also help to build it. And then the resources to implement it both to start it up and to keep it going. So here again, there's some wide estimates in terms of startup cost. Safe parking is our cheapest intervention. I think some people would say that's not technically shelter, but it creates a place for people who are living in cars and other types of vehicles to park safely. So we could create some more safe parking at a lower cost, but if you actually wanted to create shelter where there was access to water and utilities and toiletries and showers, et cetera, that would cost us more. So it goes up to $72 million if we're starting from scratch and building new structures. And then the estimated annual operating costs are based on the same estimates from the policy goals related to family homelessness, 1.7 to $4.3 million per year. What are the next one? So we were also asked to provide an update on something called the smart path to housing and health. So the federal government has mandated that local communities develop a coordinated entry system for people experiencing homelessness. And at a high level, the concept that the federal government was pushing through this expectation is that every community would have a standardized way for assessing people experiencing homelessness. And when I have clear ways in which they prioritize and match people to available resources, and in our community, that effort has been called smart path. This slide highlights some data on what's been happening with that assessment and referral system over the past year. So the table on the right shows the number of smart path assessments that we did over the past year, 938. When I say we, there's designated staff who've been trained and supported to implement this assessment process. The number of individuals who are referred through that process, 327, which was lower than our goal, that is a reflection of what I mentioned earlier. If we don't have spaces in our programs, we're not making as many referrals. How many of those referrals actually led to people entering transitional housing and how many led to them getting to permanent housing? So you can see they were leading to transitional housing went down significantly. The data indicates our transitional housing lengths of stays have gone up a lot over the past year. But some of our referrals to permanent housing because of those new one-time resources, we've been able to get people sometimes straight from shelter or living on the streets into permanent housing. So we actually exceeded our goal there. The slide on the right, I think is really telling. The average number of days between someone getting this assessment to potentially get matched to a resource and actually having referrals 168 days. And then the average number of days from when they receive referral to actually getting into housing is an initial 278 days. So these two numbers have gone up in this past fiscal year, which is consistent with our overall trend. As you can see that this is, it adds up to close to a year of waiting from that first time to getting back into housing. So overall our framework, we wanna close that gap and help people get back into housing as quickly as possible. Wanted to mention to the board that our provider community, member of our consumers who are accessing our services have really experienced some frustration and challenges with the system. And at the national level, the tool that we're using, it's called the VI-SPDAT. There's been some critiques of that particular tool and the potential for bias and how it assesses people, particularly racial and other kinds of bias. So we're committed to over the next six months making changes to that system. One of the things we wanna do is move away from just assessing people and getting them on a waiting list to assessing people for what we can do right now and helping them solve as many of the challenges they're having and work on their goals right now. So that requires us to do a new assessment and training process. We wanna be more reality based in our work with our consumers and inform them about how long the wait is expected to be what their chances are. So there's this term called inventory-based prioritization and matching, not adding people to a list where unrealistic expectations get created. We wanna focus on those population groups that I mentioned earlier on our slides to really bring together the providers and others who have a commitment to supporting those particular groups to get back into housing quickly. Some examples of that are veterans and families and working with people with disabilities and bringing different providers and stakeholders together has been shown nationally to get better results. So reducing the time that people are homeless and getting more people into housing. And that relates to the last point here. We wanna align with our partner systems. One example is working with our educational partners who also have staff who help prevent people from losing their housing, work with families who are doubled up and living in unsafe situations before they become homeless. We wanna partner with them more effectively over the next year. Somewhat related to coordinated entry is something that we've referred to as housing problem solving. Some people sometimes will refer to it as diversion. I don't particularly personally like that term. We're not trying to divert people away from help. We're trying to help them solve their problems as quickly as possible. Within the larger housing problem solving work that we do, we have something called Homer Bound where if there are people in our community who have connections elsewhere or maybe grew up in a different area and ended up here, are there ways we can help them return back to a place that they feel like would be home that may be more affordable or they may have the right support. So we've pulled together some flexible funding, housing problem solving and Homer Bound funding. Last fiscal year, our budget was $50,000, which we in our two contracted provider organizations, we mostly spent all of those funds. We helped 36 households with fairly low levels of investment to return back into housing in Santa Cruz County, neighboring counties and even out of state. So we've helped 60 people out of those 36. Of the 36, six households actually moved out of County. On the right, you can see where that money went. Most of the dollars went to security deposits in first month's rent. So people could actually afford to pay the rent on a ongoing basis, but that barrier of getting in was what we used our funds to help them with. And then there was out of County transportation assistance. And in some cases, just providing one-time food assistance could help someone to stay in their home because there was a budgetary issue in the household and providing that support made the family feel like they could keep someone. So nationally, this type of intervention, most people who have been involved with this work think 10 to 15% of people experiencing homelessness, this kind of one-time housing problem solving type of intervention can help people who become homeless to get back into housing. If we intervene earlier, the chances go up. So related to Supervisor McPherson's comment, I think it's really critical we move to the prevention framework because as people lose those connections and lose the housing, it's much more difficult to get people back into a stable situation. So for me, housing problem solving is a boundary spanner type activity between this work of preventing people from losing their housing and helping people as quickly as possible who may have just lost their housing and get back into a home as quickly as we can support them. So finally, getting to an update on where we are with our COVID shelter and our rehousing wave. Randy alluded to this earlier. You're gonna see different and hear different numbers and I apologize for that and it's because different entities require different kinds of reporting. So for this particular slide, we identified 370 additional shelter capacity units from COVID and that differs from another slide and I wanna explain why. This is really focused on our two veterans halls in one in the city of Watsonville and one in the city of Santa Cruz and then our least hotels or six least hotels. In addition to that, we've helped expand 24 seven shelter capacity at other locations, but they're not particularly reflected here in this slide. The dollars that we are using for this expansion are tied to the FEMA COVID-19 authorization to help protect people who are unhoused to get into safe situations. To date, we haven't gotten any updates from the feds even in the context of the Delta variant that there's gonna be an extension beyond September 30th. So as staff, we're still planning for that being the deadline for us to have to close things down. If, and when we hear updates from the federal government about changes or extensions, we can make adjustments to that plan. Our plan is to close down our expanded shelter capacity. We've actually had one of our sites, the city of Santa Cruz veterans hall wind down as our first site and we're gradually gonna be winding down the other sites over the next few months. As of a month ago, we had 269 households with 304 people in those 370 capacity shelter units. Part of why those numbers don't match is because we've actually been able to get people back into housing and some of those shelter units were keeping available for resurgence which we've had in COVID in case people need to isolate. I wanna talk about our rehousing wave effort and what's included. We have three teams that have started. They're doing amazing work. These are supportive services teams that are going out, building relationships with people, helping them get income benefits, IDs, finding out if there's family or friends they can connect with, helping them fill out housing authority paperwork. They've started by enrolling 140 households of those 15 have gotten housed already. We have through our partnership with the Housing Authority, 330 vouchers. So you can see we have more housing subsidies available than we actually have households left in our COVID-19 shelter programs. So we have the added benefit with these additional federal and state dollars of making those vouchers available to other households outside of our COVID-19 shelters. And we wanna make sure as many of the guests in our COVID-19 sites get through that process and get access to those vouchers. But those vouchers are only good if we can find opportunities in the private market. So that ties into our real estate partnership program with one of our contractors. Well, actually all of our contractors are working with private property owners to find opportunities to incentivize and encourage folks with vacant properties and units to help us with this overall effort. We're bringing incentives for the owners, support for deposits, money to help if there happens to be damages in the process, which is very unlikely. I've heard over and over again from our providers that that's something that property owners like to know is there, but it's very rarely used. And we also have a 24-7 hotline for owners if there's any questions or issues coming up when they're working with our programs. In addition to that, we have some flexible dollars related to the housing problem solving and the homeward bound that we have available. And the biggest challenge, I think several of us have mentioned today is really finding housing in this private market. And we're gonna explore a range of options from pursuing state funding to acquire properties over the next six months to looking at master leasing longer term, some of the sites so that we can use these vouchers that help to pay for those housing costs and reduce the amount that our participants have to pay. But that's gonna be our biggest challenge over the next six months is really finding partners in the private market, pursuing public funds to secure more properties that we can use quickly, and also not so quickly. Longer term, we need to keep moving on our affordable housing development goals. I think earlier, I skipped one of the slides that I wanted to highlight to you all. In California, there is something called the housing element, which a part of that is the regional housing needs allocation. And what that process is, is that the local government level, we need to establish some goals for housing development for different income groups over the course of an eight year period. And you can see in our report that the core type of housing we need to develop to address homelessness is for people with the lowest incomes. So in the regional housing needs report, that's called the very low income population group. And our community, we have roughly two more years to go to issue building permits. And our target was around 730, 740 new housing units and we're only at 10% of that goal. So for us to really make progress on homelessness, we've got to address this affordable housing need for those who have the lowest incomes. And our framework calls for us to at least get to our renegals over the next couple of years to put the renegals into context, our housing advocacy groups in the state who've analyzed Santa Cruz County, think we probably need 10,000 more affordable housing units to fully guarantee that all of the low income households that we have in our community are paying less than or 30% of their income toward housing. So that goal is incredibly ambitious would require a massive change in terms of federal investment, but we're not even meeting our smaller renegals. So I think collectively, if we all can work together to get to our rena targets, we're gonna start momentum and make progress in that area. So next six months, what are the big things that our staff think are really critical for us to work on and we look forward to getting feedback from the board members and members of the public. Number one is prevention. We have this unprecedented time we're all living in where so many people are struggling economically, job losses, challenges with paying bills. And there's funding available at the state through a program called housing is key for people who have trouble with their rent, paying their utilities. And I think if the eviction moratorium passes and folks who either own property or who are struggling to pay their rent don't know about this program, we're gonna leave a lot of money on the table. And from the data that I've been seeing, we are, and we're not alone here in Santa Cruz, we're not accessing that fund to the degree that the need is there. So we've got to figure out a way to get the message out to people who are behind on their rent and their utilities. There's money available. So I think that's a really key thing for us to focus on over the next six months, actually in the next month or two before the moratorium comes to an end. Second is what I alluded to, the need to create more housing opportunities, not just relying entirely on the private market. We've got to take advantage of federal and state funding to secure property and build more affordable housing. And when there's possibilities to acquire something that we can use quickly, I think we should do that in the context of our COVID sheltering closing, but we also need to think long-term, looking at vacant parcels and developing the kinds of pathways to affordable housing that can take anywhere between three and five years to develop. But the first step is securing that funding to move those projects forward. Related is maximizing the number of people who leave our COVID-19 sites into permanent housing. I've been incredibly impressed by the work of our staff, mostly doing housing problem-solving work. I hope we can keep it up. I am skeptical. So with the Veterans Hall, which was our first site to close down our staff, helped every person there create a pathway to either some kind of temporary or permanent housing. So no one from that location had to go back to the street. I'm not sure we're gonna be able to keep that up. Obviously our goal is to try to make that the reality going forward. And that's a core part of what we wanna work on over the next six months. We also secured funding, and I don't know if the board remembers, but you all approved of us submitting a community development block grant. We're waiting to hear back, but we're trying to expand the multidisciplinary street outreach teams that do focused work with particular people, not just ask people to move from one location into another, but actually to help people move from being unhoused into shelter or into permanent housing. So we wanna get those types of outreach programs started with the money we have available, continuing to work on our performance and getting our providers more data and giving them feedback and supporting them in their efforts to get better outcomes. I alluded to the change in coordinated entry that we're gonna work on, implementing the new governance structure in 2022, and then having some focused population groups, really doing more detailed work, particularly for families and veterans. So those are our core priorities and look forward to getting feedback on those from the board and others. And I wanted to share that our governor, and this is a quote from him during this last budget season that he doesn't think homelessness can be solved. He knows homelessness can be solved. And I think for me personally, I remember when I was an undergraduate student in Los Angeles and homelessness was a fairly new phenomenon at that time. And I genuinely believe back then that, oh, we can solve this problem. And we just need more affordable housing and the right kinds of services to help people get back into housing. Well, the problem has grown, disparities and wealth have grown. I still believe like the governor that we can solve this problem. We're not gonna do it overnight, but by working together to get people the supports they need to be stable in their homes or to move back into homes and creating more affordable housing for folks, either by helping them increase their incomes or reducing the cost of the housing, we're gonna get there. So I like the governor wanna continue to get to work on this and appreciate the chance to present to you all and I'm done with the formal presentation and open to questions. Well, that's a pretty detailed analysis of what we've gone through and what we wanna do. I'd really do appreciate it. I think from a county's point of view, a place where we could help, we have a lot of parcels scattered throughout the county and maybe we can identify those where it would be the best place for housing. But that's gonna take some time to construct as well. Any comments from the board members? Professor Cohen. Yes, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Morris and Dr. Ratner for a great presentation. Obviously the statistics are a little bit grim, not what we'd like, but I think the fact that we have those statistics is a great testament to your work and really laying the framework for getting a better grip on this issue. In the fact that you've met 42 or at least partially completed 42 of the 43 milestones, also demonstrates your great progress on this. I guess since one of our primary goals here is to determine the next six month work plan based on the slide that you shared and the report clearly, you guys have made a ton of progress with the milestones, but for the next six month implementation plan, what three elements do you see as being the most important? Is it more or less the same as the order of the bullets that you shared on the slide? Yeah, great question. I do think they are similar to the order of the bullets on the slide. I think number one for me is really prevention. And one of the things we heard in gathering feedback from the community was you all wait too long. You wait till people have lost their homes and we gotta figure out how do we move quote unquote upstream? So number one in helping our community access the available resources. Number two is the securing of the housing through the state and federal funding and using every tool we have from master leasing to buying existing properties to building on vacant land. And then number three is there's been so much amazing effort to help people through the COVID pandemic to get into safe places. And I wish I could share all the stories I've heard about how transformative it's been for people who historically would never come into our shelters as they were structured but having a private room, your own shower, meals, being able to bring your belongings, that has transformed our sheltering system in ways that I think people didn't appreciate. And folks who didn't come into shelter are now in shelter. And I would hate to see many of those people return to the streets. So I hope we can all work together. Number three is on this rehousing wave like maximizing those dollars to get the biggest impact. And I think the private market partnership is gonna be critical. These state funds and federal funds are gonna become available. I just want to augment what I said in my introductory comments by adding to Robert's response to Supervisor Koenig on number two. I think we have a role as staff to be more clear with the community and more clear with you all. What we see is how to break down what does it take to create affordable housing? And I don't, I think in the chaos and the confusion of everything, kind of that detail gets lost. And if we can work with your offices and the community to be very clear and map out what the choices are in front of you with these new dollars that are coming so that you can make fully informed decisions. And what I was trying to get at in my introductory comments is I think sometimes county staff don't make that information really clear and understandable because it's so complex. And so decisions get made that aren't fully informed by no mistake other than we take very seriously. We think we do have a decent understanding of what the costs are, the full costs of getting something up and running that's sustainable. And we owe that to you and we owe that to the community so that it's not just, let's create affordable housing. That's an easy statement to make. What are we gonna do to get there? We will get you that information when this money comes down. So your board can decide where you wanna direct us because it's not gonna be enough to create enough affordable housing, but we wanna feel like there's a very transparent exchange, honest exchange, a fully informed decision. And that's, I wanna really break that down that we feel responsible. We feel we do have the information to lift that up to you. Right, yeah. And I think, as your presentation pointed out, one of the, as you just mentioned, one of the most critical pieces here is the rehousing wave for people who have been in county shelters throughout the pandemic who have experienced that modicum of stability with either door that locks or a place to take a shower and have a safe place for their things. How do we ensure that they can maintain that level of stability and not have the rug where it would pulled out from under them? And so of course, that's, again, is the slide bullet point that had the ticking time clock next to it. I think we have somewhere between, maybe at best estimate, five months to resolve this issue. And right now we've only been able to house about 6% of the households currently in county shelter. Of course, many more have been sort of registered, but without the actual housing for them, they still risk getting the rug pulled out from under them. You know, you've talked about trying to secure more properties and that obviously is going to take some time. You know, I also had voiced some concern about this when we looked at the $8 million in federal emergency services grant and state funds back in March of the 23rd. And I hate to say, I told you so, we have a tight housing market here, but I think the numbers demonstrate that today. You know, so how can, first of all, how much of the approximately $8 million in federal and state funds that we have for the rehousing wave remain at this point? Yeah, a couple of responses. I think we have about 80% of the funds still left. Last time I reviewed the budget and a big chunk of those funds were to cover some of those, the gap between housing costs and rent. So a couple of things about the housing authority vouchers is that I think of that as a, if people can get through that process and secure a voucher, it's a way that they are able to close the gap between their incomes and the cost of housing. The vouchers we have available through the federal government, they're called emergency housing vouchers. They have a lot more flexibility than vouchers traditionally do in our community that allow people to use them outside of our county. So part of what we as staff try to do is honor people's choices and have reality-based conversations about, what is it that you wanna do and present? I appreciate you, I knew it was a tight housing market, but it's tighter than tight here. And I think it's a combination of many factors. So on the ground, what this looks like is trying to get people those subsidies to close those gaps and then having the conversation about, we're gonna look for a place here, but are you open to this county, that community? While we're also looking at master leasing locations so that we can use those vouchers in a building that's willing to take people in. And if you just look at the vacancy rates here, there is actually technically more than enough housing available, but it's finding the property owners who are willing to jump in and contribute. If you just look at the percentages. And I think one of the challenges there is what the federal government authorizes in terms of a rent level is based on a survey using a methodology that changed eight years ago and kind of deflated and is not necessarily really reflective of the actual market. It's kind of the low end of the market. And the incentives that we have available. So I think there's a little bit of asking our community to kind of step in and make a contribution. And then I think you're alluding to this supervisor, Conan, what are the other ways in which we can use those ESG, CV dollars, those particular funds. And I think I mentioned this at the time you had asked before. Every, we have 40 different grants that we're trying to keep track of in our department and we try to bray them together. Each one has different rules in different categories. This particular one doesn't really let us use it to buy property. It does let us use it to cover operating cost. So if we can find sites where we can continue to have a physical location where people can be, we can use those funds to cover the cost to operate the housing and the services component. So before this session, I was actually having an email exchange with some of our providers about, okay, let's start looking at that possibility of making adjustments to those dollars so we can secure a property. And then even though our COVID shelters will be closing over the next six months, if we can get people the vouchers, there's, in my work, people have often referred to it as the golden ticket with over 12,000 households waiting to get a voucher in our community on a long waiting list. There's this priority to help people experiencing homelessness that came from the federal government. So folks are frankly jumping a line in some ways to get this. And so we need to figure out how to support them to use it effectively in as many different locations where it's available. And then I think that other funding that's available coming our way and we're gonna get more detail soon, if we pair it with the ESG CV and some of our other resources, we use pot A and B to buy and set up a location and we use these pots over here to cover the cost. I think that's gonna be the path we need to look at. And keep in mind that these are all one-time dollars. So while we're doing that, we also have to be mindful of, okay, this money's gonna run out and what are we gonna do when it runs out? What funds are we gonna use to backfill it? What I don't want us to do is buy property because I've been involved with this and then you don't have money to operate it. And it just basically you end up with a property that was not gonna be used long-term. So it's a juggling act to figure out how do we put all of those pieces together? And I think we can do it. Great, what exactly meets the definition of the type of dwelling unit that would be eligible for a voucher? Yeah, there's something called the housing quality standards and there are some federal standards that articulate kind of minimum expectations of the unit. I would say that the high-level things where often with short-term quick fixes, we fall short are the access to utilities, having cooking facilities, toileting facilities and showers, those are kind of essential. And then there are some general health and safety requirements. No loose electrical wires, no evidence of water damage, mold and mildew, those sorts of things. But I think that the biggest hurdle is the utilities, the kitchen, the bathroom, those are really critical. And do those have to be within the individual unit or can it be shared? They can be shared. So the payments are actually lower when they're shared. So then you get into operating cost issues, but a single room occupancy or kind of hotels that maybe don't have kitchens or bathrooms for everyone, we can work with those types of properties. Great, thank you for the report and as I've expressed, look forward to working with both of you on identifying locations and properties for purchase. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I wanna thank Randy and Robert for putting together this presentation and data for in my six years on the board, we went from virtually never talking about homelessness to sort of engaging the various myths in this community around homelessness, that if we sort of didn't provide any services, they would all go away or that if we just found a place for homeless, the whole problem would be solved. We could just house our way out of this crisis. And I think having you here, having you engaged, not only with us, but with our federal state and other jurisdictional partners, having your really elaborative approach has been great. And then having this data, although as Supervisor Coonerty pointed out, that is in some ways very hard to read and take in, I think is a benefit in sort of finally addressing what is the biggest crisis facing this community. A couple of things that I'd sort of wanna just point out is, I think at the beginning it was said that these four specific report backs that we've asked for should be incorporated in. And I do appreciate that, although I think the reports on these specific populations or activities have actually been pretty informative. I think one of the few bright spots was the homerbound money that was a relatively small amount of money considering how much we're spending and other approaches that really solved problems for a lot of people. And I'd be looking to you in the future for how we can both expand the amount of money available for this kind of problem solving and also build in a culture of applying these micro fixes to help people quickly get out of homelessness or be stabilized. The data around families was in many ways the hardest to read because one of the few areas of this community is unanimous and wanting to support. The fact that we had dedicated vouchers from the Housing Authority, the fact that we had a focus and a prioritization and we still can't find places for these families to be housed and that the rates of rehousing are heading in the wrong direction is a challenge. And I still believe that we need to increase the churn, increase the speed at which we can get people placed both because it reduces the trauma of these folks experiences and because it makes our capacity, our current shelter capacity, that much more available for people in need. I think as you said, the idea that we're gonna be able to solve what is a national crisis in a small community like ours is just not realistic. Our housing stock has just too much demand on it from too many different areas and I don't see that trend being reduced. In fact, I think it's only gonna intensify as we move forward. So helping people find ways so that they aren't put on a list for more than a year to nowhere but instead are put on given options to figure out what's best for them and their families to find housing I think is an important step. So moving forward, I'm still interested in having those units identified in the unincorporated area. I appreciate the effort we're making in partnership with the Rio College. That was sort of before this direction so we need to still find additional units. I'm looking for more of how we can provide you the resources for this problem solving, this quick problem solving and then supporting your efforts around data-driven and outcome-driven approaches to addressing this very, very challenging issue. Thank you, Supervisor. I don't think Supervisor Friend is with us. He has any comments? I don't think so. I'm sure that I did not have any comments. I appreciate the amount of time that I spent with Dr. Ratner and Mr. Morrison in advance of this and I appreciate the presentation that I was able to catch at the end. Thank you. Supervisor Caput. Yeah, good to see you in person. Okay, great job on the study session. I want to thank you for all your hard work and with the role of Section 8, is that going to expand? Yeah, there we go. Okay. The Section 8 has a lot to do with the homeless situation. If we didn't have that program, then we'd have a lot more homeless people. So what's your outlook on the expansion of that? Yeah, great question. I refer to the golden ticket earlier in the housing world and it goes by different names, but Section 8 is classically what people refer to as the housing authority provides that subsidy for a low income household to be able to afford a place in the private market. Our current president during the campaign made a statement that he wanted to move towards universal housing vouchers for all eligible families. So the concept was if you are living in our country with an income below a certain level, we want to make a voucher available to you. Since that campaign commitment, there's been some backing up on that idea, but I think that the federal budget package that's being discussed is looking at how do we expand? Maybe not to that degree that was mentioned during the campaign, but a significant amount. I think for communities like Santa Cruz, the challenge with Section 8, which we've talked about today is it's highly dependent on the private market, being willing to take people who have that voucher. And there are some federal, and perhaps we could work with your offices on this. There's a lots of policy dialogue about the Section 8 program. And one of the origins of the program was that it was an alternative to public housing where you were concentrating people in government owned buildings and people struggling with issues in their lives and lower incomes were all concentrated and segregated in one area. So the Section 8 program in some ways was to help people to find a place in the private market. Well, the challenge is the private market is not always readily willing to enable. So lots of policy makers are looking at reforms related to that. One is can we change the percentage of the Section 8 program that can be tied to a specific building? So when someone develops more affordable housing, there's something called project-based Section 8 where you can take that voucher and tie it to a unit, which means a family that moves in, they get that subsidy when they move into the building. So I think under the current federal administration, I would expect an increase in Section 8. What we're gonna be left with is this challenge of using it in our community. So we've gotta figure out ways to create more housing that will accept Section 8. And there's lots of different policy tools. We could come back and come with some suggestions to you. But most of those, I think, are federal and state regulations that will need a lobby to change to be able to make those kinds of changes here. But positive news, I think we will be getting some more Section 8 in this budget process. Yeah, and what I really like also, it's we're taking a realistic approach. There's gonna be success and there's gonna be some failure, depending upon who we're trying to help. And I think in the long run, we're gonna get a lot done. And that's what I really like about the way you guys are looking at this. I guess the other thing I would say is, of course, we have the Salvation Army and Teen Challenge and different programs like that. And they're gonna be a big help in the future. I know in South County, Teen Challenge is gonna have a shelter for women and families. Yeah, just building on that comment, Supervisor. I came from working in big counties with larger budgets. And I have been personally very impressed with the private sector commitment to addressing this issue. I alluded to it in one of the reports. If you look at our shelter programming, there's heavy dependency on foundations and private donations to keep our current shelter capacity going. So without that kind of generosity that you're alluding to, we'd be in a much worse situation. So I'm deeply appreciative of people who are giving and contributing to this issue while we're working on it on the public sector side as well. And those are great examples of that. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Good seeing you again. Yeah, thank you for the very in-depth report. And it's clear our biggest challenge is finding partners in the private sector. And as you alluded to it, we do have a pretty good job here in this county, but more needs to be done. And but another thing that is not a concern, it's just a reality check that even at the best results that we could have, we could reduce unshulted homelessness by 50% in three years. That still means we're gonna have some. So we're doing our best. I really appreciate your professionalism and under Director Morris, we're really fortunate to have you to address this and pinpoint what some of the needs are. And I think we're gonna be able to do that and have more success in the future as well. So do appreciate your in-depth analysis of this and I'd like to hear from the public if they have any comments on this. Hi, my name is James Ewing Whitman. I would really like to thank Mr. Morris and Dr. Ratner for the presentation. There's an incredible amount of information working behind me. I know there's a meeting externally on Fridays behind this building where a lot of the information that I heard you share and I took notes on I could share with other people that along with myself could use the information. But since I left the room for a little while, I'm not quite aware of everything that transpired because when I walked in, this conversation was already going. Like for example, I don't know what percentage of the homeless population has actually been diagnosed or tested or become sick with COVID. Now it kind of gets kind of challenging. I'm gonna do some quotes. Great things are not done by impulse but by many small changes. All changes are done by not by impulse but by many small changes. My understanding following what's going on in the world is it's possible that the US dollar could be highly devalued very soon because it's my understanding that 130 countries are going to stop using the dollar. And while there have been all these protections from evictions from people in this county, I believe that the homeowners who are renting these buildings out and maybe on very fixed incomes are not being compensated. So it's entirely possible that the homeless population could grow by leaps and bounds. And maybe I missed some of that before I came in about how to take care of if there's just an explosion of homeless. So there's a lot of things I could talk about but I'm going to leave it at that. And I just wanna thank you guys again because that was some great information you provided that I think the whole community should listen to and not just the homeless. Thank you. Outstanding presentation. What I came away with that was that we by 90% are not meeting our new housing goals. That's an astounding number right there. And even when we get funding from the government or whatever to house these people, there's no place to put them. Now during this fire crisis, I had a neighbor who has a horse ranch in an orchard field and we hosted about 50 people there during this time. And I said, what can I do? So I came down to the county building like I normally did, gave him my parcel number and said, hey, what can I do to help this? And they said, wow, you've got a large parcel. You can have two, three car garages for six cars. You can have 305 peacocks on your property. But if you wanna build an extra guest house or two on your property, no way. Not allowable, can't happen. Now we've got these projects that are coming through and they're wonderful, I'm sure they're gonna be great. But we know that building large complexes here in this county takes five, 10 to 15 years. Now I was lucky enough to be raised with a tool belt around my waist. So I can convert any one of these six garages that I have into a living housing unit in about two months in my spare time, if I'm allowed to do so. So please, they're asking you, I'm asking you, work with us together so that we can create some of the most affordable, quick housing that we possibly can. So we can get some of these people off the street. Any other comments from the public? Seven participants via Zoom. Is there anybody on Zoom? Yes, seven speakers. Seven? Yes. Call in user six. Your microphone is available. I thank you very much for the presentation. It was very informative. I would actually like to see Keith McHenry and Food Not Boms and some of the homeless people he works with do a presentation to give another perspective on it. I always think if we had the military budget that wasn't draining our resources, 50% of our taxes approximately, we could do a lot of housing schools, et cetera, with that money. In terms of the recent happening in the last 18 months, I'd like to read a little bit from an environmental attorney here to give a little bit of a context. The suspension of due process, due notice and common rulemaking meant that none of the government prelates to ordain the quarantine, had to first publicly calculate whether destroying the global economy, disrupting food and medical supplies and throwing a billion humans into dire poverty and food insecurity would kill more people than it would save. In America, their quarantine predictably shattered the nation's once booming economic engine, putting 58 million Americans out of work and permanently bankrupting over 100,000 small businesses and skipping down while obliterating the American middle class and dropping an additional 8% of Americans below the poverty line, the 2020 COVID coup transferred. Sir Cagno, your microphone is available. Can you hear me? Okay, thanks. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name's Serge Cagno and today I come to you wearing multiple hats. First hat, stepping up Santa Cruz, I'm an advocate and I'm a consultant. I've done some work helping with setting up the shelters in the vet's halls. Huge, I wanna give huge thanks and appreciation to Randy Morris and Dr. Robert Ratner and the entire Housing for Health team for the presentation today, for joining our community and bringing your passion and expertise towards supporting those at risk of homelessness and those currently unhoused. Switching hats, I'm on the Mental Health Advisory Board with Supervisor Caput. Good morning, Supervisor Caput. And I'm on a committee that would like to partner with Housing for Health regarding the multidisciplinary street outreach teams. We're also looking at the alternative policing, the upcoming 988 system and peer certification. We'd like to find a way of doing that outreach and supporting people towards housing and resources, including behavioral health. So I'll be reaching out to you again, changing hats. I'm the Executive Director of Recovery Cafe Santa Cruz and we're now offering a weekly support group, something we haven't mentioned on homelessness prevention and homeless housing stabilization, both needs in our county is support groups for people to try to give them the emotional support and the goal setting and accountability and support to be able to reach those goals to keep their housing. And then last hat, I'm also for sprung shelters, a sales rep for them. We'd also like to be a resource for possible shelter options in the county for new shelters and for new programs. That's it for me. Thank you guys for everything you do. Michelle, Ellie, your microphone is available. Hi, thank you. Michelle, a registered nurse working on my badge where it's looking for a community project internship. I had purchased my 5,000 square foot home on three acres initially for a nurse retreat. And then I had considered the CNO logo type of a treatment center that's Catholic in Medjugorje of Croatia. Now it's uninhabitable since the fire. So I had a lot of questions and I was just wondering if you had any contact information where I could continue this discussion to get internship project ideas for my bachelor's in nursing for community project and then just brainstorm some ideas as I was listening to your lecture and also it gets books, articles and slides that you had previously done. If you'd followed any of Van Johnson's models, apparently he has a million dollar ideas and if we can get the infrastructure green packages to redo the Redwood elementary school, have the vets get jobs, green jobs and turn the Redwood elementary school into some housing. So I don't know if you have any information where I can contact you with something that I'd like to pick around more than a few minutes. Thank you. Rose McNair, your microphone is available. Okay, I just unmuted. Can you hear me? Okay, this is Rose Marie McNair. I am a realtor in the community for the last 45 years and I would like to thank Robert Ratner for stepping up and coming to our community to help us figure out ways to deal with the homeless issues, which is just huge. And also I want to say that I do want to help if I can in any way. Sometimes I think things that are as large as this when they're a problem for the community to be able to find help. I find a lot of times they get lost. Somebody makes a call, someone's supposed to call back, they don't call back and then neither does the person who's seeking the help because they feel like they've possibly got ignored or didn't find a way. So I'm hoping that somehow or another we can design a critical path whereby no phone call is lost, whereby there's a protocol for answering those people and finding ways to deal with unutilized or underutilized property space that we can get people into. I would like to help with that. I think that if you have that critical path in order that every protocol, every person is treated exactly the same when trying to reach them and gather up the information that that be followed. And I hope that can be helpful in the future so that there's a design to it. I see I only have a very short period of time. So I want to offer my gratitude to those who are going to try and implement this. And I've been saying for so long that words are not all we need. We really need action. So thank you very much. And let's really do it. Boots on the ground. Thank you very much. DM, your microphone is available. Is it, am I the right person to be on? Oh, hi. Yeah, hi. This is Darius Mosamine. A couple of things I want to just mention. I've been told I'm one of the largest section eight landlords least in the city. I have 33 units with voucher holders. One thing, and unfortunately, I will not rent a unit to a currently homeless person on the street, which is sad and ironic. I've done, in the past 10 years, I have rented to five formerly, right off the street homeless folks. And by the way, I've got, I work with three counties. I have property in three different counties. And of the five I've rented to, I've had to evict four of them. In fact, there would have been six, but he actually died in the unit. You can't just, the process doesn't start, stop when the voucher holder gets housing. For these kinds of folks, like I say, the hard cases that are from the street, that you need to provide services for them. That you need to provide some kind of adult supervision, so to speak. I've had voucher hold, I've had one guy, he does the things that we take for granted in terms of renting an apartment, like paying a utility bill. We can't, some of them can't handle that. When I came up one time and the guy had a generator hanging out of his window running, and he didn't pay a speech any bill. That's not a formula for long-term housing for these folks. So I just wanna say it's part of the solution having housing vouchers, but it's not the total package. And lastly, you mentioned about the rents, the section eight rents that are under market, that is not true. They're actually very, very generous. In fact, too generous to be honest with you. I think my time is up. Colin, user five. Yeah, begin speaking. Yeah. Douglas Beach Poglian Foundation Inc. DBA Monterey Bay Conservancy. Really here to comment on the flood conservation meeting. I think that got lost somewhere. But since I listened to this, it was very informative. It seems like what you're talking about here is a six month plan. And it seems to me that the, oh, by the way, my nexus to the homeless garden or the homeless of the situation in Santa Cruz goes back to prior to 1996, when actually was running for your position. And this was an issue which we dealt with on actually a TV show at lawandorderliberal.org. And we still haven't been able to get it right. But anyway, we have to deal with a short-term problem which is housing people who are going to need housing and get them to start draining instead of having them on the highway or having them in parks. Temporary solution. And as having a quite association with Poglian Club House in that area, I would suggest possibly during the filming of Lost Boys, there was one very huge tent that was constructed up there. And three of those tents were provided for male, female and family housing on an emergency basis. Get people out of the rain and the homeless garden's been approved. But I'm not saying on a permanent basis, but I would really like to see that addressed on a temporary basis. And first day of the homeless garden project with Paul Lee, I was the one who provided the tractor service. And I'd like to see that everyone would, a community participated resolution that certainly betterment. And we have to deal with, hopefully, everybody's praying for rain. But we'll be prepared for it, please, to tap me. Thank you. Mila, your microphone is available. Hello, do you hear me? Yeah, so I'm trying to make the authorities to listen and don't be blind and don't be deaf. And I cannot get, I cannot achieve it. Nine years, I'm trying to get help for my daughter. I wanna thank the landlord who was talking about homeless people that was put in his building and it was unsuccessful. Because I know why, because they do not get in-home support services that they should get. And this is what was happened to my daughter when she finally, again, got voucher section eight that I signed up for in 2008. And they've been handled that, they were not giving her that voucher section eight with me. They wanted to give it to her only. So they cut me off. They gave her that voucher section eight. And I helped my daughter to find an apartment and move in. And what the next thing they did, they didn't provide any services. They never visited her, but they isolated her from normal society and they alienated her from me, completely alienated. She will be alone in that COVID-19 year. And as a result, she lost her place and she lost her apartment. Now she's 60 days homeless. Already 60 days, she's on the street artistic nature person. It's very dangerous for her to be on the street and she gets raped and robbed. Do you hear me people? Rape and robbed. And I cannot even protect my daughter because you keep me alienated by those judges who are unelected ever by people, but they surcount. As a reminder, public comment is limited to two minutes per person per item. Tim Richards, your microphone is unavailable. Hi everybody. My name is Tim Richards. I own a business here at the Old Sash Mill and I hold three commercial leases. And I guess I'm supposed to press start or even to press start. Okay, great. Yeah, I'm calling in to voice my support of Tiny Homes. Myself, my partner and our 15 month old are currently houseless. We're camping on some friends' land. And we've been waiting to get clarity on whether or not the Tiny Home on Wheels are gonna be legalized in this county. I attended a public meeting back in March and there was a timeline presented to the public that we'd actually be legalizing the phase one of Tiny Homes on Wheels by August. Unfortunately by March 26th, that timeline had shifted and the Tiny Home on Wheels were removed from the rest of the ADU provisions. So basically it's been indefinitely postponed. And my family and I would really like to know that there will be action on this and that Tiny Homes on Wheels will be legalized in our community as they have been in so many other towns and counties around California. We really see this as a low cost solution to the housing crisis. And we'd really love to be able to buy our own land where we can park our own Tiny Home on Wheels because it's not, it doesn't really help us just to have it legalized and then to have to rely on a landlord to park it on their land. In my view, this is a really useful form of legislation because we're able to take parcels of land that were previously undevelopable for any number of reasons. And as long as there's somewhere that can be graded flat and stable enough to park, we can actually utilize previously unusable land and generate more property taxes and get more people housed in our community. So I'd really love to see a updated timeline presented to the public. And I would like for the Tiny Homes on Wheels to be legalized, not only as ADUs but also as standalone units on land. Thank you so much. Emily Hansen, your microphone is available. Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Emily Hansen. I'm also Supervisor Koenig's appointment to the Human Services Commission. So thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm born and raised, still reside in Santa Cruz County. I'm a homeowner and provide housing for both my father and my mother who are extremely limited resource and also have a home that I'd love to be able to build a second unit on. I think one of the challenges that we hear today and have heard over time is that in many instances we are limited by resources and in some instances, and in the terms of housing availability in Santa Cruz, it's not necessarily the resources we are limited by but the actual limits to deploy those resources. And I wanna really just commend Randy, Dr. Radner, the Board of Supervisors and everyone who has hands in this very important issue of homelessness in the unhoused community and working together for the strategic deployment and integration of the available resources. It's multifaceted, it spans multiple departments and anything and everything that we can do to take currently available yet unused resources and get those resources out to the community is going to be a win every which way we can find one. I think that looking at streamlining the approach to being able to deploy these resources specifically as it pertains to getting more housing in our community is gonna be imperative, looking at strategic permit coordination programs where we can design buildings to be able to accommodate what the restrictions are in the county is gonna be critical. And again, I admire you guys for proceeding down this path and hope that coordinated approaches continue. Thank you Chair, there are no other speakers on Zoom. Thank you. Good. We'll return to the board for the, discussed the recommended actions. We have a motion to do any comments for the comments from the board. Are you prepared to move the recommended actions? Okay. Second. Second by Coonerty. Call the roll please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Friend. Thank you. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay, it is 1230, but I would like to move ahead and complete our last item on the regular agenda number 11 of public hearing without objection to consider an ordinance amending the county code chapters 1310 and 1320 regarding accessory dwelling units and the diminished waiver for cultural development permit and CEQA notice of expansion, exemptions, excuse me, and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. There's a proposed resolution and notice CEQA notice of exemption, proposed ordinance and a proposed ordinance strike through planning commission resolution 2021-05. And there's a link to the planning commission staff report on May 26th, 2021, a map of the coastal designated areas and public comment received March 18th, 2021. I think that Daisy Allen from our planning department will be presenting this. Thank you, Chair McPherson, members of the board, Stephanie Hansen, special projects sustainability with me today is Daisy Allen. We're very pleased to bring back the ADU ordinance once again and the revisions to that ordinance to help the county regulations be aligned with state regulations. And Daisy's gonna walk us through our presentation today and we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Great, yeah, thank you, Stephanie. And thank you, Chair McPherson and supervisors. So I'm here today to present the key provisions of the ordinance updating the county's accessory dwelling unit or ADU regulations as recommended by the planning commission as well as the housing advisory commission. Before I dive into the ordinance, I wanted to mention that there's also an effort underway to develop regulations for tiny homes as directed by your board on March 9th. The planning commission requested that preparation of the tiny homes regulations be separated from the update to the ADU regulations as a separate policy project. And so staff will be pursuing that project next starting with community meetings. For that reason, the ordinance before you today deals only with updating the regulations for ADUs. Due to the wide public interest in ADUs enhanced community outreach was conducted for this policy project beyond the usual newspaper notice. And community outreach information was provided in detail in the May 26th planning commission staff report. Public comments received since March are provided in your packet. So I wanted to take a minute to review the scope of this project. As you may remember in January of 2020, there were new state ADU laws that went into effect. Last year, we moved quickly to update our zoning code to comply with these new laws. But at the time, there was not guidance available from the state on how to interpret some of the confusing provisions of the state law. Since then, this past fall, the California Office of Housing and Community Development or HCD released an ADU handbook. HCD is the state agency that reviews and approves the local jurisdiction ADU ordinances. So it is important for our local rules to be in alignment with HCD as interpretation of the state ADU law. Based on this handbook and subsequent discussion with HCD staff, there are some areas of county code that need to be updated to meet the state law minimum requirements. There are some other areas where our local regulations exceed state law minimum requirements for ADUs and that's okay. The intent of the state ADU law is to remove barriers to ADU construction. So our local ADU regulations can be more lenient but may not be more restrictive than the state law. There are also some updates proposed to our local ADU regulations that are unrelated to the state ADU law requirements. These updates are proposed for the purpose of reducing confusion for applicants and staff, further streamlining ADU permitting and construction and addressing special circumstances including disaster recovery as well as ADU regulations in the coastal zone where the state ADU law must be balanced against the objectives of the California Coastal Act. So on this slide, I have listed the changes that are being made for the purpose of meeting the minimum state law requirements to align with the HCD ADU handbook. These are changes that we need to make and there's not a lot of room for flexibility in our local regulations. So in terms of ADUs allowed on a given property, single family dwellings are subject to single family ADU rules and multifamily dwellings are subject to multifamily ADU rules regardless of zone district. There is no longer a maximum size for conversion ADUs. Also conversion ADUs can include complete demolition and rebuilding as long as the rebuilt ADU does not exceed the envelope of the original structure by more than 150 square feet. ADU square footage needs to be calculated based on habitable square footage only. Also the four foot side and rear yard setbacks are now applied to street facing side yards on corner lots as well as rear rear yards that are on double frontage lots. Public improvements such as sidewalks cannot be required for the creation of an ADU or junior ADU. However, this rule does not apply to life safety provisions such as fire access. In terms of discretionary review meaning project review before an applicant can apply for a building permit. Development permits are no longer required for ADUs. Certain ADUs may still require discretionary review for special circumstances such as a coastal development permit or a variance. I would like to point out that there is an error in the strikeout underlying version of the ordinance which is attachment D packet page 98 section 1310 681 H1A. Subsections three, four, and five show as being added but these sections are actually being deleted. And this is shown correctly in the clean version of the ordinance which is attachment C. And that's related to discretionary review. Finally, the ordinance clarifies that ADUs and junior ADUs are not counted towards the county's maximum annual allowed residential permits meaning that if the county has already reached the maximum new housing production allowed for the year ADUs are not counted for the year ADUs and junior ADUs may still be constructed. Okay, so now I will discuss additional provisions in the ordinance that either exceed state law or address topics that are not addressed at the state level. In other words, these are areas of our code where the county has more flexibility in terms of what we decide to include in our ADU regulations. So first regarding the number of ADUs on a parcel for single family dwellings the state law minimum is 180 U plus one junior ADU per parcel. The current county code goes beyond state law and allows for 180 U plus one junior ADU per single family dwelling, meaning that multiple ADUs are allowed on parcels with single family dwelling groups. The draft ordinance maintains this allowance and then adds an additional provision that a nonconforming dwelling group can be relabeled as a conforming dwelling group with ADUs. So the five diagrams on this slide illustrate what would be allowed on an example, 10,000 square foot single family parcel. Scenarios one and two are what is required by state law. So one shows a single family dwelling with an ADU and a junior ADU and scenario two shows that same lot subdivided and then each lot can have a single family dwelling with an ADU and a junior ADU. And then scenarios three, four and five show how the county code goes beyond state law to allow ADUs in situations where there are dwelling groups. There was a lot of discussion at the planning commission on the topic of the number of ADUs allowed on a property. There was some community input calling for multiple ADUs to be associated with one single family dwelling. In other words, to go beyond what we were showing here. There was also some community input voice and concern about impacts associated with allowing more ADUs than are required by state law. So ultimately what is in the ordinance is a compromise solution that was reached. And then for multi-family dwellings, the county code similarly goes beyond state law to allow two detached ADUs that may be attached to each other, as well as conversion ADUs and up to 25% of the units. To use an example of an eight unit apartment building, the county code allows for ADUs as indicated in the diagram on the left, whereas the state law minimum would only allow two ADUs on this parcel. Okay, and then regarding ADU dwelling size and floor area calculations, the proposed ordinance clarifies that an attached ADU or junior ADU does not count as part of the primary dwelling unit floor area calculation. This removes a barrier to construction of ADUs since the county code requires a special discretionary review once a dwelling exceeds 5,000 square feet. So now an ADU or junior ADU construction would not trigger that special review requirement. The ordinance also goes beyond state law to continue to allow small additions as part of junior ADUs in order to provide more flexible design options for applicants. The state law requires that local jurisdictions allow for an 800 square foot, 16 foot tall ADU, regardless of a parcel's existing floor area or lot coverage. This provision in the law is intended to make it easier for property owners with small lots to fit in an ADU. Before the state law went into effect in 2020, the county code already had a provision to address this issue and allow for an additional 2% of building floor area on small lots. At this time, we are proposing to remove the 2% allowance because the 800 square foot state law allowance gets at the same policy goal and that simplifies the code. The ordinance also clarifies that the 800 square foot allowance should function as a floor area credit for the parcel, meaning that ADU square footage up to 800 square feet would not be counted towards the overall building floor area on a parcel. This encourages ADU construction on small parcels where previously owners may have had to choose between building an ADU and building an addition onto their home. The ordinance also removes the 16 foot height limit for an ADU that exceeds floor area or lot coverage, allowing property owners with tight lots to construct second story ADUs, which currently is not allowed. Okay, and then regarding ADU design, the proposed ordinance removes the existing subjective requirement that ADUs must be compatible with the main dwelling. The ordinance adds design standards regarding additions or alterations to historic buildings. The ordinance requires that ADU kitchens have built-in appliances, meaning that a plug-in microwave is not enough for an ADU, although this would be okay for a junior ADU. Regarding ADU placement on a parcel, clarification has been provided that a junior ADU and an ADU attached to a single family dwelling would be considered a triplex in terms of building code regulations, which triggers more requirements for applicants. So in order to avoid those existing building code requirements, applicants wishing to have that configuration can internally connect a junior ADU to the primary dwelling. The setbacks of ADUs and agricultural parcels have been clarified. And then additionally, the planning commission added a setback requirement for second story ADUs, as shown in the diagram in the lower right on this slide. The state law requirement for four foot side and rear yard setbacks is only for ADUs that are up to 16 feet tall. So above this height, local jurisdictions can add further setback requirements. In order to mitigate for privacy impacts to neighbors, the ordinance therefore requires an additional rear yard setback of four feet for ADUs that are over 16 feet tall. And then regarding parking, there was a lot of discussion at the planning commission and input from the community regarding parking for ADUs with a range of opinions and concerns represented. In the end, the commission opted to keep the parking regulations as they are for the most part. The ADU parking requirements and the proposed ordinance reduced parking requirements per state law for all areas of the county except for three coastal areas that are particularly parking impacted. The live oak, Davenport Swanton and the sea cliff, Aptosla Selva designated areas as indicated on the maps on this slide. So these are the same areas that have special regulations in the county's vacation rental ordinance. In these areas, replacement parking must be provided when parking is lost to ADU construction and new construction ADUs are not eligible for reduced parking requirements. Coastal commission staff have shared the concern that was raised at the planning commission regarding parking in these areas. And the coastal commission staff have indicated that they would be supportive of having reduced parking provisions in our ordinance. Regarding approval and occupancy, in addition to removing the discretionary permit requirements for ADUs, the ordinance goes further to streamline and encourage ADU development. There's a provision that following a disaster, ADU construction is allowed before construction of a primary dwelling. There has been strong community support for adding this officially into the regulations as property owners are rebuilding from the CCU fire. The ordinance also includes coastal development permit waiver to streamline approval of ADUs as well as other small projects, specifically in the coastal zone. This waiver was recommended by coastal commission staff to streamline processing. Similar waivers were recently approved by the coastal commission for the city of Capitola and Monterey County. Regarding occupancy, the county code currently requires owner occupancy for ADU properties except for ADUs permitted during a five-year period as required by state law. So at this time, in order to remove another barrier to ADU construction, the planning commission has opted to propose removing that requirement for owner occupancy entirely. Finally, the ordinance clarifies that existing declarations of restriction that don't allow habitation in accessory structures can be removed and those structures can be converted to ADUs with the appropriate geotechnical and structural work. All right, and then regarding infrastructure and utilities, the existing code disallows second driveways for ADUs within the urban services line unless special approval is received by the Department of Public Works. The proposed ordinance removes that provision so that any ADU can have a separate driveway. The ordinance also clarifies that sprinklers may not be required for ADUs when they are present in the primary dwelling but there are some caveats to this rule. And staff has coordinated closely with fire district staff in creating this portion of the ordinance. Utility connection fees are currently charged for new construction ADUs but not for conversion ADUs or junior ADUs. The HCD handbook clarifies that local jurisdictions may charge utility connection fees for conversion ADUs and junior ADUs built concurrently with the primary dwelling. So the proposed ordinance reflects that update. The ordinance does not, however, require impact fees for junior ADUs even though the state law allows us to charge those fees. Impact fees are not applied to standard ADUs that are smaller than 750 square feet. So it makes sense that these fees would not be charged for junior ADUs either since they have a maximum size of 500 square feet. And that removes a barrier to construction for the small ADUs that are more affordable by design. All right, so staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing to consider the proposed ordinance, take public comment and then affirm that the proposed amendments are exempt from CEQA, adopt the ordinance and direct staff to submit the ordinance to the coastal commission and direct the clerk of the board to publish a notice of adoption. And I'll just say based on recent feedback from coastal commission staff, it is likely that the commission will have several suggested changes to the ordinance related to alignment with the coastal act and local coastal program that will be brought back to the board for consideration. And then after final coastal commission certification of the ordinance, the ordinance will be submitted to HCD for approval at the state level. Planning staff has coordinated closely with HCD during the preparation of this ordinance and we've received feedback that as drafted it is consistent with state ADU law. So that concludes my presentation. Thank you for that very thorough report and for making those adjustments that were requested. I think the county's award-winning ADU program is one of the most effective ways that we can get affordable housing built in this county. And I think making a streamlined effort that we can have more affordable ADUs is gonna provide more critically needed housing as we've just discussed it in the previous report from our homelessness discussion. And I think removing some of the regulatory and the process barriers is a key and I'm just somewhat concerned who knows what the coastal commission is just gonna ask us to do but I think it's the best that we do move on because this providing ADUs and junior ADUs is going to provide us with fewer obstacles for our property owners to provide these and provide more housing for our community. Thank you, Mr. Koenig or Supervisor Koenig. Any questions? Yeah, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Allen and Ms. Hansen for the report and for all your hard work on this. I think there's a lot of changes to the ADU ordinance in here that are really gonna help new ADUs and junior ADUs be constructed. Some of the ones I'm really a fan of, the fact that ADUs and junior ADUs will only require a building permit and will be ministerially approved that up to 800 square feet do not count towards the floor area ratio that we're not gonna require parking for junior ADUs and conversion ADUs outside of the specified zones, of course, that owner occupancy is not required for ADUs and junior ADUs that were moving the design standards that maybe you must look like the primary dwelling allowing for more prefab and modular type ADUs. I mean, all this is really gonna really liberalizes our ADU code and will allow for a lot more construction. So I'm a huge fan of it and thank you for all the hard work. I noticed that the public comment was packet that was attached was 29.3 megabytes. So a substantial amount of public input there already, even though not everyone is in the chambers here today. I guess that this question of the multiple ADUs for larger parcels, it sounds like it came up a number of times during the discussion. Is it correct that the city of Watsonville does currently have such a policy? You know, I'm not familiar with their current, the details of their current requirements related to number of ADUs per parcel, but I have heard that they were looking into making that change to their regulations. Okay, yeah, my understanding is that for parcels over 12, I think it was 12,000 square feet that they would allow an additional ADU. I guess, I mean, and I understand there's pros and cons to that. I mean, we're, as you've already mentioned, we'll be looking at tiny homes including at some point tiny home villages. Would that be an appropriate time to re-look at multiple ADUs per parcel? Given that tiny homes, by some, I don't know if they'll be defined as ADUs within our code or could be, but obviously tiny home villages bear a lot of similarities to multiple ADUs per parcel in terms of the impacts on the community. Yeah, just like a lot of the provisions in this code, in the Coastal Commission parking and some of the issues that have come up, I think the Planning Commission had concerns about allowing additional ADUs on larger lots in our rural areas. So we can take another look at it, but it's a balancing act to make sure we're meeting all the regulations. Got it, thank you. And just the other point of clarification around the two-story ADUs, I've heard some concerns from architects that really we do need two-story ADUs and this code change makes some, allows that to happen in some locations, but within the urban services line, you only can have a two-story ADU if it's on top of a detached garage, is that correct? The regulations inside the urban services line allow for a detached ADU to be only 16 feet tall maximum. But above a garage, it can be, I believe it's 20 feet, 24 at the roof peak. And if the ADU is attached to the primary dwelling unit, it has the same height regulations as the primary dwelling. I see, and the concern I'd heard was that because of the state requirements that new construction, including ADUs, would be self-sufficient in terms of energy, needing to put solar panels on the rooftops that if you're building an ADU, or I guess in this case it'd be a detached ADU in an area where there's other two-story buildings around, it could be hard to get that sun exposure if you're dealing with the 16-foot height limit. I did note that there was the five-foot kind of variance that could be applied for in there. If someone was trying to get solar panels on their roof to meet a state requirement, would that be a reason they would get such a variance? Yeah, so there's an exception process whereby you can apply to increase the height of an ADU by up to five feet in excess of the zoning standards up to a maximum of 28 feet is the hard maximum. And there are findings that need to be made for that, mostly related to the situation on the site specifically and potential impacts to neighbors. So that certainly could be the type of project that might be able to get that type of approval depending on the site-specific conditions. Got it. Okay, thank you, that's all my questions. Thanks again for the hard work. Supervisor Friend, any questions? Yes, Mr. Chair, you have some questions. Thank you again, Ms. Allen, for your presentation, your work on this. There are a lot of updates that we've made over time. I think we continue to make it better. I do have some questions just from a lack of clarity when I would read the actual proposed modifications versus the staff report versus even the presentation, I just didn't fully make sure I understood. So for example, on a conversion ADU, there's no maximum size for a conversion ADU that's being proposed, is that correct? Requirement that's in the state law, that we didn't read that state law requirement the same way that HCD read it, and we're modifying our code to align with the HCD handbook. Okay, so then to provide clarity, so for example, in a lot of areas in my district or Supervisor for Connick's district, there are non-conforming, well, I suppose they would have been garages at one point, but they're just basically non-conforming outbuilding. You can demolish that and do what with it? You can build it 16 feet, you can build it 20 or 24 feet, you can increase if it's on the quote unquote same footprint, does that mean that it can actually be larger because it can be two stories that that would have the four-foot setback, the eight-foot setback, I'm just confused as to what would all apply in a situation like that? Yeah, so in order to be considered a conversion ADU, if you were to demolish an existing garage or barn or something and wanna rebuild on the same footprint, you'd have to use the same footprint and the same building envelope and not increase the size of that building by more than 150 square feet from what the original size was of the structure. And if it was non-conforming, for instance, if the structure was within the setback line for the property, you would be able to rebuild but you would not be able to increase the degree of non-conformity, for instance, you wouldn't be able to build further into the setback than the previous structure. So if you had a 10 by 10 former garage, for example, I mean, it's obviously larger. I will just say you had a 10 by 10 and it was had a 10-foot roof. If I were to demolish that and rebuild it as a conversion, is that my exact size that I could max out out or could that be a 16-foot or 20-foot height situation? Could it be a two-sided, I'm sorry to interrupt, could it be a two-story on the exact same footprint, base footprint, the level? Or are you defining footprint, including height? Yeah, that's a good question because now I'm thinking, I wonder if the ordinance, I believe only uses the word footprint and doesn't use the words building envelope, but that is the intention of the HCD interpretation of the state law that it's the building envelope itself. So if you had a structure that's a one-story structure, then the idea is that you wouldn't be able to build a two-story structure, that wouldn't be a conversion ADU. You could do it potentially, but it would be considered a new construction ADU with all of the associated requirements with that. Okay, no, that's not, I would be more comfortable with that clarity being provided. I don't know if that's just cleanup language before a second reading or if that's a policy interpretation internally, but the way, the reason I was confused is because the language to me, I couldn't tell whether that you were allowed to do something more or not. If I'm confused on it, I imagine 10 years from now the interpretation may be confusing to somebody trying to determine an application as well. So I'll defer to your expertise on the best way to address that. I do have a question in regards to the driveway changes. Can you just kind of explain to me the rationale as to why we would want to incent a second driveway in some of these applications? I know there's other portions of our code that also define how much of a front area can be used for parking no more than 50% and stuff. And so I wasn't even sure if this was in harmony with other elements of our code and why we would say that a second driveway would be ideal in some situations. Yeah, so what we've heard from some applicants and property owners that are interested in constructing ADUs is that the logical place to put the ADU may be, for instance, on the rear of the parcel. And it may be more appropriate to have an access to that property from the rear if there's an alley or some situations like that. And that they would like the flexibility to be able to design the site in such a way that the access to the ADU and the primary dwelling makes the most logical sense. Currently the code allows for that but requires a Department of Public Works review of those second driveway options. So what the ordinance does is allows for that that second driveway to be part of an ADU design if an applicant would like to pursue that without having a special Department of Public Works review. However, all of the other requirements of the code still apply, for instance, that the code section you mentioned related to the driveway percentage of the frontage area. Incluses of the second driveway. So it would, you would only be allowed a second driveway if it still did not in aggregate apply to more than 50% of the front yard. Right, yeah, the proposed ADU ordinance is not changing those other provisions in the county code. Okay, I just, I saw a conflict there. I mean, from a realistic standpoint, most driveways already take up, I mean, close to half of somebody's front yard, especially in a large portion of my district. So I just wasn't sure then how you would be able to squeeze the second one in there. But if, so I'm just trying to work through the practicality of those two code sections that I think are in conflict. I mean, I hear what you're saying and I think, and I appreciate that it doesn't run in conflict with the other one, but I think in practicality then we may run into issues on that moving forward. I'll just close with a question about the design standpoint, I'm all for this idea of a prefab or anything that accelerates the construction. I do have some concerns though about how broadly that's going to be interpreted if there's absolutely no design review at all. I mean, we're dealing with this on something relatively different in my district that I know planning's familiar with on a single family home in theory that was constructed with no design review at all. And it's very unique, I guess, for that neighborhood to say the least as far as what you would generally define to be neighborhood character compatibility. So if you have sort of like a traditional ranch style home or a Mediterranean style home, I mean, could you just, am I interpreting this right that you could literally build an ADU that looks absolutely different from the rest of the house in that footprint? There would be absolutely no review in regards to that. Yes, that is correct. And I will clarify that actually one of the provisions in the state law updates, I believe it was the update from last year, disallows us from having any kind of qualitative design review for an ADU that only requires a building permit. So that provision in our code, that was kind of a qualitative provision about the design compatibility between the ADU and the primary dwelling. At this point, that provision in our code would only be able to be applied to an ADU that was subject to discretionary review for some other reason, can't be applied to a ministerial review. What we are potentially allowed to do is add objective design review standards. So we could add that into the ordinance. And it's not currently there, you're saying? Not currently there. The only provision we have in the proposed ordinance is some standards related to modifications of historic buildings. Okay, I mean, what I'm trying to strike here is a balance of, I mean, I feel like that, I agreed with Supervisor McPherson's opening statements that I think that this is the best way to, and the quickest way to build affordable housing in our county, especially considering the fact that basically we're sued over every good affordable housing project that we put forward. And this, you know, one of the reasons by the state removed this out of sequence to take away this argument that people will use, I think, over broadly in order to stop affordable housing because they don't want it in their neighborhood. That said, I do think that realistically, if you had five or six ADUs, especially street-facing, second-story ADUs, it didn't look anything like the home or the neighborhood. I mean, you're gonna, we're all gonna hear about it. And I think that there should be some balance there, because ultimately it's not the design standard that's really stopping, or I shouldn't say the design look, it's necessarily stopping somebody. It's other elements that really do make something financially infeasible. So we spent a long time, and there's been a lot of discussions about roof pitches and blocking out light, and whether it should be 27 feet in previous iterations of these discussions. And I mean, one of our colleagues was involved in those early discussions, but they were pretty contentious. I mean, leading up to even where we are here, and some of the things that are being proposed today kind of don't discuss those histories. And so I respect the fact that what we should absolutely, not just align with state law, I think we should go further than the state does to make it easy, because we're in a very unique area that really does need affordable housing. I just would like some feedback from planning about, just like we did on the parking standards, which I know some people are gonna express concerns with and within the coastal zone, but I think absolutely should be maintained. I mean, look, we had quite a discussion about the live-out coastal parking program for a reason. There are issues and impacts within the coastal zone that are unique. And so I understand that. And I think that we should maintain the parking regulations there. But I think there should be something on the design as well. I just think that there has to be something where, I mean, what I'm trying to get is to a policy place where this doesn't hold up projects, but we also don't end up with something where an entire neighborhood is up in arms and a neighbor has to deal with that because they built something that doesn't look anything like it would normally belong in a neighborhood. Or if there were a single family thing, we would actually not necessarily approve it. So we have to think about, because these are functionally turning into primary single family residences, I mean, a secondary form of it. And yet they would not have that. So Ms. Allen, I mean, I heard what you said on the objective standards. I don't, I'm taking your guidance on what I should ask of my colleagues in order to continue this discussion on that element. But I really am also trying to make clear I am in no way trying to bog down the approval process for ADUs. I just, I can anticipate this being an issue moving forward once these things start getting approved. Yeah, absolutely. So the option that the board has here would be to add in some kind of objective design standard where a staff member in our building division that's reviewing ADU plans can check a checkbox and say, is this here or isn't this here? As part of that review process, rather than making a finding or making some kind of qualitative determination, it has to be something that can either be seen or not seen on the building plans very clearly. It's very common for planning staff to work with an applicant to make them aware of situations even though it isn't necessarily covered in code. And so what I'm asking it for something like that, which is to say, before you move forward with this, have you considered X, Y and Z because this may create an issue within a neighborhood that I think is gonna end up causing greater problems for us and may actually be detrimental to the overall program, right? Cause right now this is a program that has a lot of public support. But if we don't do it right, I think that we could have issues that go counter to that. So would it be then saying to create some objective standards with also the very clear direction that this shall not bog down in time-length or cost, you know, the elements of that application? I don't know if those are mutually exclusive or not, but that is my policy objective in this discussion. They just depend on what those objective standards were. And like I say, I think that if it's something that our plan checkers can easily see on the plans and as part of their usual review process, then that would be ideal. If it's something that requires an extra meeting with our development review staff or some kind of consultation, then that kind of starts to perhaps not be in alignment with the state law and also adds to the time for the project. And of course, as you mentioned, you know, we can have different standards in the coastal zone as well. If we wanted to do that, we would have to make the case that there's a unique situation in the coastal zone that would warrant the need for those special design considerations inside the coastal zone. Given the densities within the coastal zone and given the number of complaints that I think supervisor and Konig that I received within the coastal zone versus not in the coastal zone, I think that that is realistically where these issues are going to occur more than not. I don't think it's gonna be exclusive to it, but to me, an area out in Corralitas that has 10 acres, I think that they should be allowed to do functionally what they need to do in order to improve housing on that stock. I think that in a situation where you have a, I mean, like I personally live on a four or so thousand square foot lot or a 3,000 square foot lot. I mean, the idea of, and I share my fence line with six other residences to put this in perspective, like I think about what they do to their property, what I do to my property has significant impacts on what any one of us experience. And I don't live in the coastal zone, I actually live a block right next to it, but it's still with that level of density, that size and parcel, and it would be something that I'd be concerned about without some additional eyes taking a look at what that would do to a neighboring parcel while still trying to not bog down that process. I mean, what I would say is that, because I think that there's gonna be some modifications anyway from the board today, is that I think that I would be totally open to you coming back and just, I'm in favor of functionally 100% of what's proposed and I'm just trying to flag something that I've experienced in nine years of experience from dealing with community on this issue, that this is going to be a problem unless we have something there. And what that something is, I really do need to defer to you and your expertise to come back with something that it'll be. And so I'll be prepared when it comes back to make that general component and whatever additional additions my colleagues have. But thank you so much for walking me through it, I appreciate your patience on it. Sure, no problem. Did you want to comment on that? Yes, but I think it landed in a fine place. I was going to suggest that for now, we could just emphasize in our information to people who are building ADUs voluntarily, we can let them know that they should consider the exterior look. And even though we don't have a discretionary design review option, we can work with people to make that consideration when they do their design. So we can begin with that and then we can, it sounds like we'll talk about it again in the future. Any other questions to my advisor friend? Supervisor. I know thank you, Mr. Chair. I just think we're going to need clarity on the conversion on the building envelope versus footprint as well as on this design. So I do think there's going to be something that comes back anyway. Okay. It'll, okay. I think it was the good, good, been comments of great concerns because in identifying with the past concerns we've had to supervisor Coonerty, you have any questions? Yeah. Let me just say, I appreciate the work the staff has done. I think we're heading in a good direction. And as everyone has mentioned, ADU is one of the biggest opportunities we have. So to the extent that we are, you know, obviously complying with state law, but then going beyond it to meet some of our local needs, I think makes a lot of sense. On many of the issues that supervisor friend was just talking about, I'll defer to them since it's his and supervisor Koenig's district that will be, you know, likely the most impacted by some of these rules. I did want to take the temperature of my colleagues around the change around the requirement of owner occupancy of either the home or the ADU. You know, while I do understand it's, it is a barrier to construction of ADUs. I also think that it creates two potentially negative impacts, right? And the first negative impact is that you have homes being turned into essentially or properties being turned into duplexes, which may erode public support for ADUs as a policy strategy with absentee landlords or investment landlords. And the second part is it increases, I think the value or the cost of properties for, you know, families that are competing for these properties to try to figure out buy a home and make a home here, they are now competing more with investors. And so while we may create some additional rental stock by not having the owner occupancy, I do think it does put additional burdens on figure the first time home buyers who will be competing. And I wanted to see if any of my colleagues share that concern and would want to adjust. Mr. Chair, I'll speak to Supervisor Coonerty's point. There was actually a recent article that I think came through CSAC or County News that talked about this occurring in San Diego, exactly, San Diego city, excuse me, exactly what Supervisor Coonerty is speaking of. And they've had a lot of issues with investors taking over, especially center city type properties and pushing out people that traditionally use it as a single family opening home stock. So I think his points are well taken and I'd be open to what he's saying. Also considering we're doing a regular review of this, I think that this is an iterative process similar to a lot of the evolving policies we have, assuming that it is in conformance with state regulations to do what Supervisor Coonerty is saying I would be supportive of what he's presenting. I'll just respond to that with an alternate point of view. I mean, take a look at what the housing market is today. I think it's pretty far out of reach of most first-time home buyers at this point with the average cost already being around a million dollars or more. So I think the benefit to affordable housing is actually in creating more rental housing on some of these units, even if that does mean they become investor owned and at least that housing is getting created. I don't think we're gonna be creating any more affordable first-time home buyer options by preventing investors from buying these units. Supervisor Caput, you're. I'd like to say thank you for the report. You've covered a lot in the questions that were brought up by the other supervisors. And I guess we've had a lot of public input at what the Planning Commission and also has there been public forums Yes, we had two community meetings this past spring. Each was attended by over a hundred folks online. And we had a planning commission study session before holding the hearing. Right. And it always comes up. We're trying our best to do what we need to do in order to have affordable housing and everything like that. Parking and traffic and cars are always a problem. So hopefully we can work this out so that it doesn't create neighborhood problems. Thank you. Okay, I think I'll go to the public now but I think we're gonna be coming back with not sure exactly what the additional direction might be from supervisors. Well, either a colleague or a friend or a coonertee but we might be considering how we might put that package together. But go ahead, we'll open up to the public. Yes, hello, my name is James Ealing Whitman. Maybe I missed something. And I guess I'm glad. I'd like some clarity to this question, which is I thought legislation was passed where ADU units were reduced from 17 feet to 13 feet. That doesn't seem to be the case. And I'd like some clarity on that. That's one question and then just an observation. And some people think I have a terrible sense of humor but if you guys aren't gonna regulate the designs, what's stopping some big fat round object like what Jeffrey Bezos wants to launch into space? So thank you. I guess a third, okay, I'm okay. I'll hold the third question. Thank you again for the presentation. So the main points here is that we need to align with the state and we can be more lenient. And this is something that I would like us to do as the city of Watsonville has already done. Now, for years, I've been proposing this to us and I've heard reasons from the staff that's been echoed back by you guys that say we'd like to do this, but we can't because it would require a change in the general plan or we'd like to do this, but we can't because it would require an environmental rule. Please call your colleagues at Watsonville and ask them. None of those things were required. So now we have another attempt to limit this option of having multiple ADUs. By this presentation that shows an example, hey, if you have a 10,000 square foot house, you can have one junior ADU and one ADU. But we have all these other options for having multiple ADUs. Well, her 10,000 square foot option, I have 120,000 square feet and none of those other options are available to me. Now, the whole point of ADUs is that we're supposed to be building affordable ones. So even if you possibly could do one of those other options like doing a housing cluster or a subdivision, the permit level required to do so is just below building an airport. You'd have to be here and get individual permission and that renders it completely unaffordable. Now, as far as the owner occupancy, you do not make a profit by building an ADU. If you wanna make a profit, invest in some of our local tech companies. Now, also here, you've had a hundred foot distance between buildings for an ADU. You have to have like a six acre property to do that. Between the setbacks of the areas and between the houses, that again, you're effectively not allowing it. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Seeing none, we'll return it to the board. There are two speakers on Zoom. I'm on Zoom, okay. Jennifer Sanchez, your microphone is available. Thank you, can you hear me? Yes. In my opinion, this ordinance doesn't provide adequate options for existing safe, non-conforming ADUs to be legalized and permitted. Throughout Santa Cruz, we have many existing garages, homes and ADUs that are built near property lines. In pleasure point alone, we have more than 200 backyard ADUs with more than 90% sitting on or within a foot or two of property lines. These ADUs deemed illegal by the county have been providing critical, affordable housing for decades. In the ordinance, we see options for temporary amnesty, but not for permitting or legalizing safe, critical, existing ADU housing stock. I believe this is very flawed and needs to be rectified. We need solutions that recognize the reality of our local housing crisis, the importance of these non-conforming ADU structures in providing low-income housing, the ramifications if these structures are removed from our local housing stock, and the reality that most of these existing ADUs have setbacks less than four feet already. This is the California minimum, and we need to be more lenient with existing ADUs. A case study from pleasure point for this April, the county red tagged a backyard ADU on Lowd Street that had been there for 18 years. It was safe with a stable tenant. The county said they needed to tear it down or move it to a four-foot setback in 90 days or pay thousands of dollars in daily fines until those things happen. As a result, the ADU was torn down and has resulted in a ripple effect of displacing five different groups from local stable housing. The owners need to sell, they're selling to an investor, they can't afford the house without the ADU, they're moving to places where two different groups are being evicted. Those tenants are moving so on, so on, five parts. For decades, county planning has made it almost impossible to convert existing structures to ADUs and legalizing existing ADUs. We cannot take a kick the can down the road approach of temporary amnesty. We need to acknowledge the reality of very common setback situations in Santa Cruz where many existing ADUs in homes don't even comply. This ordinance needs to be modified to provide pathways to legalize our grandfather's safe existing non-conforming ADUs regardless of setbacks. DM, your microphone is available. Yeah, hi, the presentation was quite dense with a lot of information and I apologize if I missed any parts regarding renting ADUs as vacation rentals. But as a landlord, I would allow, consider allowing ADUs to be rented as vacation rentals for one as kind of a backup to increasingly restrictive rent control, just cause eviction laws that have already been put on the books and might be more coming. Reason being, I just imagine the mom and pop landlord living in the main house that rents to a tenant in their ADU in their backyard, which, and then ends up, that tenant ends up going south and they're not able to evict them as effectively as they wish. And now they're stuck with this problem tenant in their own backyard. Now, hopefully that, the majority of these ADUs would be rented, but I think it should be, we should open it up and expand the vacation permit process allowances. So at least we could get some lucrative, 12% trans-an occupancy tax out of them should the owners of the parcel of the builders of the ADU choose not to take the risk of having a tenant, again, given the increasingly restrictive landlord tenant restrictions. Thank you. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay. We'll close the public hearing on that and return it to the board. Is Mr. Carroll unprepared to make a motion? First let me just address a couple of points that are made. We have in place, the ADUs can't be vacation rentals in two different places in our code and it seems to defeat the purpose to allow them to be that way. So the board's been consistent on that. To Mondo's point regarding Watsonville and violations of the general plan, I mean, the general plan is not the same as ours. I mean, we have two different situations. So something that can be a violation of our general plan may not be relevant in another community, especially a community that has primarily urban service line areas, the city of Watsonville. But I mean, I hear what he's saying. He's been consistent on wanting multiple ADUs on a parcel and I appreciate actually a lot of the points that he's raised over the course of time. And I got to say that the ordinance has moved a lot more toward what he's been asking for over the last five years than away from it. So I think that there should be recognition of that as well. With that said, I'm prepared to move the recommended actions with some additional direction. To Ms. Allen's point, I think that the building envelope, on conversion ADUs, there needs to be clarity on the building envelope versus footprint size, which was the intention of the HCD anyway, but we just need to have the clarity. On the review, I just, I think the board just needs some options that allow for some sense of review, whether that be in the coastal zone, whether that be on parcels that are under a certain size that can be characterized outside of the coastal zone. But again, things that don't add cost or time, that's not the idea. The idea is just to ensure that there's a set of eyes on these for consistency. And third element is to introduce Supervisor Coonerty's suggestion of the owner occupancy. I think that there's a value to that because other communities that are flying ahead of us on this have seen issues with that. So it'd be modifying or continuing the current owner occupancy requirement. I second. For clarity, would that be owner occupancy for both an ADU and a junior ADU? Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah, they just need to be in one of the units. They can be in the junior ADU, the ADU, or the house itself, whatever works best for them in the situation. And we have a motion with additional direction. Chair, I have a question. Sorry, can I just clarify a question? The motion was for the staff recommendation, which includes a number of things, including adopting the ordinance. And so I just wanna make sure we're clear for the record that what is being asked is for staff to bring back a revised version of this ordinance for the Board's consideration. Is that correct? That's correct, Mr. Heath, I'm sorry. Reflexively, we moved the recommended actions. So you're correct, yes, we're not. This is not an adoption, it's to bring back. But I think that the overall point is that we are in support of the overwhelming amount of this proposed ordinance, but these are some both minor and I think relatively minor modifications was proposed, but I know that they need to come back with them as a clean version. That's the recommendation. So the recommendation, it includes coming back with the minor changes that we have. I think the way I'm hearing the motion is that it's to reject staff's recommendation that is part of the package and instead to come back with a revised ordinance pursuant to supervisor friends and supervisor Coonerty's recommendations, which may be small, but they are meaningful and they need to be reflected in a clean copy on another agenda. Okay. As my spokesperson there just said, this is exactly what I meant to my motion, Mr. Chair. Okay. Well understood. Okay, okay, we call the roll please then. Supervisor Koenig? No. Friend? Coonerty? Aye. Caput? McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes for one. That completes our regular agenda, it's 125 and what I'm gonna do now we have, we're gonna be going into closed session. We have six items. My recommendation is we come back at two o'clock for a closed session. So it's just over a half hour. Do we have any reportable items, Mr. Council? No, Supervisor. Okay. Okay, then we will close the regular agenda or we'll move into the closed session at 2 p.m. Thank you.