 October 29 2020 special meeting of Santa Cruz City Council. I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting agenda. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television on 25 and streaming on the city's web cityofsantaacruz.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely and I want to thank the public for viewing today's meeting at home. If you wish to comment on the interim recovery plan instructions are on your screen please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through your phone. Please note there's a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak. Call in at the beginning of the presentation when it's time for public comment please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes and you may hang up once you've finished commenting. With that I'd like to ask for clerks to please call the roll. Thank you mayor council member Byers. Here. Matthew. Here. Here. Boulder. Here. Watkins. Here. Vice mayor Myers. Here. And mayor Cummings. Here. Today we have one item on our agenda uh it's the city council in number recovery plan workshop um and so with that I will turn the meeting over to well I'd just like to thank everyone for joining us today and you know since uh covid's happened and given the impacts that this has had on our local economy we felt that it was necessary for us to try to come together to figure out what we should be prioritizing as far as work for the next 12 to 18 months. This is the first meeting that we're going to have with council regarding the interim recovery planning and it's an opportunity for management partners who's joining us today to get some input from council members and from the community on what we should be prioritizing as we're moving forward with recovery over the next 12 to 18 months and so with that I'll turn it over to city manager Martin Bernal for further comments. Thank you mayor um I just wanted to start out by just saying that other levels have been very unprecedented times right now uh for any number of reasons and uh you know local government is really more critical now than it ever has been uh to safeguard the health and well-being of our community and yet at the same time we're probably more challenged than we ever have been as a local government in terms of being able to do that and so that makes it really important for the city to be able to do two things in my view at least and that is that we have effective government well organized government that does a good job of providing the services within the limitations and capacities that we have and then two that we provide effective leadership to our community uh and that is uh for me my mind is the number of things you know it's a it's a good good teamwork between the council the staff the community having trust uh respect an ability to work together uh to formulate a vision that we can all work towards despite the there might be disagreements but having clear direction uh establishing priorities and then taking with that taking into account our limited capacities and restrictions that we may have but also that we have a system that can make adjustments as needed and that we can evaluate evaluate what we're doing so that's that's just super critical again in our environment more so than ever that we be as effective as we can as our local government and as the leaders of our community and so that is really the main purpose for us today is to be able to to begin uh some of that work in terms of trying to identify those priorities to uh create structured systems to hold each other accountable and to adjust that needed and to take into account all the various limitations that we have and to the extent normally when we do these kinds of workshops we would have more time to do team building it's a bit hard to do that in this kind of environment but it is really important that uh we work as a team between the council members the department heads and so I certainly would encourage today all the department heads all the staff and the council members obviously to to participate fully uh and to engage uh today's not necessarily where you're going to make final decisions but it's it's a good opportunity to uh lay out concerns issues identified not here from the public here from the community here what we've collected and start to put together that framework that I think is really critical particularly in the months that come as we uh immerse from if you think about it we've got uh four uh ongoing declared emergencies in our community within the last couple years we've got a fiscal emergency we've got a health emergency we've got a homelessness emergency um and uh and we've got a fire in emergencies that's pretty unprecedented in terms of what we're experiencing and it's pretty overwhelming and so again to the extent that we're quite clear and prioritize that is good for our community um so with that um I just wanted to turn it over to um our facilitator today it's Jan Perkins from the management partners and her team who's done a lot of work with the committee the we had a interim recovery committee comprised of uh our mayor and vice mayor and councilmember Watkins who have really helped to develop uh the approach today uh to really get us to uh putting together that initial uh interim recovery plan to the state the next couple to 18 months I'll turn it over to Jan okay thank you so much Martin and uh hello mayor and city council it's really a pleasure to be with all of you today I'd like to introduce the other two team members here with me today uh Gloria Hurtado Gloria if you could just wave you're gonna be hearing from Gloria today and a number of council members have already had an opportunity to meet with Gloria uh virtually uh as we get our council interviews and uh Claire Coleman uh Claire if you could wave as well uh Claire um has been helping prepare materials and Claire was also part of our management partners team working on the financial forecast so she has that background as well um so with that uh Claire let's move on to the next slide uh just the the objectives uh Martina's actually and the mayor have actually gone over these quite well but there are three specific objectives today uh one is to establish three priority areas of focus uh and we'll be going through a process we've gotten a lot of good information to tee that up for a productive conversation and we'll be looking for council consensus and on on three uh key areas of focus for the interim recovery plan periods of 12 to 18 months secondly identifying some key metrics for tracking recovery again we've gotten a lot of good input on what those might be and we have provided some options and we'll be looking for some council direction on a subset of those and we'll talk more about those and then finally um creating a framework for making decisions about new work or services or projects or initiatives that might come up during this period so that the the council and the staff can actually stay focused on the priorities agreed to tentatively agreed to today and then agreed to formally when this comes back to the city council at a city council meeting so those are the objectives today and as the mayor noted um maybe we'll go to nine and maybe we won't go to nine if we can be efficient with our time then let's try to do that as facilitators we um really do focus on um trying to be as very as much efficient as we possibly can and we uh very very rarely go over a time our objective is to always um end a little bit early um so that's a collective and a and a shared objective for for everybody perhaps so with that um we'll go on to the next to the so the agenda sort of the flow of the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening we're going to have just a few slides on the purpose of the interim recovery plan just going to that just a little bit more um and then open it up for public comments which the mayor will handle um and then we have just a few slides on some input that we've gathered then we're going to spend most of the time on talking about the priority areas of focus for the next 12 to 18 months after that then we'll talk about metrics following that we'll talk about the framework for decision making um and these would be on on new items and then as we begin to wrap up we wanted to get some council input about communicating the city's financial condition and the recovery plan so uh just looking for some input we've already asked for some input as part of council interviews and front department heads but we'll have a a short conversation about that to get your thoughts and then we'll wrap up uh and be concluded no no later than nine o'clock so on the next slide um just a few you know zoom guidelines i mean you've been doing this and you know and as martin said it's a little bit hard to do team building in a zoom environment um i know as a facilitator um i will certainly be glad to be back in a in a real room in person it's uh it's not the same but we do our best don't we everybody does does your best um so um for council members um it's nice that you're showing your face and i would encourage you to continue to do that and maybe that is your norm anyway for your council meetings which is fantastic uh for the department heads um i understand that the norm is to not which actually with with as many people that are that are in the zoom room um that's actually helpful to have the council um and the city manager showing your face um the hand raised feature um we may or may not actually need that with so few people that are um i i think we can probably physically see the hand raised the hands raised by council members but we also don't want to miss anybody so um it is a feature that is available and so um it is something that we typically do use in these workshops and so to the extent that that a council member is um trying to say something and and perhaps i'm not seeing that you do have your hand raised your physical hand uh feel free pleased to use the the electronic hand um as well um and then a facilitator either a glory or myself may may call on um the mayor or council member as well as we go through or the city manager as we go through this so those are just a few guidelines just a few ground rules just as we and you know as if we were in in person together we would be going through a few ground rules um always assuming good intent um everybody uh is is looking out for the best interests of Santa Cruz looking out for those interests in different ways perhaps with different points of view and and um with with different objectives but always with good intent um seeking first to understand which really just means listening to other points of view um and then to be understood uh seeking consensus we really are looking for consensus we will be doing some virtual dot voting uh so that we can uh be very clear about what the the council majority wants to do with regards to priority areas of focus but but the goal is always um as much consensus as we can and seeking areas agreement staying focused um gloria and i will do our best to help help all of us collectively stay focused but i invite everyone to um participate in that ground rule as well um and then of course uh showing respect for the process and for every everyone and i i'm sure that you do that so those are our typical ground rules um bike rack as we go through the next few hours there may be some things that come up that would be better addressed in some other forum maybe the city manager needs to come back with information or you know something else and we rather than going down a rabbit hole or getting off on a tangent we'll make a note of it and and claire will keep track of of any bike rack items so it's a time management tool so that we can stay focused on on the agenda today that's what that's about and and by the way if a council members or the city manager have anything that as we go along that you think ought to be on the bike rack feel free to type up and say so okay so um so those are all the kind of housekeeping items so now i'd like to ask laura to talk just a little bit about the purpose of the interim recovery plan we have just very very few slides on this so laura thank you jan this is laura schmidt the assistant city manager i'll just do a brief recap of how we came to focus on an interim recovery plan so claire if you could advance to the next slide please so in winter of 2019 the city council was focusing on putting together a three to five year strategic plan and we had gone through various outreach and information gathering steps with internal city staff and in february and march of 2020 we were supposed to begin the community outreach portion and of course that's when the COVID-19 pandemic hit so um as we worked to operationally respond to the pandemic in the spring of 2020 council members rightfully recognize that the three to five year strategic plan was probably not the appropriate vehicle for us to be focusing on in order to get through the pandemic and then raise our sights to figure out what we're going to do in response to the pandemic to focus on recovery for our community our financial situation and our economics so in june of that year the council voted to create a council committee called the interim recovery plan committee and that was mayor Cummings vice mayor mires and then council member Watkins and that interim recovery plan committee established the three objectives to put together three priority focused areas identify key metrics so that we can actually measure how we are doing for the recovery and then create a framework for decision-making recognizing that as the pandemic changes we have another emergency such as the fire we have the financial crisis we are often faced with needing to be able to make course adjustments and decisions quickly so let's put together a framework to enable us to do that next slide please so um why the focus areas why do we need those it's it's it's basically good governance and it's really important for council and staff to be able to stay focused on a few things especially in this ever-changing dynamic world of COVID-19 and the other unfortunate emergencies that we've been facing in 2020 we also need to be able to implement those changes quickly and then underlying those focus areas we need to develop a robust work plan to say so these are the focus areas these are the items in the work plan related to those focus areas that we need to implement and doing so will be that school of fish navigating and aligned um to get down to one place all together and achieving what we need to okay so mayor i'll turn it back to you for public comment that you are muted at this time if there's any members of the public who like to comment on the interim recovery plan now it's the time to call in using the numbers on your screen once you've called into the meeting please press star nine on your phone and you'll be given two minutes to comment mayor i don't know if the numbers on the screen are what we see but we only see that this so i don't know if they see something different i'm sorry it's something different okay thank you okay so i don't see any members of the public calling in at this point in time so um if members of the public call in later maybe we can open it up to the public comment towards the end again okay thank you we'll we'll keep moving in there okay so i'd like to turn this over to uh gloria hertado all right yeah go ahead started um the first thing that we wanted to do was to collect information and data to inform this process um the first step that uh the city took was the financial forecast and management partners was a part of that so you all received the financial forecast we did council interviews which all of you participated in we did department questionnaires that each of the departments completed and then we also did a community survey and next slide and i'm going to let laura talk about the the financial outlook because i know there have been some updates so i'll turn this one over to laura thank you gloria um as council recalls the covid-19 pandemic really impacted our major revenue sources and the shortfalls that we're experiencing are just not for the fiscal year 20 that we finish but also the fiscal year 21 that we are currently in and multiple years out it the pandemic essentially triggered a recession for us and for other agencies and across the country so based upon the updated forecast that finance put together in october we went to council and at that council meeting it was a special meeting in october on eight you all adopted fiscal year 21 budget changes that helped us find reductions and savings in our budget of approximately five point two million dollars we uh of those changes 27 of them were one time so those very much helped us meet our financial goals for fiscal year 21 but for fiscal year 22 that means the ongoing recession will continue to be exacerbated until we find fundamental structural ongoing changes the other thing that we adopted in october were there were a net 18 fewer positions and those structural changes reap benefit year over year and all the departments throughout the city experienced reductions um and contributed to that 5.2 million in additional reductions that we found on top of furloughs and retirements and other actions we had already taken in fiscal year 21 that gives you the financial backdrop it's quite serious and one of the things that we're hoping to do as we figure out our focus areas as a city will be able to help inform and improve our financial situation fiscal years and in the coming fiscal years as well thank you i'll turn it back to management partners thank you and that's me um so your your financial outlook uh financial condition will continue to be something that you're addressing as a council as a city um the other piece was council interviews so each one of the council members was interviewed and we collected information on what you some of the priorities you think we should focus on for the next uh 12 to 18 months what projects could possibly be deferred um or or eliminated um we also talked briefly about metrics so what metrics could we use that um would track the recovery and then also discussed ways to communicate this to the public and there were a variety of suggestions the next slide uh department has also completed questionnaires and they also uh gave us um thoughts their thoughts on priorities for the next 12 to 18 months they provided lists of what uh current projects or important work that's already underway they also identified what progress projects could possibly be put on hold uh during the the interim recovery period and also um provided suggestions on metrics and data that may already be collected next slide um we also the fourth will this was the community survey and the community survey was available for 11 days online and there was a very good response a total response was uh 1,835 um and um as you can see that the top five priorities were uh fire emergency medical services or public safety affordable housing park spaces open spaces environment climate action infrastructure homeless services the next slide what we did because there were so many responses we pulled out those who are actually either residents we wanted to focus on the residents the businesses that are within the city students that were within the city and these were the top five priorities the change when we pulled out um the public and the visitors and non non-city residents was that homelessness uh services became a bigger issue for those who reside or operate businesses in Santa Cruz and the environment had a lesser priority when we focused on those who are residents and businesses within the city of Santa Cruz so this is important information to have as background as we start moving forward in developing your priorities okay um I would also like to have a point out that we have prepared a workbook um that was provided in advance to the council and to the public and and um results from the survey are included in that workbook as one of the attachments so that uh anybody who wants more information can get it from the workbook so uh we wanted just to give you the kind of the bottom line highlights and uh in the slides but a lot more information is certainly available there okay so now we're going to move into um discussion of the focus areas um so um by way of introducing this Gloria mentioned that we received information from the department heads we asked them what significant projects are already um on the books already underway that the council has already given direction for um in addition to those uh four emergencies that have been declared and then of course working on the the financial recovery itself um and so we have this list and this is also in the workbook as one of the attachments but we thought that uh starting out with this just as an information piece we're not going to spend a lot of time on this um and this is not for the prioritization these are all projects that are underway and that will continue to to move forward um unless there um is some other action that is taken um but the point of this slide is that Santa Cruz as you well know is a very busy city you have a lot on your on your work plate um it's a as the council and the staff develops this 12 to 18 months uh interim recovery plan and identifies areas of focus it's important just to keep in mind that there's a lot of work going on every day along with the day-to-day management of just managing staff managing the day-to-day services that go on in all of the city departments um in providing core services so so this is just backdrop very important um background information and we can certainly look back to any of this um as we go through our conversation today but we wanted to provide that to you and some in the workbook we have more than a list in the workbook we actually staff provided the status um of each one of those as well so there's there's more information and I know city manager could elaborate on any of these if as we go through the discussion today there's a need to do that so on the next slide Claire okay good so on this one so as Gloria indicated when we did our interviews with the city council and as we did the questionnaire with the department heads we asked what are the the key priorities and we um we heard a lot of alignment actually um you know we did not hear a list of 30 things and which means that um the council is um doing a good job of understanding that that you really do need to focus um and so we were able to sympathize and sort into these eight areas um I am in a moment going to show you another slide because we also heard some some process and principles that will be important to the city council and I'll get into those in just a moment but I I first wanted to share with you the areas of focus that council members um doesn't mean that a majority mentioned each one of these but these came up in our interviews and through our virtual dot voting and after discussion of each one of these then we will see which three of these really will emerge but these are the eight that did emerge as focus areas as possible focus areas the department heads also had a lot of alignment with what the council said the department heads had five key areas that they thought would be important focus areas over the next 12 to 18 months it's not to say that they are not all key areas to work on but as we're thinking about what are the top priorities nothing if you have 30 things they all can't be priorities eight things can't really be top priorities but you can have three priorities and so that's really the the idea is to begin to to narrow but there's certainly a lot of alignment here between the council and and the staff so first going to give you an overview and then we're going to take an opportunity to discuss each one of those this slide that Claire just put up in interviewing council members a number of you a number of you mentioned a variety of things that as you go through your interim recovery plan and develop that you said these are important principles or processes that that that really would be an underlying framework for it and so we wanted to list these and one of them that came out from a number of council members as your health and all policies and to be very mindful of those principles of equity public health and sustainability as you go through all of your work another idea that came up was to continue to look for state and federal resources which there may very well be some some new ones we have the CARES Act now might be CARES Act too and and we know there's a lot of conversation going on about that so there that very well could happen other comments that we heard had to do with prioritizing resources to those most in need it was just more of a of a comment the grand jury reports were mentioned as as something to be mindful of and just keeping those in mind it was also suggested that engaging the community in maintaining parks could be something that by way of as a way to engage people and then in defining core city services and prioritizing them with the idea that that resources are limited as council members well know and so at at some point it may be helpful to actually say what are those core city services and and prioritize those so for these we wanted to share those as a way to to acknowledge that those are also important principles or processes to be thinking about as we discuss the areas of focus so in the next slide we're actually now going to ask council members to begin to talk about these what we would like to do is to hear from council members what your intent understanding that not every council member mentioned every one of these things but we are going to go through one through eight and we would like to hear council members comments about what you might envision these to be so what would be the intent of each one of these because that's going to be helpful as we move into setting narrowing into priority areas of focus and then what and then after the council actually does decide on the priority areas of focus the city manager will be returning with a work plan to meet those and we'll talk with a separate slide and martin will talk about that but but it will be very helpful to the staff to understand what council members have in their minds about these before there's any virtual thought voting so we're just going to go through starting with number one and i think claire has provided some other slides so she can just add some bullet points so i'm now going to open this up council members to offer your comments and not every council member may need to or want to come on out comment on everyone but i certainly want to make sure that all council members have an opportunity to comment on everyone so if you would like to hold your hand up or mayor mayor your first i was just wondering if maybe you could go back to the screen before because since this one only has four and the other one had all eight so i'm just trying to write them down so i can because i think some of these can actually be combined okay so now okay and let me um i thank you they're actually also on page four of the workbook just so you have that as a convenience so because we realize you're you know you you're looking at a variety of different things jen this is goria yeah i just wanted to remind that when we condensed this list into the eight all of these were um priorities that were mentioned by more than one council member yeah so it might not have been a majority but more than one council member um identified these areas so if there was something that only one council member identified it didn't make the top eight so this is sort of a consolidated yeah loose consensus of the council members yeah thank you for clarifying that gloria yeah that's helpful okay so um why don't we go through one by one um so these are the eight and if you want to take a look at that page four of your workbook so you have all eight in front of you um we created the the next two slides just to give claire room to type in some notes so again if we were in person with nice big flip charts we'd be writing it all up there but we're doing virtual so who has comments on the first one on the council uh council member meyers first oh you are muted yeah i think i'm sort of gravitating a little bit towards um where the mayor was going um but i do believe the item number one um could be one of our top three priorities um i think that because of the recession but also the long-term needs of the city which we know are you know we're before even before cobit so our pension obligations are uh cip which you know often is push back and push back um some of the new um pressures on the city so obviously we've learned how um how potentially damaging wildfire can be we now have conditions that may affect our downtown because of flooding so i think um the the new revenue and then also looking at um cost recovery but i also think that the um doing the assessment of the internal kind of the internal workings of the city makes sense right now um you know i i'm reflecting on some of the actions by by different cities and counties right now that have experienced these different natural disasters you know and they're creating they're sort of combining and making departments or making at least interdepartmental teams you know around um recovery and and various things whether it's from wildfire or the you know potential damages from you know watersheds that make becoming towards the cities later on you know deep brief flows and things like that so i i just think number one is for me it would be uh it would be one of the three so i'll stop there thank you okay but mayor you had your hand up next i think thanks yeah i agree with vice mayor on fiscal sustainability and i'm gonna not jump a little bit ahead but i was just looking at the list on page four and i feel like you know with that long-term fiscal sustainability there's a lot there's you know a number of these items that kind of fall underneath that so you know restarting our local economy i feel like you know when we have and also the green economy and downtown investment i mean when we have you know jobs and especially if we're trying to expand beyond tourism as our economic base you know really thinking about what are new jobs that we can create in the community that will allow for um you know people to have the finances they need to go out and shop in stores you know to afford their rents in town and you know i feel like that's all a big part of kind of restarting the local economy and investing in you know our downtown space and then ultimately that all feeds into you know long-term fiscal sustainability because if we can determine what are new you know job sectors that can come into the to town that wouldn't be for example impacted by something like um a pandemic in the future you know that kind of fits in with the the long-term fiscal sustainability but get to the vice mayor's point i think that that should probably be at the top of our list because we ultimately need to make you know maintain um you know our our ability to function as a city and that's going to require maintaining that financial stability and sustainability okay good other comments from council members on the first item again we we want to get your thoughts on the on each one of these okay council member brown and then what can thank you uh yeah i i absolutely agree um i guess i want to say and it's kind of uh i think this applies to pretty much all of the eight that um you know just to make the statement that the devil really is in the details on a lot of so um we may have different ways of thinking about what is needed to move towards fiscal sustainability and i think i'm thinking in particular with respect to new revenues you know so i i agree that that's a priority and i do think that there's much a much deeper conversation that we need to have ultimately about uh where we're going to prioritize within that you know what are the strategies for fiscal sustainability if we're talking about new revenue uh where are we targeting uh for those new revenues i know that there's some differences on the council around you know what kind of taxation measures we might want to put on the ballot so again um i i absolutely think that number one is should be our top priority and i do think we need to find a way to you know flesh out some of uh those details uh you know as as a as a council i'm just gonna add here because i don't want to keep repeating myself but we have heard you know and it is and i understand the constraints and all of the reasons why we are doing this today um but we are five days from an election and the council is changing so um i don't know that that would cause there to be a significant shift in the the main priority areas um but i do feel uh a little bit it feels a little strange to be doing this today i'll just say that um and i think people in the public have noticed that as well so i just want to be careful about one not getting too detailed but also understanding that we're going to need to sort some of those things out as we move forward but yeah it's a number one is clearly number one for me okay council member Watkins on number one uh thank you thank you yeah no i i think i you know i agree with the comments made um by my colleagues in regards to making this a priority i do think that and we discuss as a subcommittee you know timing and refinement and um you know input along the way so definitely mindful of the fact that there will be a shift in health members and wanting their input and their bias into this as well so i know this is sort of a preliminary excuse me approach to moving forward i don't think uh substantially in terms of the three areas that will come up with will change but as mentioned by councilor brown i'm sure the details and specifics will be uh refined moving forward and i do think that part of that should include how we're really constantly engaging with our business sector and our various partners in terms of um kind of top uh you know top priorities and impacts um that they're experiencing at that time so really being data informed and really constantly consulting with them um to help refine some of the needs because part of what our long-term fiscal sustainability strategies will be is to also sort of support our businesses now from um the immediate impact and then in regards to where i believe the mayor was going i think you know there doesn't need to be um a separation between our long-term fiscal sustainability approach with for example a green economy or i'm investing in downtown so i do think there's opportunity to potentially consolidate some of the various priorities because for me i think a long-term fiscal sustainability strategy to the vice mayor's point really should include resilience to climate stressors moving forward so and that could also lead to green jobs and sort of also generate more opportunities so i don't think we need to decouple those um you know just sort of at this time that's sort of what comes to mind for me okay and i see that council members are using the the electronic hand raised feature so we'll just use that it sounds like that you're used to doing that in your in your council meeting so that's fantastic so council member matthews yes i would also put a whole bunch of dots by this one long-term fiscal sustainability there are a lot of components as i looked down the list pretty much items two through eight are all fundamental to number one yeah you get to thinking about it homelessness arises as a key issue for the business community um public safety arises as a key issue downtown investment green economy obviously relates to long-term fiscal sustainability uh restarting and growing the local economy portable housing and infrastructure quality of us frankly so it's almost to me to my mind it's almost like all of those things are part of that big heading um under the the captions under fiscal sustainability included cost recovery i'd be curious to know what kind of progress we're making on that and what um currently in the pipeline i know the staff has been working on that i i'm just at this moment not familiar about how far along we are on that path it's not going to solve the problem but it's one of the ingredients new revenue i take to mean mostly of a ballot measure of some sort that takes its own path of exploration polling and what kind of returns you get what's the climate etc i would also say a part of that is recovered revenue and that to me kind of relates down to restarting and growing the local economy we've lost so much i mean we need to just rebuild our bailbacks and our koq those are two big ones um it was mentioned uh well and then you know the green economy whether you talk about uh well so so many aspects of our local economy whether it's um environmental sciences or green tourism i mean that that is a very simple theme to a lot of parts of our economy and we actually are lucky to have a pretty diverse economy um anyway not to be the fourth but i i just see all of these threads tying back to the long-term fiscal sustainability okay great council member golder thank you i do just have a quick process question too so would you are you going to go around robin for each of these eight or should we use the hand raising feature you know let's use the hand raise since uh since you're used to using that we'll use the hand raise okay okay so i think um i agree with the mayor in that i think number one and i think um number six and maybe even number five could kind of be kind of combined and um i also the one thing i haven't heard anybody speak to but and i don't even know if it's possible but if from from i mean sometimes we've had to do this within the school district where you're like restructuring departments and so i don't know you know um if for example like departments could be combined out like a cost-saving measure moving forward and i and i can't think of anything maybe off the top of my head but but really looking at that as a yeah a thing and even thinking like public safety is there a way to combine with central fire or other local you know smaller fire departments to save money and then i like the idea that the mayor also said i was thinking the same thing of expanding our tax base with the creation of new industries and luring you know startups or businesses here and um making it i don't know incentivizing starting businesses by keeping these for those kinds of things reasonable or at least um you know comparable to neighboring counties to encourage businesses to start here and stay here and then finally the other thing too is is um i just noticed that they're putting in a target and i know it's going to be in that probably that kmart building in um scott's valley but just any opportunity where there's a vacant building reaching out and doing our best to try and get those buildings occupied so that we can keep getting that tax sales tax revenue thank you councilmember buyers um right everything that's been said is right on i was wondering what provide for public safety could be i mean we have fire and we i i just don't it's just a funny word for me provide i think we are providing and fire and police park you know park staff but i don't know whether there's some maybe as you consultants can help me on that well let me just say right now um we're going to go through these one by one so that we can hear consultants about those so we're on number one um okay but i know that you're on a time uh limitation so i we want to make sure we get your comments so well that that's the only question i you know we'll i'm sure we'll have quite the discussion about solutions to homeless but that was just kind of a quiz of understanding word okay i'm fine okay thank you and uh councilmember matthew one other thought that was on my margins here in terms of the physical sustainability um we read in almost the gen every agenda report our investments in energy conservation across all departments and they're big big chunks of money so that's another area for physical sustainability and also i know we've tried to make progress with technological efficiencies that also give us um being able to do the same amount of work at a more efficient cost so um whether you call those infrastructure or whatever they they are um investments that can yield that can improve our bottom line in terms of physical health okay good okay uh councilmember matthew oh i'm sorry mayor and then councilmember what fine one thing that just came to mind i think when we think about um actions to ensure long-term physical sustainability i think that one thing we have to keep in mind as well is that it doesn't come at the cost of community stability because i think about it just brings to my mind you know there are ways to attract um whether it's new streams of revenue or new jobs but there um at times you run the risk of gentrification and pushing people who've been long-term citizens or middle class out of the city and so i think that while we're thinking about solutions for long-term you know physical sustainability that um it shouldn't come at the cost of our community stability okay councilmember what can so i was just gonna um so that the energy investment can also lead to good green jobs so i don't think that they need to be thought of as separate um and then there's also strategies that as we think about investments in um and areas of our community to ensure that we're doing so in a way that's informed by not trying to um create conditions for gentrification so how are we just being mindful of those i think to the mayor's point as well okay very good okay don't see any other hand raises on that so let's move on to discussion of finding solutions to homelessness knowing that it's a very very big topic um but if this were an area of focus for the next 12 to 18 months what might be your intent i think that might be a better way to to think about it because it is not a short-term issue of course so um i'm looking for councilmember brown you have your hand up first thank you yeah so this is obviously a huge challenge and i think a priority i think we have some opportunities right now to really kind of rethink how we address homelessness and you know i've said it before i'll say it again um you know the approach that we have invested heavily in i don't i do not believe hasn't worked um we are um kind of looking at opportunities to work with the county new um you know new funding streams with with the county uh some of it covet related and others not um has kind of created the conditions for seeing that expansion of emergency shelter um is possible and uh that it it is effective and so you know i really think that you know and and to councilmember mouthy's point that homelessness is a big issue for the the business community well it's a big issue for everybody in the city neighbors um you know it's it's a big issue for the people who are on house as well and so i think that kind of really rethinking how we use the very limited resources we have um for things like waste management porta potty's hygiene um and then really really making sure that our commitment is demonstrated in our cooperation with the county so that we can have a productive uh a collaboration with them so you know i know that's kind of some specific and some sort of vague but you know i i do feel like it you know i think this is a priority and it sounds like others do as well um but i just want to be clear that my uh perspective on this is um not to suggest you know new ways to move people along and pile up more citations i really want to see some actual progress made uh so i'll just leave it there for now but i do think this is a conversation that we you know and and for for that matter we have a grand jury report that has suggestions and we have a cat multiple catch recommendations that we also ought to be looking at um so i think we need to really you know expand our thinking at the same time that we're acknowledging that we have limited resources good okay thank you uh councilmember mire's hard to get the three priorities you know and i think this is this is one that is um it is a priority um but i'm i guess i would sort of put it as number four when i think about trying to get the three and i know we're going to collapse some of these which i think is very doable um but i think that um you know the county's going to come out with the focus strategies report completed report uh november tent and then there's going to be a lot of work with not just our city but all three cities in the county as well as other parts of the county so i think we're at kind of a point time where um we're going to get a lot more clarity um on on where the county's coming from with regards to their you know role and how they're going to start to manage this you know this policy issue and the and the needs of of folks that are in our community so i would um you know i guess i i guess my thinking is you know we need to continue to to play um you know to be on the team with the county but um i think sometimes we do end up kind of stepping into the forefront and trying to sort because it is such an acute issue in our community especially you know visibly people are people are upset by how the conditions they see people in um and so but i think i guess for me i'm sort of i'm sort of uh a little bit cautionary in keeping this as a as one of the top three only because i do think that there is considerable um progress at the county level and um with hopefully some change in investment from either the state or that the feds we can become part of the team and not be sort of the the backup quarterback which i kind of think we've been for a long time so i think we have a lot of good policy ideas that have come out of the cash i think we've there's been a lot of good analysis by our staff on best management practices that are coming out nationally in terms of reducing homelessness as well as both preventing you know through prevention but also through diversion so there's there's a whole suite of kind of policy development that i think has really come to the forefront in the last five years that um i think we hopefully can catch on to the um catch on to the progress of the county and try to try to become part of their their programs their process and so i kind of that's how i kind of ranked this right now which is you know this isn't a one of my top three but it's four or five and it's something that we need to attend to but um it's a real drain on our resources and our staff right now i feel like so we've got to be careful about continuing to throw resources towards this i think our service providers in town too are doing quite well and i've been really impressed with all their progress today thanks thank you vice mayor okay uh council member uh buyers and matthews and watkins you are a muted council member um i you know the county gets the money and they give you that i i don't know what else they do finding a place safe for a big um shelter you know nobody's going to have it in their district you're not going to find a shelter out in in capitol or aptos we we will always have the impact of the actual bodies in our city emeline is here the jail is here it's just simply where they're going to be uh so i it's such a huge high priority uh and to think that just piling a lot of money and it is it takes so much more than money is it's part of it is edgeting the community you know nobody will have a campground anywhere near their their street or wherever you want and i really think a lot of it is because they're just i don't want to aim right but i think if they just step back and understand the problem and the issue the census that shows that something like sixty some percent are from santa cruz you know they've been here at least the last five years because they do the census every two years and that's the main question they asked how long have you been in santa cruz um so i uh until we just say to the neighbors in the community help us on this please get involved help you know visit the campgrounds and come to housing matters and take a tour to see what can be done but uh you know they're maxed out our our uh our nonprofits are doing all they can uh you know and they they depend on donors of course you know to help them do so it's such a high priority and until we just 100 percent show everything we have this uh into it we we're not going to help the distances we're not going to help the neighborhoods unless we all agree that it is such a high priority and we simply just can't wait we have to wait for the county to give us the money absolutely but other than that i just see well the reason grand jury they just said years have been spent all this and nothing has really changed our population is much much higher so and i think all of you know this has been a high priority mine for many many years and still is and i guess i'm encouraged because the state and the feds are starting to see the need that our governor has made it a high priority for the whole state so anyway i i will sorry i have to leave because you know this is going to come up and come up in different ways and i think you already know how i feel thanks thank you uh councilmember matthews and watkins and golder the issue homelessness did come up in all of the interviews so i didn't mean in my initial discussion to imply that it's all business community it has residents all the categories you interviewed um i don't think this should be our primary the possibility and i even kind of object to the language fine solution i do not think that is the burden of the city of santa claus i would like that to be support solutions to homelessness and i think that's the direction we should be moving my own opinion um and we have been making progress in that more recently with the county's increasing engagement in the cost of covid um uh emergency um i would so i would like to see real emphasis in the whole increasing of this partnership and member buyers mentioned this is the role of the non-profit others have as well um i'm very interested to see what comes out of the focus strategies support um that's coming to the county um i would like to see and i believe this in focus strategies i have not um been actively involved in that process but i believe there's an interest in um looking at programs that actually are successful in moving those experiencing homelessness from where they are to a better place actually seeing methods of improvement uh whatever that consists of um i i think we don't feel the city should be expected to continue bearing far and away the majority of the impact and so again it's underlying support solutions focused on partnership thank you councilmember watkins uh thank you yeah you know i i just i guess my only additional comments are you know homelessness is so complex and that is on this health is substance misuse poverty there are many faces to homelessness we have a number of homeless children in our county so i think definitely this is not um even if it's not a priority per se it's something that our community that our city will continue to need to work on in partnership with so many others to focus on how we're addressing our homeless population um that being said i know we're also looking at sort of certain things that were our approach to it and one of the things that we're going to have is um a study session on the cahoots type model so as we're sort of thinking about the things that we can do as a city that can be better informed by various models that have worked in other areas um and then in regards to sort of the role that i think this interim recovery but just this really opportunity that we have to um really shift our our systems right we have a chance to see how we're as a city providing conditions for people success and that i think is how how are we and how are we making investments in ways to create good jobs how are we thinking about housing and various and diverse housing opportunities so how are we creating those types of conditions for success in partnership with how are we addressing some of those who are struggling in our in our community as well thank you councilmember golder and then then to the mayor unless mayor did you need to jump in first no okay councilmember golder first and then mayor thank you so i've said this before um and while i really do agree that homelessness is an important issue that we um we need to work on as a society i don't think that we can solve it as the city of Santa Cruz and so even um finding solutions to me also seems not to be like a semantics police but it seems a bit much and i think thinking about it from a long term perspective looking at um ways to increase affordable housing ways to increase business opportunities and ways to invest in our community to prevent future homelessness is something i'd rather see at the top of our list and i think i'm super impressed with um the level of collaboration between the city and county um this year regarding homelessness and like i said i do think that it's a very important and a strong like three and a half but if i only had to choose three it would not be in my my top three at this at this meeting okay thank you uh mayor i'm gonna kind of echo what my colleagues said and so i'll be short but you know having worked on the two by two and especially working um on homelessness a lot through covid uh it's been clear and pretty obvious that um the county needs to take the lead role and they have been taking the lead role during covid and we've been able to stand up they've been able to stand up with support of the city a lot of really good programs and i will just um add that uh although you know i think traditionally it's been seen that the county is kind of divvies out money that hasn't been the case right now with covid i mean with the shelters that they've set up they've needed to hire more staff and those are county employees that money wasn't given to the city and then the city had to go out and employ those people the county is in charge of that and so i think that we need to and and those programs have worked you know i mean the hotels have been working um the managed encampments have had less of an impact and have had a positive impact on the people who've been there and i think what we need to do is highlight to the community um you know what successful programs look like so that we can build on those in the future but really let the county know that we are here to support what they're trying to do and the programs they're doing they're successful that we're in support of that but we should not take the lead role on because that's we don't get the funding for that and that's not our role and the county has finally stepped up to really take the lead role and i think that we need to let them do that and we need to be their support um so you know to the extent that we can continue partnering with nonprofits um that we can you know when new innovative um programs emerge that we can consider you know whether that's finding facilities for them but i think that we need to be more in the role of supporting the solution and supporting new approaches rather than trying to take the lead on you know solving homelessness because it's going to be you know it's it's not um part of our purview we don't have the funding and i think that we'd be much better in a support role thank you okay i think we will move on and to um the next area which is uh providing for public safety which was mentioned by by some council members as a a key area of focus priority area focus so we'd like to hear comments about what that might mean um and mayor do you have your hand up right now if so you can i can go after council member golder okay yes council member golder so this is one of my i mean this is a priority i don't know if it'll be in the top three but i'm gonna say why i think it's a huge priority to me i think um we have a hard time and historically with recruitment and retention of police officers and keeping our police department like full and so i just um and i think without police and fire our residents really aren't safe and something i see that maybe i was the only one that said i said it because it didn't end up on the list but i would consider this public safety is um one of the root causes of homelessness that i see is um drug addiction and um when i'm out in about and i do spend a lot of time walking through homeless camps i don't feel very safe when somebody that's high on drugs is talking to me in an aggressive manner and so i know i'm not the only person that experiences this in homeless camps or on the levee or walking through town and so for me um mental health is one thing but drug abuse and addiction is a whole another can of worms and i think like from a public safety perspective like somebody can be very unpredictable when they're on drugs and i think it you know when someone has drug addiction and i think that causes quality of life kind of crimes because they feel for their addiction and then it just it's like a snowball effect i don't know how to how to um address it other than that but it i think it's something that's important to me i think we're capturing that and like i think i said before too there's not a lot of like education for youth around um drugs in school there just isn't it's not there so it's like that's a problem okay mayor i think you had your hand up next and then we'll go to vice mayor meyers yeah i just think um you know there's been a lot of um push in the community around trying to rethink public safety and that's part of why we're gonna have the study session on mental health crisis response and you know rethinking what that can be and so this fits with homelessness as well because there's been a big you know i think we're at the beginning of a point where we can have a conversation around you know who should be responding to whether it's mental health substance abuse um or homelessness should those be police officers or should that be another group and so i think you know in the next couple weeks we're going to be having you know what will be the beginning of the conversation around that um so that we can really identify you know what are the you know who should be responding to those calls can you start doing things differently um and i mean you can have someone experiencing a mental health episode and that can be confused with somebody on drugs or um vice versa and so you know this is something that i think the public is really interested in and then just i mean given that we've had so many layoffs like as we reopen and you know depending on what happens next year if we have another social uprising covid's still going on you know how do we support our all of our public um safety systems you know fire included so that we can ensure that you know we are keeping our community safe um regardless of what kind of crisis we may face okay thank you uh vice mayor meyers you're next yeah i agree um i agree very much with what um council member colder and mayor Cummings have been stating um i think when we say provide for public safety i think it's almost it's almost kind of more of an analytical type of approach that we need um i do think that we do have a drug abuse and addiction issue that drives a lot of you know a lot of the issues that our community sees whether that's people um struggling with homelessness and not to say the people who are homeless or drug addicts you know drug addicts that that's not the correlation i'm trying to i'm trying to promote here but i do think that to the extent that we understand some of the pressures coming from um the drug aspect of of what i think many of us see in the community understand um the severity of that we just need to kind of i think kind of analyze that a little bit more and understand its role and where it's coming from and working with you know the education system and some others to see if we can really kind of get at that um in terms of that impacts on the quality of life and the success frankly of young of young people and of all people in our community i think that's one piece that kind of plays into these to these public safety issues um and then also i i appreciate that we're diving into the mental health response and police response i think that's another really important piece so um again i think this is um again it's it's a little bit of a number four for me it's it's this it's this real it's these social issues that continue they're not going to get solved in one year or two or three years but um really getting clear on causes on strategies on sort of really structurally understanding our approaches i think are kind of the things that i'm i reflect on when i look at you know when i look at public safety i look at homelessness those kinds of things um even just to some extent affordable housing um these are long plays you know and so but i think that clarity and really understanding our approach might be sort of sort of the priority um so those are my comments thank you okay thank you uh councilmember wadkins next i i appreciate the comments um by my colleagues i think you know for me one of the things that comes to mind is that often when somebody says public safety people think of different things um one of which is to deploy you know officers first responders once uh you know an incident has occurred another is um you know which is brought to my attention about being uh feeling safe as a for example undocumented resident to call law enforcement if there was an issue that occurred um also looking at it through the lens that um councilmember golder referenced in regards to investments in education and prevention and um and that includes public safety and creating those conditions where students are um or youth are informed and um optimal opportunity for their success is public safety so i think i guess where i'm going with this is that i think there's an opportunity for us to sort of um reassess and reevaluate to um vice mayor meyer's point around an analytical approach what are our needs and then looking at how are we making informed uh strategic um kind of investments in our resources that meet those needs based on how we're all interpreting public safety um and and so i mean and so in terms of how to prioritize that um i think you know we can think about what that looks like in terms of the broader context also when we have the conversation around the cahoots model etc at okay thank you uh councilmember matthews and you are muted councilmember um okay having a hard time picked the top three but i would say that um public safety broadly risk is a big issue for me and we all know this goes from everything to the wildfire response to marine safety to gangs etc i mean it's a very broad topic um i think and also i believe this showed up in all the different categories um that were interviewed um to me the perception the sense of public safety is something that's really important to our residents and our visitors and our businesses um do i feel safe and they kind of define that to themselves and um there is it's my perception that there's just a very um widespread ox for this issue that is a big challenge for um whether people want to invest more in government um whether they want to come downtown whether they feel safe um hiking in our parks etc you know we just adopted the parks master plan and it has safety written all throughout it so um it it can be a bit nebulous and it's broad but to me uh providing the reality and the perception of public safety um it's it's really important and it it will depend on a more effective response to the mental health and substance abuse issues that are so um driving the perception of public safety in the community and the minor crimes what are called minor crimes and that just drives people crazy okay thank you uh councilman other golder so i don't want to be like a gas bag and talk forever on this one but i just have to echo what councilman matthew said this was brought up on a couple of different ones and i think even from um you know an economic standpoint like the perception of feeling safe somewhere will make you want to go there or not like you know arriving in the middle of the night in south polo we were like let's get out of here we don't feel safe whereas like you know some places you want to enjoy and so i think it it contributes to our parks as well like when they just pulled out 255 gallon drums of needles up in Pogonib a couple weeks ago some people don't feel safe walking up there you know so we have to it almost ties into uh broader areas of our of our of our town because it's also you think about like even biking and walking and those kinds of things that you enjoy you want to feel safe you want to feel safe at the beach that there's life parts there or that you know i i don't know i just i think i think yeah public safety it it almost encompasses maybe it could be lived in with something else i don't know but i just think that it is very important thank you councilmember what comes you have to hand up again sorry i was just only the one thing i was thinking is i wonder if some of these broader like you know more collaborative type efforts are kind of encompassed somewhere in regards to like yes we're a partner in creating you know prioritizing public safety in all forms and responding as as needed but thinking about like there's you know this effort underway called neighborhood courts and it's part of this bigger sort of infrastructure and partnerships that are required um for community resilience but also in terms of how we as the city are thinking about our resources and um and and in economic wasn't economically efficient but also um you know socially just i think there's an opportunity for us to do that in an informed data kind of approach but with the other partners okay good thank you i'm there yeah your hands up that's one final comment because i think one thing that we don't think about and this is kind of interrelated with some of these other pieces but when we think about public safety as well you know given the number of people who've been laid off and you know fingers crossed we you know get some financial resources for people who are running out of unemployment and for people who um you know have seen a reduction in ways that are knowledgeable but part of that public safety is also ensuring that if you're living in this community and you've seen the loss of wages that you don't end up on the street because um you know when it's it's when people become resource depleted when they start resorting to other ways means of of gaining resources and so um you know i think that to the extent that we're really focusing on ensuring that you know people are stable in their homes and we're getting resources to people who you know if they need whether it's food rental assistance or what have you that that also fits into public safety because that's a big part of taking care of the community thank you council member brown i just want to echo mayor coming's comments there i think that uh thinking about public safety um as community safety thinking about that more broadly um as other council members have suggested is really important and um i agree that um and this kind of fits in with the theme that came up around um ensuring that people most in need are are served i do think that uh we we have with limited resources again we do have the we have a role to play in housing housing um and stable and so i i just want to um kind of add my my two cents about making sure that that is included in our uh kind of definition and and discussion around the concept of public safety yeah okay um let's move on to the next one which is downtown investment was brought up by more than one council member so what's the what would be the idea of this as a focus over the next 12 to 18 months what are your what are your comments in terms of intent for those of you who would like to comment on this my senator mires is your okay can i get up first yeah i think it's just it just popped up first and then popped up um yeah i mean i i i guess you know i kind of i mean kind of i mean i want to compliment you on this workbook um first of all because um you kind of you guys put this together along with the project list in the back it's sort of um and maybe it's a lot of reading i've been doing lately but it's in that um and i'm sure council member matthews can reflect on this um because i wasn't i was living here then but um i wasn't intimately involved in the recovery after the earthquake but um i i see downtown investment um it really sort of it i would expand it a little bit what i'm kind of seeing in this list is is sort of a kind of a mini uh mini stimulus type of outcome that we could pursue um and you know none of these things are all going to get done in the next 12 18 months obviously but you know putting these things into a package of a sort of economic and community investment stimulus just seems to be kind of popping for me right now as i as i read through the packet um it's kind of like a community resilience and quality of life investment sort of strategy that we could sort of um because when i look at the list in the back um in the very back of the report i mean we do have the housing project so we have three three different affordable housing projects that are coming online but we also have some privately um private housing projects as well so we've we've got you know a significant amount of investment around housing in the downtown um possible uh we've got um also the completion of a of a project called the resilient coast project which is really an investment into our coastal resources so it's our beaches it's west cliff drive it's some of our main features that bring tourism dollars and also provide quality of life for residents and also addresses some of our some of our neighborhoods that need some of these infrastructure investments we've got you know now three libraries that we're going to be building brand new libraries or at least significantly remodeled libraries in two cases and a new library and another and then we've got water infrastructure that's being rebuilt so we we have i mean just quick quick back in the napkin we got about a half a billion dollar mini um sort of well it's not very many that's sort of a stimulus package that's internal to the city of Santa Cruz and i see that sort of as a as a way for us to really think about how to bring jobs how to bring investment i think we need to look at tools like equitable depth development planning which is you know very much um underway and a lot of cities um and i think there's a lot of really good case studies and experts that we could draw on so i i guess when i see downtown investment um i see this infrastructure piece and with that and and these major projects and i also see that providing additional opportunity for some of our local businesses as well as sort of really following some of the things we've learned during covid which is you know the potential for open streets and some other things that we've put in place that have really shown that people really want to enjoy our downtown in a slightly different way so i guess it's a long way of saying you know i think this this for me is one of the top three but i think it's a little broader than just downtown i think it's this package of of really reinvesting and um kind of reinventing Santa Cruz to a certain extent but i would be very i would kind of add this equitable development planning aspect to this so that we sort of have a lens to look at it through which is making sure that we're not gentrifying making sure we're not displacing people and keeping um keeping all communities in place with regards to the outcomes so this is definitely one of the top three for me though so but i think it's bigger thanks thank you so Councilmember Matthews and Golder um this is a big one for me i think it can be um considered really a part of so many others um but it's essential to all of them when you talk about um uh as i mentioned under the long-term fiscal sustainability talk about recovering the critical um coq and retail sales tax um success of downtown is a significant part of that when we talk about supporting a green economy or growing a local economy jobs distances affordable housing infrastructure all of those um tied into the opportunities um that are facing us downtown particularly since we have in recent years revised the downtown plan the parking structure um we're working on the major projects coming forward that connect us to the river um in a way that fulfills uh goals that have been on the books for a couple of a couple of decades um it really is a key priority for me and um whether it needs to be pulled out by itself um the thing that um uh Councilmember Myers referred to i look back to uh following the earthquake um then um based with massive devastation downtown we came forward with um projects for the museum of art and history which is the cultural attraction open space attraction commercial attraction museum building attraction additional height of density and residential uses downtown such a potential now um with uh new parking structures with commercial uses in them um it's uh to me this is an opportunity to um really get some gains in multiple areas that will benefit us well into the future and i do believe coming out of covid there will be uh grant opportunities in all these areas um that if we are moving forward we have plans in place we will we will be well positioned that we certainly through coming out of the earthquake and coming out of the great recession um i think it is a time to um be visionary and be ready to take advantage of our efforts that are available okay thank you Councilmember Golder next um i will echo what the council number said before me i think this is super important and also looking at it from um the broader perspective that that um investing in this critical infrastructure that has been in the plans for a long time and following through with those plans will help the economy help housing help you know support a green economy if people are living and working in a in in close to mass transit and so i just don't want to see any of these critical infrastructure projects be put on the back burner at this point i mean i feel like it was just maybe this year i don't even know if it's even done yet that we finally finished down talent after 31 years um you know the there's still holes in the ground so we have what we finally have some momentum i'd hate to see it come to a standstill because of this i just want to i it's very important to me thank you councilmember uh what comes next oh no i'm sorry um councilmember brown and then what comes so yeah i i guess i kind of want to echo uh what i've been hearing from my colleagues um but i kind of feel like the downtown investment piece is should be brought in that we're going to talk about this as a as a focus area i agree uh that downtown is a critical part of that but we have you know we have small local businesses and other parts of town that are also struggling that are really important to the vitality of our our city uh writ large and i also think that um these and i think you know other council members have said this but i see these as happening they're already in motion as a matter of course and i i don't see us necessarily changing uh you know changing focus in these areas so i'm i'm not sure that i would put it at in my top three um as a focus area just because i feel like it's kind of happening um but i um i do agree that it is important that we kind of stick to the path that you know that we have laid out and uh continue to make those investments and not you know like shift gears uh but again for for me to be able to say that i want this to be one of our top three focus areas i would say it's kind of um in the kind of investment in you know healthy resilient community um that's just my i i like to focus on downtown but i think we need to think more broadly if we're gonna really think about our the way we invest thank you uh council member what comes next think one i guess one of the things i just i think a lot of what i've been thinking about really has been said already i do feel like this is part of the bigger um investment kind of package as was mentioned from um i think i believe the vice mayor mentioned it in regards to how are we um you know creating a um you know in regards to creating a downtown that is um it is about investing in economic stimulus is about thinking of resilience as thriving downtown is often an indicator of how well a community is doing so we need to prioritize our our downtown um and doing so also is a way to forward our equity you know hopes and regards to affordable housing opportunities as well as resiliency in terms of getting people closer to where they work in public transportation and where they can recreate while also providing uh investment for economic stimulation so how are we thinking of it sort of holistically and then also you know in terms of what councilor mass has brought up in that you know downtown's reinvent themselves um over time and so how are we making informed decisions about what we have it had and what was already kind of on the horizon with some of the um trends that we were seeing and then how are we uh how are we moving forward in a way that is um going to be more resilient in the future as well as poisoning our city to receive uh you know grants and funding and supportive effort just to help support our efforts as well okay and councilmember Matthews do you have another comment just a follow-up i'm glad to see that the term affordable housing got added that was part of what i mentioned because downtown is the one place where um most people feel comfortable with the idea of adding density and so um there does seem to be an openness to that and it's an opportunity for affordable 100 affordable next market and affordable projects so i definitely want to keep that on there and um i also just want to point out although it doesn't show up here um downtown really is kind of the uh psychological touchpoint for a lot of the people that live out in the county when they think of Santa Cruz they think they have to think of each and they think downtown so i think it's uh logical um just it's important to be committing okay thank you and mayor coming i'll try to keep it short because i think most of my sentiments have been said you know this downtown investment can also there's a few pieces like green economy restart local economy where i think like that restart local economy and we'll get there but i feel like a lot of these can be embedded under there if we want because and the reason why is because there's so many areas that are not only up and coming but that are um kind of expanding and i mean for example our west side you know po i mean i don't i wasn't here for the in 1989 earthquake but when i arrived in 2007 i've seen a lot of development of the west side since then um along with the east side and so i think that rather than kind of isolating and thinking of our town in terms of you know where is the central place that everybody's going to be the downtown we have these areas that of other areas that people are going to so also then thinking about you know um economic opportunity and investment to drop the entire city but specific to downtown given the fact that we've seen so many businesses leave and there's vacancies the one thing the one opportunity i do see is an is for us to rethink you know what should be the focus of the downtown and i can't see that as something that's on a 12 to 18 month trajectory really putting some deep thought into you know what we're dying trends so we knew before covid that retail was going down in the city because a lot of people are buying online it's likely not going to come back because i imagine a lot more people are comfortable purchasing online and so that there's not going to be that desire to go back to retail so what does the downtown become and what's and you know what should we be really focusing on when we want to bring businesses into our downtown empty spaces and and i do also want to mention as well that you know because we have so many empty storefronts downtown that i do also see you know they're they're being a need when we're thinking about recovery well that's an area that definitely needs a recovery plan because we've seen how badly it's been impacted and so i think that you know as we're going through these exercises and as we're kind of thinking about you know where our areas of focus i think we need to really focus on what's been impacted versus just what we feel like is important because the downtown has been significantly impacted and we need to try to figure out how we can have that area recover versus something like public safety which yes that's important to everyone it's something that it has is ongoing but when we really think about what has been the most impacted during covid and what needs the most recovery i can then see if we through that lens the downtown being an area that has been negatively impacted that we need to put some attention on in order to you know get it to recover from from covid and the impacts that it's faced okay good thank you okay let's move on to the next one so so our intent just from a process let me do a process check is to is to go through this same conversation for for all eight get your comments out and then we're going to take a break give everybody a break at that point and then we'll then we'll resume so just we'll continuing on with the next one of we heard some thoughts about supporting a green economy so we'd like to hear some ideas from council members as to your intent what is that what does that mean and that may have been informed by this previous conversation too let's see council member matthews has her hand raised first i think you mean it and that yes yes to that in all of this many forms whether it's visitors we we saw the state parks for a big issue or the environment was a big issue for visitors it's our marine sciences it's tech it's energy etc so all of those huge support one of the questions i have so that's just all i'm going to say there is that so rich and i think they're strong support for it one of my questions is this exercise given the fiscal situation that we're facing is the idea to pare down some of the things that are already on our list or to think of new things because that's kind of a big question you're looking at new initiatives shifting of energy carrying through what we have let's say well my understanding is that it's it's not creating new things it's it's um you're in a recovery period for the next 12 to 18 months so you really do need to prioritize and focus your efforts and you already have a lot of on your plate and so this discussion we're going through now is to get your thoughts about what council members individually have in mind as you're thinking about these eight and then we will need to narrow because we will have to have a a discussion and i know that martin will want to weigh in on this about a staff capacity i mean it's from a practical point of view um if you don't narrow what you are going to focus on over the next 12 to 18 months then you're unlikely to accomplish much at all thank you and i get just my final comment there on the green economy to what extent is the market just taking that topic and running with okay i think that's a good comment yeah it may be market-driven okay let's see the next person was vice mayor mayors you had your hand up next and then the mayor after that yeah i see this as um almost almost more of a uh a define a definition problem more than a um and i like the word support in this case because i think in many ways we have we are on the we are on the verge of we have done a pretty good job of creating the green economy here you know we have a thriving solar industry um we have um you know manufacturing that's focused on you know we have one of the pop inventors who invented an electric skateboard you know that is going through the roof we have you know the university is providing various you know resources and and and ways to look at manufacturing various products as well um you know there's a growing robotics and yeah so there's the our green economy i think is is sort of on is sort of lifting off i think um the places um that we can accent that green economy um is is really around calling it such and really recognizing the the innovation that's coming here so it to me this is um it's just to me this is sort of a marketing piece um you know everything from our organic food commitment and small scale food food resource you know food food innovation that goes on here um so i think it's and obviously i think our economic development department sort of has a beat on this but i think this is more of a for me this is more of a of really kind of coming out with what we do here you know we have one of the you know one of the world's only world surfing reserves is here you know that is part of our green economy you know that our ocean is part of our green economy um so i think we just don't call it that and i'd like this to to really look at um a way for us to express this a little more clearly in our recovery um as a community and as a city i think we do it but i think we just don't call it this and we we're not really marketing it so those are my thoughts thanks thank you uh mayor coming next yeah i kind of share a lot of the same sentiments as the vice mayor just really you know trying to do more to highlight um our green industries and then again you know when thinking about um reinvesting in our our downtown or um you know trying to attract other industries like really being mindful of um you know who we're trying to attract if we're tracking outside industries or you know if we want to support um industries that are trying to kind of launch themselves you know really focusing in on those you know green businesses and then something that i think fits into our green economy as well i mean i know green goes to sustainability but also cannabis is really taking off i mean we just got um a report out today from our city schools that the children's fun i think more than doubled this year and so or i think it doubled and so you know this idea that um you know there's this industry that's building and and it doesn't have to be you know manufacturing or growing what have you but you know what opportunities are there within that industry as well to you know really take advantage of since it's in its infancy and as it grows there's going to be opportunities okay good thank you um let's see councilmember uh what comes from then brown i shared um i'm sure some of what has already been said and one of the things i would just maybe offer is i almost see instead of supporting a green economy is how are we really more or less using a climate lens as we're thinking about recovery and by doing so um we'll accelerate a green economy we'll um create more resilient infrastructure we'll lead to good paying jobs which would hopefully lead to more affordable housing and the cost benefit or the to restore sort of the balance of affordability here um so how are we thinking about it i think maybe more holistically and then i think what i um would say is how are we accelerating what we already have and and and moving forward um as intentionally as possible i think we have a lot of really existing and underway but how are we able to sort of accelerate those um efforts and one thing that i found now being on the council is um although i've written grants in my like my other capacity that you know there are grant opportunities out there and there also will likely be more grant opportunities on the horizon so as we're thinking about moving forward with these efforts around um recovery how are we able to have uh resources to help us track those grant opportunities and to help us write those grants to receive the funding to support a number of these initiatives um which include um you know ways to sort of jumpstart our economy and the green economy and climate as well so i don't know where that could fit in as a possible kind of priority approach um but i definitely don't think it's something we want to miss by not having that kind of on our radar good good okay council member brown yeah i uh i absolutely agree about using a climate lens to evaluate a recovery and i you know i think i would just add to that you know our policy in general around um kind of infrastructure development and you know in other areas that the city has a role in you know in performing the work i guess i'd just say and i think that it's this for me supporting a green economy is all is really about integrating you know and and putting putting green jobs and and putting the green economy at the center part of that yeah is marketing and you know the the market's taking care of it on its own but also we can highlight those successes but also really being strategic about uh some how we we um very very um deliberately uh try to integrate the incentivizing and you know and activating the green economy and so i think that you know for example we have you know we have a climate action coordinator and tiffany wise west is amazing at you know trying to find grant opportunities and look at new strategic initiatives and i think that um you know and some of those that have come off you know many building out many grids and and kind of looking at our alternative uh transportation infrastructure build out and i think that um this is a place where that that is something that we should we could as um councilmember walken suggested really kind of accelerate and and kind of and give you know i would just love to give tiffany more support to be able to spend more time um and have a crew that's working on this specifically in cooperation with our economic development department i know that sounds like it may be kind of a new thing but i i do think that it's it's about integration and and cooperation and and and providing the resources that are needed to to really deliberately and and aggressively build this in okay thank you uh councilmember matthews and then the mayor after that okay having served on the uh this standings report for many many years um i just want to bring back in the visitor industry as a part of green economy we've seen so much move to eco tourism and really enthusiastic buy-in on that in terms of where people are choosing to go whether choosing to do how the um uh industry is responding to that in their own practices and um you know i think of uh the things the partnership with business Santa Cruz and also the state parks in terms of emphasizing the themes of stewardship um and whether it's um in our forests in the ocean and the footprint we leave et cetera i think that's that's a huge strength for us and it's it's part of this theme that as others have said uh uh really just needs to be i think highlighted thank you um mayor coming i was just gonna say i i feel like um and i'll be short with this i i feel like after hearing all the conversation that that the the notion in context of a green economy i feel like it's more of a value rather than like an area of focus it's something that we value across all these you know whether it's you know the businesses that come into our city or tourism it's a i feel like it's more of a value rather than something that we want to like really hone in on but i think that we should keep it um you know when we think about you know whatever our top three are you know that when we're thinking of fiscal sustainability or you know um you know recovering from uh covid and the impacts it's had that you know when we think about our economy moving forward and how we look at tourism that we really put the you know of emphasis on sustainability and um environmental protection at the forefront thank you okay thank you so all right so let's move on to next one i don't see neither hands on this one um okay so again there's a lot of discussion about uh the economy in one way or the other so this is a restart and grow the local economy with job and business creation so what are your what are your comments let's take help member gold or you are quick quick on the draw with your hand right well just because i felt like it tied back in with number one so i think this one is super important and then what some of the other council members have said uh that you know outside the downtown there's a lot of thriving business districts on the east side midtown you know um there's the the rebuilding of all those like i don't know what they're called but basically that were just warehouses in the past on the west side and there's some you know plans to put more um live work style buildings out there that i think um could really bring a lot to um you know in in in to our town okay thank you uh mayor Cummings you had your hand up next and then vice mayor Myers yeah again so this kind of ties in with a lot of topics that we've brought up before but i do think that being specific um you know identifying opportunities for workforce development and so i know i don't know if this goes on the bike rack but there has been some work and this was i think one of the items it was on the list before but there's been work with um labor the construction and with our public works water departments you know really thinking about how can we build and you know really start encouraging some of our youth to go into the trades as an opportunity for workforce because um what we've been seeing is that um our trades and the tradesmen within those trades are are you know getting to the age of retirement and there isn't a pipeline to get people into that workforce and so i mean given that that is a very you know in terms of you know what like the education that you have to get in order to enter that workforce which is generally high school diploma and then a lot of training along the way you know what can we do to start building out that workforce because that can be a very viable group within our community and then what are other sectors where we need to have workforce development so really i think that part of you know we start and grow the local like you know in terms of job and business creation part of that job creation being on um the trades and workforce development within the trades okay we'll capture that um okay vice mayor Myers uh yeah i uh yeah i definitely agree with a lot of what's been said um and i think um you know i i go back to i mean i i there's a couple things i think that i reflect on with 2008 and one was um you know the the the stimulus package that came out of the federal government obviously which was really targeted towards um you know sort of shovel ready projects but there was also this this intent to really try to support certain industries solar being one of them that was probably the most well known and then concurrent with that the state also passed several of the park and water bonds which were major investments in the billions of dollars and so um and i know just in my work that i do you know that those investments translated into really significant development of jobs here locally i mean you know we we had a we went from a couple of of nonprofits that maybe did restoration work and now we've got you know five six seven plus the university is working in it state parks is much more so i think to the extent that we think about this um i i i do think this is part of the context of um if you know it sort of rolls back to five um and i think it's this whole idea of um really evaluating the kinds of jobs that we would want to attract to Santa Cruz moving ahead um or being known for the place that does this kind of work um such that maybe it attracts um conferences and other things that might benefit you know our t at t so i do think that um i think this is uh important and it it's it's kind of its own animal you know i mean i think it fits with this kind of the infrastructure discussion we've had in the downtown investment but it's kind of the third wheel of of number one sort of infrastructure and and housing investment and those things and then number three would be sort of really creating the workforce for the future which you know now that we've been through covid we know that we have weaknesses in that in the opportunities for the people who live in here and who you know want to be here in Santa Cruz those are my thoughts okay thank you uh councilmember matthewson and what comes i have to make uh a quick comment uh mayor talked about something going in five rec and some people will remember the day when you had meetings and there was a side issue he was talking about sitting in a parking lot and now he's sitting in the parking lot that's a truck we're getting rain um a huge number of our businesses in Santa Cruz and the county are small businesses and i do think our economics we'll talk about what the city does our economic department has done a really good job and i i think it's really important to talk about going to local economy with child and business creation our partnerships with small business development center our co-sponsorship of so many things like think local furs and fanatics's work and all these these small initiatives that engage a huge number of individuals in small businesses are really really productive so i don't want that to be forgotten and um i think that's it and and also i guess the the chamber large number of the chamber members are small businesses so that that's a really important uh aspect of the character of art we have some great big ones that we also have a huge number of small and they're the ones that kind of need uh to pay the help and i again want to commend the economic development department for what they've done in the covid crisis and in the wild part crisis i'm just jumping in there saying what can you do to help our small businesses pay a lot of taxes and that's that's a good thank you um councilmember Watkins um no thank you i definitely agree in that this is um so interconnected in regards to some of the other areas we've discussed um when we're thinking about uh our role as a city we i think have to take into consideration how we're partnering uh with our business sector but also with education and thinking about how for example there's an initiative called the Santa Cruz County College and now career um as for the career readiness now i'm placing on exactly all the different they just enter name but nonetheless there's a collaborative around really trying to integrate um opportunities for our educational institutions to work with the industry to their uh to better have a way for pathways for employment and successful jobs in our region to the point around thinking about how are we generating and working with our um our partners and also thinking about the data and really getting informed um on what the issues are with our businesses what businesses have been able to be more resilient than others and then how are we supporting our businesses and planning for future resilience and um in areas of uh whether it be a natural disaster i hope there's not another pandemic in anytime soon but but as stressors come to communities so how are we thinking about becoming as resilient as possible and supporting our businesses in doing so um it's but it's all interconnected in terms of what um sort of we were talking about with the sort of broader context around uh sustainability and long-term planning okay uh Mary you're had your hand up yeah i also think that this is probably a good area um when we think when we're talking about like green economy and so like average like if we're thinking about restarting and you know we're thinking about tourism or branding like this is probably a good area where that green economy could come in because it's it's a it's a point where we can you know whether it's through visit Santa Cruz or um just advertising and highlighting the different kinds of businesses that are in Santa Cruz like really trying to put that green sustainable brand out there i think would really fit into this kind of area focus okay great okay i think we've gotten lots of good ideas out here and these just like all of the other areas are um about five to ten years way more than 12 to 12 to 18 months so we'll we'll come back to that one uh lots of good ideas um okay so let's move on to the next one Claire okay affordable housing was another area that was mentioned by some council members as a uh an area of possible priority focus so again we'd like to hear comments uh so what would you envision that to be over the next 12 to 18 starting with the the mayor i see your hand up um well i know that you know we there's a number of projects that are coming online so i think to the extent that we can continue supporting those projects and also um just identifying future projects and you know potential sources of funding from the state i think that's going to be critical and one thing that didn't make it to the list that has been in the works and we're going to be talking about it next week and it's going to be custom on that by crack is um that there's a data a rental housing data uh subcommittee and we're going to be having a presentation from an organization called 3di which they have created ways ways to efficiently collect data on rental housing and i think personally that's something that's really important because not only does it feed into understanding how people are being impacted um which can kind of fit into what we were discussing earlier on public safety but additionally you know it can give us a sense of and a way to establish a way to track our housing over time especially with an emphasis on tracking affordable housing because we do know that with a lot of the older mom and pop landlords as they start you know deciding to sell their homes or you know when they pass their homes along to their children if we're seeing a decrease in the number of those affordable housing units it creates an opportunity for us to not only be able to identify what's coming offline but also it gives us an opportunity to advocate at the state level saying you know hey we had all these um houses that were affordable they're all being sold because they're single family homes we need you know we're going to have a really huge you know we have a crisis the housing crisis it's going to get worse we need more funding to be able to you know create more affordable housing in our community so I think it's an opportunity for us to have um you know to put in some kind of data collection effort especially because you know with everybody being financially hit hard and um you know with eviction protections coming offline um with the fire evacuees and then as the university opens what impact is that going to have when we see you know 10 to 15 thousand students come back I think it's really important that we're starting to track what's happening with our affordable housing now because it can be very um negatively impacted moving forward after as we emerge from this crisis and I and I'd also say as well it can give us a sense of how landlords have been impacted as well by the crisis because we do I have heard a lot of stories about landlords reducing their rents but again it's all anecdotal so I think that we could have a really good source of data that can really inform policy moving forward and so that's just one in addition to trying to find opportunities to create more affordable housing. Thank you. Councilmember Golder and then Brown. I just want to say that I would like to also keep the projects that we have on the books like moving forward and then to the extent possible when we're talking about like raising fees for things like not raising fees in the permit process that are going to discourage people from creating these future buildings that can be affordable or mixed use in the next 12 to 18 months because there's a lot of other factors that are already increasing the cost of construction and so if we can encourage it by not I don't know you know making it too too much compared to other neighboring cities. Thank you. Councilmember Brown and then Watkins. Thank you. I so many of you know those who have heard me talk about affordable housing in the past know where I stand on this being the number one priority for me were it not for a global pandemic and economic crisis and city fiscal crisis I would be saying this is absolutely the number one thing and so I do think I want I do want to see us continue to move forward with the projects that we have been you know working towards and I want to really just shout out to our economic development department for the work that they're doing I you know I think that they're absolutely finding those opportunities where they they are arise and they're you know they're working to put it all together to make these three projects that we have in the downtown area hopefully a hundred percent affordable move forward so I definitely don't want any of that to get derailed I and I have other thoughts on how we can make affordable housing more of a priority for the city you know and I think we have an opportunity to talk about that at our housing study session but you know I just want to say that yes continue to do what we're doing but also really really focus you know I think the city has an opportunity here to be to play a stronger role in promoting the development of affordable housing we tend to accept that the market is going to get housing built and that is true and with lack of you know lack of resources for significant subsidy we are you know we are challenged but I do think that we we have other opportunities so really really focusing on you know city property and you know other ways that we can leverage additional sources of funding which again you know I don't want to suggest that that's not already happening I mean that is what our economic development department is doing so you know I just want to kind of put a shout out to them and suggest that this is really a significant priority for me and I do think that we should keep moving on the many of the policies that came out of the housing blueprint subcommittee report committee that I was on with councilmember Watkins and you know and and so and that does involve looking at our fee structures and you know other ways that we can make it easier for people to build and or to build ADUs for example and to get abated units back online I think there's a lot of work we can do there and it's it's sort of happening but I'd like to see that accelerated if possible thank you councilmember Watkins I think I was you know I was just pretty much about to say the same thing affordable housing and addressing the need of affordable housing has always been a priority as long as I've been engaged with the city and there was a year-long effort by then mayor chief that led to a really substantive blueprint to not only to serve existing affordable housing but to see increasing housing while also balancing community vitality and I know some of those initiatives have actually you know they've come to fruition others have been you know put on pause but a number of them really fit into what are an investment in our downtown for example how are we using city-owned properties to create more affordable housing looking at certain parking lots and consolidated parking in downtown was one of the one of the the priority areas but looking at data and having next to studies and being informed by what is the way that cities can create the most affordable housing possible given sort of all of the various constraints and potential assets so I do feel that the housing blueprint session will be a great foundational resource for us to think about where we've seen progress with some of the policies that have been outlined in that document but how are we moving forward with some of the other priorities that haven't necessarily been prioritized at this time that might be more ripe for us to move forward on but I think this also then goes back how are we tying that into ways to create more climate resilient buildings and there's the green jobs and solar et cetera so I think it's all really interconnected and we have really great information already on the books that we can use so those are just sort of my my thoughts on that on on this priority area thank you council member rapheus we're briefly just saying the course on the initiatives we currently have in line looking at the objective standards for design looking at the opportunities for revising ADU we just took some major steps recently to some of the zoning code ordinance changes and i look forward to the to the study session it may well be that the state is leapfrogging ahead of us so i do think there's actually a lot of potential here oh and the other thing i wanted to mention which others haven't i know there's been discussion in the past and some projects in line with employer-based housing with the school district and some of the major healthcare providers in town so that's kind of a little niche but it's an important one for workforce housing okay good thank you okay mayor is your hand up or was that just a uh no okay didn't want to miss you okay so let's move on to the last one number eight it looks like you have vice mayor Myers with their hand raised oh i'm sorry that's okay i thought i had a raise but i realized it wasn't raised oh okay no worries no worries um yeah i won't i not a lot to add i think i think very consistent with all my colleagues on this i i guess the thing that um i think about with this is um really tiny um and i think that uh you know the struggle we have with meeting the sort of perfection of affordable housing um in a sense can pass us by um because we i i believe we need to be ready for the available types of stimulus and funding and other things that come through um post recessions um and again i think um you know using the library as an example we know we've lost significant resource in that funding just you know over the last few years of making sure you know making sure reevaluating the project several times so i think with um housing specifically i i want to also compliment our economic development department and the housing team um you know everyone in california needs to build affordable housing and um the more we look for um sort of the perfect the perfect package of affordable housing um i i fear that we sort of will lose will lose um some opportunity there so i guess um this is this is really hot we have to really weigh our strategy around moving ahead with this as a priority because um the resource is not going to be there forever because other communities will we'll take it and you know they'll take advantage of those resources especially when it comes to to um offsetting the cost of building a unit of housing which of course has gotten very expensive in our area so i think there's a um this is uh this is an important priority um i think it rolls into some other things but i think it's um there's an opportunity cost here that if we don't sort of really really evaluate and get on you know are able to really move projects forward i think we could potentially lose some of those some of those resources thanks okay thank you okay great thank you okay the last one is infrastructure improving and maintaining infrastructure so i wanted to get your thoughts about what would be your intent if this were a focus area for the next 12 to 18 months um it looks like uh the mayor has his hand up first and then uh council member uh golder and then matthew just had a question with this and this one in particular because i feel like between this one and affordable housing there are for example projects that are underway and you know are we thinking about in addition to what's already happening what would we want to do or would we want to or just those projects like as they're now my understanding and martin certainly can clarify is that it would not be new projects because of the lack of resources but rather if this is an area of high priority than the than the staff and the council would really be focusing in on this over the next 12 to 18 months they you know under the the reality of there are limited staff resources and financial resources i would add that the you know recent years the focus has been on really funding for infrastructure which there might be an opportunity to tie it into the the item number one to some extent also as it relates to potential grants or stimulus to be able to move forward with the particular projects particular with this stimulus like as it was noted before where um there was an interest in activating the economy and moving forward with ready shovel projects so i think that's where it kind of ties in um and of course a lot of it the infrastructure needs that we have in our community revolve around our facilities our park systems those are really the the more significant ones so if new dollars are available which they may be from the federal government you know have shovel ready is that what you're saying our team yeah yeah i think they're definitely that that would be an opportunity and also it could tie into some of the other like some of the housing projects those provide also opportunities to improve infrastructure okay good okay with that then mayor did you want to comment because that was a clarifying question i think yeah i guess i'll just i i mean like i feel like you know the library is something we can't stop on because you know we like if we were to say this isn't a priority i feel like there's still projects that would keep moving forward that's why no one declared it because i know our you know our work master plan's coming back um we just voted on you know getting in contact with the library so i guess for me i'm just kind of wondering is the idea that we would think about other infrastructure projects because i mean it like in water for example that something that we're you know we're not going to stop investing in the infrastructure on water so you know if the idea is that we would try to think about new projects um versus kind of continuing to move forward with these i would say no i would say maybe uh only if the opportunity comes up obviously to to move forward with existing projects um or to you know in this time period to identify funding for for future projects but no we wouldn't initiate new projects i feel like there's no i mean like for some of these it's kind of like there's no way we can stop with some of the projects that are right there's so far away or the or like you know like the library like we can't it's not like we can just say you know we're going to pick three and because we didn't pick infrastructure we're going to stop all work on the library so i just wonder if oh right that's great that's great there are some for example as you noted the uh enterprise funds the water system you know those are those are funded there's a funding source for them those are perceived uh the the the limitations are more on the general fund the library project that has funding there's bond funding there's parking funds so some will proceed because there are funding sources there are deadlines and they have to continue um i think i think uh and uh i'm not sure what the all the uh the rationale was for the divisions that listed this on there but uh if the question is are we going to be able to make uh improvements or add projects that are not within our existing sort of scope or that are funded or that are in the general fund in particular the answer would be no because there is no funding for for infrastructure projects in the general fund um and uh also you know just disturbing capacity to do so uh you know there are there are those exceptions that uh were noted around enterprise funded or that are already funded um but otherwise it wouldn't be a less flex some like i said if there's a the similar package that includes funding to be able to make some improvements that we already know we can we can take advantage of it for example making some parks improvements or some a lot of times for example we are taking advantage of making um as you as you've seen on on solar projects on um uh HVAC uh energy energy conservation projects that sort of thing um so we you know we'll continue to get advantage of those opportunities as they come up so i think it is a let me just comment and then all the other council members do want to comment naturally on this because it is an important area it is always um a bit challenging and in terms of setting priorities uh when you do have a number of projects that in fact are moving forward and you want to continue moving forward the the idea here with during the interim recovery period is is for the council then to say though for the next 12 to 18 months we're really going to focus on these three areas whatever they end up being and just because you have projects moving forward doesn't mean that shouldn't be a focus area because things don't happen just because they happen they happen because resources staff time are put into them and if that turns out that infrastructure is indeed one of the council's top three priorities for the next 12 to 18 months and then when we get down to that voting then that should uh that should emerge so it shouldn't i just wanted to mention it should not be the thought should not be well it's going to happen anyway you know it's what are what are the council's priorities i mean that's really will be the question when we get to that point of voting but having said that let's just hear what council members had on your mind especially those of you who mentioned infrastructure as a priority starting with council member golder so to me this is a super big priority um probably number two because i think sometimes you can use you know deferred maintenance as a strategy to save money but then eventually um the cost of repair or replacement is going to be greater and so to the extent we can move forward with the projects that are already on the books i think that this should be a number two and including but like you know the war for the metro project the library other water projects and things like that that we can't just ignore or you know bill um end up costing more in the long run thank you uh council member mathies and then uh life fair buyers um this is definitely a priority for me the we could fold it under number one we could get the economy back going many of those other categories as well um the enterprise funds um my mind uh are are moving forward and have the staff support and funding to do that um i do want to move forward with some of the other major ones that have been mentioned already and particularly because right now i think they are not only necessary but an opportunity so uh i talked to staff members yesterday just writing grants like right now so um i think we have so many unmet needs that are a high priority whether it's um um energy savings or like pedestrian improvements or whatever so um they are projects that want it's an opportunity to actually get funding funded and move forward and and they do fit into this longer goal thank you uh vice mayor um Myers uh we're not doing a very good job of picking things off our list um yeah i mean i think that this is it's a council member colders um you know mention of sort of sort of the deferred maintenance um problem that sometimes you know where we end up um having you know having to fix things at a much more expensive cost um again i kind of think of this as i think i'm understanding from Martine that you know these kinds of things aren't necessarily going to stop but you know there's a certain level of commitment that we you know just have to acknowledge either we can't make at a certain point in time this one seems a little out of sorts with our 12 to 18 month sort of timeline but this is one i know i i i mentioned in the um i think in the interviews so i i guess i think that um curious about our kind of the new revenue source and what it means with regards to infrastructure and i specifically i'm kind of really focused on sort of parks because it is general fund um dependent and i look at some of um of course there'll be grants but there's also going to be you know there are parts of our parks that really do need the you know improvement and maintenance aspects to this so i i i kind of see this as something we need to be thoughtful about when we create or we define the new revenue source that we might be targeting um and i think specifically um based on some of the the survey results i think specifically for our parks parks and open space needs um there's real risk that those areas could be heavily impacted um during this downturn if we're not thoughtful about um how what what our priorities are about about those specific um places thanks thank you i'll count remember what comes from then brown um i'll just say i appreciate the comments made by vice mayor mires in that our parks are the most vulnerable in terms of our infrastructure without kind of the enterprise funding to support them um you know i think one of the things that we also have underway is our um coastal infrastructure and sort of our climate resilience coastal planning that's occurring so how are we thinking about that as part of the infrastructure conversation um absolutely looking at grants and revenue sources but also remembering that um when thinking about infrastructure we can also think about how it is tied to creating good paying jobs and creating local workers for those jobs and even really seeking out to get the work the workforce that has um has the sort of the populations that have been left behind to be those workers so i think it's just part of that holistic conversation i do agree in that um either we're paying for it after it's broken but we have aging infrastructure like most of our nation really and and it's unfortunate that we haven't had more investments or support at the kind of the federal and state level to support infrastructure but hopefully um more funding will be on the horizon and we'll be able to make some of these um really critical investments if not we're we're gonna have to fix and pay for them later uh but how we're thinking about the parks because they're the most vulnerable i think is a really important point that that Vice Mayor Myers brought up thank you councilmember brown and then mayor i was also going to uh call out uh parks and open spaces i think that it's it's really we are really at risk here of um taking a step backwards and we you know we have this amazing some that um if we let it go is going to be a lot harder to um kind of get back to um you know good management practices and all of that so and and that is partly infrastructure but i see that more as a services question um and so i think that we just need to um maybe that's a uh bike uh bike bike thank you i don't know why the wouldn't come thank you and yeah and i agree you know i i don't think that we can um we can ignore uh infrastructure but i also want to remind everyone that we kind of say this every year at budget time i mean at least my time on the council and other years when i've watched as an absurd you know been an observer um you know we always say it's a priority and then we never have the money to really make those investments and so i think that um if we make you know to the extent that we want to make this one of our three priorities i i think that we need to be really focused about what we mean there because we can just continue to say year after year infrastructure is a huge priority and here's our big list of you know the capital program that never gets actually funded so you know i think that um i think that there's within this some some uh you know maybe prioritization within the infrastructure category that um we ought to be thinking about and you know i think that staff has has done a great job of kind of honing in on what's doable where the funding sources are and but one thing i just want to add into the mix is um you know i think that we've made a great start with our commitment to the rail trail and so that's an alternative you know transportation infrastructure that will serve us well in the long term and i think that um that's an area where you know i'd like to see us put some more focus on you know in terms of you know bike pad infrastructure and um you know that's again probably a longer term thing but since we're talking about all of the infrastructure i thought i would just add that in the mix but yeah it it's you know it's hard to keep saying it's a priority and then see that it kind of you know it's hard to fund and it's just right now okay uh mayor commings and then councilmember matthew yeah just kind of hearing from you know and my understanding is correct but if you know the if the idea is that for example you know we have a number of infrastructure projects that are coming up the library with the affordable housing the metro with affordable housing i would actually consider the the pipeline project with um the construction of the affordable housing with office space for dientes and the health center along with the wharf along with the rail trail you know i think that it was touched upon by a number of my colleagues that you know in addition to that being investing in infrastructure it also creates jobs and part of that is creating the affordable housing that we're saying we need so if my understanding of around you know you know improving infrastructure and investing in infrastructure if that is kind of falls into that category then i think that that would be you know definitely like number two on the list because it would actually achieve a number of the goals that we're trying to get to around workforce development workforce you know stimulating the workforce creating the infrastructure that we need and then creating housing and also you know also in addition to creating those things we're then we then also have another way to draw people to our community so whether it's people being able to bike from one side of the city or from capitol to the west side or whether it's you know attracting people to a new library or a newly renovated wharf and knowing that the longer we wait to renovate the work the work the worst it's going to get you know i think that that hits a lot of the goals that we're trying to achieve so if my understanding of you know investing in infrastructure encompasses that then i think that would be you know one of the goals at the top for us okay uh councilmember matthew yeah i i tend to think of infrastructure meaning facilities and transportation that's not so much the housing project so you know over that outfit i i think it's the bottom line but what do we need by infrastructure and just moving forward if the goal is to identify some kind of a revenue measure for this in order to do this in this before and though it it's definitely a process of identifying what the public see the things they're most going to spend money on and then putting together a winning package and some things that we may think are very important in terms of really urgent infrastructure which may not stay very high with public so you know that that bridge will be crossed in the future well i'll just i'll just leave it at that okay okay so i think we we have lots and lots of ideas out um we're going to go ahead and and take a break now um we're going to take a 15 minute break let me look at time let's just let's come let's start in at six o'clock so a little bit more than 15 minutes give everybody a real break you've been sitting here quite a while so let's start at six o'clock sharp and um and then at that point we'll need to be refining these and then doing some virtual dot voting and determining what your top three priorities are what's that picture on the right here black woman oh we're indulging us in in such a long meeting um okay so um these are the eight so based on the comments that that were made um what i wanted to make i wanted to make a process suggestion to the council which is on number five um this was um a suggestion that was made by one or more one and then joined in by more which is supporting a green economy to move that into the list that we have actually on another slide that is more of the principles and process and that may be considered part of um i'm not sure if it's health and all policies but it's having to do with sustainability but it's more of a of a way that you approach your work uh and that's what what i certainly heard from council members so if as opposed to kind of a thing that you would be focusing your effort on um so if if i'd like to get a sense of the council if that would be acceptable to remove that from the list before we do any virtual dot voting and so that would um leave it with um seven things as opposed to eight could i maybe maybe just to make it easy to thumbs up if you agree with that now of course Cynthia is um eating so you mean it's like a visual thumbs up yeah well i mean it's fine you know verbal thumbs up is totally fine so okay so so we will do that and then Claire has has captured your various comments with regards to the green economy and so those comments of course will be provided to staff and much of the the emphasis of what council members have said is that you're let's move forward with what what you're already doing in some cases market it better perhaps name it brand it but to continue with what you are doing so then that leaves the remaining ones and i did hear the comment from some council members that different things on this list relate to others no question about that if we were to to put these in bubbles they would all be intersecting everything does relate there's no question that everything does relate to each other and each one of these represents a body of work either by well not either you know by the staff and by the city council as represented on either committees or council meetings and or community meetings and so forth but it's a body of work for each one of these and then each one of these are worked on within your existing resources although you're hoping to get some stimulus funds and so forth and and that's of course always um hopefully important to keep in mind that that might be on the horizon so um with that in mind i'd like to encourage the council to keep these as separate the remaining seven because they are all bodies of work even though they are um interrelated so with that so claire if you could just um we're not going to spend a lot of time going on through these slides but i just wanted just to do a quick review as you can see we have captured your comments and then for fiscal sustainability in addition to the comments that you have here there's a lot of other work that's being done in terms of budget balancing and the council of course is involved in that as is the staff a lot of work being done there and the next one homelessness i think we've captured the the comments there about the county needing to take the lead role a lot of other comments about the how the city can reconsider its approach yes council member matthew i had my virtual hand up as well okay sorry yeah i'm going to explain what you and others think about renaming the support solutions to homelessness rather than fine kind of general freedom yeah there there was a thank you for bringing that up because i think we had that in there and if um you know thumbs up to that support solutions to homelessness yeah um okay so yes and and mayor do you want to make a comment there or is your hand or are you just supporting that make a comment actually on the first one because it just occurred to me that we have that as long term fiscal sustainability but i was just wanting to see if our councilman just talked about short and long term fiscal sustainability because we do have to think about you know what what can we do right now to keep businesses stable in addition to the long-term sustainability so i just thought that it might be worth plugging that in there too because we do have to meet the immediate and long-term needs can you go back one slide please yeah so claire let's go back to that there we go so right now it says take actions to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability so you are certainly working on short term right now with regard to your budget balancing and and you've already taken some actions on that um and then a variety of other things that are more short term um but if that is a council consensus to um really address short and long-term fiscal sustainability it could be word smiths but but getting short term in there as well um so let me just let's just do a sense of the council as you think that that's a good idea to add short term in there and also this one incorporates the um encouraging new business and industry growth which is down in a separate item as well yeah it is because it is related but we're keeping separate that because there's a whole body of work involved in working with businesses and you've got a whole economic development you know effort um and so we didn't want to lose it but we can certainly acknowledge that it is part of fiscal sustainability no question about that so so without like collapsing that other one into this one because there's there's a lot of work tasks that need to be done um it certainly can acknowledge that that they are interrelated and martin anytime you want to jump in you know from the your perspective you feel free of course as you will okay all right yeah okay no i think that's true because i think the um in the short term the question of uh in particular of additional revenue will have to be addressed if the council wants to consider any kind of measure for say november of next year that's something that would have to be done in the short term certainly within the 12 to 18 month time frame good okay so Claire on that one um just add in um short term and long term on that slide if you would please so we can all right i have to stop sharing one second i'm having oh technical challenges oh don't don't worry about it then let me bring that back oh it's just fine i just had a little bit of an issue right there technology oh my stars they're still driving new bunkers okay that's okay well we we know that we're gonna do it let's just put it that way yes we will track it separately okay so um let's move on then Claire if you would please to just um number three so these are just the comments again we're not going to go over these but we did to attempt to capture the the comments on what this meant to council members in terms of providing for public safety um as a as a it's always a priority of every city that as a is the intent so i think we've captured that um so let's move on to the next one Claire uh downtown investment um try to capture that this has a whole range of things and and one of the things and takeaways that i got from this is that you have a number of projects that are already underway with regards to your to your downtown whether it's some housing projects or or other kinds of projects and keeping those moving forward again over a 12 to 18 month time frame as which is the focus of this that's capturing all of those comments martin did you have any comments on this one no i think that's right i think certainly the um the housing projects the metro project which is a transportation project as well and then there's also the the warriors arena is a piece of that too okay the farmers market improvements so there's a lot and it has both short-term and long-term of course because housing is considered a piece of a linchpin to having a strong downtown uh particularly some of the retail and and other sort of support services there that are downtown okay so keeping those moving forward so council member matthews and then i think council member golder you might have had your or no mine was just what's ut oh transient options and say tax okay the t ut is what confused me i know what that is i don't want the t ut oh the ut is the transactions in use tax so that's your additional sales tax on top of the baseline it's a more technical term we always we always have cost sales tax but there's two pieces to it you don't have to worry about it no don't worry about it uh council member matthews you had a comment i don't um it's your feeling that this whole package of downtown stuff should be a separate item apart from the fiscal sustainability yes and the reason is um that we look at it as a body of work i mean if if you were to throw it into the fiscal sustainability one then it's this giant thing and it still takes staff time and it still takes resources and and everything takes a work plan you know if you're going to get anything done you've got to have a work plan to do it and so by having it separate to say you know is is this really one of the top three priorities then um then it um is something that is more manageable okay and i would just say also that some of the really important projects coming forward are not necessarily city panic this project huh they may be privately funded but they will take a whole lot of staff time some of the private housing uh another project it's a number of projects yes it'll be moving forward downtown yeah so it's a deal of uh time to staff time to process yeah so it's acknowledging that that they're that to support downtown and and maybe the name of that downtown investment is not the right heading you know maybe it's you know supporting the the success of the downtown or so or something else you know you may want to you know we could wordsmith that as well but the idea is a focus on the downtown right it'll be some overlap with uh how to speak the housing one yeah okay uh i don't see any other hands up at the moment so let's go on to the next one i just wanted to before we do voting i want to just do a quick so the green economy we're going to move off to the side and not have a vote on that um in the local economy that one is really restart and grow the local economy with jobs and business creation so there's um a bunch of things um that were mentioned there some of which have to do with um you know grants that you might be able to get um others have to do with your economic development efforts that are underway and really focusing in on those um and uh you know this is one where i don't have bonnie's uh on i think he is on i think it might get for her to sort of weigh in okay sure what she's about these and whether were anything from the scene here good or good evening councilors mayor vice mayor um so i'm looking at this and you know one interesting thing that we're doing right now is we actually have a draft of a economic development strategic plan and we were waiting for the work that you're doing today and any follow-up work to finalize that so that we can incorporate any additional initiatives in it i think a lot of what you've covered this evening so far we have captured in our ed strategy we do have some additional things in there but um i'm looking at this and some of these are pretty broad strokes so i you know i support everything everything that's here um we do have a lot of initiatives that are underway both on the recovery um you know but i think we can sort of tear off a lot of the things that are that are here we do have existing partnerships i would say one thing that we are doing is which is is relatively new because of the pandemic is that we're looking um almost more regionally but certainly countywide as far as recovery efforts and so we are leveraging those partnerships um not just at the university in cabrillo um but with other jurisdictions other uh supporting organizations countywide chambers to really uh work together collaboratively to try to address uh business recovery and economic development right and i think the other thing to keep in mind here is that i mean though likely will be some kind of stimulus package i guess the one thing we don't know whether there'll be any sort of direct support to cities but certainly there there will be some support to businesses and i think uh local businesses small businesses and uh i think we'll likely have to play a role there so that was something that will be before us i'm pretty sure at one point or another here in the coming months say as far as the arena just since that that did come up earlier that we do have a deadline next year to decide or extend um on whether or not we're focusing at the permanent home in santa cruz for the santa cruz warriors so that is a temporary building and our agreement with the warriors and seaside company does end next year so um there are some decision points they don't necessarily need to be captured here but there are some big directions um and you already mentioned the warf as well so i think they've all been captured some of the big initiatives and project okay i think mayor had a had his hand up and then councilmember matthew so i just need to clarify this again and maybe martin you can clarify this for me when it comes to some of these big projects is the idea that they're going to keep moving forward or that tonight because i i just you know i don't think that in our best interest to say we're not going to focus on any of these big projects knowing that there's financial constraints around them and that you know it can lead to for example the warriors leaving which we don't want um but then like where do those fall into place because you know is it that you know warriors arena will fall under infrastructure along with the war from the library and the rail trail or is it that you know with downtown investors that would include the downtown along with the the warriors arena but it wouldn't include some of these other pieces so i'm just trying to get a sense when it comes to you know infrastructure like the arena the library rail trail or where do these fall and i think that's where we'll have to sort of bring that back to you so far as the work plan because i mean to a lot of extent these are what i'm hearing a lot of this let's continue to do some of the major initiatives and projects that we're working on and so then the question will be uh you know of these you know how do we treat them if for some reason resources become more limited or there's decisions that we made amongst them and so maybe that's where we can identify maybe some prioritization or criteria amongst amongst the different projects or so i have to think that that through to some extent maybe can we maybe set those projects under either infrastructure or some other category because it just seems like it just it just seems weird that some are going to fall into place with others and i don't think you know it seems weird if we're gonna if we're gonna make a decision on where to go tonight or if we're going to make recommendations on where to go it seems like all those projects should kind of get pulled out personally yeah there is and there is overlap in the infrastructure category because when i think of infrastructure in at least the way we thought about it it's more how do we how do we find funding to increase our infrastructure investment that's been sort of our rich challenge and so i don't necessarily think of is the housing projects as infrastructure some of these projects it seems to be more how do we again invest in our infrastructure that's where we've had deferred maintenance and not i'm saying that it's not a priority but it's really the issue has been identifying funding it's not necessarily show us the projects it's it's it's funding to to make improvements in unless the projects but it's it's you know the ones that we're working on we we know that we have opportunities for funding we know they can move forward because there's options to make them move forward but and in terms of generally when we talk about infrastructure it's about how do we make progress in areas where we don't have opportunities because of funding constraints okay so um and maybe some quick comments from first council member Matthews and vice mayor Myers and then council member Watkins um these things so repetitive in a way uh i'm wondering if a lot of this local economy can be pulled up into that first one can we talk about i think these things come forward and then um some of these facilities holding into downtown or i think those are the things like there are some obvious projects we want to carry forward we have to compress it to three let's not lose something critical and these are all kind of just a compilation of suggestions from all of us there wasn't any go waiting within which would be important ones within which category also right um vice mayor Myers yeah i just have a question went back through the the documents during the break and it occurs to me when i look at the project list in the back because ultimately the focus areas are sort of made up of projects and in some cases or um literally requirements so you know there's a number of things on here when i look at the projects in the back there's a number of things so i guess my question is like for example the housing element like we have to do that right by law you know i mean that's something that we don't get to say we're not going to turn in our housing i mean we could but that's not strategically very good um the other would be the lcp update and by nature of having to do that we recapture the resilient coast we also i know have to update our climate action plan this year because of you know the requirements from the state so my question is um kind of a requirement either under state law um do we assume that those things have to move forward or how do we handle that situation in the context of the areas of focus so those aren't insignificant projects in and of themselves so i'm just trying to remedy sort of the project list a little bit right now because that that's reflective in these areas of focus as well and so maybe i'm getting ahead of myself but i'm just curious if you just have a very short quick answer to that sorry no that's that's a good question i think from the staff perspective we we assume that we're going to be continuing to do the the basic requirements that we have in place so that we're assuming that those things are going to continue there are various things that we have to do um and uh but what we'll also do is once we get your priorities here we'll look at those also within the context of those but for now we're not saying that we're not going to do any of those basic things because a lot of those are supported by grants right martin so they're in some ways they're a little bit cost-neutral not completely obviously but you know in many cases those kinds of things are supported by grants for example the housing element some of that worked everything right okay okay we're going to continue to meet our obligations for some of our basic requirements right and some of the things that we have to do in the day-to-day basis so okay that's helpful thank you and then when martin and the staff come back with the work program for the top focus areas you're going to see a lot of those projects because they are moving forward but it but you know as i mentioned before they don't happen just because they happen but they happen because they are they are priorities and that you're allocating staff and resources to them so um but they will move forward uh councilmember Watkins thank you yeah no my question or sort of process comment is similar to what i think vice mayor mires is getting at in regards to what are sort of um what are these parallel tracks of projects that are already underway but then what are becomes the sort of crossroads where you have to reprioritize based on limited resources so then i was looking at the agenda and i see that you have established a framework for decision-making regarding new projects um work or services but is there also a recognition that there might be um kind of the integration of existing projects and how does that how does that fit into that framework around prioritization or i mean i'm i guess there isn't that really that christ are we going to establish that later in the agenda that's right here yet yes okay i will help i think that's good i think uh as jan mentioned i mean the work plan will kind of further refine and define so you're given a kind of what you what you're kind of overarching for the goals and priorities areas are we're going to take those and integrate them into what we're doing and create the work plan that will come back to you and then later on in the meeting yet we'll go through the sort of creating the mechanism or structure for uh making decisions around changes for adjustments okay so at some point it might be helpful to identify what's already existing in underway likely to be completed or mandated by law for us to complete versus what's a new kind of idea project that we want to have that discussion around prioritization okay okay uh council member Matthews you have your hand up yeah similarly um just looking at the project underway um it would be very helpful to know which ones are just going to proceed like highway one nine the contract is out i think that's going to proceed um which ones are which ones it would be crazy to not continue etc we're almost being asked to choose between things now that we haven't got the full picture of right yeah and again i think at this point you know we're not necessarily asking me to give us the specific uh projects it's really your areas that are important um and then we will integrate that and and obviously you mentioned some things and we'll take that into account and then and then incorporate it into everything else that's in the hopper and bring that back to you and and tell you given what you've made priorities what you've identified just what it means and this might be what would be the impacts would be the particular uh projects of things that are ongoing and you can say well that's acceptable originally it's basically operationalizing what you will end up with your top priority areas it's so that you will know over the next 12 to 18 months what staff and and council will be working on okay so let's take a quick look at the next one Claire affordable housing just to you know recap this you've got a bunch of projects or several projects that are moving forward already um and so you've made a number of comments there so if this is selected as one of the you know top priorities all of those will those things that are moving forward will continue and if they those are projects that will continue moving forward in any event and then the last one discussion about maintenance excuse me infrastructure so these are just some of the comments that were captured there so um let's go on to the hard part which is um selection of the top priority focus areas and again maybe just to revisit for just a second you know why we're doing this in the first place the council or the city of Santa Cruz is a complex city you have a lot of needs every all of these things are important and work is being done on all of them but the notion while you are in your recovery period is to seek some guidance as to what are the top areas the top three areas to really focus in on during the next 12 to 18 months it does not mean that everything else stops of course but that that gives some guidance to say out of everything we're doing these three areas really need to have extra attention extra focus and then after um those have been selected then martin and the staff will bring back as we've talked about a few times of a work program that says this is how we are going to accomplish those areas of focus over the next 12 to 18 months so that's the idea mayor your hand is up i didn't want to ask it maybe um you know before we vote with number six i think that you know there's the need to create but there's also the need to sustain affordable housing so i'm wondering if the language could be such that it reflects that although there is the need to create more affordable housing there's also a need to sustain sustain the affordable housing we already have so i'm not able to change there any any objection to that by the council to add in sustain i don't see any head shake okay um we will add that when when when claire can technically add it she can add that word sustain i don't um but in the meantime the way uh and she'll do the oh there okay it's like councilmember matthews has her hand raised oh i'm sorry i missed that thank you um i want to ask the question again even what bonnie described what she's doing um support local economic development to others not filled at five so this is put in to number one long-term physical sustainability office every we talked about new revenue which which i just mean a revenue measure but then in the discussion i mentioned uh rebuilding our taxes basically we're building our taxes i just put that out as a question i'm really hard to break well let me just say it is um always everything is interrelated and i can appreciate the interest in in wanting to combine those but there's a whole uh work element and work program that will be involved in in what bonnie describes and in working on the local economy that is related but it is different from um the the budget the fiscal sustainability it's all related but if you if you make it too big then it may be that um you know you went you you end up not realistically being able to really focus on three areas and then let me ask another question regarding number seven which is the infrastructure i seem to hear from the manager that the big infrastructure project like water wastewater you know the really big utilities um those will kind of continue anyway um and um that what we typically think of as infrastructure is different um project am i understanding that so that do a lot of these things that we looked on the last pages as projects in the work are those actually things that are going to happen anyway so we don't need to choose that one do you see where i'm going with my question or not yeah because the this kind of relates to the other piece of this that i think is important to keep in mind is that uh you know in the past when we've done our strategic plans you know they really are there's more to longer-term aspect to in that particular case we're doing in-term recovery plans so it's a little different because we're we're in this sort of crisis environment with multiple emergencies and so it's really about what are we going to focus on you know here in the immediate you know 12 to 18 months so it doesn't mean that these other things are important when they're going to work towards them but it's really and so infrastructure again is one of those where there's some long-term aspects to it uh but there are some long-term connections to the other items that some of you noted some of you noted that for example some of the housing partners are really infrastructure it doesn't work but it's infrastructure and whether there might be some things that we do in this 18 12 to 18 months around those items the uh the overall goal of infrastructure and putting infrastructure probably a little longer term uh yeah at some point you may want to pick up the the project that you started before which is a long-term strategic plan and under that um then you would be looking at least five years out and you're you're going to have more than top three you know you're going to have a lot more it'll be much more robust but for this one it's it's really the interim recovery period 12 to 18 months is the focus it's much more short-term focus okay so oh i'm sorry uh so we was uh councilmember what comes you had your hand waving i think sorry sorry i'm trying to make sure that i'm capturing what i'm hearing and i think what i'm hearing is there's an interest in really identifying sort of the broader themes of priorities give um our limited ability to really focus on everything but also recognizing that we're still for example going to partner with the county and try our you know play our role in preventing and combating um those experiencing homelessness or public safety is actually a core component of what cities do work so like but how are the broader themes essentially going to fit into our priority setting yeah exactly no that that's right and it's i i guess the advice i would i would give on all of this is that if you make things if you don't say what as a council what say your your top three areas of focus for this interim recovery plan uh period timeframe will be then you really do leave it to the city manager to do you really do because uh choices have to be made because you don't have enough resources to do everything and so when it's always helpful for our city manager and the staff to know boy for this 12 to 18 month period the council really would like the the top areas of focus to be these three things and so that that's just very helpful from a policy perspective to to have that so that's why we're we're trying to you know focus on in that regard so if that's if it's okay oh councilmember matthews you have your virtual hand up so i understand the down count in depth that does include um assuming um putting energy into a lot of the um affordable housing projects and other yep the whole package is down yeah great yeah and the wording on that one um if that you know may need to be modified slightly too you know so that it's you know a little bit broader once we get into wordsmithing a bit um okay so the way that we are um going to go about the voting is is um asking council members to uh select three and all you need to do is have the numbers so if you say my numbers are one two and three whatever your numbers are um and then we will go in order then you'll just call those out and claire is going to record those and we'll go in order that you typically go at your council meetings as i understand it i have those written down um oh the first one though is no longer here kathryn councilmember buyers so we'll start with um councilmember uh matthews then brown and golder and what comes then vice mayor meyers and then the mayor and jan i'm gonna um shift these back to the way that the numbers are in the workbook i just want to make sure that the numbers you have on your pages um match um because we removed number five okay okay i see what you've done okay so um councilmembers need more time to select your three you've all been thinking about it i'm sure okay then why don't we go ahead with um who did i say uh councilmember matthews just read off your numbers okay um something to change when i know what the particular how the particular shake out um uh one and uh if i could have a board to meet seven you only get three though 146 as a facilitator we always get complaints of i don't get enough dots okay uh next is councilmember brown uh thank you yeah uh so one seven and is councilmember golder councilmember what can i'm like the one that wants the dot but i can like cut you hear that one that i always have to watch at the at the workshop i was so hard rolled up in my mind how to do so i think i definitely one which i feel like could also encompass six so i'm not thinking so one and then four which i think can encompass seven and then eight one four and eight yeah okay got it okay uh vice mayor meyers i think you're next yeah i'm a i'm a dot cutter for sure i might even be a quarterer uh i definitely one and definitely four and i cut just just for the record i kind of think four i think seven can roll into four just because of the projects we have online i'm coming online um but i will say one four and eight okay and mayor coming and obviously i'd like more dots as well seven okay so i got everybody right because we have one council member isn't here okay um so we have only two that have a majority of the council um if you want to have three then we could do another round of one between six seven and eight if you want to have three and we've done that before as it's fairly simple to do that so um shall we do it you want to you want to get a third one in there okay so uh we'll go in the same order so starting with uh council member matthews you get one vote out of six seven or eight and we're going to start all over again yeah but no no one one vote of all you can only vote on six seven or eight because then we're trying to to reach um a majority and you can pass if you want i'm going to vote for number seven because i think infrastructure is mostly going to go along okay number seven that's my logic okay um council member brown uh same seven for the council member matthews stated okay claire um why don't you record those um on the other side of the line on the other side of the line just i don't want to keep all the don't worry i didn't lose them i just made another slide you won't be able to see it if it's on the other side of oh actually you will i'm fine to be me yeah just i can you go back yeah there we go i think so we can just okay because the ones that we had before that's what we had before okay so now um we've had two council members do their second round and both said number seven is that correct did i get that right okay um so then we have council member golder also think that um housing the the need to address and sustain affordable housing is longer term than 12 to 18 months and i think six is kind of the same as four and one and i've also heard our facilitator say twice that these capital investment and you know maintenance projects don't just happen and so i'm afraid of pulling in after a big storm in the next 12 to 18 months if we don't replace the piling so i'm going with eight still a stick okay um council member what kind of well housing efforts happening within the city under the downtown investment it's always hard uh vice mayor mires for the mutated oh let's see so claire i think we we needed to have another x under a so yeah two people also kind of lean on the sort of the Sabbath is sort of happening with four um i think so eight so eight has a couple of meanings for me one is that like i said before i think that outside of the enterprise funds um i think there's infrastructure that gets lost kind of in the mix of infrastructure and i'm specifically considering some of our parks facilities and and our parks and open spaces as infrastructure i think they're important green infrastructure frankly um so um and then also um there's there's work for example with the resilient coast um program that's coming online which is really around protecting our coastal resources which are both a tourist piece and also part of our green infrastructure in terms of protecting us from sea level rise um and i hate to see kind of lose that those things um even for 18 months i feel like those projects are important to keep online so uh i'm going to go with eight okay thank you and mayor coming on what council member matthew said and just with our conversations with the city manager it seems like a lot of the capital improvement projects that have been moving or infrastructure projects that have been moving along aren't really going to stop it seems like that train's going so but i do think that you know when we think about the need for and sustaining affordable housing i mean if there are stimulus bills that come out and the our economic development directors talk about this you know the more that we can have projects ready to go and identify opportunities to you know either create more affordable housing or the third programs that we can use to sustain and keep people in their homes like that's going to be really important as over the next 12 to 18 months we see you know the sunset of the eviction protections how do we kind of keep people in their homes and how do we kind of sustain affordable housing whether that's through you know credits that can come you know as part of the stimulus package that can go to landlords or the tenants what have you but i think that we need to keep a lot of effort on that so i'm going to go with seven um you have a lot of needs and so you really have ended up with two top priorities that a majority the council a strong majority the council really does want to focus on and that's okay because there are only you know seven focus areas there and something will be occurring in all of those areas that they just not going to be the the top areas of focus so there's nothing wrong with only having two there's nothing wrong with that and the city manager will be coming back with a with a work program on those two and indicating with the other projects that are that are already underway you know what will be happening with those so there's there's nothing wrong with with having two in fact i want to applaud you for only having two i think that's actually a best practice given given the kind of conversation that you've gone through so yes mayor it looks like there's a council member matthews had a question oh i'm sorry i need to look over here to see the participants the blue hand council member matthews um yeah i said at the beginning i wanted the ability to change my vote okay on the issues around number seven my interests are not so much in funding emergency relief programs because um i think our resources in those cases are short-term i'm hoping we will have more state and federal resources to do that my interests are more in policies and actually planning and matches and so forth so what we mean by that might be rather different um and i would also like to know again what what are we not doing if i don't vote for infrastructure i may have some images of how things are proceeding um i do think of them more as physical things either facilities or utilities rather than i think they're they're issues around our part but i don't see that as infrastructure so much um so you know before we come back for final quantitative i can have to say the infrastructure component is of no concern just like how are we interpreting these things before we sign the check okay so let's hear from council member watkins and then vice mayor mires and then any comments from the city manager i think i was just going to say that i think what i'm hearing this really be is for the city managers to have a sense of where the council is right now in terms of top space addressing affordable and sustaining affordable housing is a huge priority for our entire community and city and how are we going to immediately do that in the next 12 to 18 months you know with the housing movement study session and our downtown housing coming online like those are all for me i think just interconnected and if that's the at the point is for for our city manager to hear that and our interest in our sort of thought process for connectivity then i think you know we've expressed a real shared interest around around that as a council as well as how we're maintaining and supporting um the most vulnerable kind of aspects of our general fund and the infrastructure associated with that whether it be our coastal resilience or and or our parks and maintaining those critical resources so if this essentially it's not sort of throwing them out but saying i hope you know our city manager hears that that this is something i think we all pretty much expressed and shared and i'm not trying to make it so that we have four but i'm just not trying to say that i don't think it needs to be maybe now maybe i'm just throwing out your whole talk but like what you know only three either i think if it's just to express what we hope the work is to be i think we are in alignment in a lot of these areas yeah and it certainly seems that there is a lot of alignment for sure among council members uh martin do you have any maybe final comments on that and then we will talk about the uh the work plan oh did i oh i i'm so sorry yes vice mayor meyers yes i see you do have your electronic yeah i i see the immediacy of what we push with the focus on the 12 to 18 months i guess what i'll say is that um the way that i'm looking at eight and you know to council member mathie's sort of question is that um we're looking at um you know we're looking at this really crazy point in time right we've had this pandemic where people can't um be inside um we've had uh wildfires that basically have surrounded and burned the watershed above our town um we have just completed probably the first of its kind study of our coastal resources and not only those resources from a tourism perspective but how they actually provide buffering from damages from sea level rise as well as potentially the the disappearance of of world famous surfing waves and others so my perspective in this is i number eight to me is is a reach it's it's saying today that in the next 12 to 18 months we're not going to lose track of the infrastructure and the green most importantly the green infrastructure that provides the benefit to our town for the future and so you know green infrastructure is actually protecting it's doing what we've done well and over the last 50 years we've created a green belt we've um set back some some of our facilities from the ocean we've done things that we probably didn't know we were doing right when we did them but um this is a critical time when funding sources and other attention is going to be paid especially from our governor and our state to say you know these are the investments we see as the smart investments moving forward and that's why really i think we have to expand you know infrastructure is not pipes and streets anymore it's forests that are well managed to provide buffering from catastrophic wildfires it's a watershed that's you know managed so that we don't get catastrophic flooding it's you know infrastructure that is natural like you know living shorelines that actually buffer from sea level and and the king tide effects that we already see it's having places that people can walk when they're not when they can't when they can't be around each other so i see number eight as it's a reach goal but it is the future and so councilmember matthews that's my pitch yes councilmember matthews your electronic hand is up yeah it's a discussion um and i guess i want to get back to looking at the significant projects underway which things are going to continue we um have a consultant working on our objective standards for multi-family housing back to make a big difference in affordable housing we're about yeah study session on uh state all the state changes in the state law that could mean a lot for us we haven't had that yet we know there's a ton of changes that can make a big difference our actual affordable housing projects are centered downtown so in terms of physical um investments in affordable housing that's mostly where they're happening not exclusively so you know i think i the case can be made for changing my vote there and you know just voting for the infrastructure there again when it comes back i want to know what's dropped off and what are we keeping anyway and what's stopping off so that that's the future assignment for staff so i'll change my vote there okay so just to be clear so you're changing your vote from the seven to eight yeah okay okay and council member what comes you had a comment actually i just wanted to see if martin wanted to speak to that like i don't i don't necessarily see eight been being a trade off for seven i think that seven is obviously a priority for our city it's going to be an investment in our downtown with some of the projects naturally will include aspects of needing to have um you know tenant protections and looking at state resources are all like i don't think it's one or the other per se but i wanted to see if martin wanted to just weigh in on that yeah of course yeah sure um i'm sitting here thinking about how to uh how to sort this one out a bit because there is obviously there is some overlap in some of these things downtown investment we've all agree is incredibly important and a lot of that has to do with the the construction and moving forward of some affordable housing projects right so uh there's some overlap there but affordable housing means different things to uh the different aspects of it i think there's difference of opinion perhaps in the council around that the various policies that are different so um these are policies that we can will look to work on um and uh so i think i think what we'll have to do is as we prepare the work plan and identify the air you know the areas within each of these categories i think that'll help you uh with respect to determining you know what it means because there's a bit of a thing it's it's a bit hard right now to like fully define it um but i think once we put in the work projects between within each one of them i think that will help um and again this will come back to you so this isn't the the final um and and so i think your clarifications that you can provide today extend possible but what what it means to you and for example uh councilmember meyers talking about the infrastructure what it means to her uh that's helpful um so that we can uh try to incorporate in the work plan what exactly is to the extent possible what what what it means and what this priority should be so uh councilmember brown and then watkins so yeah just to follow up on that i um i also think that uh martin your point uh burnall martin your burnall your point about um this coming back in the shape of various projects within the the various priorities um will help clarify because it seems to me as we all know different departments take the lead and responsibility and much of the activity for certain functions and so infrastructure and affordable housing may not be the responsibility of the same people and so in terms when we talk about trade off we also i think want to be thinking about um staff capacity departmentally i mean it for the city manager's office they're all um kind of going to take time uh regardless but i do think that that's uh an element that we ought to be thinking about as we prioritize and so i'm going to stick with affordable housing but i don't see um them being you know that dropping off just because we've now got a two to four on that um i hope it wouldn't that that would be um a shame but um just thinking about who you know who has the responsibility and how that fits into the into the mix okay councilmember watkins i no i appreciate um those comments uh by councilmember brown i think it makes sense to think about how um you know it's not one or the other but this is information input for potential examination of various you know capacities of various departments and i think that given that there is an election you know to an earlier point made that we do want input from you know at minimum two new two new council members so there will be an opportunity for them to weigh in as well so given that one and four are strong i think that ideally the city manager heard that seven and eight are also very high priorities as we think about how this is returned to the council for refinement okay um mayor coming yeah i just wanted to comment because to uh councilmember some of the things that's been coming up it seems like you know when we think about interim recovery there's two things that come to my mind one is economic recovery and that has a lot to deal with you know job creation job stability and then community stability and that really for me is along the lines of you know how do we keep people in their homes um so that they're not displaced and put out on the street because we know what i but looking through this list when thinking about like public safety i feel like you know for um you know long-term fiscal stability and downtown investment is that really gonna take you know a lot of staff time from PD or fire probably not you know um versus economic development in the planning department and so i think there is an opportunity to kind of look through this and see you know if there are areas of interest that have a lot of overlap with certain departments obviously we want to try to tease apart what um you know and create a priority for those departments so we're not bombarding them with um work but you know when i think of improvements and maintenance infrastructure again to council member at these points i think of like buildings versus you know um yeah i feel like our water department you know is going to continue to try to you know work on how we can maintain the water infrastructure and look for funding fire is going to keep looking at you know how we can prevent and you know make our open spaces um more resilient to fires and then you know i think that um it's you know full of 18 months we've just passed our parks plan there will likely be funding coming down to help support our parks which does have a lot to do with tourism but then i also think you know the reason why push affordable housing is that you know what i heard about other times like after the recession for example that you know if you have shovel ready projects there could be more funding that goes into that and we you know we we but we have a decent amount in our affordable housing fund i think we should really be trying to figure out how we can get more funding from the state to make all these projects happen because a lot of concern that's come through the community is that um given the funding that we do have in our affordable housing fund do we have enough to create the affordable housing you know and to fund the products we have so i just keep that in mind and just think about you know if there's other opportunities for us to get more money towards affordable housing that's the right now we're also in really good position but again i think that to the extent that we can figure out um you know if there are departments where where our priorities are leaning there are there are departments that aren't going to have that big of a lift and we can figure out other things that we can work on with them on the side i think to that extent we should keep that in the back of our minds thank you uh vice mayor moyers yeah i i guess i'll just say you know i these are really tough choices and um i think you know we have some legs on affordable housing i again i keep pivoting to this investment in downtown um completing the projects um that we are looking at doing downtown that gets people back downtown it gets people living in downtown um it hopefully will um rebuild our metro our transit center which again comes along with additional commercial spaces that we can be creative about when we move forward thinking about um rethinking maybe some of how we use those commercial spaces and retail spaces to the mayor's point earlier this evening so i you know my intent is not you know i i was joking when i when i made that comment earlier i mean i i i thought absolutely value and i know we affordable housing is is probably the highest priority i think for most of all of us all of the council members um it's it's a target we have to constantly keep our eyes on and um so i you know i just believe that um you know based on my statements on number eight you kind of you kind of heard where i am but i just wanted to clarify you know i i'm it's difficult to try to rank these because they're all very important um and again i think eight is a reach goal and it's the kind of thing that we need to start thinking about now because many many communities will be doing that and so um i i just wanted to clarify that and then um there was one thing but it's gone out of my head so that i'll end it there but just to clarify i absolutely think affordable housing has to be a target um i think we've got some really strong projects and uh we keep moving on those and and hopefully we'll be successful okay thank you and then final comment from councilmember what tensor was that before you had your that blue hand up no no i mean that was before i had my hand up but okay i couldn't tell in general i you know i yeah i agree i think you know if the if the interest is to really give a broader kind of sense of where the council is with everything to the city manager i think there will be refinement more information to help us actually you know design and refine workflow for the next 12 to 18 months okay and then i'm clearly hearing that affordable housing is important as well as interest so we'll we'll keep that in mind as we prepare things to work okay so uh you have uh long and well short term and long term fiscal sustainability that'll be wardsmiths a bit uh the downtown and uh infrastructure are your top three so good thank you thank you for hanging in there with that that was not an easy process for you it never is um okay so if you could move on claire to the next slide that's just okay we can we've already done that so uh martin this was just your slide and just indicating um what you'll be coming back with and and roughly when you'll be coming back so our uh yeah so as we've discussed uh we will take your discussion today um and uh what you've identified as the as a priority areas here um and then the input that was also provided around things that might uh we might be able to stop uh that was in your packet along with uh everything that's in the hopper to bring back to you a work plan that outlines uh and in the in the interim if there are particular areas or uh questions we have about particular projects that we just want to make sure we don't forget about or that we include but you know let me know um what couldn't try to be as inclusive as possible but there may be some things that we might miss but today so they have to fix that that you can be aware that would be helpful um and then we will bring that work plan to you and I believe we're our goal is to try to get that to you in November is that right Laura I think that's what we're looking to be shooting for but also as was pointed out earlier too I think my mean that we will have a tune to the council um and so therefore we will need to touch that with the new council um as soon as possible so the new council probably won't really have their first opportunity to sort of weigh in until january um so we will see that martin I think the goal for November was not the work plan it was the actual translation of what we heard from the council members today to the interim recovery plan so they will actually receive a document that represents the interim recovery plan and these three components and that would be in November I think january is a more realistic time frame to give us time to work with the department to massage and categorize and organize all of the existing backlog into the different priority areas to bring them back for a facilitated discussion and um with a january timeline we might also be able to get the new council members input into that process so that it all hopefully would come together at that point so it sounds like there'll be another opportunity to kind of refine this a bit more yeah good okay so let's move to the next slide claire um so everybody hanging in there okay or do we need another break everybody hanging in there I guess you're used to long council meetings so for the moment we'll we'll keep moving so uh gloria if you could just briefly touch on this one sure um a list of um projects or items that the council during the interviews um and also the department has identified as items that could be deferred and the purpose of this is really to just give this feedback and this input to martine as the work plans are being developed so um we're not going to vote on them but I do want to because these came from individual members do want to give you um the opportunity to maybe comment on some of these that you do think they're important and can be or you do think they can be deferred or you absolutely don't want martine to consider them for deferral so as I said all of these items came from uh interviews and staff so just quickly um public works there's some public works projects that are funded and some that might just be um uh wish on a wish list um one discussion was about essential versus non-essential services so if there are any non-essential services left that the city's involved in that those could be deferred um not funding to non-profits was discussed the civic auditorium and I'm not sure if that's a bond program or uh that it's funded um the parks and rec programs especially during the covid time that a lot of those may not be happening anyways um housing projects some of the larger ones in big policy longer term uh discussions uh the university's long range development plan uh council initiatives that are outside the priorities project labor agreements um non-mandated advisory committees and commissions that still require staffing um and therefore city resources the rental housing inspection programs the arts programs the war of master plan um I'm not sure it's fixed costs that don't generate revenue I'm not quite sure where that came from and then county functions um that the city is currently doing that so there I believe there's some human services type functions that the city has taken over but that really belong in the county's basket and then some of the climate um and the sustainability programs so all of those came out of discussions and so I just want to give 14 some feedback on these from the council and I think we have the next slide to account for that although we might want to leave it up so people can see the list on this I'll take notes and then everyone can see um yeah when mayor mayor go ahead so couple comments one I think we just um we just had a lot of discussion on um infrastructure so I just say take those projects with the grain of salt obviously because if we just decided that um there was you know an agreement that that was the third um and you have like civic auditorium renovations well do we does that fall under one of those priorities or not so I think just taking that into account um the university I mean we just invested money in um continuing with our UCSC advocate so I just think it'd be a waste of money if we stopped if we were paying that person and then we just said we're gonna stop moving forward with that um and I think it's really critical because the university is not stopping with the LRDP so if we stop now and we will be like very far behind and I think that a lot of folks in the community will be very upset um with our you know lack of moving forward with that and I think as I mentioned earlier with with regards to climate and environmental sustainability that is probably one of the top priorities thanks to affordable housing in our community so um those I would say will probably keep forward and then I guess another question is that a lot of there's a number of items on here that are coming back um probably before we actually um you know before we actually decide on what this in a recovery plan is so I look at the warp master plan I know that's supposed to come back either at the next meeting or the following um so I just I'm just a little confused um but with with you know and we just have that long conversation of what projects are going to keep moving forward which is which versus which ones will get installed so I think that um you know those that are um infrastructure and kind of um you know university climate um or some of the ones that kind of concerned me a little bit the most yeah council member brown as followed by council member Watkins and again just input to the city manager that's all this is so um I I share uh mayor Cummings concerns about uh kind of how some of these seem to if we're going to be deferring seem to contradict what we just said we wanted to prioritize um but I also I have well when I have what a comment about the list and the amount of of time and resources really varies across these different um items so you know it's it's kind of hard to uh think about you know some of you know we could say I mean the warp master plan alone could be like four or five of these other items right so um so just thinking about which ones that to be deferred will actually um you know lead to you know opening up more staff time and then what the costs are I think we really have to consider that um so but then I'll just off the top of my head there's a couple I have questions about um and so the first one is the number three reduced funding to non-profits except food banks that is that a defer reduced fund reducing the funding or reduce the funding and how does that save staff time to cut non-profit funding if that's what we're talking about I don't um I don't get that that's the one question and then um yeah I so I don't know the question that needs an answer but um what staff time is the is the city really putting in on the university LRDP work I know our planning director comes to some of those meetings but it's largely been taken on by county supervisor and three members of the council and then the advocate that we're funding externally um well we're funding but it's an extra on position so um just kind of wondering about that and then um the last one I just well actually there's two more um I'm not comfortable saying that we want to reduce or defer climate adaptation and environmental sustainability programs I mean we have one you know one staff person who does the lion's share of that work and does an amazing job I don't know how uh deferring those particularly given that we've said we want to really be focusing on green economy and kind of and using that climate lens and all of our our work it doesn't seem like deferring that activity is gonna really be of any benefit or save much um in the overall staff budget time budget and then um the last point I would make is you know I understand the point of number 15 uh deferring activity actions around county functions the city carries out but I do um you know I just want to be mindful of the the challenges of taking that kind of stance I mean we just have to look to the Sentinel a couple of weeks ago and with a big story about how trash is not getting picked up because the city and county are in a standoff and whatever the story is behind that how that happened um it doesn't matter to me so much of the fact that that was on the agenda I mean that's what people are hearing and so to say that we are um gonna stop being you know just we're gonna defer any activity on county functions that the city is carrying out I just think it's one more step in that you know county versus city fight and we've moved to a place of what I feel like is pretty good cooperation and I would just hate to see that get undermined so um just a couple of questions and come and then the others will comment I'll leave it there okay and let me just remind you this is I'll call this laundry list came from the council interviews and it was also um happened before you took the budget actions that you took so um so we're just trying to give um our team just a general sense of this but these did come from council members um there weren't there wasn't necessarily any consensus but these are some of the thoughts that came out during the discussions okay uh let's see council member Watkins and then mayor comments I guess I I wonder for the purposes of tonight's meeting if um I think Martin heard that there was really two strong areas of consensus for the council um really four in terms of just wanting more clarification around um affordable housing being wrapped into existing initiatives around our downtown investments right now specifically in the next 12 to 18 months as well as looking at how we're integrating infrastructure as the most vulnerable infrastructure in terms of our parks in terms of our general funds funding around climate adaptation and environmental efforts um and then I think um also in all you know in kind of all transparency there will be two new council members but I feel as when I was a new council member not having my voice as part of the strategic plan um at minimum there's two new councils there's four openings right and so I think you know we want everybody on the council moving forward in the next 12 to 18 months to have their voice be heard and really the fingerprints on this document so there's sign and um coherent and so I think you know for general purposes I think I maybe I'll ask Martin did did you hear kind of where we're at is that good in terms of where we want to go and then more information will be forthcoming and opportunity for more input from from newer individuals as well yeah no I think I think uh I think you provided the input and again there'll be more input and again I think these were we didn't feel to these in any way I think we just what we heard we just stuck them on here and and I think as Gloria pointed out some of some of these things we've already essentially provided direction on through the budget process and some of these will be before you and you'll be there'll be an opportunity to provide direction as well so uh yeah to be honest I don't I don't help useful this may not be maybe maybe one final comment from the mayor and then we can move on I was just gonna say um again too I think you know it was good to hear that this came before and we had our budget because because um that provides some context and and I know it came before after we kind of just had our previous discussion but then I would just point out that with you know parts and rec programs and city arts I think that um you know the arts are underfunded and really don't you know need a ton of funding for what the men you know what they need to operate I mean they always could use more but you know I think to the extent that we can keep arts going it's a good thing and then additionally with the park and recs program I mean a lot of those a lot of folks in our community use those programs as their kind of outlet it helps with you know physical and mental health and so I think that you know to the extent that we can keep those going to provide members of the community with that outlet and avail you know opportunity to get into the open spaces or to you know have access to recreation I just want to say again you know trying to keep those moving is probably a good idea okay uh council member Matthews this really did this was really did represent just kind of brainstorming without discussion among council members so I'm going to comment specifically but in terms of engaging uh new council members in this you know we swear our men and then we go on vacation they come back and deal with some heavy-duty stuff so we have talked previously about the onboarding process it's something I'm really interested in I think every single person on the council will say boy when you first step into that as much as you think about what you know about how the city works etc there's so much you don't know and particularly to be asked to make really really big decisions just the orientation generally and on on the upcoming big decisions going to be so critical yeah and just you know that's that's being worked on now we also invited them to participate today recognizing that uh this might be helpful uh so they were all uh in form of the meeting today and so forth it looks like Tony wants to say something to you so okay Tony yeah thank you I just want to point out that I think the mayor covered this at some level but uh item seven is on dealing with the university's long-range development plan it's not really an option in so far as the university's long-range development plan is moving forward and so we really need to react with this uh plan forward so the extent I mean the extent we deal with it is is a question but um the timing is not because we are not in a position yeah but Jim I agree it's really critical to have any council members uh be unbored in as quickly as possible and updated as quickly as possible so we do plan to have a very robust program to get them on board okay so I think that's just input and uh martin has has that a little bit of input and as he's working on work programs to come back to the city council he can consider any of these that might may be appropriate and may not be appropriate okay so let's keep moving then Claire um so we now uh are shifting gears um so metrics for tracking recovery in our council interviews we we did ask council members what might be some of the things that that could help you gauge recovery gauge this and we asked department heads the same thing um at some point in the future the city may want a very robust performance measurement program to measure all kinds of things the intent for this is to have a a limited number of metrics that would help you gauge maybe even through a dashboard for the public but but be able to tell yourselves and the public you know to what extent are you making some progress so with that in mind um and as as this slide says um we we will have on some other slides to show you the idea is to agree on a limited number of metrics um we're suggesting up to 10 because that that would be reasonable for staff to be able to keep keep track of and for those metrics to be ones that uh there's readily there's data readily available for and that the staff is already tracking but that can put it together in an organized fashion so we there were a total of 17 possible metrics that were suggested either from council members or or from department heads and those are in the workbook and we applied some criteria and again this is shown in the workbook to each one of those and the criteria having to do with will the data actually help measure recovery is the is the city currently tracking the data if it's if the city is not is the data readily available which could be the case we wanted to know is the data available at least quarterly many cases it is some cases it's not that doesn't mean it's a non-starter but it's a it's a useful question depending on how often you want to report and then the final one is does the city have some direct influence over the outcome so we applied those those criteria to the suggestions these are 15 of the 17 metrics actually have data readily available that's quite a few so that's a good thing so we our firm actually has a lot of experience in performance measurement so so we used another individual in our firm who helped take a look at these and these are worded as a percent change because then that tells you to what extent you're making progress if you're measuring change so these are again in your workbook and i'm not going to read them to you because you can you can see them on here but they are they range from some of the financial metrics that you are currently uh gathering to business closures as a metric that data is available for to commercial vacancy rates unemployment you know permit you're already getting that data you have that you know some data about housing and homelessness as well as crime so there are actually quite a few data points that you could measure if you if you wish to and then the next slide Claire shows um there are a couple of suggested metrics that would be very interesting and that could be useful in the future if data could be found in a readily available fashion that they're right right now that is not the case and so we wanted to show those to you for instance the percent change the number of new jobs would be a great thing to know but right now there's not a good source of that so that may be something in the future that that could be the case and same thing with percent change in the number of housing evictions the really good information to have right now there's not a good data source for those so um what we wanted to do is to get some sense from the city council as to for you what would be the most important things to track so if you move on to the next one Claire um so again a little bit of voting we think this is not going to be quite as complicated um as the last one so out of these 15 we wanted to find out from council members what would be most important for you uh for the staff to track and we think that if you each select your top five we'll probably end up with you know eight nine ten you know in that range that would um be ones that could then reasonably come back in an organized way to report back to the city council and to the community in terms of tracking recovery so before we do that kind of virtual voting are there any questions or comments from council members yes um looks like council member what can followed by math is um yeah i guess i just i think some of this data seems pretty um you know consistent with what we already track and can be used as a proxy measure for some of the things that we're hoping to monitor so for me i think i'm just trying to understand what is the type of data that is more um i mean like we we we we track tot you know and we track sales tax and we track a lot of these things as we should as a city so i i guess i'm i'm not quite clear on what exactly this does yeah yeah well the the idea is to tie it to recovery so yes you do track it you definitely do track that historically um many of these have been tracked but to tie it to recovery so that say a year from now you'll be able to indicate whether you think the local economy has recovered based on these indicators i just i think i have one last clarifying question though if it is tried to recovery then um i think naturally some of them will fall into the areas of recovery in terms of for example sales tax revenues or commercial vacancy we're going to naturally like look at those as proxy measures for how we're doing as a community um and i don't know if excluding any really does as any favors really because we want as much data as possible so i i mean i maybe i'll open it up to my colleagues to see their thoughts on it but those are my initial kind of reactions sure okay council member uh mathies and brown oh council member brown i think council member mathies she i i lowered her hand but i think her camera was frozen oh okay sorry my internet was unstable oh okay um my impression is uh we were not just to throw out a few but choose our top five and i read the criteria is to pick indicators that are pretty available that are not going to be more work we're not going to start and try so forth so um i'm comfortable proceeding with that i did have a question number 11 is a percentage in the number of permits issued by any type 12 percentage change in new housing units permitted and 13 is percentage of all new housing units seems affordable now is that permitted or built because one of them is permitted and the other is unclear i mean it would be progress to know how many of the new housing units would be affordable of those permitted even if they are not yet built you see where i'm going with that yeah um i think that's a good question whether that would be probably permitted um if all new housing permitted would be one and then affordable permitted would be right 13 yeah it's a good clarifying question we both yeah so yeah it's you know up to the council's preference but if i said lee you you already collect this information so it seems to me we get it pretty regularly yeah on an annual basis we have to report this information to the state hdb the housing community development department and so um you know we have it at minimum on an annual basis and and we can produce that on a more regular basis as well for affordable you want both permitted and built laura did you want to add a clarifying comment oh i think you might be muted thank you i think it would be might be helpful for the council members to understand even if we do have all of this information um a subset of these would be used in the periodic reporting that we do back to council so you guys will see your focus areas that you've identified will have progress information at a brief descriptive level and then we will also have the key performance indicators that you identify in that periodic reporting information back to you you would still be able to get the full plethora of the data that planning and community development collects that ed collects that finance collects but this would come consolidated as a relate to this interim recovery plan progress good thank you laura okay council member brown i think you're next i just want to follow up on uh council member walken's point because i'm still uh a little confused as well about how to how to think about prioritizing these so if and if i pick five they get am i siloing well is transient occupancy tax more important than sales tax or admission you know like i i guess i'm just i'm still not entirely clear what the purpose of narrowing at least in certain areas are i can see mostly on the column on the right um perhaps some of those being a little bit harder to um you know gather that data and make sense of that data and and how that ties to recovery but in terms of the tax revenues i i guess i'm just not i'm not understanding and if i don't pick any of those and that's a whole entire you know i mean that's a huge piece of the you know the economic recovery picture and certainly the fiscal health of the city so i i'm still just a little you know i'm just not clear how that winnowing process would happen mostly with the um items on the column on the left one through eight one through seven i i think probably the maybe one explanation is to um to restate a bit what laura said um all the data points are being provided that the data is available but in the intent is to provide them together in one um in one report so that the council can see based on all of the data that that you have selected and the tricks you've selected um are we making progress in recovery so the idea is to not have so many that would um be a you know a challenge for staff as we're thinking about 10 but i guess i you know can turn it to laura or martin in terms of you know the number i think the other possibility process wise is to go through the process that you guys have identified see what the finalists are that the votes turn out to be and then if there are things that seem like they're just missing and we need to add then we can do that but i think trying to get into the actual vote process see where it takes you what the priorities come up to be and then if it looks like there's some from one through seven that don't make it that really fundamentally need to be there regardless then we can add them in if we try something like that yeah we could certainly do that uh by smear on wires going forward i'm going to give you five okay are you ready yep i like uh business licenses issued business licenses renewals business closures i realize the data is unreliable but if there is a way that we can get that and i would say across the city not just downtown percentage change in new housing units all types permitted and percentage change in number of housing evictions i know that's a hard one to get but i'm just hoping that somehow we can figure out to get it those would be my five thank you okay very good okay so she's got the ball rolling here okay mayor coming yeah i was just it took me a little time through our conversation but then um i did it you know kind of kind of realize that like yeah if we want to pick where our metrics for success you know and what do we think are those metrics and just kind of honing in on those um so yeah that makes it makes a lot of sense after our discussion so i'm going to go for it as well um i'm going to go with uh two um oh please it's 16 16 just appeared on here 16 i don't think it was one of one of the previously uh mentioned the percentage change in housing evictions was not previously included on this list oh no then that shouldn't be on that okay um yeah i think that would be when that data could be become available then right now there's no data available for that yeah i missed that that was that was Donna's uh okay yeah but if there's just no data available for that but it can be noted that when the data is available then then that could be something that could be provided there are two that would be my data becomes available while i've got them on that one as well yeah there was another one on that when the data is available to the other one was new jobs that was the other and there are two that there's just no data right there's right now so no way to report it really okay uh so then let's go to uh councilmember Matthews next so we'll go back to the order okay with an eye on how are we actually measuring our recovery um i would say number one percentage change in top number two percentage change in business licenses issued and i take that to mean both new and renewal that's correct um well those are actually two different data points but um so you could pick one of those and then we can we can talk about that because there's i know that one is one is new wins and ones renewals because that's very important too but i know they survive yeah exactly anyway yeah i would say business license issued yeah exactly yeah the percentage change in sales tax revenue i'm looking at our two big income things you would be in sales tax which have suffered the most um uh measurable our commercial vacancies that's something that we have a good handle on uh we were told by staff that that is available bonnie do you have a comment on that yes it is we have through loop net um we track that regularly and we can run actually run a report pretty much at any time i would say uh that's given our focus on recovery that's an important one and um the number of permits issued by tight very good okay and council member brown you would be up next one three eight nine and eleven okay and uh council member golder here up next i only had one question is what what's number five what's admissions tax four more movies one two three four nine okay very good uh council member wadkins i'll try to stand to the best of my ability so i um i appreciate this process and i feel like we don't want to um rush the metrics that could be the best metrics to assess our progress and um there are very specific metrics that fit very specific policies that we want to make sure we're aligned with so i hope that this is just sort of a sense but not necessarily um ignoring uh best practice as it relates to data collection and proxy measures for local government and economy and and um also trying to get um kind of like just point in time what's happening everything is happening really quickly so we want to always seek more information so i think i'll just i'm going to express my discomfort in this process having worked briefly for a data collection agency um but that being said i will um kind of share some of my priorities i do think we want to look at the um at number two um number eight and for sure number nine as well number 11 did i do five and number 13 actually i'm sorry number number 12 which i think covers number 13 and we've already heard from the vice mayor um let's see i think now i lost track because we weren't in order did the mayor did you already yeah that's the yeah you did that's everybody okay so so the ones that that have um the most interest are um looks like one two three i'm just looking at if it's three or more just the ones with the most interest one two three eight nine eleven could you highlight those in in a color cut clear just so we can see those a little bit easier the ones with career more just to get a better sense of of those because even one two three four five six something you really could have more i mean we were thinking of ten that that would not be too many for the staff to report on um as part of this interim recovery plan so um are there any we did get to ten total in terms of the ones that got exes by them although the rest of them got no more than two yeah i mean yeah you could as a council i mean you're going to be um tracking your sales tax and that certainly could be um that would be another one that you would be tracking this would be it'd be reported on if you wanted to and then your if you want to do ones with two then you would add number 12 as well laura do you want to comment on this i think i'm going back to what council member walk-in said one of the things that we can do at the um as we debrief this meeting is we'll go back to the top priority areas that you have identified and make sure that we actually have indicators to measure each one of those areas and when they're not we'll pick from this list or find additional possible ones to recommend to you and that's what you'll see in the November packet because there does have to be a measurement line of sight for the three to four focus areas that you selected to some sort of reporting mechanism for progress so we'll make sure that that exists and we can take and tie that so what this exercise then provides the staff is some preferences if these are the ones that are preferred by council and then there may be some additional ones as well good okay good thank you all right so then uh gloria i'm oh go ahead council member i just wanted to make one suggestion the league of california cities as well as the national league of cities also identify various metrics that local jurisdictions should be tracking so i just encourage sure as as we before but we reference best practice good okay uh we have some other hands up council member matthews did you have another comment well yeah we could go back i mean i i beg my fellow council members to pay attention to the sales tax revenues i mean if we are measuring recoveries that's a big one and similarly admissions tax you know that's a boardwalk for pp sake so um and that just plays out into tot and sales tax so that's a little other things but um and then the ones i don't know if they're so readily available our personal income um the homeless count happens um not as regularly so that may be a tough one the crime rate seems to be nothing that it caused for argument so um you know i think the things that we collect pretty routinely unemployment is something i think we get regionally anyway so if we could choose 10 things that we have some we do have 10 really credible the other ones that relate to what we're talking about so we certainly dare yeah so council member golder and then the mayor i was going to say almost the same thing is that the reason it was easy for me to choose and i didn't have any comments before is i felt like we're measuring economic recovery and so for me if i'm in economic recovery at my own house i measure my bank account i measure my income streams coming in and so like our big income streams bowls are easy to measure we could measure those once a month four times a year whatever it is and it's not going to take a lot of staff time from my perspective whereas somebody does things linearly abstract like the change in counter homeless people the crime rates the affordable units even the unemployment rate i don't know how often we have access to that and so i think if we're just trying to even the jet i'd urge for number six to yeah number five so i mean anything where we can just measure how much more money we're bringing in so that we can get back into got it okay um thank you mayor um to council member matthew's point um i do agree with both of those you know the sales tax and the admissions tax i think the one thing well yeah i know that retail obviously has been going down but that's not the only thing that we measure as as it relates to sales tax i do want to point out though to um my colleagues that one thing that's that's been tracking throughout the news during the pandemic is that construction actually hasn't slowed down so if we think about that and if we even think about the um you know buildings and proposed construction that's coming into Santa Cruz we haven't seen a stop in construction so if um permits issued is is an item is a you know a factor for determining recovery or not i mean i don't think it maybe our planning direction can speak to that but i know the national trend is that construction hasn't slowed down so it might not be as good of an indicator as opposed to sales tax and admissions tax if we're going to go with them so i just wanted to put that out there as well okay well i think we have a lot of uh input our own state counseling in the ground if you have another comment or i think or a comment i just want to make one quick comment yeah so yeah i mean of course it's a response to council member Matthews of course i think we should be tracking uh the sales tax and admissions tax isn't going to use up three of my five on the various tax revenues it's kind of back around to my question about why prioritize one of the taxes over the other i agree completely i kind of wish we could just put those in one category and then i just want to make a comment about the business licenses and i know they're both on here business license issued and business license renewals but i i think it's really important to think about those distinctions because when we look at business license renewals i mean we say we are about um you know a thriving local economy and you know local businesses but if we are not renewing a lot of those and new licenses are being issued perhaps to um you know out of town change or is that really a measure of health um it depends on what our you know our community values are so i just think that um that's a distinction that we really want to make sure we we are clear about when we get that data i just wanted to point out that economic development director has her hand raised as well thank you bonnie go ahead thank you um i i just wanted to make a comment about the business closures um and earlier in preparing for this we had some of these comments as well but the particularly that's uh not the most reliable data point i think we need to realize that it is it is really hard to track that particularly in real time um you know you can use utility data to help support that but it's it's it's not reliable as necessarily a snapshot in time um so we can come back to that um but as far as a metric you know a really reliable one it is not that i think laura you have a another comment yeah um i've been texting with our finance director so we can definitely add five and six to the um list just as a default okay good okay and uh council member mathies um regarding business closures i actually asked economic development about that maybe a couple weeks ago in reference to downtown and because you see the you know stores that are closed but it does turn out to be much more complicated and it gets back to the issue that council member brown raised so that business licenses licenses issues versus renews and but i think that is again something that's pretty um retrievable and i think most of the business licenses that don't renew are the small really small local businesses that don't make it and because we have so many really small businesses in Santa Cruz that that's a good chunk of it by impression okay uh vice mayor meyers yeah i'll just um i just wanted to reflect on um director limpscomb's comment and um you know i i guess i i feel like you know the expertise level in our you know between our finance department economic development planning um you know there's i think we i think we have sort of in place sort of a little bit of the pulse of so i guess long story short is you know i respect staff sort of bringing this back with maybe some refinements um again looking at some best practices through league of cities or you know um and and try to kind of maybe come with a proposal to us because i i think that's very helpful good thank you okay good thank you okay so i think we've got a lot of input that's some ideas from council members as to what you uh might like to see back and your um asking staff to provide some recommendations so good okay uh so we have uh one more hour before we are um supposed to be finished and we will be we're actually getting close to it does you need a break or shall we just power on through keep going keep going okay all right okay so um gloria i'm going to turn it to you okay so one of our objectives for tonight was to um work with councils is about the framework for decision making on requests that come up during this interim um recovery period and it is a request that are outside of the priorities that you've already established so you've established your priorities staff will come back with their work plan so you'll be moving forward but in this period most likely there will be new things that arise new requests that come up um the first question or goal will always be can it wake the regular budget cycle so if there's a new request that comes up a new project a new effort can you just handle it during the regular budget cycle and if you can that's going to be what you want to do but that won't always be the case and next slide so what we want to make sure is that um new requests are are at a minimum um you don't want to be revisiting new requests every week that's the purpose of having your priorities so um you want to keep them at a minimal and you want to um any new request to come forward you want to make sure that there's an analysis of the impact whether it's a fiscal a staff or resource impact so the criteria that we're developing is really going to be focused on new requests that require more than eight hours of staff time and I understand you have a policy for how council handles requests that require more than eight hours of staff time and that is that you have to have a council three council members um agree to to the request so when we look at these requests and in the next slide we're going to um look at the framework two ways um one some threshold questions and then the criteria so next slide so for each request these are some threshold questions that we would want you to consider so the first thing is it consistent with your recovery priorities so if something new comes up is it going to support your priorities consistent with the recovery priorities that you've already worked on to identify and then the second is um having other council support so you need to have three council members before you bring this item forward uh next slide and so then there's the criteria for council to consider these new requests uh and this um comes from input that we did receive from council again during interviews and also from some of the staff recommendations so the the first criteria and new request is is it urgent is it an emergency because if it's not urgent if it's not an emergency you can handle it during your regular budget process but uh as everyone's experience this year there are lots of emergencies and emergencies and certainly um at the time we were doing the interviews fires were going on so uh if something is urgent if it's an emergency certainly you're going to have to deal with it and part of your analysis is going to be um the funding impact where the funding might come from certainly on public safety issues like fires um you know you deal with the emergency uh and and deal with the second part later um the other criteria for consideration on new request is the fiscal impact so one part of it is what is it going to cost the city and where will that funding come from and what will we have to stop doing in order to do this new project or new effort um but there are also going to be instances where it could be new revenue or possibly new grants that come in uh and certainly on the federal side if new funding is available you still want to do the analysis because any new grant are there is there a match requirement um are there other resources that the city is going to have to consider in accepting new grant new funding setting priorities for the new funding so there's the fiscal aspect that you'll want to examine um the other criteria is mandates there are state and federal mandates um usually cities try to comply but mandates don't always come with funding so there will need to be some analysis is there a risk to the city if it does not immediately comply um what is the impact on other operations within the city yet a criteria is the impact on city resources so it's not always a fiscal impact sometimes it's a staffing impact the facility impact sometimes if if city resources need to be realigned it means other projects will be delayed or be funded so these are criteria that we heard from uh from the council and from the staff and so we wanted to offer these as um the criteria that you would use for council initiated request next slide and by applying these um then this helps the city manager um one um it helps him know uh your priority not only your priorities but the criteria you're going to consider helps him keep staff focused on the priorities uh it also is going to enable the city manager to set limits and also decline requests if they've not been vetted through the process if they don't have uh three council members supporting the request um and uh and also um it will help him continue to enforce that um council policy of three council members supporting the request before it even moves forward and I wanted to give martin uh opportunity if he wanted to chime in on uh on how this will enable him to move some of your request forward but also to ensure that you're staying focused on the priorities uh and not having multiple requests come forward that shouldn't be dealt with at this time uh yes uh and I think you you've essentially covered it but I think the idea here is to be able to um you know have some clearly understood criteria and and measures that we can implement equitably and fairly such that uh we can process request in a way that you know makes sense and picks into account of the various considerations and this consistent with sort of city council policy so that uh you know it's just a lot easier to to get clear direction and to prioritize projects as these requests come up and as uh uh was noticed uh by jan from the beginning we are busy sitting we have a lot of a lot of things going out a lot of requests a lot of really good ideas so this is always a challenge for us um and by having you know clear criteria I think that would be really helpful and we can then uh uh communicate it back to the council as requests come up so there's questions I think that'll be helpful to if everybody has an understanding of what they are it'll just be much helpful for us to to move forward with uh either processing the request or or or not so I want to give council a chance to to comment on the criteria um do you go back to that slide um the criteria um thank you I see a council member masses has their hand up but mayor um let's see where you want to just look at the slider do you have a comment I do could you go back to the previous slide just before this one actually go back to the next one because it has both the the threshold so those thresholds you need to pass through the threshold before you apply your criteria okay mayor go ahead so um just to start on the slide um one I think that as it relates to the threshold questions um instead of it is it consistent with IRP priorities which I think is good but I think at the same time will it impact those priorities because as we mentioned earlier you know there's it based on what we kind of broadly outlined today as our priorities there are also you know it it seems that those are really going to target a few specific departments so if there's for example uh something is proposed that's going to go to a department that is not being impacted by the workload that's going to be within those priorities then it seems like um council should have the flexibility to bring some move forward if it's not going to impact the work that's being done on those um priorities so that was one of the things I want to put forward and then um I think also within the criteria is you know um there's nothing really there's a lot of um mention of financial impact um but I think there also needs to be something included around community benefit because the policies that we um pass don't always result in a financial benefit because there's also community benefits and so I think that that should be a criteria as well as you know if there's something that's being brought that will also have a major community benefit then that should be a criteria for consideration for moving forward let me just ask uh martin to to maybe clarify something so the council adopts the budget you have your work program in the budget you have items that are that are approved um and then these would be things that would come up during the year these would be non-budgeted a non-planned non-scheduled items correct martin yes and and I think what the mayor is referring to are are items that uh do not impact priorities or uh that uh maybe they might not be necessarily related but they don't impact the priorities and so how would those be handled I think I think that's that's that's the question and I think there the criteria the criteria would be if it's going to require you know staff you know considerable staff time that's where that the council policy kicks in if it's going to require that additional uh time um and resources or funding then that's you know what kicks kicks that in as well um one and I bring that up because it's not like the community benefit portion is not mentioned in the criteria so I don't think it would be you know good for us to agree on something that wouldn't include that so for example with covid you know we you know drafted a you know emergency eviction protection ordinance that required more than eight hours of staff time you know we drafted a um price scouting ordinance that required more than eight hours of staff time I wouldn't say that those had a direct financial cost outside of the staff time that is required to have that taken care of but it did have more than eight hours of time time required for that and it had a community benefit and so you know all the criteria that we currently have listed really focuses on funding will result in new revenue but those are two examples of when council brought items forward that required more than eight hours of staff time that resulted in community benefit and if we agreed to everything under the um these priorities that wouldn't be something for example that we fit so I'm just using that as an example I think I think that mayor I think that would have fit under urgency you know that there was a community there wasn't urgency that that be addressed so I would have I would have brought it forward under the urgency for the community okay uh council member Matthew has been brown then what I'm just generally supportive of this approach I'll put it there okay and I you know I think it's easy for all of us to attempt it to add one more thing one more thing so I think we are in a period of furloughs and everyone who's doing even more work with less um it's a time that calls for discipline understanding there will be emergencies uh council member brown yeah um thank you I I'm just going to push back and reiterate the um the interest that mayor Cummings uh raised in um having community benefit the one of the criteria that could be considered because um the examples that he gave were could be could fit under emergency urgency but there are others that don't I mean the mission belt project you know there are things that come up that we have an interest in working with the community or particular segments of the community that may not take a lot of time but there is a clear community benefit and I feel like I mean we are we are representatives as council members of the public interest I would hope and so when there are things that we can do to help promote you know uh positive community relations then I think that that's that's a valuable criteria to use particularly for smaller projects that may come in somewhere around that eight hour threshold okay thank you uh council member Watkins and then by Senator Myers I do I appreciate criteria and I actually really like strategic planning and so I appreciate this whole effort and I think that there's been a lot of information provided and I think moving forward I think I a person would like to see it um broadly and then I believe I will have better a better sense of how it can can move forward I things are changing so quickly too there's such an important component around how are we constantly speaking the data to understand the need and and then adjusting and pivoting as well so I just don't want to lose um with any type of um kind of I think we need to have uh not like a strategic plan but like almost like an adaptability plan and so how are we thinking about this as a way that we can also be nimble as government at this moment because there's so many things that are underway I like structure in terms of criteria I think community input also um is needs to play a role in this um as well as the onboarding process for newer council members who can understand how this all flows in terms of their role as as policymakers so I think there's been a lot that's been provided this evening that I think can give our staff ample opportunity to come back to us with sort of a concept and idea of how to move forward in a way that will meet the needs of prioritization structure but also allowing us for um kind of nimble uh opportunity as well as as bringing in um kind of the new folks who will be coming on board in about a month or you know so those are just one of my thoughts thank you i'll vice mayor wires yeah I mean I I guess I guess my my my thoughts on this um I mean these seem reasonable to me I think that um you know we're gonna have an election in five days so you know this um depending on what happens you know these kinds of things can get you know kind of shaped very quickly from a new majority um but I think I guess kind of publicly stating that um you know we focused as a city we have a you know before us to keep our fiscal solvency to you know hopefully keep our employees employed um and I think kind of the intent in this is that as much as elections can bring um new energy new focus new projects new um uh you know new priorities you know that the intent with this is really to recognize that um absorbing those kinds of things this is really needs an evaluation process so I do think um the general criteria here outlined is is is fair um and I think it's realistic and and I think it provides a little bit of um a little bit of a kind of a reality check in terms of you know sort of where we are right now in terms of the recession and the covid issues and all the various things that we're trying to trying to juggle right now so I'm generally supportive of these and um I think it is important to um understand that even with an election change potentially that um you know our staff and the city manager specifically you know we we need to be guided right now and we need to um pretty much uh stay on course um because we if we get off course we can end up spending a lot of resources that we're not going to be able to to replace so those are my comments thank you okay can I add that okay I'll go ahead Martin I was gonna say that you know this does you know it does you know forces to really focus on the interim recovery plan I mean it does sort of recognize and acknowledge that we're in this essentially a an emergency type of period where that is going to be the focus and it really does impose you know a pretty high level of discipline here um uh for sure but I think that's again to recognize that it is sort of this uh we're in this sort of unprecedented sort of time in that our focus has to be on those immediate things given the the nature of what we're experiencing and where we're at so this as president here it does it does do that it does force us to really focus on those things and it means that there are some uh gonna have to be more saying no to constituents and to members of the public because we have to dedicate and focus on these things mayor go ahead so I you know I think with that when this comes back to council and obviously it'll be after the election I think it needs to be really clear with within these interim recovery planning priorities what departments are involved to what level and what degree because that's going to be really informative on you know work that's been done throughout this entire year that was really responsive to the public so for example as councilmember brown brought up you know um I've been working with Parks and Rec and with other community stakeholders on you know how do we reshape the story at the mission to include more of an indigenous perspective I think it would be um like detrimental to a lot of relationships we've been building over the course of this past year with the indigenous tribes and with our partners in the parks if we were just to say we're not going to work on this anymore because we're prioritizing you know downtown development workforce development and affordable housing you know and for example I've been doing a lot of work around public safety with the police that for example would not have fit in this criteria to have done that work in response to the murder of George Floyd and it was something that you know I said to the community I was going to be committed to working on and myself and the police chief have gone through the process of working with the community on bringing forward changes to police policy if we adopt this policy we would not have been able to do that work and we would have had to tell those people sorry that doesn't fit with our interim recovery planning so therefore we can't do that and I imagine we would have had more protests as a result of telling people sorry that's not in our interim recovery plan so we can't do that so there has to be flexibility built into this and that's why I think it's really important that we identify you know what are the departments that are going to be most impacted by the interim recovery plan so that we can figure out okay if they're going to be working on that what are the departments have flexibility what's some of the projects that we've been working on and by stopping those projects what's going to be the impact on the community because I think that that really we have to find that balance and I don't I personally don't believe that you know um for example you know that parks is going to be the this interim recovery plan is going to impact for example parks to the point where we can't keep doing the work at the mission or police to the point where we can't continue doing work with you know mental alternatives to mental health crisis response or you know ways that we can improve policing so I think that those things really need to be taken into account because there's been a lot of work going on and it can ruin some relationships with the community that we've been building over the past year given all the crises we've been facing okay let's see council member Matthews has a comment I think the incident you mentioned about Black Lives Matter and the work they're doing with the PD falls within that urgency category pretty plain pretty plainly in terms of the work with the mission bill that's worked that's well underway and headed I believe is well on its way I'll just give as an example council member Myers and I went to planning and said can we revise the B ordinance you know I actually didn't expect him to even get to that they were able to assign it to an intern and brought it to us but that was not urgent I mean we could have put that on the side so there again I think we you know we have to use their own judgment Laura did you have a comment you came back on I'm wondering if it would be more amenable if we moved is it consistent with IRP priorities to a criteria instead of a threshold I think that would address mayor Cummings and potentially council member Brown's concern so but it keeps the other criteria in play but it removes it from the threshold piece of it and Laura I'll say that's part of why I said impacts as well because it doesn't impact the interim recovery plan then you know it just becomes one of the criteria though so if it's one of the criteria and the council member initiated request that has three supporting council members has a really strong line of sight to one of our interim recovery focus areas and would really help us on on some recovery aspects it gets a little bit more weight than if it does not that's not to say it can't be considered anymore because it's no longer threshold it's just part of the other criteria so you're saying that the the sponsoring support would continue as a threshold and the IRP priority would be one of the criteria so we have one two three four five it would move yep exactly which does provide some additional flexibility by doing that right so there has to be you know a good amount of support political support to move forward with something and then they would have to sort of be urgent and or meet some of these other criteria oh yes council member Watkins I just looked over there yeah I apologize I'm sorry Laura can you restate what you're suggesting just to make sure that I'm following sure what I was hearing is the having the consistency with the IRP priorities as a threshold question so if it doesn't meet the interim recovery plan it's that's kind of almost a knockout knockout criteria and I'm hearing objections to that because there could be community driven work there could be you know event environmental work that things are going on in the in the United States that brings something sometimes it might have a sense of urgency so but if it if IRP is up at the top it wouldn't get through that filter so the only top level filter would be the broad sponsorship of the three council members it has that then it goes into the criteria and we move consistency with IRP down here with urgency fiscal impact mandate and and resources so it gets weighed with all of it but there's no quantitative value that if you don't have it you can't get into the process okay thank you that's helpful you're welcome yeah but I think the the fundamental idea is to issue the council and staff to be able to stay focused on on your recovery I mean that's that's the fundamental idea but of course you're a dynamic city and things will come up that are urgent and that have to be addressed of course okay I don't see any other comments on that oh the mayor yes please one other question so if you get advanced I know that there was um hit advance the slide Claire can you go ahead go to okay to this one city manager action yeah so I just want to get some clarification so by doing this would so by approving this for example with bullet number two I mean what that says to me is that it more or less gives executive authority over for the city manager to approve or decline whether something goes on the agenda regardless of the debt if it has the support of three council members or approval by the mayor and so I just want to get some clarification around that because I feel like the role of the mayor has kind of been removed from the process of being able to prove items going on the agenda and you know given that we're elected to represent people and bring items forward I just want to kind of understand how this fits with because I think it would be you know I can only imagine if like three council members or members of the public asked us to put something on the agenda and then the mayor has no you know ability to put an item on or to have that kind of you know um ability or for the council members too as well so I'm just trying to figure out how this fits in because it seems like you know we're more or less giving executive authority to them for the city manager to put items on the agenda talking about work that requires more than eight hours so that would be the first and if it does have the support of three council members then it would move forward through the process onto the agenda but if it does not have the support of the three council members or if it's work that is less than eight hours then it gives the city manager that the discretion to make executive decisions on the flow of work. Martin is is that correct? Yeah I think that's right I mean I think the I think the main difference uh mayor I think is that it would be the three council members uh sponsorship uh one from now and and then also the the criteria but I mean ultimately the mayor or policy you know gets to kind of set the agenda and and work to sort of do the flow but it's really it's really more about the work plan and how the work plan gets adjusted that uh kicks in this so this just kicks in the process to adjust the work plan and when to adjust it but not necessarily manage the agenda and in the flow of the meeting that's that's really the mayor's the mayor's role. So I guess the the three council members or the mayor would also be the criteria in the previous slide for for putting an item up for no I would be three council members I think for for new items I mean that is written as a way I understand it it would be three council members whether it includes the mayor or not. This is for new council initiated request. For new right for new right right but as far as managing the agenda again in terms of placement in terms of you know the regular agenda management process that's still within the purview of the mayor that's that's not suggested to be changed here it's really for new initiatives new projects. New projects or initiatives that would interfere with the work plan. And that's you know the policy council policy 6.9 it works that way already uh you know it applies to all council members so but you can you know you can put it on the agenda to make the request so that's still there I mean I think if you wanted to move forward the request you know that's okay so vice mayor Myers and then council member Watkins. Thank you I'm having a little bit of a flashback because I I think we I think there was a process a year ago where a lot of this was discussed and then there was a council policy that was adopted and then it was voted back down and we went back to the original policy and I guess I'm I'm just kind of reflecting that you know we're going to have some new council members coming on at some point you know not at some point but you know in the next 30 days and I I'm starting to feel like this has gotten what I thought was going to be a pretty straightforward discussion how I feel like has really gotten in a lot more extensive and I I'm I'm personally starting to feel kind of uncomfortable that we're making these decisions and we're we're basically setting the table for new members coming on and I'm just wondering if we can revert back to policy 6.9 and and and sort of delay this until after the election and and the new members are seated because we've already set quite a big table for them in terms of our priorities our metrics some other things and I I do think that it just seems this seems a little out of place to me this evening so I'm just wondering if there's the potential to try to bring this back once the new council's been seated thank you. I'm just saying that the yeah certainly up to the city council but you're not being requested to approve this today this would come back to you in the context of the the whole recovery plan goal as Laura pointed out before so it's you're not required to do it today but certainly if the council wishes to whatever whatever you'd like to do you can do that or if you want to bring it back after that. So the proposal is that you get feedback tonight yeah the final proposal gets brought back with the whole package okay sorry I lost track of that yeah okay I suggest maybe we I don't know we try to wrap it up yeah okay councilmember Watkins that I see the city attorney is also maybe wanting to say something no okay I'm just here if there are any questions of a legal prospect okay thank you action like this if there's a turnover on the council and the new council has different ideas about how these matters should be brought forward then obviously the new council will be able to make those decisions. Councilmember Watkins I think my my comments really just sort of echo what the vice mayor was sharing I I want to thank and acknowledge the the work that went into this this evening in regards to wanting to really just you know recognize the needs for prioritization and focus and unfortunately all the many projects will have to be you know curtailed absolutely and understanding that and what is the transparent process of that and I think that you know when I came onto council four years ago and I've shared this you know with Martine in the past there was already a strategic plan underway and you want to have I think we're at a we're clearly this time having we're at a window where opportunity for a new council to have their voice heard in this and to have ownership and commitment to whatever comes out of this so I think we can my my hope is that this can help inform sort of what a proposal could be to this newer council when seated and then allowing for additional input and buy-in and ownership so that there's adherence to it moving forward in the next 12 to 18 months if not I think there will likely be confusion and a lack of understanding and so I I do fully recognize the need to prioritize I know many communities have you know you know short-term and interim recovery strategies underway and I believe that's absolutely what's required here it for our city as well and I think the timing and the information that's already been received could really help inform the next iteration of this conversation without really putting kind of the the cart before the horse if you will okay I think we have all the input we're going to receive on this item so thank you for that so we can keep moving along so really the the last couple of very short pieces we did get some input from council members about ways to communicate the city's financial condition and the interim recovery plan with community we put those things on the slide and actually the very first bullet point on there a number of council members did in their interviews as well as this evening of course talk about the importance of orienting new council members and giving opportunity for to get their input into this and that's been a theme this evening as well so we wanted to acknowledge that as as part of this discussion so we're not asking for any council direction or certainly a decision on this but rather just for any other comments that there might be of any other ways in which the city could be communicating with the public about the financial condition and the interim recovery plan so just if there's anything to add to the slide now could be an opportunity to do that briefly and I see council member golder wishes to do that so I don't want to add to more staff time or any anything like that but I know I've expressed to the mayor and the city manager that one thing I think is important is including our youth and so if to the extent possible I'd love to start and it could be really small but just a kind of almost listening session where we're doing outreach meetings to the local high schools or just an open meeting a few times a year where where we're just kind of listening and it doesn't have to be everybody like I'd be happy to do it and maybe if one person wanted to join me and I don't want to take a lot of staff time for that okay thank you mayor to that point I actually met with 95th graders today so if you know about the member golder and during our city schools committee meaning I actually brought that point up too that there was a desire for there to be maybe not the same youth council but you know an opportunity for council members to meet with groups of high school students to kind of hear and gain their input so happy to follow up with you council member golder but I just want to let you know that I can express that with the city school committee earlier today and then I think that you know with regards to this list you know to the extent there can be engagement you know with the chamber I think with various contractors the unions the workforce development board because you know just letting people know who are involved with workforce development you know securing businesses develop business development sounds like construction that I think it's really important that they all know that we are as a city looking to partner with them as we think about our interim recovery and you know long-term recovery to bring jobs back in and and also I'd say you know I've been saying it before but also engaging with folks in the cannabis community to understand what are emerging opportunities for jobs in that sector as well so really thinking about up-and-coming opportunities and job sectors and how can we engage with the folks who are currently in our community to keep them here and and and help expand their businesses as well and I think that would also go for a lot of our green jobs as well good thank you okay any other I don't see any other hand raises uh okay so I think we're ready to oh yes vice mayor Myers you are muted right okay yeah I talked with our communications person about this and I think also Jan you and I talked about this when we when when we did our interview you know figuring out how just how we get how we get communication out there I think Jan you mentioned I can't remember what city you mentioned but you know some are doing it really well and if I know Elizabeth had a lot of really good ideas I mean I think it's really important I think people are really searching for this kind of information and really wanting to kind of feel collectively that they understand the where the city but the shape that the city's in and the and the concerns about services being cut and things like that so to the extent that we can I mean I I guess my comment on this is I think this is a high priority and it should go hand-in-hand with the recovery strategy so and I think you know even adding maybe some personal touches like stories from local businesses where they've been able to change their business model and are you know able to stay afloat or different just different creative solutions that people are coming up with you know to get through this so I think trying to promote the kind of entrepreneurial you know spirit of Santa Cruz how different families are working together so that you know they can make it through with one parent having to be home while they're you know while they're just in learning I just think we have to personalize it I think sometimes government is is sort of a little bit a little bit boring so you know to the point that we can make this a community story as well I think is very important so thanks great thank you councilmember Watkins and then Matthew I won't I won't say too much more other than that you know one of the things that I believe this current situation and COVID and the national disasters we've experienced has really highlighted our interconnectedness to work together whether it be with education the chamber our community foundation other nonprofits to come up with our safety net resources so as we're moving forward and thinking about our recovery planning and communications and partnerships I think we have to prioritize interconnectivity and if we're thinking about working towards you know a thriving workforce we also have to factor in childcare and education I mean so there's so many layers to this that we can't ignore that we're sort of in a silo looking towards recovery because it's really a holistic approach that we need to engage beyond just the various sub sectors of a business or what or whatnot we need to look holistically in my opinion right thank you uh councilmember Matthews I do agree that communications are really critical what right now um the whole communications challenge I mean we've all heard you talk about so challenging and need to be honest about the city situations and to celebrate our successes large and small not just our own doing but with partnerships across sectors and one of the things we do need to do is challenging but not impossible right now is to rebuild public confidence in the city you know if we're going to go out for revenue measures we have a major repair job ahead of us in terms of confidence you can do that but that will take that will take over good okay thank you well those are some great additional comments and I can see the Claire has captured those so that's super good okay so then we'll move on to the um next to the last slide and uh Laura I'm going to turn it to you thank you Jan you guys are almost done hang in there for a little bit more so just recognizing uh that we know that once we have an approved interim recovery plan and the content approved by you in November we will develop a reoccurring reporting mechanism to report progress back to you at council meetings so it'll need to be a team effort because the interim recovery plan crosses all departments all departments will have to be able to report in information and contribute to the periodic reporting mechanism so it's going to need to be balanced as far as valuable up-to-date information for you but also easy to put together and not a whole heads of a lot of overhead because we have a very taxed set of staff right now with the furloughs and everything else and all the wonderful work that they're doing so just wanting to let you know that this will be part of the process that we develop to follow up on the actual recovery plan itself okay good thank you okay then the very last slide so you all have hung in there just very well so we're we will be putting together notes from today from the various comments that we received from council members and the three priorities it will be working with staff on the metrics and and on all of the follow-up here so we'll be putting together a document working closely with staff on that so that staff can then present that back to the city council in november so that's our follow-up and so then as we close we just like to offer council members and martin an opportunity to make any any final closing comments that that you may have not necessary for everybody to comment but martin if you'd like to or the mayor or you know anybody would just like an opportunity to give you an opportunity to do that briefly um if the mayor wants to go first that's that's fine with me i do have just minor comments sure well you know um i know this is a very strange time for this to be coming but this is something that we've been trying to work on i'd say probably since you know may but given all the various disruptions that have occurred and crises that we've been responding to it's kind of come at this time but i do think that it's really important that we continue working forward on figuring out ways that we can you know work on a recovery plan for our community um after all the the crises that we've been dealt over the course of this year and so i just want to thank management partners for all the outreach you all have been doing um i'd also like to especially thank vice mayor mires and councilmember walk-ins for being a part of the recovery planning subcommittee and taking the time to help with this effort and then for all the council members in terms of the community staff we're able to be here today and you know i just think that um you know as as the election results come in i think it you know it'd be great if we can take what we've discussed today and you know also engage with the council members who are new council members and um i do want to say that although it's been a you know long and difficult back and forth conversation i do think that it's been productive and that we've made progress and i'm just hoping that um you know whether it's summer or january that we'll be able to adopt the plan that will provide us with some guidance over the course of the next 12 to 18 months so thank you all okay thank you martin yeah so first of all i want to let the council know that uh you know i recognize that uh you uh as council members have objectives and many things that you'd like to do and the new council members will as well in our community in general does i mean this is this is a community that has no shortage of really incredible ideas and really good ideas of we can be doing a thousand of them all at once there's no doubt about that um and and that's that's really wonderful and i also recognize that we do have to have some flexibility with respect to uh being able to to work on things because you have goals and objectives and our community has desires and things change so we do have to have flexibility and i think that's important um at the same time though i think we also have to recognize that you know we are in a unprecedented times and we do have to have certain level of of discipline and fidelity and prioritization and sort of balance those things so that we can make progress and also make progress in the environment that we're in now because it's not only is it uh overwhelming with the number of issues that we have but also we have more limited resources than we've had in the past even from what we had just a few months ago and so we just have to put all these things together and that's really the idea here is to sort of recognize and and create at least a a structure a culture an environment where we can have uh these discussions and make the decisions and really keep on track and make progress so that uh as i noticed from the beginning that we have uh you know good governance and and strong leadership uh and teamwork in our city uh and that's really the the intent behind all of this and so i do want to thank uh the all of you council members the department has and and everyone um and again i wish we could do this more in person because i think it's probably more valuable uh so we can do some of that team building um but um i think to the extent again that we can work you know well together and we can have that the discipline and fidelity and and these conversations and flexibility uh will be better off and i think we can do that so thank you very much thank you so i see council member what comes in matthews both have their virtual hands up i'll try to keep my comments really short i know that's getting me and i i do want to echo just sort of the comments around uh gratitude to the subcommittee and to our consultants and to the city manager and the staff that led up to this evening's um presentation and discussion i guess my my question is just for clarity on next steps because i heard that there would be adoption in november and then i think i heard the mayor say that actual final adoption would be in january so is it like a proposal for final adoption in november and then formal adoption in january so i'm just kind of wanting a little bit clarity on what's next november it's just sort of confirming the the uh subject areas and then in january would be the actual work plan so in january you would have the work plan that lays out more specifically uh what's what's going to be the action items around these categories so you're going to confirm that these are the categories that are uh important to you uh the new council have to validate that also again in january but at least it'll give us a opportunity to focus on developing that work plan between now in january so that the council can confirm uh the new council and we can put have enough time to put it in place so that you can consider that and then we'll bring back some of these uh also the uh the criteria the uh measures so we'll bring that back based on all the input that you've provided us as well does that seem right to yes now that's what we understand too thank you um and council member matthews um again thank you to everyone who had a hand in this um i came into it i'm at the end of the process here it's been really thorough here that there are no easy choices um i guess my short message is good luck to you all um well i think what we do see going through all this sequence of prices that we've seen uh over the past year there is a tremendous reservoir of um factions in this community concerns in this community the willingness to become small institutions and show the kind of discipline and focus that we've talked about here with the new council that the community will step up and i think overall does want to emerge from this series of prices it's not over yet but um you all know you know there's great potential to it so uh i think that this is one of the opportunities okay well uh let's see uh vice mayor mires yeah i just want to thank my uh colleagues and uh also recognize the work that you guys have done um jan and also martin and laura um and you know i know you guys have been working really hard on this on a very tight timeline so i just want to thank you it's been um i think a good process and i look forward to um putting it into place with uh with final adoption so thank you good okay i don't see any other virtual hands up so on behalf of gloria claren myself thank you for the opportunity to work with you today we do know how how um challenging it is to be doing these workshops uh over zoom and one of these days we will all be in person again and won't that be nice so thank you for hanging in there and providing the direction that you did and such thoughtful uh discussion and respectful comments uh with each other so it's been a pleasure and we will do our homework now and and get back information to um martin and laura so thank you thanks for finishing seven minutes early that's always our goal hi i'm stan i have to has anybody ever told you you sound like judy woodruff