 to order on this May 26, 2022, meeting of the Capital City Council. Welcome everyone. If there's any attendees, welcome to you as well. Thank you for tuning in. And I'm gonna ask Chloe to do the roll call and then make a little announcement. Yes, thank you Mayor Story. I'll read this and then I'll call for the roll. In accordance with California Senate Bill 361, this meeting is not physically open to the public. Council and staff are meeting via Zoom and there are several ways for the public to watch and participate. Information on how to join the meeting using Zoom or a landline or mobile phone, along with how to submit public comment during the meeting tonight is available on our website, cityofcapitola.org and on the published meeting agenda. The public can also live stream the meeting on our website and on our YouTube channel. As always, the meeting is Cablecast Live on Charter Communications Cable TV Channel 8 and is being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Wednesday at 8 a.m. and on Saturday following the first rebroadcast at 1 p.m. on Charter Channel 71 and Comcast Channel 25. And our technician this evening is Walter. Thank you very much, Walter. Okay. So, Council Member Britrand, are you present? I'm present. Thank you. Council Member Brooks. Here. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Present. Vice Mayor Keiser. Here. And Mayor Story. And here. Thank you. And also thank you, Walter, for being our technician this evening. And now if you'll join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, everyone. I'll ask if there's any additions or deletions to the agenda this evening. Staff has no changes to be taken this evening. Okay. Next we have a presentation this evening and this is a presentation from the Central Post Community Energy and it's their annual update. And it looks like Ms. Steadman is here to give that presentation. Hello and welcome. And I'll turn the Zoom floor over to you. Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Mayor, Council members, staff. It really is a pleasure to be here this evening and to have the opportunity to update you on everything going on with Central Coast Community Energy. So is everyone able to see my screen? Excellent. Okay. Well, just to begin, I'd like to talk a little bit about community choice aggregation, which is the type of agency that Central Coast Community Energy is. Community choice aggregation occurs when communities, cities and counties come together and say, we would really like to have more control over our electricity. We'd like to have a vote on where it comes from, how much it costs. And this is a model that was really enabled in 2002 with Assembly Bill 117. After the passage of that bill, community choice aggregation agencies started forming throughout California. We are currently one of 23 such agencies in the state. So how does the community choice aggregation really work? Well, it's essentially a partnership between the joint powers authorities, the government agencies that are formed to serve a region with power and the investor-owned utility that has traditionally served the area. So in our case, that would be Pacific Gas and Electric. So essentially all of our customers in Capitola and the region are still receiving power through PG&E's polls and distribution lines. What Central Coast Community Energy does is go out and procure the power. And in our case, we have very ambitious goals that are set by our board of directors to procure renewable power. So we purchased the power and in many cases invest in new power generation projects. And then again, that power is delivered to customers through Pacific Gas and Electric's infrastructure. Customers still receive their bill from Pacific Gas and Electric. It's just the portion of the bill that would have been your generation charges from PG&E would be replaced by the generation charges of Central Coast Community Energy. And it is worth noting that our rates since we formed in 2018 have been very competitive with PG&E. We have always represented as savings and currently that savings for residential customers is at about 20%. So this map shows all of the areas that we serve. We go from Santa Cruz County down to Santa Barbara County. We have about 430,000 customers and we are geographically the largest community choice aggregation agency in the state. A little bit about our government structure. We have three boards, a policy board which is made up of members of the board of supervisors, council members from the 33 cities and counties that we serve. We also have an operations board that is made up of county administrators, city managers. They also meet and where the policy board deals with the high level policy decisions like power procurement agreements and budgets. The operations board is dealing really more with the day to day decisions that are necessary to keep the agency running. In addition, we have a community advisory council which is made up of members of the community representing all sorts of stakeholders from agriculture to advocates for rate payer equity to experts in areas such as air pollution. It's really a diverse board made up of the diverse interests among the customers that we serve. Those who serve on our policy and operations board are appointed and rotate every two years. Cities that have less than 50,000 population will share a seat which again rotates. And right now council member Brooks serves on our policy board and city manager Goldstein on our operations board. So thank you both very much for your service. Just a little about the agency and our accomplishments since we formed in 2018. We have throughout our service territory about an average 94% in enrollment so that means of all the businesses and residents in the communities that we serve, 94% of them have opted to enroll in community choice aggregation in our agency service. We do have two rate plans, a standard rate plan and then a second which is a little more expensive. It's about a little less than an additional penny per kilowatt hour. That is three C prime. If you opt up to three C prime then we ensure that the power you're receiving is 100% renewable. And our enrollment in that program has increased about 40% just over the past year. We have two offices, currently one in Monterey, one in San Luis Obispo and we have 34 employees. So definitely very proud to be offering new job opportunities in the energy industry in our area. So far we have invested over $27 million in our energy programs. And I'll talk about that more a little bit later but one of our missions as an agency is to reinvest dollars back into the community. And a lot of that work is done through our energy programs which provide rebates and incentives for residents and businesses to electrify, electrify transportation and electrify buildings. The last thing I'll mention here is that we did receive an A rating from S&P and we were the first community choice aggregation agency to receive that rating. So our goal is very clear and simple. It is to achieve 100% renewable power by 2030. This is 15 years ahead of the state's goal and the national goal is by 2050. So we are very ambitious in what we believe we can achieve but we do think that it is achievable and in fact we have already made great progress toward that goal. What this graph shows you is how we're doing in terms of those renewable energy projects that I mentioned earlier where we're really going out and procuring new sources of power. Our policy board made a decision that it was no longer acceptable to use carbon credits and attributes as a way to report our percentage of renewable. We don't want to be simply shuffling around the clean energy resources that are already out there. We want to be contributing to a cleaner grid and making sure that new sources of clean energy come online. So in the line chart, you'll see with the yellow line the state's goals for procuring this power and the green line is our agency's goals. The blue line represents where we actually are. So we still have a lot of work to do but we've made a tremendous amount of progress and then just also briefly the majority of the projects that we have entered into contract with are for solar. There's a small portion that's also wind and geothermal. And then lastly, I do want to mention the investment that we've made in battery storage. I think obvious to all of us that the sun doesn't shine 24 seven and the wind doesn't blow on demand. So really a challenge for the entire industry is how do you meet customer's power demands during the hours of the day that renewable energy is not abundant? And the answer is really storage. It's being able to find a way to store that energy so it can be used in the evening hours, in the early morning when we still have energy demands but again, the sun and the wind aren't immediately available. So we have procured many battery storage projects. We've got 261 megawatts in storage and we're continuing to look at new technologies for storage and new storage projects to help serve our area. The city of Capitola, you are just over 95, almost 96% enrollment. That's 5,790 customers, mostly residential but we do have 808 commercial customers in the city and 22 customers that have opted up to the three C prime the 100% renewable option. And I should mention that for the average residential customer that added cost really comes to just about five extra dollars a month. The other thing I will mention is that we have issued $23,000 in rebates to your businesses and residents for electrification programs but there are many more dollars available in those programs. So anyone who is listening tonight who is interested in getting an electric vehicle or moving away from gas appliances to electric appliances, please check out our website, find out the programs that are available to you because there are many great opportunities. This is a list of the programs that we currently offer and you can see on the left that the amount of dollars that we have put into these programs has increased substantially each year. This fiscal year, we have $14.1 million dedicated to funding these programs and that represents 4% of our operating revenue. Electrify Your Ride is probably our most popular program that is for electric vehicles but we also have programs for electric school buses. We have programs to electrify ad equipment and each year we put more and more money into that program because our agricultural community is very interested in adopting sustainable practices and that program has been fully reserved every year that we have offered it. We also offer programs for new construction electrification. This is really targeted to affordable housing units and just this week I was at the groundbreaking for a new affordable housing project in Watsonville that we played a part in funding in terms of making sure that this new structure is going to be fully served by electric appliances and be equipped to charge electric vehicles for the residents. So just a little bit more about Electrify Your Ride. I'd like people to know that there are several components to this program. So we are not only providing rebates for purchasing an electric vehicle and by the way those rebates vary according to your income. So customers that meet income qualifications that are low income customers will receive double the rebate. So the rebates for vehicles range from $2,000 to $4,000 and they are stackable with other programs. There are other funding sources available through the state, through other agencies and we've had customers that have gone through the process of stacking rebates which we can help you do and have been able to receive $15,000 toward a vehicle. But this applies not just to new vehicles but also leased vehicles and also used vehicles. In addition, there are separate rebates for the purchase of a charger. And finally, we have another set of rebates through this program for electrical upgrades. So if you get an electric vehicle, you wanna put a charger in your home and you find that your panel is not upgraded to the point that could support that charger, we will help pay for the electrician and the work that needs to be done to upgrade your panel. The last thing I wanna mention is our local vendor registry. I talked about how important it is to make sure that our revenue is going back into the community. So we have introduced this registry. It's really for any local business, any service that we might need be it marketing or catering or legal or anything, construction to go and register your business. This really becomes the portal that we can go to to connect with our local communities and to enter into those relationships that will help support our local economy. So thank you so much for your attention. I just wanna end with the various ways to connect with us, be that through social media or our website. And again, I just thank you so much for your time and I'm happy to take any questions. Council members have any questions for Ms. Steadman? Seeing none, I would just like to thank you, Ms. Steadman, for bringing us that very informative presentation about your achievements this year. And thank you for putting us on the path to clean and sustainable energy. And congratulations on your achievements being ahead of your expected goals in that regard. And we look forward to soon hearing that we're at 100% sustainable energy. So thank you once again, and we appreciate you being here to give us your updates. Great, thank you so much for your support. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, well, let's... Mayor Story. Yes, Denny. I did just wanna chime in and really acknowledge the RACE for the grant that they recently gave to Capitola for the Electric Street Sweeper we just purchased. It was an amazing contribution to helping Capitola really reduce its greenhouse footprint and procure what we hope is a state-of-the-art street sweeper. We'll do the job of sweeping our streets and also not polluting our air. So it was a very significant grant. We really appreciate it. Thanks for bringing that up, Jenny. Let's see, I don't see any hands up. So I'm going to move us on to additional materials and I'll ask the clerk if we have any additional materials for this evening. Yes, Mayor Story. There was one additional material received. It was a staff distributed presentation regarding item 8D, the community survey results item. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Next, we'll move on to oral communications. This is the opportunity for members of the public to address the council on items that are not on finance agenda or are on the consent agenda. If you would like to speak in public comments, just raise your hand in the Zoom application or you can dial star nine. The moderator will give you three minutes up to three minutes to speak. Also, you can send an email to public comments at capitola.ca.us.gov, G-O-V. Did I say that right, Larry? I'm sorry, I forgot to share the screen, but let's see, we'll get it going for you. If I could find it. Yeah, the email is public comments at ci.capitola.ca.us. Do we have any? I don't see any hands up in the Zoom application. Any phone calls or emails? Mayor Story, I do not see any emails on this item and I don't see any attendees. Let's see, make sure no attendees with their hands up at this time. Okay, I'm gonna move on then from public comments and go to staff and city council comments. Are there any staff comments this evening? I only have a brief announcement. I just wanna congratulate Public Works on all the work that they've done to get the beach ready for summer. It's always a mad dash this time of year to start the work as soon as the permits allow us and try to get it done before the Memorial Day weekend hits. So I know everybody is in all hands on deck. Really proud of everybody's effort. Yeah, thank you, Jamie, for mentioning that. I have noticed the tractors out there grooming our beaches, getting ready for Memorial Day. So excellent job with that. Any other, are there council comments? I see council member Brooks. Thank you, Mayor Story. I would like to share a few words about the gun violence taking place throughout our country and a few things that I know. What I know is this, that my daughter should not have to practice active shooter drills at the age of seven. I know that our country's teachers should not have to study escape plans and visualize how they would protect our children. I know that there are lawmakers blocking legislation that could reduce these horrible acts of violence, but won't because for some reason, 237 shootings this year in schools just isn't enough to make them realize that we have a problem. And I know that I've been blessed with access to this platform that when used to bring light, such atrocities can be scary and uncomfortable for some. But as much as we don't want to get into the dark shadows of politics and talk about the divide of our country, a divide we're seeing actually right here in our county and our city, I know that we must blur these lines when it comes to protecting our country's most valuable assets, our children. I know that the five of us here cannot ignite the change alone. So I ask our community to continue to show up for our children and to protect them. And my heart is truly with the families who over just this last month have lost loved ones from gun violence and I'm sending my deepest condolences to the families in Texas. And I'm asking for a call to action for prevention and reform and to come together for our children. Thank you, Mayor Story. Thank you, Council Member Brooks. That was very well said and I think very timely in the wake of the shootings in Texas. But before I make any comments in that regard, I'm gonna call on Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor Story. And my comments are related to the comments of Councilwoman Brooks. And although we hadn't discussed this previously, I think this is something that's on all of our minds this evening and in general. I think I like many others are horrified by the senseless act of gun violence that we saw not only in New Valde, Texas, but in the last several weeks in Buffalo and here in California and a house of worship and like there's just so many instances that we can point to that are just tragedies all around. And so my purpose of public or excuse me, my comment tonight would be to ask if it's appropriate to you, Mayor Story, that later tonight that we adjourn this meeting in honor of all of those who lost their lives, not only the 19 children in New Valde, Texas, but all of those who have lost their lives to gun violence if that's appropriate to you. Thank you. I think that's a completely appropriate Council Member Brown and I will do that at the end of this meeting. And other Council Members that would like to make comments at this time. Seeing none, I just want to express that I also share Council Member Brooks and Council Member Brown's sentiments about the gun violence that we are experiencing. Thank God, unfortunately, we haven't experienced it in Capitola, but we can't feel that we are immune and I know that all parents worry about the simple act of sending their children to school. And as Council Member Brooks mentioned, that should not be the case. And I also want to acknowledge that I think that at least the minimal things that we can do are really common sense gun control practices that are supported by 90% of Americans. And there's actually a bill that's already passed the US House of Representatives that go toward that effort and it is currently stalled in the Senate. So I wouldn't encourage anyone who may be tuning in or hearing this later is to contact your Senator and encourage them to do whatever they can to get that bill passed in the Senate. Those are just some of the minimal things that we can do. I also see Council Member Kaiser or Vice Mayor, Kaiser, excuse me, hand up and I'll call on her at this time. Thank you, Mayor. My comment was along the same lines as yours. I really feel for what's happening and I am really saddened by the fact that we are here and that we continue to be here in this position that we're in, especially for our younger generation. And all I can say is do those acts, email your senators, vote, be present, speak up, be a part of what's happening or else no change is gonna be made and we really need to be advocates for the future to come and that's where I think we need to be focused on and not politicize this but really get things moving to a place where parents can feel comfortable sending their children to school. So thank you so much. Thank you Vice Mayor Kaiser. Yes, Council Member Bertrand. You're on mute, Council Member Bertrand. I wasn't prepared to speak because what I wanted to propose I think requires some thought but I'd like to share what those thoughts were with the city council. And so recently President Biden wrote executive order basically setting standards for the federal arms, excuse me, people in law enforcement, FBI, et cetera. And it sets a rather high level standard for police operations in terms of gun violence and how to deal with guns and other aspects of that issue. Unfortunately, this only affects the federal agencies involved. It doesn't have control over the state. He doesn't have control over local operations but it is also possible that local operations could begin to follow those guidelines even though we don't have to. And the commentary that I've heard is that it might go quite a distance to improving the situation. So I wasn't prepared to talk about it but I too am very moved by the situations of the families that have lost their children. I'm very moved by the fact that communities are being just totally fragmented with sorrow and all sorts of other emotions that, normal communities, any community should not feel. I can imagine it happening here in Capitola. Most of us in many respects know our neighbors. We know people work in the city. We know families of the kids and stuff like that. And this kind of violence just perpetrates and leaves scars. And the scars are mostly felt by the children and the parents that lost their children, of course. But I think if we think about the impact of following in broad part, in the broader community what this executive order is, we may be able to do something without leaving this to the Senate which doesn't seem to want to move. House of Representatives have definitely moved. Senate is not. So this is something I believe we could do. So the reason why I didn't want to bring it up yet but I guess it's important for me to do so. I wanted to talk to the chief and to Jamie and see if this is something we could actually put in force in our community. And then the next thing I would like to do is for the city council to advocate to the board of supervisors that they also consider following the president's executive order. Obviously it's not law in this community but if we take that example, our sheriff has taken many examples in terms of community policing and this was a federal effort. I think we could take the same effort here and have that impact that the executive order is gonna have on the federal law enforcement agencies. So I believe this is something that needs some consideration. And I wanted, like I said, to first talk to the chief and to talk to Jamie and then come back to the board here and see how we can push this further and be maybe the first city council in Santa Cruz to try to see if we could get the board of supervisors to take this up also. Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah, thank you council member Bertrand and wanted to follow up with the city manager and the police chief. And I look forward to hearing about further about that conversation. Yeah, I think there has to be a community buy-in and you can't just order something like this. It would probably entail a change of policy and such. So I don't think it's an on-off switch. I don't know if it's gonna be hard to implement but I think it's worth consideration. The reports that I've read indicates on a federal level it should have a substantial impact. Yes, certainly, depending on I think the scope of what you're discussing and if we were to consider it, it would be through, I think proper public notice and discourse and so. So with that, I will then move us to item seven item seven, which is the consent calendar for this evening. These items will be held for the single vote unless the council member wishes to pull one for independent discussion. Does the council member wish to pull any of the consent items? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion on the consent calendar. I'll move the consent calendar. I can second that. That's a motion by council member Betranz seconded by vice mayor Kaiser. Can we have a roll call vote please? Council member Bertrand. I agree. Council member Brooks. Aye. Council member Brown. Aye. Vice mayor Kaiser. Aye. And mayor Story. Aye. And the consent calendar passes unanimously which will bring us to item eight which is our general government public hearing portion of our meeting this evening. And the first item is concerning community grant program recommendations. Before I start us off on this particular agenda item, I do want to disclose that I am going to recuse myself from this item. This is because my wife works at an agency and she derives her income from that employment and that agency has been and is intended to continue to be an applicant for the capital of community grants funding. So on that basis, I'm going to recuse myself out of an abundance of caution. And I will ask vice mayor Kaiser if she will take over at this time. Thank you mayor. We'll see you soon. And Larry, I think you're presenting item eight A. Thank you vice mayor Kaiser. Thank you. Give me a second. I will share my screen. So my plan is I won't give the presentation and then after I'm done, I'd like if council members Brown and Brooks would like to give their ideas behind this. And we also have Nicole Young from optimal solutions on the line, if there's any questions. So just kind of a little background, the capital community grant program is historically funded like depending on the year up to 40 community groups and programs. In 2018, the voters approved a percentage of the transitory occupancy tax to dedicate toward early childhood and youth programs. And over the past few years city council used this to fund youth programs through the community grant program. Prior to just, you know, we kind of got to a certain point in this program and obviously like a lot of things like the pandemic stopped things but prior to COVID-19 pandemic, council did make some changes is that we did go to multi-year grants and then prior to that, we even separated the budgeting from the allocation of the grants. Prior to that, the budgeting and the actual grant awards were done at the same time and it was very difficult to do. So sorry, let me get the next page. On April 14th, the city council received a report from optimal solutions consultants outlining the ways that community grant program could be modified to meet the city council's needs. The council approved council member Brown and Brooks to a subcommittees and the subcommittee met multiple times to review the report and to consider its recommendations. The following are a list of the recommendations that were made from those meetings. And the first one is to budget the grant program and the following amounts. This amount is actually was already included in the budget that was considered. General funding of $125,000 and the early childhood and youth programming of 61,000. And this does not include any of the CDBG money that was arranged for some of the historical grantees. In addition, a three-year grant cycle to establish kind of a secure funding source for multiple years for these grantees. One of the things we've always heard is that consistency for the funding is really important for these organizations. The next thing was to kind of, as part of the report, there's a kind of specific, what they call conditions for health and wellbeing. And the subcommittee came up with three specific ones and that's stable and affordable shelter, health and wellness and healthy environment. And the percentages next to that are the percentages of the total funding to go to each of these. So 50% of the $125,000, for example, would go to stable and affordable housing and shelter. And the additional one is to continue with the fourth priority of early childhood and youth programming and to use the recurring TOT revenues for that purpose. The next step was to kind of create different tiers of grants. Operational grants that basically can be used to just kind of keep the doors open and make sure the overall organization is functioning, 30% in each priority. So each priority that we previously listed, 30% of the funding for that would be operational grants which the subcommittee decided would be up to $7,500. Kind of the thing is the organization must serve capital residents. And just, it can be used for administration. The higher level grant, the outcome between $7,500 and $15,000, 70% of the funding of each priority would go to that. These programs must directly benefit capital residents. They would require a report, I think the final decision was once during their grant cycle to the city council and up to 25% of that funding could be used for administration. This is kind of the chart we came up with just so you kind of get an idea is for $125,000 in general fund, $37,500 would be used for the operational grants and then they're split among the three priorities and 87,000 would go to the outcome or the higher level grants. And the same kind of percentage was found out or decided for the ECYP as well. So kind of the next steps to consider is considering adjustments to these recommendations as well as the overall programming. Notice of funding availability for the grantees and to create an application that kind of defines the priorities and requirements so that the applicants know what the city is looking for and what the priorities of the city are at that point. We've talked about finding new ways to reach out to nonprofits other than, because it's always difficult to figure out who's listening to what, but we're gonna find different ways to do it to kind of get more nonprofits that serve capital involved if we can. Then we review applications and make funding determinations. Generally the subcommittee reviews the applications and brings everything back to the council for consideration. And in the history, we haven't done multi-year contracts in a few years, but in those contracts, we historically had performance responsibilities and available funding provisions for these multi-year contracts. So make sure the organization does what it's supposed to do. Generally, we actually had something where they became part of another organization. There'd be some steps to see if that funding would continue. And also if the funding is not available, there are generally outs. If for whatever reason, the council doesn't have the funding next year, we included those in our previous contracts and we'll work that as well. But we hadn't done that in the last couple of years when we've been doing one year or sometimes six month contracts. That wasn't so necessary, but we definitely feel with a three-year agreement, there has to be something in there to make sure that over the three years, the grantees are doing what they said they were gonna do. So the recommended action is to approve the subcommittee recommendation changes for the program as displayed in the direct staff to issue a notice of the funding availability. We can read it, but I would like to give at this point, if it's okay, council members Brown and Brooks to be able to kind of discuss with the council the reasoning for these recommendations. Thank you, Larry. I'll say a couple of words on this and I'll turn it over to you, councilman Brooks. I'll say that the guidelines that were created, we use some of the info and guidelines provided by Optimal Solutions in a way that we found to be appropriate and specific to our own city. So for example, we took the community profile and the needs assessment that came out of that community profile to determine the three different categories that we would be funding, the stable and affordable housing, the health and wellness and the healthy environment. These needs came directly from the community profile that was provided to us. The way that we divided the types and amounts of grants, the operational versus outcome and the amounts of funding that would go into each of those also came from general guidelines and suggestions provided by Optimal Solutions. We tweaked them a little bit in ways that again, we felt would be more suitable to our city specifically. Essentially, we've created a framework for how to determine who the grant awardees will be and how much they will be awarded. But this doesn't exclude any of our previous grant applicants from applying again. There's lots of ways for all of the people that have applied for community grants from us before to fit into the categories that we have now created. But this gives us a framework for determining who will be awarded a grant from us and by how much. And then finally, the three-year cycle, I think as was already mentioned, aligns our grant funding cycle with the funding cycle of other jurisdictions which will allow us to maximize our impact throughout the county. And so I think those were kind of some of the key points that we considered as we came up with these guidelines. And I'll turn it over to you, Councilwoman Brooks, for any additional comments or anything that I missed that you want to share as well. No, I think you did a great job, Councilmember Brown. I'm happy to answer any questions from Council. But I believe you did a good job explaining. And thank you, Larry. Thank you. So I'm here to be able to answer any questions. And again, if there's questions related to the previous report, Nicole Young from Optimal Solutions is also on the meeting. Thank you. Are there any Council questions, Jeff? Do you have any questions you want cleared up? I don't have any questions. But if I can make a comment, then I'll wait until... Okay, great. Let's go to our attendees. Larry, if you can see, I do see somebody with their hand raised, LS. We have LS. Great, you'll have three minutes to make your comment. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you. This is Leah Samuels. I'm from the Human Care Alliance. We are a nonprofit leadership alliance. And I did yesterday have to go over with my six-year-old a safety plan for school shootings because they don't do those for children in kindergarten. And that was just a sad, heartbreaking conversation to have. And I will say, having represented as a defense attorney and dependency attorney, some of the people who end up being perpetrators of violence that in a lot of these cases, these are children or teens who fell through the cracks. And it's often nonprofits that provide vital services that reach these children. And we can't measure the amount of tragedy that is reduced or avoided by the intervention of nonprofits. And I'm here to comment on the funding for nonprofits. And I wanted to first thank you for your presentation. It's very thorough in your thought for changing course. I know at some point you thought you might have to cut this funding. I thank you for giving multiple-year grants. Nonprofits really are part of our first responder team. Our concern is the allocation of funding is less than in previous years, 2015-16, 277, 2019-20, 245. And we do understand that there is this additional funding, this CDBG funding, but that funding is intended to help nonprofits with the increased workload that they've had. And it has to be used for specific purposes. It's not meant to supplant other funding. So our concern is that there's lower funding being provided than historically, whereas inflation has significantly increased. And additionally, we're worried about smaller nonprofits. They can't comply with the additional funding. So there's a smaller discretionary fund and that means that smaller nonprofits are not going to be as competitive to thrive and give us their innovative solutions to help our community. We can't tell you if you have more money to give, we just want you to consider that when you're reviewing nonprofit performance, particularly in these multiple year contracts, you're reviewing what you're going to give in the future, that you have a realistic expectation that the services provided are not going to be at the same level for less money with inflation and that you just really keep that in your mind as you're looking at what's happening with these nonprofits and that you consider it's difficult for the nonprofits to show increased productivity and that a lot of their productivity, like I said, is preventative and we just can't measure that. And I thank you for your time this evening. Great, thank you so much for your comment. Larry, do you see any emails or any other hands raised? Vice Mayor Keiser, I do not see any emails on the side of men. It doesn't look like we have any more attendees with their hands raised. Okay, great. And I think we can take it back for council comments. And I know Jacques has something if you want to start us off. Sure, thank you, Vice Mayor. My comment was as our presenters sort of alluded to, this is a pattern. I think this was mentioned in that way that will help us approach the problem deciding who to fund and there's categories which I guess I look forward to a better definition of what the categories are but I go back to the Cole sisters presentation. I'll read that a little bit more carefully. So I think this will give us an approach which I think we'll all appreciate because up to now we've sort of gone almost in a way of preference, you know, what we felt about and there wasn't a really good way to support it. So I'd like this guideline. I did hear a little bit about in the discussion that we might have some flexibility and in answering to the person who just from HCA made a comment. I think that we might be swayed by innovative requests. I don't think that we would be immune to that. I won't be on the board. I don't think when this comes up but I think our board has been very receptive to trying to meet community needs. And when someone comes up with something that may work which hasn't been tried before, I have great faith in our city council to provide that kind of exception and maybe make a role just for that person or that agency. So thanks. Those are my comments. I think it's an excellent presentation and thank you for Kristen Brown and Yvette Brooks in working with the Nicole sisters and putting this, I think it's a great way to call them the Nicole sisters. I know they're not sisters but I think it was great that you put together this presentation and thank you very much for serving on that committee. That's it. Great, thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you. I just wanted to address some of the concerns that I heard from our speaker because I think that they're valid concerns and there's some that we discussed during our consideration of our funding model as well. So while we have what looks like less funding this time around in actuality, we had pulled our early childhood and youth programming funds that are now being funded through our TOT dollars. And so they're no longer considered as part of our, I guess you'd call our general community grants because they have their own dedicated funding. So there's about $60,000 just for that. There's $125,000 for this overall community grant program as you see with the three priorities in the top. And then we have that $150,000 for CBBG funding that's not COVID related. That's something different entirely. And when you add all of that together we're actually putting more towards community programs than we ever have before in the past. And so I can understand why at first glance just looking at just these three categories with their $125,000 that looks like it's less but overall we're giving more to community programs than the city of Capitola ever has which I'm really excited about. And if I got my math wrong or my statistics wrong on any of those I would invite Larry or Jamie or Yvette to call me out. I'm pretty sure that that's the correct numbers but I just wanted to address that because it is a valid concern and I wanna make sure that the community knows that these are things that we took into consideration during our deliberations of this new model for our grant program. Great, thank you. I also wanted to add in that I am sort of looking forward to entertaining the three year sort of contract idea and just I feel like it creates more of a relationship with the nonprofit and we can kind of see progress as we go throughout the three years rather than just trying to reevaluate once a year or even less than that. So thank you guys for all your work on this and does anybody else need to say anything or do we wanna go forward and make a motion on staff recommendation? If I may vice mayor. Yeah. Sure, I will make a motion to approve the subcommittee recommendation changes to the community grant program as displayed and direct staff to issue a notice of available funding. I will not read the three points that have been presented and I think those are obvious but I'd like to make that approval motion. Great, thank you. Do we have a second? I'll go ahead and second. All right, so we have a motion by council member Bertrand and a second by council member Brooks. Chloe, may we please have a roll call? Yes, council member Bertrand. I agree. Council member Brooks. Aye. Council member Brown. Aye. And vice mayor Kaiser. Aye. Thank you. So that passes unanimously. Mayor Story had to recuse himself but now he can come back. Welcome back. Thank you vice mayor Kaiser. Were you listening Sam? Were you supposed to listen to you? I'll never tell. You'll never tell. Okay. I'm gonna move us on now to item 8B which is to receive the community survey results. The recommended action is to receive the report and provide direction to staff regarding potential measures to place on the November 2022 ballot. Can we have a staff report please? Sure, I will kick this off and then I will be turning it over to Gene Fragman who's our polling contractor who conducted the poll on behalf of the city. You will recall that council had a meeting, I think a couple meetings ago and we determined that we were gonna pull the concept in the community of a second home tax and then also look at a potential district tax, district sales tax. So Gene has conducted that poll and he has his results and he's ready to present them this evening. Well, Gene, I think I'm ready to turn it over to you. Are you gonna share a screen or do you need a staff to do that for you? I think you're on mute. There we go. I think I need you guys to share that. Okay. Larry, do you think you can share it? I can share it. Thank you. See it okay? Hi there. Nice to be back. We conducted the survey via telephone, cell phones, text messaging, emails, completed 168 interviews with people who can be defined likely to vote in this November. And what we just did today kind of go through relatively quickly the highlights of the questions in the survey. Now we started as we have in the other three surveys that we've conducted for the city of Capitola. How would you rate Capitola, the place to live and it's ridiculous, I mean that 95, 97, 96, 95% of the people like living here. There isn't much more to say than that. Obviously there's no differences in the community. Most everybody at the very least really likes it a whole lot. Chart two, another question we've asked in all four studies is just a general overall job rating for the Capitola city government. Again, very positive. This year 71% giving the city government an excellent or good rating and pours out 4% remarkably consistent over these last eight years and in all four studies that we've done. And there really isn't much more to say than that except that you should be able to do yourself. People recognize and think that you're doing a good job. More specifically, we've been asking how good a job is the city doing managing its budget and finances and these as high but it's still very positive. It's been as high as 58% in 2014 but it's still at 50% which is pretty similar to what it was two years ago. Giving you an excellent or good rating and again, the poor rating are very low, just 7%. Most people who do not give you a positive rating give you a rating of, I don't know, they just aren't able to voice an opinion. Ratings are a little more positive among the older voters, those over 65 and registered Democrats. And then the next chart is a question we've asked in three, the last three polls, how much need the city have for more money in general? Great need, some need, a little need or no real need. Again, fairly consistent with even just a hair high this year on the great need and some need combined at 60% compared to just 55 or 54% the last two times we asked this question. But in all instances, very few people in this case about one out of every 10 say that you have no need for more money. And that brings us to chart five where we asked individually in a rotated or randomly mixed up version order of questions how serious are these issues or problems facing the city of Capitola? Very serious, somewhat not to or not at all. What you see in front of you on the chart are proportions who say the problem is very serious just the top box. The number one was need for more affordable housing not a big surprise of 53% then group 40% range are need to maintain beaches effects of climate change, traffic congestion and need to maintain emergency public safety programs. Significant lower and less important are the condition of city streets and roads, crime and then at the bottom, the condition of the Capitola community center. The need for affordable housing, our top item was more important rated more often as very serious by renters, those under the age of 50 and anybody who's not a Republican. I'm also interested in the age of police and emergency public safety programs was more important to home owners, people who don't have children in their households and the oldest voters, those 65. And then that brought us to our first and what this chart shows first and vote which we actually asked these twice. The first two sets of bars are the first time we just asked about any other additional information and we read a paragraph that might be similar to something people would see on a ballot when they filled out their ballots at home. I used to say when they'd go into the voting booth hardly anybody does it anymore. And since we all get our ballots at home is a general second home tax. And we put the levels at $6,000 per parcel, $3,000 for condominium specified rates in general, raising about $2 million annually for 20 years. And as a general tax requires only 50% and we start out with a 55% yes and then drop the tax for anybody who hadn't said yes. We picked up another three points. We drop in the tax of 4,000 per parcel and 2,000 for condominium. More support came from renters, Democrats under 50 year olds. They sort of the same kind of same folks who think that portable housing is a very serious problem. Less often a yes vote among homeowners, Republicans, independents and others and the older actually just over 50 years of age. The second set of however is the second time we asked this question, which was after people heard some reasons to support and oppose the second home tax. Here we dropped our support to 48% on the $6,000, $3,000 combination or 50% with a slightly more tax rate of four and two. My sense is or my assumption is that most have not thought much about or you probably even heard about the second home tax and reacted more positively to arguments against as we'll see in a second than normally we see in most polls, which is why we seem to drop off. Before going on, we also asked one other version of this and this we asked of everybody, if we just had a dedicated tax only for streets, roads and affordable house and nothing else with a tax rate of a little bit lower, 3,000 or 1,500, excuse me, or 1,500, how would you vote? And for this we had 50% at first. And remember this compares to the first time that we asked the general second home tax of 55 to 58, but at the end, this one went up at 55% after they heard before and against with the focus on streets, roads and affordable housing. Unfortunately, when you focus so narrowly, you create a measure that requires a 230 for passage putting this below where you could possibly get to that two thirds, whereas if you're hovering that 50% or so range, you're in the bulk general tax. Chart eight, as I mentioned, statements favoring opposing, these are the five statements that we read people about or that they read themselves or they did it online. And we asked them as each one is making much more likely to oppose the second home tax, somewhat more likely to oppose it as it make no difference to you one way or the other. These are just the proportions that are again, the top box are much more likely to oppose the second home tax. And we have one particularly high item, measure talks for all the good things it will do, but mostly the use of salaries and pensions from government bureaucrats. We sort of want to hear sort of if you find the expression that sort of need anti-tax arguments against most anything that's a tax from the people who oppose any sort of tax. But I think it may perhaps in the current and without people knowing about the second home tax react quite positively to that argument. And the others were all around 30% range, which again, is also higher than we often see in arguments against ballot measures, even most tax ballot measures for cities, counties, agencies, school districts, whoever. Democrats were less likely to say that each of them were much more likely to oppose the tax. And then the next chart is the arguments in favor of the second home tax. And the only one that actually does better than the top score on the opposition is all the money will be used here in a local community. That's one we ask in one form or another and just about every poll we've been doing for the last 30 years. And it's always first or second. I think once it was third, but that's pretty rare. Then together after that are four items related to affordable housing, the measure low and moderate income people who work here to live near where they work is severe housing shortage in our community. The measure will help prevent this storage, this shortage from becoming even worse. Some of the money will be used to support the supply of affordable housing here in Capitola. The measure will provide the use of properties as vacation homes, preserving them as permanent homes for people who have been working in Capitola. And that's sort of the second group. Generally, Republicans reacted less positively to all of the people under 50, particularly to all the items that are listed there in one shade of green or another were more effective with the people who are under 50 years of age. So before we move on from any sort of tax discussions, we say, well, what happens instead of a second home tax? We asked people about how would you vote on increasing the sales tax by a point 99.5%. First, five years for streets and roads, just those. And there was a typo on this chart, the first one where it says no at 48%, it should be 58%. I just quote that, I apologize. But yes, it's only 38%. And then in a version that was strictly for streets roads, I mean, no, that was the strict version, general version, streets roads and other cities picked up only 1.39%. This was interesting that the older people, over 65 homeowners, Democrats and to some slight extent Republicans were more positive to the sales tax than were renters, younger people, descendants and people who lived here for less time. Perhaps in the changes, they know what a sales tax is and they lived with that and they are a little more likely maybe to say that they can live with it, whereas the younger voters are also the ones who want something done about affordable housing. And then the next chart, we asked people about where they get their information about Capitola city services. They were led by the Capitola SoCal Times, 56%, friends and neighbors, 52, Sentinel website, cities printed newsletters, cat recreation, catalog community meetings, city digital newsletters and city posts on Instagram or Facebook book were less. My understanding, too, is that city digital newsletters, I think, and Jamie can put it here wrong, this is a fairly new way of communicating with voters that have to be at 20% now is actually pretty good. This that hasn't been around like the Sentinel has been or like our friends and neighbors. And then each people who said they had a, they used a specific source of information whereas is that very useful for you, somewhat not at all useful. So these are percentages based on the people who had said that they used a particular item, a particular source. The most useful were the community meetings with city officials, digital newsletters. Anyway, it says five of them that were in that 40 percent range and then less useful. I think interesting is that the source of information that was the greatest was really useful, meaning the Santa Cruz Sentinel. And then our last specific question, we asked, well, if you wanted to learn more about city issues, which one of these areas would you be most likely to participate in? Two of them got about one out of every four voters they either intend an in-person or a Zoom meeting. I remember these are, you have to choose one only of these, 18% in e-mess and an e-mail or whatever, 16% on YouTube or the city website and only 8% with watching community television. So one more slide, which I think is just sort of trying to summarize the six, seven points or so, I think are the most salient in the poll we just did. One, voters like living in Capitola have positive attitudes towards city government and generally the city has a need for more money, the basics. They like what you do and you need more money. That's always a good start. But as I get by the most serious problems facing Capitola as related to affordable housing, maintaining Capitola's beaches, dealing with the effects of climate change and traffic congestion. Less likely to say there are serious problems related to community center crime and the condition of streets and roads. And the fact that condition of streets and roads did not score particularly highly is I think is reflected back in relatively low scores when we have a ballot measure that concentrates on that. Slight majority of voters initially support a second home tax, but support the roads after people hear reasons to oppose the second home tax. A sales tax increase is not supported at this time. Should the city decide to proceed with the second home tax ballot measure, it will only have a chance of passage if it is a general tax and not one with a narrow focus. And finally, before deciding whether or not to proceed with a ballot measure, the city needs to hear from various community stakeholders stakeholders to determine if and how strong any opposition might be. I think if there is a strong concerted effort in opposition that would make passage of a second home tax extremely problematic. Questions, comments, anything? Council members have questions for Mr. Bregman. Council member Brown. Thank you, Mayor Story and thank you, Mr. Bregman. I just have a question kind of out of pure curiosity. That our statistics, you know, they were in the 50 or 60% of approval or satisfaction or whatever the question may have been. And you had mentioned that it was higher amongst those who were either younger or older or Democrat or not Republican or whatever. Again, based on whichever question there was the different statistics. Do you think that these differences in the opinions that we received are because of our demographics as a city or because of the differences and who is more likely to actually respond to these polls? Well, when I say that their differences, it reflects a statistically significant difference between two groups, between those under 50 and those over 50, between those 65 and older versus those under 50. And so that's not really a function necessarily of who the population is per se, capital other than that, the people in capital who fit into these groups, this is how they respond. That's a little different. Yeah, I guess what I'm asking. And again, this is, forgive me, I'll wrap it up after this because it's mostly just a personal curiosity, right? Is there any thought of or consideration of like, are people over 50 more likely to even respond to these polls? Are people who consider themselves democratic or Democrats or Republicans more likely to respond to such a call? We stratify as a way through results to make sure they're in correct proportion as we know from the voter statistics to be. So for instance, yeah, right. So we know that roughly 62% are registered Democrats, 15% of them are Republicans and 23% are either registered with no party or minor parties and that's where our sample is. Perfect, thank you so much. I really appreciate your work on this. Thank you. Yeah, council member Bertrand. Thank you very much. I enjoyed the presentation. Thank you. So in a sense, it sort of follows Kristen's question, but I'd like something a little bit more pointed that might help us decide how we would go forward. So those are sort of presented, present, excuse me, percentages based on that demographic. But what I'd like to see is a different way to present the data. So if we have some voters who are Democrat, excuse me, or the balanced Republican, I'd like to get it based in terms of, okay, you answer that question, but there's more Democrats here. So if we put it on the ballot, you might have a better chance. Or if you broke it down into age demographics and we had a very high percentage of older 65, which we've had some data that suggests that, then it might give me a better idea of putting it on the ballot. We might have a chance or not have a chance. So I don't know if that was under your mission to provide for us, but that would give us a better idea percentage-wise in terms of our age demographics or party demographics, it gives us a better idea of how to proceed. Okay. Two things. The sample of the people who we interviewed in the study reflect the demographics of the likely voters in the election. So you are likely to have 62 Democrats. That may be more or less than what the actual total registration for the city of Capitola is, but this is who are likely to vote. Now, what you're talking about in a sense, I think, is turnout. Right. Is there something that will motivate people who don't normally vote in this sort of election to turn out, or on the contrary, to motivate people who are, who usually vote in this kind of election to stay on. Yeah, I'm trying to get a better sense of that. That's kind of a fault of what happens in the other elections that are going on statewide, even and locally, and how, what kind of campaigning goes around these measures. If there is a strong concerted effort by an individual group to support the second home tax, they do a lot of campaigning and a lot of communicating with voters. That's going to spur people who support it to go out and vote. Yeah, and I totally agree with you. I think your last point is that we should be conversing with our stakeholders. The tax that provided some TOT, especially for our youth programs, was the result of some compromises with some stakeholders. So I think that was a great point to bring up. And you did point out to the fact that, and I think Jamie will probably talk about this at some point when we're trying to decide, forming a committee is going to be very important within the city and pushing forward and having a strategy and a budget to do that and all that, totally important. So that's the second or third step to make it effective. Jamie? Just before we got to the comment, there was a few things I wanted to raise. The first one is, is I was just going to quickly talk about kind of the parameters for those of you who haven't done this before around what the city can and can't be campaigning. So up until the point that we put something on the ballot, city staff can work on producing something here and helping folks get to understand what a measure may or may not do. Once it's on the ballot, it becomes something that the city, city staff at least can't really be involved in. And then the second thing I just thought would be helpful for council to hear tonight, and it was in the staff report, but just before we go to the public, that the key decision tonight I think is either, A, decide that you want to hear more information about the second home tax. And I think probably between now and our next meeting we'll be able to have a delegation of folks maybe meet with different community stakeholders about their feelings on it. Or the other option will be to make a determination tonight that we're not going to be putting something on the ballot and let this measure, let this pass for the selection cycle. So that's all I had. And with that, I think we can let me go to more council questions or public comment. Yeah, thank you, Jamie for that clarification. I'll call on Vice Mayor Kaiser. Yeah, thank you. I don't know if this question is for Jamie or Eugene, but looking at the second home tax and seeing that once pros and cons or information was brought up about it, the percentage went down for approval. But what if that was linked in with one of the main concerns which is affordable housing within our community? And if that was something that was linked to the tax that's where the tax money is zoning towards is that gonna show, do we think that would show a higher rating of approval or is that we just have to keep it at the general tax? Does that make sense? Well, when you're talking about general tax, you don't run a campaign that says, this is gonna be a general tax that we're gonna spend however we feel like it this week. You talk about the things the money can be used for and affordable housing can be the lead on that. And actual lead in this sort of campaign because you're talking about a housing tax. Right. So it's not, we saw that it's so far away from getting to the two thirds it's gotta be general. But it's general in the sense that the money goes to lots of things. You talk about the fact that it goes to all the things that people like in here and that they traditionally like. And you also spend a lot of time, for instance, talking about the community center. Sorry, Jane. But, that's the way you campaign on this kind of, oftentimes on this kind of measure. Sometimes you just campaign on the fact that a city is in dire straits and they need everything everywhere. But that's not the case. Okay. Great, thank you. One other argument. Go ahead. I would share is that, I think that about half of the tax measures that I've been involved with, there was no opposition. So nobody was actually submitting arguments. So you always wanna test how effective opposition arguments are people's opinions. The real goal is to come up with something that really doesn't have opposition because we're a relatively small community. I know in larger communities that's never gonna happen. But unfortunately in this case, we didn't come up with an argument that really resonated with a lot of voters and increased the support. So it probably would mean we need to fine tune the argument. But I think you're exactly correct, Vice Mayor Keiser, that the affordable housing linkage with this, I think it's really intuitively necessary because of kind of the way it would be structured that it really is sort of trying to make second homes less attractive in Capitola to preserve the housing for people who live and work here, right? Thank you. Council member Bertrand, you're on mute. Okay, there, got it. And I think Jamie reminded me, I came up with this idea originally because when I was campaigning in both times, I campaigned recently, neighbors did talk about their concern about second homes being here in Bacon. And the concern was lack of revenue to the city, but also lack of community. I mean, there seemed to be an undercurrent of concern. It wasn't expressed much more than that, but some people would actually stand in front of their house and point out, depending on the neighborhood, oh, that house is vacant, that house is vacant. And it was elevated to the point of they knew which houses were vacant all the time, certainly because they lived there. So I do have a question for you, Jane, and Margot sort of got me thinking about this. So how we present things is very important, but there was also an undercurrent of people who thought we weren't managing our budget very well. And I was wondering if you had some background information about that and our finances in general, I don't know how specific they were, but that was a large section of the pie chart. If you have something you could share, I'd appreciate that. Well, actually, it was a very small section of the pie chart of people who don't think you're managing the budget well. 7% gave you a poor rating, that's almost negligible. Okay, so within your experience, but it was more than some of the others were getting great things, great comments, about the city and stuff. It comes to money. Most places do not get great ratings for how they're managing tax money. That's why these are so, so good, that even the people who don't give you such a good rating is mostly fair, or it's actually mostly people who don't know. That's probably true, or they can always do it better. Right, yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, thank you very much for giving us that relative perspective. Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Brennan. I wanted to ask the whole question just about an alternative path to raising money for affordable housing. Are impact fees and avenue toward charging vacant homes for their impact on affordable housing and capital? So the simple answer to that question is sort of no. So we have an impact fee associated with new development that's an inclusionary fee, and that is for affordable housing. And that gets assessed on all developments that meet our criteria for that inclusionary fee. And I know we just updated it, and I apologize, I cannot remember exactly the nuances. The challenge behind assessing an impact fee only on second homes or vacant homes, I think it would be very hard, number one, to create the nexus, because for an impact fee, there has to be a nexus of the amount of fee, what the impact is on the community. It's hard to argue that there's more demand for police services, for example, on a vacant home. And then number two is is that the vacant, I think this is sort of a use, if you will, and that could change at any given moment. And an impact fee, it's sort of intended to be kind of in perpetuity to build new roads associated with that development. So I hope that answers your question. We do have an inclusionary impact fee that helps us build affordable housing, but it isn't just assessed on vacant homes. Right, okay. Thank you for that explanation, Jamie. I'll ask if council members have any further questions on Mr. Bregman's report before I go out to the public. And seeing none, I'm gonna open it up now for- I have one more question. I'm sorry. Uh-uh, okay, go ahead. I couldn't get my hand up, but Eugene, this is a question for you. I don't wanna make an assumption, but if you've done other surveys recently, concerning public tax, what do you think the general view is right now? I don't think you've done anything on this or maybe you have, but I'm just trying to get a sense of how you read- I must admit, this is the first second home tax. So right now, this is a very new concept. Generally speaking, the little I've done that I've done lately, that's on these past things, it's challenging, a little more unusual because people are so concerned about inflation. I mean, every poll you see, that's the number one concern of voters throughout the country in general. I think it's probably true in California as well, but the Californians and capital residents are no different than this respect. Tend to be very generous in their willingness to support financially the things that their community needs. And so I would say probably gonna be, I mean, assuming things have turned around by October when voting starts, it's gonna be a little challenging than it might have been some other year, but certainly outside the realm of possibly, that's for sure. Okay. Thank you. I'm gonna now see if members of the public would like to speak to the city council on this item. If you do raise your hand in the Zoom application or you can dial star nine and the moderator will give you three minutes to speak. You can also send an email to public comment at ci.capitola.ca.us. I'm, Larry, I don't see any hands. Yes, minister, I do not see any hands, but we do have an email on this item. Okay, good. I'm gonna share the screen, it's a short one, but I'm gonna share the screen and share sound, if that's okay. Have you taken into account universal mail-in ballots in your modeling? J.M. I'm not sure what it means. Question is. Yeah, I believe the question was going toward whether the survey process considers, matters the form of voting and whether that incorporates mail-in voting. Oh, I see, okay. Oh, yes. Yes, sir. Yeah, so it does factor in the various forms that residents may vote or voters may vote on the item. Okay. Yeah, any other emails, Larry? Minister, I do not see any other emails on this item and it doesn't look, wishing to speak. Nobody else. Okay, I'm going to then bring it back for council deliberation to see if we can determine the will of the council. Is there a council member that would like to lead off on this item? Yes, council member Brooks. Thank you, Mayor Story. So, the numbers are close. You know, I think it's interesting what our constituents gave feedback on. I think it's worth surveying our community and their thoughts to get it, to define a clear path. For me personally, just hearing the conversations today and terms interchanged in regards to vacant homes versus second homes. And I would really like to, if council agrees that we should survey the community and get some input on this when staff returns to really get a clear idea of really what defines the second home. Who are those that would be exempt from it? And I find it ironic because just in this like high level conversation where I know really nothing about what second homes are, I see our constituents in our community asking for more affordable housing. But yet when we build ADUs to become second housing, does our ADUs defined as a second house? And if we're increasing taxes, then those prices, those increase of costs goes to those that rent and is that something that we could exempt? And so there's just a lot of moving parts that are when the survey results say that we wanna increase afford, they wanna see an increase of affordable housing, but yet we may not be creating more affordable housing by raising the taxes on these second homes if those are rentals for our community. And so I just wanna look at different ways we can explore that with the community in those conversation. And who are those that are exempt? What defined second homes are when you come back, again, if this goes to, if council does agree to have this, the feedback from our community, who did you survey? Who were you talking to out there? And it looks like it won't pass with a two thirds vote or at least it doesn't sound so. But for a general tax, if council wants to talk about it going into the general fund, I would be interested in having further conversation of how directly those funds would be used, even though it's for general tax. We know that we have in our, what is that, the UDL or not UDL, the retirement costs going up and all of these things that we really need funding for to be, to strategically plan our budget out for the next decade or so. And so what would that look like? And fees associated, how much does this cost to get on the ballot? How much does this cost to the city? Should we win or lose if we did this? So those are just my thoughts and comments, but I most certainly think that it's worth taking it a little bit further to get the, to get some more community partners buy in and thoughts on this. So thank you. Council member Brown. Thank you. I think Councilwoman Brooks brings up some really good points that I agree with in terms of the need for us to consider this further. I would like to hear more about the potential for a second home tax and what we could exempt if we considered the thought about ADUs and if that would be considered a second home or not. So I think that's a really good point. As she also mentioned, this being a, it would need to be a general tax and it looks like the higher acceptance was on the 4,000 per parcel, 2000 for, what did you say it was condominium? I believe. So I think I'd like to hear more about that as the specific option for considering moving forward with this as a general tax. And then even if it was a general tax, Councilwoman Brooks mentioned potentially considering what that would go for. I would like to have further discussions at another time clearly about how this could be used to create more affordable housing if we're gonna be taxing housing, it would make sense to use it to create more housing. But again, those are all conversations down the road but just for the sake of comments for today, I would like to have this come back to Council for further consideration of placing this on the ballot and what that would look like. Vice Mayor Keiser. Thank you. Yeah, I kind of wanted to respond. And this is just what I was under the impression I think this has sort of morphed from vacant home to second home. So I think this sort of started out as being labeled as a vacant home, meaning homes that are inhabited what less than, I don't know, Jamie, was it like six months a year or was it six weeks a year? It was something where it was very obvious and kind of how Jacques was saying like that they are not inhabited that they come whether it's a family or a renter maybe once or twice a year. Something like that. And that with our housing crisis sort of where it's at that this is looking into things like that. So that was the impression that I was under as far as second home, vacant home, not necessarily an ADU that's being rented or lived in by somebody on a regular basis that is using and paying tax dollars and things like that. So in my mind, those types of situations that they would be exempt that's just where my head was going for it. So I am definitely in favor of exploring it further. There are other cities that have done it have received great amount of tax dollars from it and which would I would like to see where we could put those. I do think we also would have to bring up the thought of enforcement and how we would go about doing that as a city. And however, this could generate enough funds where it is creating a job for somebody or jobs which is also great. So I would like to definitely see further information going forward, what else we need to do? Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor. You know, the council members have comments. So I just expressed my thoughts about you know, this proposed tax that I'm not opposed to trying to get more information and clarification about what exactly this measure may potentially be. I think there does need to be further clarification about whether it's a vacant home tax or second home tax. You know, the polling seems to identify that it's a second home tax. Now, I'm not sure if there would be any difference in the results though, if you clarified that it was a vacant home tax and I don't know. I mean, our survey is our survey and I'm not sure if those numbers are gonna change as we try to get more information going into it. Probably as a part of this process, we should look at also talking to stakeholders and seeing what kind of opposition there may be. It is sobering to me though that the polls show that on the larger amount, it had 55% approval, but when there was any mention of opposition that dropped 7% to 48% approval. And that doesn't bode well for passage. Even on the lesser amount, it went from 58% to just 50% approval. So those same kind of, I think, deltas from before and after people fear the arguments of before and against it. And I'll just share my experience with, I think with Mr. Regman's fine work and when he's brought us results in the past, that generally what I've observed that there's about a 10 to 15% delta between what the polling shows in terms of approval and how much it is actually a yes vote on it ultimately. Many of the taxes that I've seen and most of them have just been either TOT or general sales taxes. And generally the polling comes in very high in the high 60% and yet when the actual vote comes, they will pass somewhere in the 50s and low 50%. So I just, to me, that's just kind of taught me you got to discount the amount of approval. And when I apply that to these particular numbers, I'm not encouraged about this being a successful campaign. And I just also want to recognize there is going to be a campaign going on in Santa Cruz at the same time, you know, it's my understanding and so there will be a significant campaign there which we could potentially learn from. But those are my thoughts about the item. I see council member Bertrand has his hands up so. So I think Mr. Bergman did comment about why that drop after some education. Oh, you've frozen council member Bertrand. If you can hear me, I wanted to try turning off your video. Okay, I'm going to, we seem to have lost, council member Bertrand seems to have lost his connection. So I'm going to talk real slow and see if he comes back. Mayor Story, do you want me to tell a joke? I can, if you want me to kill some time. I'm kidding, no, okay, sorry, I had to. I know I was almost intrigued to take you up on that offer but I remember the last joke you told so. So, well, I'll see if a council member has wants to lead us with direction to staff on this item. Yes, council member Brown. I'll ask my colleagues to let me know if I've wrapped up everything that we had mentioned but I guess the recommendation to staff would be to bring this item back to us at a future meeting with consideration of adding this to the ballot including clarification on the difference between a vacant versus second home tax, how much the tax would be, what kind of properties would be exempt? Was that everything that we discussed? And how much, like, is this a two, is it, are we going to go with the 4K, 2K or the 6K, 3K? And then I also heard about the cost to put it on the ballot and enforcement. Yes. That was my list of the items we were going to come back with. What was the last one, Jamie? I'm sorry, I missed it. Enforcement. Enforcement, yes. Yeah, so enforcement uses cost to put it on the ballot, exemptions, qualifies, second versus vacant home and then the amount. Cool. What about discussing it with the stakeholders at this time? I think that that's a very good idea. And I'd be happy to meet with other members or there if anyone would like to reach out to stakeholders at this stage, I think that's highly advisable. Okay, is it okay if we add that to the list of bring-backs, so to speak? I think that's fine, great to have a, as long as I get some council members volunteers to help out. I'll help out, I'll help, I'll work with Jamie on that. So I see that council member Bertrand is bad. Before I go back, hold on, I mean, we had a proposal from council member Brown. Do you want to put that in the form of a motion council member Brown? Yes. Is there a second? Do we need a motion on this? I think this is just recommendations to staff. I don't think we're doing, I'll make a motion if we need a motion. Well, well, I was wanting to see that we had at least support among the other council members for the direction. Maybe just a straw poll. So I see three thumbs up. So. Mayor. Mayor. And so yes, then now I'll go back to you then council member Bertrand. Okay. I didn't know what happened. I just lost signal completely. I don't know if the whole system went down. So I didn't hear the proposal at all. And so if that could be repeated, that'd be great. Or the direction. I believe Christian is trying to establish the direction. So. Yeah, there was a recommendation of direction to staff based on everything that had been discussed, essentially to bring this item back to us with further discussion of putting it on the ballot, what it would cost to put it on the ballot, how it would be worded, the amount of the tax, which kind of homes would be considered, what's the difference between a second versus a vacant? Which kind of properties would be exempted? What did I miss? Was that everything? I know. I don't know. And reaching out to stakeholders. Reaching out to stakeholders. And enforcement. So that was the direction to staff was essentially to bring it back to us with more details on those specific items so that we could further consider moving forward with putting this on the ballot based on the information that we received. OK, I'm glad to follow Sam and help Jamie and all with reach out to the stakeholders. So I totally agree with you, Kristen. We got to take those steps, figure out if it's even something we can do. And we're sort of slim. I think the last comment I heard from Sam is that we're kind of slim, bordering on, you know, not even close to 50, but a little bit over 50. And when people go into the ballot box, it may not show that we're actually that favorable. So, yep. OK, I have unanimous direction to staff on this item. So Jamie, do you feel you need anything from us at this time? OK, sounds good. I'm going to move us on to the next item, then, which is thank you all very much. I think, yeah, thank you, Mr. Bregman, for once again, serving the Capitol residents. And yeah, there is a lot of, I think, helpful and interesting information. And I think for all the staff and council members is seeing, you know, the mood and opinions of the residents on the functionings of the capital city government. So thank you for that. Thank you. Jamie knows I'm available to conversations with everyone. Thank you. Bye bye. So I'll go on now to item eight, see which is the regional housing needs allocation and the recommended action is to accept staff presentations on regional housing allocation and direct the mayor to send the attached comment letter to the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments Board of Directors. Can we have a staff presentation, please? Yes, Mayor and Council, I will be doing this this evening. Give me a second here. Well, it's not one up there we go. Larry, how does that look? Looks just fine. Great. So I'm going to be standing in for our Community Development Director this evening. Unfortunately, she had a pre-planned trip to Portugal. So she's on a red eye flight to Europe at this very moment. So this item is on the agenda to talk about the regional housing needs allocation process and what where we are in that process right now. I think this is probably background for most of you, but the housing elements have been required by the state of California since 1969, starting in around the 1990 era. The state added the RENA process, which is the regional housing needs allocation process, which essentially ultimately results in a specific number of units that gets assigned to every city and county in the state that they then have to accommodate within their housing element. And by accommodate, really what that means is have the zoning in place to allow it to be built. The process by which RENA numbers end up in our city in our city is first the state assigns different regions overall numbers that then those regions have to divvy up between the different cities and counties in their area. And that formula that they developed has to be consistent with the state laws and regulations around how you do that. In our region, the entity that gets assigned the units and then ultimately adopts the formula is AMBAG, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments. So this is the sixth RENA cycle wherein the state is assigning numbers down to the local to the cog, which is AMBAG, that's the Council of Local Governments. And this time around, AMBAG was assigned 33,000 plus units about significantly higher than the previous cycles, mostly because of a whole raft of new state laws that have established, you know, previously they had lower vacancy target ratios also took into account overcrowded homes that have overcrowded homes with homes were overcrowded. Then that was an indication that there was a need for more housing. And then also there was another state law that pushed the RENA process to push more housing into higher income, less diverse communities. So in this last cycle, our region got 10,000 units, as I just mentioned, this time around 33,000. Capitola had 143 in 2015. And this time around, it's one thousand three hundred and thirty six. So it's an entirely different ball game we're dealing with this time around. The reason why we got so many, number one is obviously the overall three fold increase in the numbers that AMBAG got. Number two is Capitola has a high concentration of jobs. Since we have a high concentration of jobs, we were allocated. I think we have something like five percent of the total jobs in the region. So that gave us a pretty big chunk. And then the last piece, probably the most significant was what's called the AFFH units, the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Units. And those were divvied up to jurisdictions that were higher income and lower diversity. And Capitola qualified as both higher income and lower diversity as compared to the other average units in our region. The other factor to take into account, I'll stay on that slide for a second, is that many of the large cities in our region that historically have taken many of the arena housing units did not qualify for AFFH units. So Salinas, Watsonville, Seaside, the cities in the valley, the Salinas Valley, like Greenfield, Soledad. So all of those cities didn't get any AFFH units. And so it was a relatively small pool of cities that got all these AFFH units. So as I talked about before, the arena process involves the numbers coming in from the state into AMBAG, AMBAG taking public comment, talking about the methodology, producing different draft allocation formulas, ultimately voting on it, which our AMBAG board has done. And they have now released their approved methodology for public comment and an appeal process. Once that's complete, then we will have our numbers for our next housing element update. I'm going to talk briefly about an appeal, but I want to be clear that staff does not recommend an appeal. Appeals of the AMBAG formula are limited to number one, that they failed to consider information in the jurisdiction survey. Number two, that they did the math wrong, that they didn't they didn't do the math right. They came up with a formula and they got capitalists population wrong or that there's been a significant and unforeseen change in circumstances. So that would be set up that, you know, when the rules were being considered, the city was in great shape and then we were hit with a tsunami. You know, so those would be the kind of reasons why you can appeal green allocation. The thing to keep in mind is that while it is a form of protest against the arena methodology that we may be frustrated with, the appeal goes back to the AMBAG board of directors. Our representative on AMBAG, Council Member Brown, would be required to recuse from that item. And so it doesn't go to court. It just goes back to the AMBAG board. The AMBAG board certainly was divided on this. I think it was a 13 to seven vote or something like that. But it wasn't. It was they knew that there was pros and cons. And so for us to say that we don't like it at this stage would be pretty it would not be a surprise over the history of AMBAG arena appeals. There's been about 50 plus in Southern California and only two were accepted and those were based on really the math was wrong. And in the Bay Area, there have been no successful appeals in sort of the history of this process. And then lastly, we would need to submit the appeal here just a few working days, which would be a real real challenge. So instead, staff is recommending that we submit the attached letter basically in protest to the board, the AMBAG board. Effectively, the argument in the letter is one that staff made during the arena process, and I know Councilmember Brown reiterated at the AMBAG board level is that fundamentally, the process didn't take into account the size of the city. And so there was no factor that went in that looked at how much vacant land or underdeveloped land or total land area the city of Capitola had for development. So the end result of this, these are the AFFH, these are the cities that get the AFFH units. We are ending up with 400 AFFH units per square mile. And the next highest city is Carmel with 288. So you can see that really they just never took into account land area. This isn't a surprise to the AMBAG board. This was pointed out to them many times during the process, but ultimately the argument didn't win the day. So that's what the attached letter that we're recommending the mayor send to the AMBAG board includes. So with that, I'm available to answer any questions. Other other questions from Councilmembers and seeing seeing none. And and I just want to disclose that, you know, I had asked Jamie to put this on our agenda because we were in the comment period and the appeal period for the arena process, which ended on June 6th. And I just thought we should, as a council, I think, affirmatively and consciously, you know, address whether or not we wanted to send in an appeal or comments. And and I think it appears and I accept that, you know, an appeal would be a I think a fruitless waste of time and energy under the circumstances. But I feel that you know, that we should make our voice heard about certain aspects of this process and the what I consider twofold. I think overly burdensome impact upon Capitola and while at the same time, you know, this process, in my view, does not address the need for affordable housing or in an effective way assures that it will be built. And so just I wanted to share those thoughts. And if there are no questions on the on the presentation, I will then go out to see if there's members of the public that would like to address the council on this matter. If you do, please raise your hand in the Zoom application or you can dial star nine as well. You can write an email to public comments at Capitola. It's like that public comments at C.I.Capitola.ca.us Larry, are you seeing anything come in there? Mayor Sturry, I don't see any of the attendees with their hands raised. And we have not received any emails on this. OK, I'll I'll bring it back to the council and the further deliberation and possible action. Is it? Yes, council member Brown. Thank you, Mayor Sturry. I can completely understand the council as a whole's desire to want to show our united opinion about our disappointment of the number of units that we've been allocated as a city. I respectfully do want to remind the council that I've been bringing up the fact that we were going to have a very large number of units coming our way since about September of last year. And I did make many of the points that are in the letter in our meetings. And I know that staff also wrote similar letters to the AMBAG board. And so I appreciate that we would like to do this now as a group. Um, as mentioned, you know, there's only a couple reasons that we're legally allowed to appeal and it hasn't been successful in other cities. However, I do want to note that the state auditor in April conducted a review of the rena process and published their findings in a report and found that there are actions that need to be taken to improve this methodology and the trust in the system of how the methodology is determined, including, you know, amending state laws to clarify how the Department of Housing and Community Development will determine a healthy vacancy rate, determining a formal process for documenting its consideration of factors required by state law and its needs assessments. Historical trends to inform vacancy rates was one of them. Review of the finance department's household formation rates and projections. There was there was a whole report on it. So I think that we're not just seeing this problem at the city level. I know other cities are seeing it as well. And I think that clearly at the state level, there needs to be some changes and clearly the state auditor sees that. And also, I think as we move forward, you know, this only happens every eight years. It used to be every 10 and now it's every eight. But that means that in the next eight years, if we want to see changes that go higher than just what's happening at the ambag level, then really what needs to happen is changes in the regulatory agencies that are, of course, managed by the legislation that determines how they're run. So I think that's something that we need to consider as we move forward is that these agencies are run through the guidelines of the legislation that's created them. And so if we as a city want to consider over the next eight years, any kind of advocacy on behalf of ourselves and other cities to ensure that these methodologies are changed, then that's something that that we should consider. But that being said, I appreciate that, you know, we need to make comment as as a united body, and I look forward to approving that as or supporting that rather when it comes back to us for a vote. Yeah, well, thank you for contributing that additional information, Council Member Brown, and I think your points are well taken. Council Member Brooks, thank you, Mayor Story. I'm not one to eight years. So Council Member Brown, maybe as I think about our process here, I had the pleasure of going to Sacramento recently for the city leader summit and sat down with Senator Layard. Alongside Carmel by the sea, Sand City, Scotts Valley, all of the cities who are who are just as heavily impacted as ourselves. And I think in addition to this letter that we're sending, we should be working or I would like for staff to work with the league on creating a letter including all of those cities that I mentioned to share that we need a funding commitment from for housing that matches the scale of this this new request as well as to look at just what Council Member Brown was talking about the process in and of itself. So although we not that we can't change what Ambe has done, but we have moved past that opportunity and it's now time, I think, to bring in our senators here. And so I would like to see staff work with the League of Cities representative to create a letter in collaboration with the other cities. Carmel by the sea, Sand City, Scotts Valley, and I think there was a couple others I can't recall to to share our concerns. Yeah, just as clarification, that's in addition to the letter that's proposed and affected. Yeah, I mean, I agree. We don't need to do an appeal that that wouldn't make sense. I feel like. That the letter to Ambe might not be as effective as sending this to to our senator, to be honest, Council Member, I mean, Mayor Story, that at this point when I sat down and had a conversation with Senator Layard about this, this is something that he most certainly has the opportunity to do things. There's bills, a legislation on the table right now impacting the funding sources to support housing. And those are things that he he should be aware of and that that we're thinking about and that it really is impacting us. So to answer your question more directly, I think it would be more beneficial for a letter to go to our senator rather than Ambe. Understood. And Council Member Bertrand. Well, I like the letter that you've come up with and with help that was well worded. And I'm glad you brought it to Council's attention. You know, I know where Kirsten has brought it up many times. It's not something that has been lagging, but we're sort of it ahead because of the process as Jamie detailed. Thank you. Yvette Brooks for reaching out to other cities in the area when you were in Sacramento and talking to Senator Laird. I appreciate your your forward motion there on this issue. I recently went to I agree, I think we should send a letter to our our representatives with you, Yvette. I agree with that. And also, I went to a recent housing event and I talked to some staff people of our local representatives and brought up the issue of, you know, we'd like you to come to City Council and give a report on what you're doing in Sacramento. And, you know, I I've found that to be a little bit more and, you know, I I I found that to be positively received. And maybe Sam, you know, as official representative of the city to reach out to our local reps and I know they're all too glad to come here and talk when they're in the in the area. So maybe that's a time when we could let them know we're very interested in this conversation. Yvette Brooks has already talked to Laird about it. So that might be easily covered because he's always aware of the issue in this area. So that's my comment about trying to get our representatives in here. And thank you for bringing the letter up and thank you, Yvette, for reaching out to our representatives when you're in Sacramento. And yeah, I was wondering if you had any feedback about sending this letter to our state representatives. As opposed directly to maybe seeing them back. I think that we should keep them back informed on what we may be addressing it directly to as Councilmember Brooks mentioned. I think that Councilmember Brooks's point were well taken. I think that at the end of the day, the letter to Ambag about this rena process is unlikely to result in a change. I think it's more just officially saying that as a city council, we're very disappointed in their decision making. I think Councilmember Brooks's suggestions are and Councilmember Brown's suggestions are exactly right in the longer term. This is what we would need to do is reach out to our senators and our folks in Sacramento. That won't happen before this process is complete. It'll take time to pull something like that together. But I think moving forward in the longer term, so that we're not in the same pickle eight years from now, or potentially we can get some housing, some funding to help deal with it between now and then I think the letter to Sacramento from a consortium of Monterey Bay small cities is certainly a good call. OK, I guess I just want to clarify. You know, we're currently in the Ambag comment period for this rena allocation. This letter is to meant to respond. And it very well may be a starting point. And but would maybe be a springboard to those, I think, future activities and lobbying that we would need to do longer term. And so. Is there let me is there a motion to approve the letter as presented by staff? Councilmember Bertrand, I'll move that we present this letter to Ambag as presented by staff ceasing our representatives in Sacramento. And I don't know if we could get a joint letter, but maybe that's a little too late in this process. And they're a slightly different situation to. OK, so we have a motion. I think the joint letter would take, you know, that that would be a longer term. Right, right. But is there a second to Councilmember Bertrand's motion hearing on the motion dies for the lack of a second? And. Is there is there a follow up motion? Um, I'd like to make a motion for staff to work with our league representative on a letter to our state representatives regarding the Rena numbers and the housing or funding regarding a commitment to the new housing requirements. OK, is there a second? Also, no. There's a motion and a second by council member Brooks and seconded by Councilmember Bertrand and I'll call on Councilmember Brown. Yeah, I just want to clarify and maybe our city attorney can chime in because the item that we have before us is to approve this letter to Ambag. And so are we legally allowed to essentially vote on taking a different motion not related to our Rena allocation with Ambag? Or can we add that as an amendment to the original motion to send the letter to Ambag? You don't have to make the original motion. I mean, you need to notice the community to the extent that they know that if they want to talk about this topic, they can show up and talk about it. And they think that this motion is close enough to the original what was on the agenda that it's fine. So we're not sending the letter to Ambag? Well, the the the motion on that made by Councilmember Bertrand fell for lack of a second. So, yes, the letter to Ambag, my interpretation is dead. So and there's now I would call it an a alternate motion on the floor now. OK, can I request a friendly amendment? Oh, certainly, yes, you may. OK, I'd like to request a friendly amendment. I wasn't going to second that motion because I am on the Ambag Board of Directors, so I didn't necessarily I'm the president of the board of the directors right now, so I wasn't necessarily sure that it would be appropriate for me to second the motion to send the letter. But saying is how staff has sent a letter and I brought up these these issues. And now we've all discussed the importance of these issues. I do think we need to send the letter and then continue to do as Councilwoman Brooks is suggesting in the short term, work with our senators to get funding for the Rena allocations that we've been given. And then in the long term, try to work to advocate to change the Rena allocation process for the next cycle. So I do think that all three of these things are incredibly important. I just didn't know that I was going to be the only one outside of Mayor Story, who was kind of pushing for it. So if there could be a friendly amendment to that motion, I would recommend that we continue moving forward with the letter to Ambag if to do nothing more than to clarify that we as a body collectively agree with the things that both staff and myself have already brought forward to the board's attention. OK, got it. Yeah, thank you for that. I'll call on Vice Mayor Keisi. Thanks. So I just wanted to clarify, we're sending the original item, the letter to Ambag, basically because that's what's addressing the immediate situation, but then we'll be sending other letters regarding future movement with Rena numbers and and allocations. Is that does that make sense? Yeah, I think that that's kind of fair summary of the motions that are before the council. OK, so that wasn't my motion. And I appreciate Councilmember Brown bringing clarity to to this item. I I have to apologize. I was mistaken that with these conversations we just had that it wasn't going to be effective for a letter to go to Ambag. So I apologize, because that's what I thought I heard here this evening. And so what I'm hearing, thank you to Councilmember Brown for following up that there is some there that this will have an impact and that this is making a stronger statement or making a statement just in general. So now that I've received that clarification, I would like to withdraw my motion and and restate one if that if that's fine with the mayor's story. So let me make sure I get this right. I think as the maker of the motion, you could withdraw it with approval of the second on that particular motion. And that was seconded by Councilmember Bertrand. Are you willing to accept Councilmember Brooks, withdraw all of her emotion of her motion? Yes, I'm there. OK, so we have an amendment to that on the floor by Councilmember Brown. And I don't believe that that's been seconded yet. Well, was I have to make a new motion? Because the amendment was to the motion that she originally made. And that's been withdrawn. Yes, OK. So why don't we reset then and start over with Councilmember Brooks? OK. So once again, I think we've had a great conversation about a lot of great letters and the good we wanted to for our city here. The first letter that's presented today by a staff, I would like that we as a council, my motion is that we go ahead and submit that letter to Anne Bay. And in addition, I would like staff to work with the League of Cities in writing a collaborative letter with our sister cities regarding the Rena members and a and the need for a funding commitment to forehousing that matches the scale of this new requirement. And that is my motion. Is there a second? Well, second now. Is there further discussions on the motion? Seeing none, I'll ask for a roll call vote. Councilmember Bertrand. My second that. Councilmember Brooks. I should have said I. I apologize. I took it that way. Thank you. I was seeking a damn song. I second that emotion. It was driving me crazy. Councilmember Brown. I don't know where my mind was going. Vice Mayor Kaiser. I. And Mayor Story. I, the motion passes unanimously and sounds like it's getting late, so yes, it's getting. I'll move us on to the next item. Which is dental insurance premium refund. And the recommended action is to approve the proposed refund of up to five months of dental premium to city employees. Because of the nature of this particular action, I've been asked to present a preface to this item and then which goes as follows before the city council this evening as part of agenda item. A D is a recommendation to refund dental insurance premium to employees. The city received a partial dental insurance refund from the city insurance provider for premiums paid in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. Those eligible for the refund will include at will management employees and city council members who have paid dental insurance premiums in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. That will management employees consist of department heads and the city manager. The dental insurance refunds for at will management and council members will be between three hundred and seven hundred and forty five dollars, depending on the number of people covered by dental insurance in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. And that concludes my presentation of this particular item. And I will then Larry, did you want to add? I have a quick start just kind of just the really quick staff report if that's OK. OK, yes, please go ahead. I'll share my screen really quick. You didn't cover most of it, but thank you very much. This is just a reminder. This was a dental insurance company provided premium refunds to the city in twenty twenty one twenty two. The city staff pays insurance, the city does not. And because of this, the city staff would like to pass these this refund back on to the employees who were covered during that time. The eligibility for this plan would be you have to be currently employed as the first of May of this year. You had to pay dental insurance premiums for at least one month in twenty one or twenty two. And the refund will be based on what what the employee actually paid. Employee plus one, employee plus two. In twenty twenty one refund, because they did separate out the years in the refund, the majority of it was for twenty one. And it's the number of actual months covered up to with a four month maximum. In twenty twenty two, it'll be one month coverage. Three fund amounts for everybody will range between sixty dollars and seven hundred forty five dollars. Just you know, the refund is taxable for employees. The money that went out originally was not so there will be taxed on it. And the plan would be included on the June 17th paycheck. Staff has reached out to the employee groups and there's been no issues with this, so the recommended action is to approve the proposed premium refund of up to five months of dental insurance premiums to city employees. And that is the end of my quick presentation and I'm willing to answer any questions. Questions from council members. Seeing none, I'm going to see if any member of the public would like to address the council on this item. If you do, please raise your hand in the zoom application. You can dial star nine. Moderator will give you three minutes to speak. Or if you prefer, you can send an email to public comment. That's C.I.Capitola.ca. Mayor Stroy, I do not see any attendees with their hands raised and we have not received any emails on this item. OK, I'll bring it back to council then for a motion. I move the staff's recommendation. Go, Jack. Go. Go. Sorry, I move the recommended action to approve the proposed refund of up to five months of dental insurance premiums to city employees. I'll second. OK, it's a motion to approve the recommendation by council member Bertrand, seconded by council member Brooks. I'll ask for a roll call vote. Council member Bertrand. I approve. Council member Brooks. Aye. Council member Brown. Aye. Vice Mayor Keiser. Aye. And Mayor Stroy. Aye. And that motion passes unanimously which will bring us to item nine, which is adjournment. And I will adjourn this meeting and I want to do so in honor and and I think with our sympathies toward the victims of the May 24th, 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, as well as the May 14th, 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York and with that I adjourned the capital city council until our next regular scheduled meeting on June 9th, 2022, starting at seven o'clock p.m. With that, thank you, everyone. Thank you, staff. Thank you, council members, for your good work this evening. And I'll close by saying be kind to yourself and be kind to others.