 We're online. Are we? Yeah. Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the 11 a.m. public portion of the closed litigation session of the February 12, 2019 meeting of the City Council. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony thereafter. The council members will move to the courtyard conference room for the closed session. I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Here. Glover. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. At this point, I'd like to see if there are any members of the public who would like to speak to us on any items listed in the closed session. Seeing none. I have a brief announcement. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. The closed session item for anticipated litigation, it lists two potential cases. One of those will be taken off of the closed session agenda. The other one, I'm required to announce the subject matter if it's known to potential plaintiffs or whatnot. And that is the intent under the California Voting Rights Act to bring a lawsuit against the Santa Cruz City Schools School District to compel the district to switch to district elections. So that will be the item that's discussed by the council as anticipated litigation. Thank you. Mr. Cendardi. So at this point, I will adjourn the meeting to the conference, the courtyard conference room where the council will go into its closed session. All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our 12 30 p.m. session of the February 12, 2019 meeting of city council. I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Krohn. Here. Glover is currently absent. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. Mayor Watkins. Here. And will you please please lead us through the Pudgetly Nudes. At this time, we'll have some new employee introductions. So if we could start with our director of public works, Mark Dettel, to introduce James Bushnev and Danny DeBora. Is that correct? Great. Mark Dettel, director of public works. And it's my pleasure to introduce two new resource recovery collection workers. Next to me is James Bushnell. He was, let's see, he was born in Sonoma and grew up in Sonoma County and San Mateo County. Currently lives in Capitola. He has a wife of 25 years and an 18-year-old daughter. Let's see, he's has 20 years of driving experience and he's graduated from Westside High School. And what he tries to do when he's not working, he tries to have fun. Still mountain bikes, skate, surfs, plays music with his friends, plays guitars and drums. And he sings. We'll have to hear that at a different time. And he's lived in, kind of a fun fact. He's lived in Hawaii off and on for the last 15 years. His brother lives out there and they kind of go back and forth. So, both nice places. So, please join me in welcoming Danny, James, okay. Next to James is Danny DeBora. Danny was born in Watsonville and raised in Watsonville. Currently lives in Watsonville. He has two children, a five-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. So, we know what he's doing when he's not working. He's very busy with his kids. Worked in, he's worked in waste management since he was 23. And he graduated from Renaissance High School, likes to go camping. And so, please join me in welcoming our two new waste resource recovery collection workers that we're in the pool right now. So, keeping our trash and recycling off the streets and where it should be. Thank you and welcome. If I could now have our director of water, Rosemary Menard come and introduce her new employee. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm pleased to be introducing to you Becky McNulty. Becky has joined the water department as an administrative assistant too. She works in our water distribution section over in the courtyard. And she was born in Hong Kong but grew up mostly in San Francisco and Santa Cruz. She's been working with the city on and off over a number of years. She's worked as a sort of a temp and also she worked at the police department in HR. So, we're really glad to have someone who has already knows sort of city ropes a little bit. She was working over at the Corp yard doing something else and we sort of snagged her off of a list. So, she's one of those great experiences we have here where we hire somebody temporary and then they apply for the job and then they get to the permanent. She's very process and detailed oriented which is really great for that particular group who have a lot of paperwork to keep track of and she's supporting that. She's done a lot of work on software implementation, construction software, so that's a really good match to this particular group also. She enjoys outdoor activities with her family walking on the beach, hiking, running, yoga and she has three college aged children, one going into grad school that we're also working for us at the moment in the transition and that her husband gave her a stand-up paddle board for Christmas. She's looking forward to a chance to really get to use that. So, please welcome Becky McNulty. All right, we'll welcome to our city. So, at this time we have a presentation on street smarts and I will go ahead and hand it over to you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Watkins and city council members. I'm Janice Viscard, community relations specialist with the public works department and I'm here to give you a very brief update on our street smarts campaign with mission to reduce the number of traffic related crashes and injuries throughout the city of Santa Cruz. Street smarts addresses everybody that uses our roadways, so that's not only drivers, but also pedestrians and cyclists. And this was emphasized in our kickoff celebration that took place back in September 2017 at Kaiser Permanente Arena where we had over a dozen community partners, host booths with interactive traffic safety games and activities. It was a very well attended family friendly event. I'll just point out really quick on the slide. The little one in the middle is my daughter. I didn't recognize her. So our year one goal was to raise awareness of traffic safety issues in Santa Cruz and our current two-year goal is to change attitudes and a prime strategy is message repetition. So hopefully you have seen some of these messages on street pole banners in front of schools, on the sides of city vehicles, through social media, on television radio, in print and online. And the bottom message, watch for me, is a new one that of course raises awareness of the vulnerability of bicyclists on our roadways. We've held two informal surveys to date. Both occurred at the open streets events in 2018 and 2017. And they have indicated that our methods of message distribution are working. And another positive measurement of campaign awareness has been the yard signs that we provide free of charge to any Santa Cruz resident and we've given away over 400 of these to date. And here represents one of the videos that we produced last year through our media sponsorship with KION Telemundo. We actually created 10 of these in English and Spanish that aired all last year three weeks out of each month twice a day. And I would just like to share one of these with you now. Our people here on the Central Coast, but some of them still cross the street mid block, which is dangerous. You should always cross at an intersection and preferably use a crosswalk. Don't cross between parked cars and be vigilant for cars turning. The rule is, look left, right, and left again before crossing. And make eye contact with drivers. Otherwise, even if you have the right of way, you may lose. Use your head as well as your legs when crossing the street. It's the street smart thing to do. Brought to you by the City of Santa Cruz. So I'm happy to say that these videos are evergreen. We continue to use them this year. We have a new sponsor with Comcast who is airing these in English and Spanish. And we also boost them on Facebook. I try to boost them for about a week at a time. And in general, we're seeing 200 full views of these each week. And that's only within Santa Cruz zip codes. Last year, our outreach was expanded with the help of Santa Cruz Police Department. We produced four different community events with them. This one occurred in June. It was our street smarts family bike ride with David Tarazas, with Mayor Tarazas. It was a very successful event. Ecology action led the bike ride. We had about an hour at Laurel Park with interactive displays, again underscoring safe rules of the road. Then we all got on our bicycles and SCPT actually escorted us across busy Laurel Street to the Riverwalk. And we all pedaled young and old along the Riverwalk to the Penny Ice Creamery who generously donated ice cream cones for all of us. So it was a very educational and yet fun event for us. Outreach to elementary school students was another focus of year one. We partnered with Santa Cruz City Schools and Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency, presenting nine assemblies to 1600 students across all five elementary schools. And the focus was preventing distractions on the road and in the car. And we actually designed the assemblies in an after-school club at Branstad 40 Middle School. And you can see in the lower pictures the kids, the middle school students ended up on the stage sort of peer-to-peer education performing in the assemblies for the younger kids with the help of a professional musician. And these were very interactive. You can see the kids are engaged with hand movements and sing-alongs, very rewarding events. The principals, the kids, the teachers all gave us great rounds of applause. And I'd like to say we're very grateful to County Health Services for the 1200 hours of staff time they donated in this effort. And they paid for the take-home materials I've provided you with that extended the messaging to get the parents and siblings involved in these traffic safety lessons. Currently, year two, we are doing more school outreach, but this time we are partnered with Ecology Action. We are part of their elementary bike smart and walk smart programs for second and fifth graders. And we just completed 12 assemblies to middle school students, serving about 1200 kids. And you can see we have a street smart to wrap artists there in the center of the screen. We took the same lyrics we used for the elementary kids, but we gave them a hip beat. And you can see how engaged the kids are, so another very successful event. Our year one budget was just under $50,000 and about a quarter of that was donated from community sponsors. Currently, our year two budget is about $27,000 and about half of that is coming from the generosity of these community sponsors that you see listed here. We're so grateful to them. They extend the outreach that we can do. And I must say that our media sponsors also contribute to our outreach greatly. They are giving us a value of over $37,000 in media placements this current year too. And the top of the list is Comcast, who's providing us with almost 350 placements of those videos each month and they air across a variety of networks, including ESPN, the Food Network, CNN, Family Channel. Even some high profile NFL and NBA sports, Fox Deportes, and Galavision. KAZU, our local NPR radio station, is providing us with about 33 spots during commute hours, Monday through Friday. KSCO is doing about the same thing during the Good Morning Monterey Bay Area Show. Again, during commute hour, KZSC, over one a day, Monday through Friday. And Good Times as well is printing our long form ads about twice a month. So we're really grateful to our five media sponsors for year two. And we're not only using these sponsor media placements to distribute our messaging, but we're continuing with outdoor signage in front of schools twice a year on street polls. We continue to table at major events like Open Streets and Earth Day. Our signs are up inside the UCSC shuttle bus. And new this year, the Santa Cruz Warriors are designating student street smarts leaders. And these leaders are getting free tickets to the basketball games and they're getting a street smart shout out at the games. And we also use the Warriors mascot Mavericks and CHP's chipper the chipmunk at many of our events that really just helps attract the kids and gets the messaging out there. And here is the second of our two new ads, Share the Rules, Share the Road. And of course this highlights the campaign's premise that it takes all of us, whether we're drivers, cyclists, or pedestrians, to make our roadways safer. Just to review the campaign progression, year one, we focused on raising awareness. We feel we succeeded at that. Currently year two, we are attempting to change attitudes. And by the end of the year three, our goal is to have succeeded in improving traffic safety behavior within the city of Santa Cruz. And I'd like to note that these objectives all align with the counties and Watsonville's newly adopted Vision Zero plan. And in fact, we are going to be collaborating with Watsonville on media outreach, which is very exciting because it's going to extend the message reach. And I'm happy to say that we have our top sponsors with us today to accept Street Smarts Awards. And Mayor Watkins, I'd like to turn this honor over to you. Great, well thank you so much for the presentation and the celebration of a wonderful program that is demonstration of public and private partnership to ensure the health and safety of our children in our community. So I appreciate all the work that's gotten us to this place today. So it's really with my great appreciation and on behalf of our city, the city of Santa Cruz to present our Street Smarts Gold Sponsor Award to the Monterey Bay Community Power. And receiving that reward on behalf of the policy board is our very own council member Sandy Brown. And okay, and the Four Streets Smarts Media Sponsor Awards will go to KAZU FM 90.3, general manager Miklos? Apologize if I didn't pronounce your name correctly. Okay, okay, Mick Benedict and underwriting executive Jocelyn McNeil. Would you like me to come down one at a time or how would you? That's great, we're right here. The next award goes to KSCO AM 1080 to the program director and host of Good Times Morning Monterey Bay, Rosemary Chalmers. Our next award goes to KZSC FM 88.1, underwriting manager Louisa Cardoza. And the last award goes to NBC Comcast, but we're going to have to hang on to this one for the account executive Ana Jimenez, who is unable to be here today. Thank you to all our sponsors and our supporters and for the presentation. We really appreciate all that you've done. So at this time, we have a special opportunity to recognize a longtime employee, honoring Carol Berg and her retirement from the city of Santa Cruz. So we'll go ahead and invite up Carol and Bonnie. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. I just had a couple of comments. Carol, please, please come up. It's with great fondness, appreciation and gratitude and also a little bit of sadness or a whole lot of sadness to see you go. That we're before you today to honor you for your considerable contributions to the city and the entire Santa Cruz community over close to two decades of service. It would not be an understatement to say that you have influenced the lives of tens of thousands in our community. And enabled the rehabilitation, preservation and creation of thousands of affordable housing units in our community. Allowing many Santa Cruzans to continue to call Santa Cruz home. Your impact will be felt for generations. Thank you, Carol. It's been a true privilege to work with you and learn from you all these years. Before turning it over, I just wanted to say there will be a roast on Thursdays for some of you who are so inclined. It will be in planning room 107 on the city hall annex, all right. We're the real fun. Yeah, okay. Carol, would you like to make any kind of statement? I would, for one thing I'll warn you that I absolutely love the city. And I easily cry, so I'm just warning you in advance. I almost didn't come to the city of Santa Cruz to work 18 years ago. I was coming to my first interview for the position I'm in. And I got to the city day in advance to go to the library, do a little research, and had my wallet stolen. And I thought, is this a sign from the universe that the city doesn't want me? This is not the right place for me to be. And so I, because all my money, all my credit cards, I had $20 in my car and a checkbook, that was it. So I went to the desk at the library and asked them to see if they had my wallet, and they didn't. But the woman behind the counter said, well, I live all the way down in Aptos, but if you want to come, you can stay with me. And I went, wow, this is pretty amazing. And so then I'm going, well, I had my checkbook, which was from a credit union somewhere else. And I naively thought, all these credit unions, maybe they talk to each other. And so I can get them to cash a check without any ID. So I go to the Santa Cruz Credit Union and they say no, no, no, we aren't connected. But the manager said, but I will cash your check personally. And I thought, wow, I guess maybe the city wants me. And obviously it did, because I'm here, and it went well. The thing that I want to say is that I am so grateful to have been here and to work for the city for all of these years because, as you all know, it's such an incredibly special place. And the teamwork that is here. I've worked both in the housing department, started in the planning department or division, and moved over to the economic development department. And in both departments, there was just a sense of real teamwork, really high professionalism and real dedication to the city. And I, having spent half my career on the public side or private side, had a little bit of an impression that was wrong about public employees. And I can tell you it's absolutely wrong because the public employees that I've worked with in both planning and economic development are amazing. They really, the high standards and their work ethics and everything are just terrific. And I want to especially acknowledge and show gratitude toward the team in economic development, and in particular the housing division. When I first started, there were really, we whittled down to two of us. It was Norm Daley who's back there, even though he left me in June, I'm still grateful for him. And it was just the two of us. And over time, about three or four years ago, Jessica Melor, who's also back there, she came along and helped us out. And I'll tell you after Norm left, she stepped up to the plate amazingly. She has been so incredible. And then we're led by Bonnie Lipscomb who you all cannot have a better economic development director than Bonnie. She, these are hard times and they've been hard times. She manages the whole thing with grace. And so I just wanted to express my gratitude to Bonnie as well. And to all of you, because your dedication is truly amazing. And the community, this community, it's so funny because people come here and they recognize what an active community Santa Cruz is because people really do care. As a civil servant, we get a lot of rewards because we're able to make change. I mean, whenever I'm really kind of getting down a little bit, I think about, well, there's somebody who's homeless who actually has a place to sleep tonight because something I worked on and did. Or a family has a house to live in that they can afford. And so it gives me that reward so that the gratitude I have for having this job is real because I get these incredible rewards. I should say that it's hard because we have many masters, we have city council, we have public, we have management in the city. And so it's not an easy job all the time. And I guess I want to say to all of you because these last two years have been pretty tough. There's kind of reflecting the national atmosphere of distrust and all that's filtered down to the city. And we have such an amazing team in this city. And it's just, it's wonderful to be able to work together all toward that common purpose. And I just want to hope that what I experienced when I came here in 2000 and 2001 just strengthens in the city more and more and more. Because it's such a beautiful and wonderful place to live. And I just want to thank you all. And thank you all for allowing me, now I'm gonna cry, to be a part of your lives and to have the privilege of serving in this community that is so amazing. And thank you, and that's it. Carol, I want to thank you for your service to our community and for all your dedication and work and for your kind remarks today. And it's my honor to have a mayor's proclamation here for you. So I'd like to come down and present that to you and then allow for maybe the council members who are interested in to say a few words as well. Carol, I would like to just speak to you personally. It was just so wonderful to hear your heartfelt remarks. Acknowledging your sense of dedication to public service, to the work of providing housing, and to the spirit of public service that permeates throughout the city of dedication. And the rewards that you get for under very difficult circumstances. And demands that are almost infinite, doing really good work to make good things happen. And it was such a personal statement, it really struck home. And I just want to thank you personally for all your many, many years of good work, thanks. That's over, Brown. Carol, I want to thank you for your service and for your dedication to promoting the most effective affordable housing and productive affordable housing development strategies that we can possibly find in a city that has limited resources. I understand that's no small feat. And I feel like this is something that I've not had an opportunity to say to you, I come to you often with questions and potentially critiques of the direction the city's gone. And I just want to take this opportunity to say, I'm really grateful for the patience that you've exhibited in dealing with, and I imagine this has happened with council members before me. People who come in with high expectations and interests and walking us through this process. And it's been my pleasure to work with you, even if that hasn't always come through in our interactions. So I just, I want to be clear about that. You really have made it possible for this council member to really try to most effectively navigate the world of affordable housing policy and practice and you will be missed and your spirit will live on. I might be one of those council members that you're referring to. Carol, congratulations. We go back to, I think, 2000. And maybe we started working on 1010 Pacific and Schaefer Road at that time where we got significant affordability. Back in the good old days when redevelopment was still around. I have appreciated your taking us through over these years, the CDBG process, the community development block grants, and all of that red tape that goes with it and stuff. And thank you, and happy trails. Thank you, Carol, and wishing you the best in this next chapter of your life. Okay, so next on our agenda is innovation of the year award to finance and the city. And so we have a presenter, Richard Lee, who's our finance director of San Mateo. Welcome, Richard. Good afternoon, honorable mayor, members of the council. My name is Richard Lee, I'm the finance director for the city of San Mateo. I'm also a member of the board of directors for the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers, or as we affectionately love to call it CSMFO. CSMFO is the preeminent resource for promoting excellence in government finance. It serves all government finance professionals through innovation, collaboration, continuing education, and professional development. It is a genuine honor to count Marcus among my colleagues within CSMFO leadership. As an exemplary leader, he is quick to direct awards and accolades such as this to his team. Within CSMFO leadership, Marcus is, within CSMFO leadership, which includes finance officers from throughout the state. Marcus is widely recognized as a leader among leaders. For his service to our organization and members. As the board liaison to the Monterey Bay chapter, as well as a colleague and friend. It is an absolute pleasure to present CSMFO's Innovation of the Year Award to the city of Santa Cruz in recognition for its fiscal sustainability action lab. Like many other cities throughout our great state, the city of Santa Cruz's general fund was faced with a $5.5 million deficit in fiscal year 2018-19 with escalating trends over the next five years. Within a short period of time, the city's finance department pitched an action lab concept that tapped the support, knowledge, and interest within supervisors and managers throughout the entire city into action oriented teams that yielded 67 conceptual alternatives of which 10 were incorporated into the fiscal year 1819 adopted budget. The remaining alternatives identified through the action labs can be utilized to address future budget gaps. Without further ado, I'll see the microphone to my esteemed colleague and the city's finance director, Marcus Penancell, to introduce the members of his team and provide additional comments. Thank you. Thank you. Richard, I wasn't expecting that. I do want to call special attention to our team. So just put it in context, 2018 January, we were trying to figure out how to best bridge our gaps, how to come up with those solutions, and we had about 10 weeks to do it. So what we looked back upon that time, it was Cheryl, our assistant director myself, and then Bayer with the city of Santa Cruz, the three of us around the table trying to brainstorm ideas, and we came up with this action lab concept. And what we then realized is we had 10 weeks to do it. We had no staff, no budget, but get it done. And we worked with our Laura Null and our purchasing manager and borrowed her staff person, Elizabeth, who became our point on this project. And we soon came up with the idea of bringing in finance department staff as facilitators. So within 10 weeks, we launched, created this new idea, engaged over 60, we call it a 60-60, we got over 60 fiscal champions within the city, across city staff, who started intimately understanding what was going on in the bigger picture of things. We became quickly engaged on how to provide internal solutions, what different ideas might we think about internally. This complemented the stuff we were already doing with the council on parallel paths with community focused groups and budget 101 sessions. So this was an internal focus, how we might present this internally. So we ended up with over 60 ideas from over 60 managers who became little fiscal champions throughout the organization. And that was the bonus we didn't count on was just that engagement with our staff and having so many people come up to us after the fact and say thank you. Thank you for bringing us in, thank you for letting us participate. Thank you for listening to us and thank you for acting. So we're really proud of the outcome and I really want to deflect anything that you're looking at me and embarrass them. Because it really wasn't without Denise Reed, without Jillian Morales, without Tracy Cole, without Michael Mano, without Cheryl Fife, without Elizabeth Millwee who went on to greater bigger things. Without Jason McCluskey who couldn't be here today, without Jesse Soto who went on to bigger and better things. This wouldn't have happened and I really just want to commend their work because they were already busy doing other work. And when we came up to them and said, hey, can I borrow some more of your time that you don't have? So I'm really thankful for the outcomes. I'm really proud of the outcomes. And I would conclude with a little self padding in 2012, I got the opportunity to come here to the city. And I remember saying things like, we want to create the department of choice and we want to create the best department in the county, region, and state. So I'm honored that the State Society of Finance Officers has recognized the work that we've done at a state level. I won't say we're done, but we've come a long ways and I'm really proud of all of our team who's back in finance. Because you're seeing these folks today, but you don't see all the people who had to step up and help us backfill. I'm just really proud of all the commitment. So on behalf of the city, I thank CSMFO for this award, certainly. Wonderful. Well, congratulations for all your wonderful work and recognition. And we're so lucky to have such a stellar and competent team with such lofty aspirations leading the way. So thank you, Marcus. We'll see you later. Okay. So at this time, I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our agenda and business. So today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television, which is on channel 25, as well as streaming on the city's website at thecityofsanacruz.com. Lynn Dutton is our technician for both this afternoon and evening sessions. Thank you, Lynn. And I would like to thank him for his work. All City Council members can be emailed at citycouncilatcityofsanacruz.com. If you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item, we'd like to receive your email by Monday at 5pm. Before our council meeting. This provides us with an opportunity to review your email and include it in the rest of our agenda packet. Please do bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and the city council constitute public records and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public. Accordingly, if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to have made public, you should not include that information in your correspondence. Our rules of decorum are located on the window edge to my left. And it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside, as well as outside of our chambers. At this time, I will just take a quick moment to read our council interactions, as well as a few statements about the role of the mayor and the presiding officer. So one of the things that we've discussed in terms of the principles we'd like to adhere to as a council include to be respectful. To engage in open and honest communication. To be honest and truthful. To address difficult issues. To find and seek areas of common ground. To be open to different perspectives. To give the benefit of the doubt. To role model good leadership and to be considerate of each other's time. In my role as mayor, regardless of our varying perspectives and politics or policy approaches, is my hope and role is to ensure that we can all at least respect the process. And so I ask that we adhere to the handbook's guidelines for the role which seeks that every council member, desiring to speak shall address me as the presiding officer. And upon recognition of the presiding officer shall confine comments to the question under debate. To avoid all in decorous language and references to personalities and abiding by the rules of civil debate herein stated. And as stated, we may disagree, but we will be respectful of one another. All comments will be directed to the issue at hand, and all personal attacks should be avoided. So that stated, I'd like to move on to statements of disqualification and ask if any council members, if they have any statements of disqualification today. Seeing none. Is there any additions or deletions on behalf of our city clerk? There are not, okay. A brief statement about oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will occur at or around 7 PM. At this time, I'd like to hand it over to our city attorney to report on closed session. Any outcomes from that? Thank you, Mayor Watkins, members of the city council. The city council convened this morning at 11 AM in the courtyard conference room. There are several items on the closed session agenda this morning. First, it was liability claims and involving the claims of Martin L. Herman and Kerry Herman. Those are also listed on your consent calendar this afternoon as agenda item number nine. Several real property negotiations items that the council received a report from gave direction to its negotiators. Those are the properties at 510 River Street. Owner SPG Associates, 600 River Street owner Gateway Plaza Associates, LLC, 700 River Street owner Summer Solstice LP, 808 River Street owners Richard L. Antoni Santy Trustees, and 744 River Street, R&R Santy LLC owner, an APN 00817216 in the same vicinity. Richard L. Antoni Santy Trustees are the owners of that property. Finally, real property at 125 Coral Street. Owners James P. Gillespie and Jean Gillespie Trustees and Marley F. and Sandra I. Gillespie co-trustees. There was one item of labor negotiations involving the SEIU Local 521. Council received a report from its negotiator on that item. There was one item of significant exposure to litigation. The agenda lists two, but one was withdrawn prior to the closed session. Council received a report from its legal council and gave direction. There was no reportable action taken on any of those items. Thank you, Mr. Kandaki. So at this time, we'll move on to our consent agenda. And those are items 4 through 13 in your agenda packets. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Is there any council members wishing to pull an item? Council member Glover. Item 10, please. Item 10, okay. I believe that was the same item. Council member Cron, you were suggesting to pull as well. I would like to pull item 12 and 13. And I'd like to make a comment on eight. And I wasn't going to pull five, but I will now. The oral communications one. Any other items? This 10 is already, okay. Do you want to make your comment on item number eight? Yes, just wanted to point out what a wonderful plan this is. This is the award of contract for consulting services to prepare West Cliff Drive adaptation and management plan. We have a powerhouse of people. It's a local firm and we've got folks like Gary Griggs. Charles Lester used to be ahead of the Coastal Commission here. An old friend, Bill Henry, Ross Clark, who used to be the climate change person. This is like really powerful group of folks. And I just want to thank Tiffany Wise West for bringing this forward and sorting through the bids and stuff, because the bids were awfully close. So I assume the city gave them a certain amount and they all came right to it. But I'm really happy to have the revel. Thank you. And thank you for the hard work, Tiffany, indeed. Okay, so at this time I'd like to see if there are any members of the public who would like to request an item be pulled. Or to speak to us on any items on our consent agenda with the exceptions of items 5, 10, 12, and 13 that have already been pulled by council members. Okay, seeing none, I will look for a motion. I'll move. It's moved, second. Motion made by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Cron. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. We'll begin with item number five. Thank you, Mayor. I just heard you say on or about 7 PM. And I was wondering, I thought the language I was hoping that was passed is at 7 PM. So I would just move that we make that language that says strike on or about but at 7 PM or all communications will be at 7 PM, second. Any further discussion? Just to state the obvious, sometimes for some reason we're a few minutes late. But I think that's the intention of honor about, but if it's going to be at, no one's going to sue us for starting at 703. Before we- Agreed. Okay. And is there any member of the public who'd like to address the council on the oral communications item number five? Okay, so I- I hear what you can just say. This was to align with the council policy that was adopted, and the language matches the policy. So are you suggesting to change the policy as well? Is the motion- I'm just suggesting that language change for sure, if that changes the policy. I don't understand the policy, but I mean- So you would essentially- I would love to see a time certain, that's all, that the public can look at and say, hey, 7 o'clock, okay. And if we start a few minutes late, they'll understand because we went over something from this afternoon meeting. I don't have a problem with honor about personally, but if there's a motion on the floor to change the policy language to remove the word about and a second by council, a motion made by Councilman McCrown, seconded by Councilmember Glover. Any further discussion? The motion is for the councilmember handbook, not the policy. So I don't know if that is an issue. Item before you is the councilmember handbook, that's right. So to change the policy written within the councilmember handbook, correct. Okay, so the motion would be to modify the language under oral communications within the councilmember handbook to remove the word about, correct? Would that be proper? It would be to say at 7 p.m. as opposed to on or about. That's correct, thank you. Which means that we have to go back and change the council handbook. Let me turn again, this policy rather, yeah. It's much ado about nothing. I think it's a distinction without a difference, so that's really up to the pleasure of the council. I mean, I think our intention is clear one way or the other. Okay, any further discussion? I mean, I just want to, I guess I want to weigh in here and just say that I understand the intention is because based on the experience of my time on the council, we have had situations where at or about became much later. And so I understand that concern. And so if saying at gets us closer to in the seven o'clock range, then I understand why this is being brought forward. And so I would like to do something that prevents us from creeping into far a field of the 7 p.m. time, certain. But if, and so if that makes it more clear, then I'm willing to support that. I don't know that it's going to make a big difference in practice. I agree. Okay, any further discussion? Yeah, just I would wonder if it would be acceptable to council member Crohn just hearing the desire for there to be potentially a little bit of wiggle room from 7 to 710. I'm not sure if we want to just say between 7 and 7.05 or something, or if we just want to stay with a hard 7 o'clock. I'm okay with staying at the hard 7 o'clock and then just like we did the other evening with the delegate. I think it would be good, but I'm open to having to be 7 to 7.05 so that we have that window. Councilman, way too much time on this, but it's much easier to control the time since our evening session starts at 7 when oral communications was in the afternoon. There was much more of an opportunity for other hearings to run over and so forth. So if the evening session starts at 7, then saying starting oral communications on or about 7. The only thing is sometimes afternoon does run on we take a dinner break and we get back at 7.15. So let's deal with reality. I think honor about hits to mark. Okay, any further discussion? I just want to state that it doesn't seem like there's been any reason for us to suggest that we're not going to start on or about 7 o'clock. We've already made those changes. And so I think that until it appears that we're starting to drift into the 737-40 range. That I don't think that there's any reason that we should have to change the language now and then change policy at a subsequent meeting. And so I think that it'd be good if we'd move forward with the way the language is now. And if it demonstrates that we need to change in the future that we do so. Okay, at this point, I'll go ahead. I just wanted to make it clear what council member Brown said that it was this floating target. That's the reason to get specific in the language. But if I'm hearing commitments from all council members, so I'm going to withdraw the motion. Okay, so we have a withdrawn motion. Is there a motion then to accept and move? I'll move the item. Second that, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. Item number 10. Yes, thank you. So it was brought to my attention that there was this agenda item with regards to the redevelopment or the renovation of the grill at the De La Viega golf course. Yesterday in our community programs meeting, we were struggling to find money to allocate to programs that serve underserved communities in our population. And so I'm a little distraught to see that we've spent about $925,000 in renovating the golf course restaurant on the, up at the De La Viega golf course. I feel like if we had had the opportunity to look at the numbers ahead of time, because it's my understanding that currently if there's a purchase that needs to be made, it requires to be over $100,000 for it to come to council. So in order to not only avoid this happening in the future where there is a rather large quantity of money being spent on things that, especially considering our fiscal situation that we just heard about and now we are currently dealing with a deficit and the city is expecting excuse me to have to make cuts this year also. That we start really reevaluating and looking at the ways that we're spending our money and reprioritizing it to make sure that we're taking care of the people in our community and the public good, which I believe is not thoroughly achieved by spending close to a million dollars on a infrastructure piece of a golf course that I don't believe the lowest or most vulnerable parts of our community ever use. Okay, is there any member of the public who'd like to speak to us on item number 10 on a consent agenda? Okay, seeing none. Okay, so we'll turn it back to the council for questions and then maybe clarification on the ask around this item. Council Member Brown? I'll make a general comment of concern. I share some of council member Glover's concerns about the general use of city resources for the golf course. However, I understand that this is a particular ask for capital improvement. What I am particularly concerned about today, and I will raise those when at other opportunities, I will continue to raise those in our budget process. When we consider our fee structures overall, the city fee structures. However, today I do want to get some clarification on how it is that we are now being asked for such a significant increase in the budget for this structural improvements here. I mean, it's a pretty significant increase of $600,000 if I- For clarification on your request, is it to ask staff to come and speak? Yeah, okay. Please. How it is that we were so far off the mark and also in terms of the process, why it is that we're being asked to essentially what I understand is approve this retrospectively, retroactive retrospectively, the money, it seems to me, has been spent. And the council was not asked as representatives of the public. We wanted to make that kind of significant commitment. This is city property, and we obviously have a commitment to maintain public properties. But we weren't asked to prioritize this one over others. And so I just want to get some kind of understanding of how we got here and how it is that maybe this might not happen again in the future. So if I hear you correctly, there's two questions. One is how we got here, and two is the request of a retroactive pay. Is that more or less- It's the significant, so the two questions are the significant difference between the initial amount approved by the council. And the actual cost, one, and two, how it is that we're being asked to approve this after the fact. Without being asked as this kind of played out. Okay, and which staff would be your resummoning? Mark, do we have you here? Mark Dettel? Okay, thank you, Mark. Mark Dettel, director of Public Works, and unfortunately, we don't have many projects like this. This was a project that was, we had an active operator for 47 years in this building. And when they moved out, we did an inspection. We had a structural inspection of the facility. And the inspection, 62 page inspection, so fairly detailed, but yet non-destructive. And they said the building was in reasonable shape, but had a lot of deferred maintenance. Well, when we issued a contract to do some of that maintenance and tore some of the sheet rock off the walls, we discovered it was in much poorer condition than we originally anticipated. A lot of the piping had deteriorated, some of the structural members had deteriorated. And so the budget was originally created based on the original inspection. And then some of the work had gotten started once the amount of work that needed to be done. That kicked it into a whole higher level, had to go to the building department, had a lot of code upgrades. Had to install fire sprinklers, ADA improvements, and just the magnitude of that project increased. If that had been a contract, we would have come back to the council immediately and gotten that approval, but we would have been back several times because of the change orders that we would have been held to. This project, unfortunately, would have probably been even significantly more. Because we managed this project in-house through our facilities, we were able to manage those improvements through our facilities budget. Hoping to get to the other end where we can meet the lease commitments that we had with the new operator and turn that over to them so they could start generating revenue. Unfortunately, it's just escalated higher than we would have liked. So I share your concerns as far as how do we not do this, how do we not get to this point again? And one of the things we'd like to do is if we manage projects like this in the future, we'd like to report back to council on a six month basis where the budget is, where the expenditures are, and what we expect to reach the remaining part of that project. I think it was done over several years, so it was done with maintenance funds, which are appropriate as far as facilities, but it did consume a lot of our energy and resources, so. I hope that answers your questions. Yeah, does that answer your questions? For the most part, yeah. Okay, and it seems like a lesson learned, and that's always helpful, so we can modify and adjust as needed. Council Member Crum? A couple more questions. How do we expect to recoup the million dollars? Just so folks know, this is $300,000 that the council appropriated at one point. And then it's kind of $625,000 over budget, but it never came back to the city council for approval of those funds. It was used out of our maintenance funds, which we appropriate from what I understand at budget time. So the funds were just being drawn out of the maintenance funds. And now we're being asked to replenish it, I guess, into the capital improvement. Good afternoon, Mayor and Members of the Council. I was just going to comment as far as the revenue that we receive from the De La Vega Lodge as well as the Pro Shop. And prior to starting the needed improvements and renovations, we were receiving about a little under 160, about 159,000 a year. And this is actually with some reduced hours that we had the restaurant at that time closed at 2 PM. And so the business plan and the model is really looking holistically at both even Shakespeare Santa Cruz and trying to change really the overall attraction of the restaurant as a destination in itself. And other events on site. So their business model, I would expect that when the renovations are complete, the over a million dollars of investment that the Lostalots are putting in the project. That the revenue return, because we do have a percentage sale on gross sales, will be significantly higher than the 160,000 a year. So roughly within, at the very conservative estimate of five years, the city will be repaid for the structural improvements and a lot of the deferred maintenance that had happened over the last 47 years. But I expect it will be significantly sooner than that because of the improved hours and overall appearance and attractiveness of the restaurant. So five years, you think? At the most. Thank you. I have a question for the city manager. Councilmember Glover alluded or referenced the 100,000. Is that, do you know about that like, is there 100,000 dollars, anything over that, it comes back to the city council? I think what that relates to is the authority that the council, that we have to issue contracts and award contracts, which is 100,000. So, and this is different, this is budget authority. There's budget authority with respect to what's actually allocated in the budget. In this particular case, funds were used from the operating budget, the facilities maintenance budget that were allocated and budgeted by the city council. And we used to make repairs on this project. What was unusual about it is that we use operating budgets to fund a capital project. So that's where it varied. However, with respect to your question, the 100,000, that applies to any project, any contract, whether it's construction or whether it's supplies or services. And so that's a council policy that you have adopted. So even though we may have saved some money by doing it in-house, if a contractor had done it, it would have come back to us at every $100,000 along the way. Yes, if there's been, well, it depends on, yes. And also, in this particular case, if the CIP budget was going to be expended and then to be an allocation, no matter what that amount would have been, whether it's 50,000 or 20,000, it would have had to been an adjustment as well. I bring this to the council because I think it's a really serious, serious thing that council members, I feel, should know about just going forward and use this information. Okay, council member Matthews. Just to give a little context, I will say in this particular case, I think this was, there's been a lesson learned. It was not an intention to be devious. Anyone who's worked on an old house knows you open it up and there's some bad surprises in there. I think this is illustrative of the fact that the city has a lot of aging facilities that have often deferred maintenance on them. And when the long time operator decided that they wanted to retire, the second generation wanted to come on and had a very energetic, forward-looking vision of what the clubhouse and pro shop could be for the community. And bear in mind it, over time, became more than just serving the golf course, but came to be serving the disc golf and Shakespeare and with a vision of other ways of engaging the community. So they brought that idea forward with their business plan and with the request to create a new lease arrangement with them. With the idea that the city would make the upgrades and they too would make extensive upgrades on the interior in a way that would make this a much more attractive facility for the broader community. And so, as I say, in the process as the difficulties unfolded, the other alternative would have been to walk away from a decrepit facility with a contract written for some people that wanted to invest in it. I mean, so I think it was a sound decision to work with the new operators of the Lodge and pro shop representing a great vision for the future that expanded the use of the La Viega, both the park and the clubhouse. And in the process, we have brought it ADA accessible, we have made it energy efficient. It'll have a pretty quick payback. So again, just to repeat, I think the lesson's been learned. We'll be a little more careful in the reporting and feedback to council. But overall, I think this is a really good project for the community. So given all that, I'm prepared to move the motion for approval of this recommendation. I'll second. So the motion by council member Matthews is seconded by council member Myers. Any further discussion? Okay. Yes, I was just curious if the staff knew what percentage of the maintenance budget the $920,000 was, everybody know? About 25%, I would say. And just a comment on the $100,000, there were over 30 vendors working on this project. So there was one large contract that went to council, $270,000. The others were smaller contracts under $100,000. All right, I'm just going to continue, if you don't mind, I have another. You have additional questions? I have additional questions and comments with regards to that, yeah. Okay, and then we have a motion on the floor and action and a full agenda ahead. So I'll just remind you all about that. Absolutely, we do have a full agenda ahead, but I believe just in response to that, that this exemplifies a problematic trend of spending in our city, where of all of the maintenance and budget funds, we're spending 25% of them on the development of a single building that serves a smaller population than the larger portions of the city. And as just admitted by council member Matthews, that the city has a lot of buildings with deferred maintenance. So I'm concerned about the equitable distribution of the maintenance funds and making sure that we're using them in the most beneficial way for the largest population in our community, which is one of the reasons why this is so concerning. And I had mentioned earlier in the beginning of the process, the agenda item, that I think that it would behoove the council to be updated whenever there is a purchase of an amount less than $100,000 so that we can be updated because if you look at the transcript here of the different accounts and money, it has 1533, 46, somewhere in there. So I would make the motion to change the policy so that for budgetary allocations on maintenance and or contracts be reduced from $100,000 to let's just say $50,000 at least. So that we can get that kind of an update when there's that expected expenses coming forward. Mr. Cundadi and then we already have a motion before, go ahead. The item before you is simply transferring funds that are already allocated in your budget. You certainly could change the policy to require council to receive reports when expenditures are over a certain amount. That would be a separate agenda item that we would have to bring back with our existing purchasing policy. I'd like to change the motion then to direct staff to come back with a proposed language for a policy change that would make it so that expenses over $50,000 would have to come to the city council for approval. Would that be a friendly amendment? Absolutely not. I'll second it then. Okay, we have a, go ahead. Mr. Cundadi. It's a separate topic. Sorry, I was just trying to ask. I would suggest and I'd be happy to distribute a copy of our existing purchasing policies to the council members. And then we could certainly put that on a future agenda. It's up to the pleasure of the council as to whether to direct it be brought back now. The concern I have about it a little bit is that I don't know exactly what that policy says. And so how to do it in a coherent way, I wouldn't be prepared to offer any advice at this point. Okay, great, so we have, how do you want to? Do you have a motion on the floor? Do you want to withdraw your motion given the information you've heard from our city attorney? Can I make a quick comment? My preference would be that we, and I think it might be worth actually reviewing purchasing policies as a more general review. And that we consider that at that time because I share your concerns and think that it might be worth just looking at them in a bigger picture. I would like to call the vote if we can, please. Call the question on the original. So all those in favor of the recommendation for item number 10, moving forward to the second. I'm sorry, did somebody second, it's a point of order. Somebody second the, and now we have a call to question. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No, aye. So that passes with council member Brown, Matthews, Vice Mayor Cummings, myself and council member Meyers in support, council member Crone, Glover voting against, okay? The next item on our agenda is item number 13, I'm sorry, item number 12, excuse me. Hold by council member Crone, I believe. Yeah, I was approached by several members of the public who would like to speak on this. And I said that I would pull the systems of resolution, authorizing city managers to execute an encroachment permit to Verizon wireless for installation and maintenance of underground conduits vaults at grade cabinets and wireless canister antennas mounted on utility pole at 117 Morrissey Boulevard within the city's right of way. I would like to hear from the public, but if the other council members want to have a question. Okay, are there any members here who would like to speak to us on item number 12? Okay, please light up to my left and we'll have up to two minutes. I had previously written and asked for more time because I'm representing the group EMF aware, I never did hear back. I didn't receive that request, it didn't come to my attention. I sent it several times, yeah, okay. So I didn't see it, so I don't have it in my record for, so you'll be given two minutes, I apologize. Okay, all right, okay, so I want to start since I only have two minutes. This is a letter I have already sent, exhibit A, the conditions of approval for this application. The original application states that if one or more of the following conditions is not met, this approval may be revoked. And number five, the applicant shall be responsible for the completeness and accuracy of all forms and submitting materials submitted in connection with this application. And that the revocation of any approval permits, if this is not the case. So I have found many errors in the report, particularly in regards to the antenna, both Verizon and Sequoia refer to this antenna as a cantana. But in the Hammett and Edison reports, they claim one Amphenol tri-directional panel antenna with one direction activated. So I looked up the serial number they had on the Amphenol website and that model was not listed, could not be found. I found another similar serial number, it was not the same one. And if that is in fact the correct model, it's not a panel antenna. It's listed as an omni configuration tri-sector antenna, according to the spec sheet with a 360 degree beam width for the radiation. So I mean given these discrepancies, I don't know how we can trust the report of the RF specs. I know Hammett and Edison uses a proprietary program to figure the RF. So there's no way to check what they used for the specs. I know none of us are RF specialists, even in the planning department. There's- Thank you, and you feel free to submit your comments and we can pass them around the council. I started late because of talking to you about the three minutes. No, I don't believe so. But thank you, we start the comments when you start your, we start the time when you start. Okay, next speaker please. Please withdraw this application. Next speaker please. Point of order, may I just very quickly? I did- This is a chance for us to hear from the public at this point. It's a point of order though I believe, I believe but I just want to point out that I as well as every other council member did receive email yesterday at 11.36 AM from Ms. Orion requesting additional time to speak. I just want to make that clear, it's on the record. Thank you for the point of order on that one, that didn't come to my attention nor did it get into the agenda. So I didn't have the three minutes. I'd be considering that, point of order, I'd be open to having your additional one minute added if you'd like. You'll have your additional one minute, go ahead. We'll go ahead and come back to you after two minutes, so we can add one minute for her. Okay, that's okay. Do you need your additional minute? Finisher remarks, yeah. Yeah. Thank you, appreciate that, thank you. Okay, so to pick up where I left off, this is not a panel antenna as was stated in the Hammond and Edison report. It is a tri-sector omni 360 degree beam with antenna. So I see no reference to this antenna anywhere in the planning file, which I looked at personally yesterday. I looked all through the entire file. So given this discrepancy, I don't see how any of the other calculations can be correct or be trusted. So given this fact, I ask that this zoning administrator approval be revoked according to the above provisions of the conditions for approval and that you deny this encroachment permit for the installation. I've said many other things in the letters that I've sent, which I hope you also got, that all of you got. They have many things I don't have time to say now, but others who are here, I hope will say. There's a lot of ADA issues involved in this, and those are in my letters as well, thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Mr. Watkins, members of the City Council. I've been asked to read a letter that each of you got a copy of from Nina Beattie. She's too electromagnetically sensitive to be able to be in these chambers. And so I will read parts of it so that I'm at the two minute length. Dear Mayor and City Council, I am disabled by electromagnetic sensitivity, EMS. The proposed cell tower near 117 Morrissey would be an access barrier to me, blocking my access to Morrissey, Soquel Drive, Water Street, and nearby businesses. Despite the well known disabled minority in Santa Cruz, the city of Santa Cruz has apparently never created policy or practices to accommodate those disabled by EMS in city services and buildings. They will protect their equal access or even develop a transition plan as delineated in the ADA Title II Technical Assistance Manual. In 2012, Santa Cruz County Health Officer Poki Nam Kung delivered a report to the Board of Supervisors in response to their request, which evaluated RF health impacts and included acknowledgement of this disabling condition. Where is Santa Cruz? Why the silence? The city has apparently taken no action. It has allowed the downtown area to be increasingly inaccessible for EMS disabled individuals. And now additional small cell towers have been approved at central places such as the clock tower and Trader Joe's. These access barriers reduce vitality, diversity and economic drivers in the downtown and a reactive barrier to goods and services for me and people like me. Morrissey is a primary access point into the city and its main arteries from Highway 1. It's Verizon and other companies, blanket cities with powerful small cell towers in the public's right of way. Even though- Thank you, and do feel free to leave your comments with our clerk here as well. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. I'm Drew Lewis, Santa Cruz. Permitting the development of small cell microwave antennas using technology, wavelengths and energy levels that fall in the category of a class 2B carcinogen, stated by the World Health Organization, would be a direct act of chemical trespass, violation of civil rights under the US Constitution, and violation of the Nuremberg Code under the category of medical practices and medical experiments conducted on populations without informed consent. We are dealing with an industry using a technology that has ominous implications for the health and safety of all people and all living things in our communities. The industry forcing this known health hazard on all of us is paying morally challenged scientists and doctors to fake so-called studies on the safety of this technology. They are using tobacco science that cigarette manufacturers use to lie about tobacco cancer linked. This class and type of technology is already being used as a military weapon of war and crowd control at higher energy levels, at very high energy levels of power. This same technology and energy form is used to cook food in a microwave oven. The California Firefighters Association, CFA, after several years of many documented adverse health effects experimented by firefighters after being exposed to this technology and its microwave radiation have taken an official position of opposing the stationing of microwave antennas on or near their stations. We had an excellent presentation by doctors and scientists on the adverse health effects of the wireless rollout, and I have sent you links on those presentation. Therefore, I recommend that the city council reject any and all proposals to deploy this very unsafe and untested technology in our communities. Anyone who participates in this crime against humanity, who knows or should have known the health effects on the general population. You're welcome to leave your comments. This technology will be liable for all criminal and civil penalties. And I think it's really unfair that you only allow three minutes for public comment. Okay, thank you. Next speaker please, you have two minutes. Dear Santa Cruz City Council members, and congratulations to the new mayor and all the new council members, I hope you're enjoying your time now. My name is Fred Rico Baker. I'm a Vietnam veteran and a graduate of UCSC. I came to Santa Cruz in 1966 to attend the pioneer class of Stevenson College. I'm here to ask you to look closely at the dangers of approving small cell antennas. By the way, it doesn't mean they're small, they're actually pretty big. Specifically, I would like you to not approve the encroachment permit for 117 Morrissey Boulevard. I happen to be electromagnetically sensitive, partially due to the EMF and chemical pollution. I received in Vietnam, including being exposed to ancient orange. My wife and I do our shopping at Staff of Life Market, located just across the street from where the antenna is planned to be deployed. This location of a highly energetic EMF antenna will likely interfere with me wanting to continue shopping at this wonderful health food market. You folks on this council are where the rubber meets the road. This is the place where people like myself can come here and talk to somebody. And I want you to know that you have not only the right, but the duty to when some government agency, and in this case, the FCC happens to be not only owned by big business, but also not really doing its job, which is to protect the people of this state. And the state itself has the right to say to one of these kind of federal agencies that we don't have to listen to them for their rules. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker. Erin Martin and Consul Jackie Griffith. I wish that we were given the chance to finish a sentence when the light comes, just to finish that sentence. I'm not going to talk about the technical part of this. I'm going to tell you the story that for the last 25 years, I've had to bear the same sort of thing that a lot of people give towards the EMF, that they don't understand that people are sensitive to it. People didn't understand that I was sensitive to pesticides. But now look, after all the people laughing or putting you off, now look at what they're talking about or just for roundup, you know? So we know that even before 5G and all the new small sales, we were not meeting what the European standards are for EMF. Just the whole blanket EMF standards for Europe. I really impel you to listen to the people who have trouble with this, because you may be having trouble with this or your children or your elders, and not know it until it's much later. We just have to bear with the troubles that people are going through from it. So please pay attention and do not approve this new cell power installation ever, don't approve any in our public rights of way. We are all people. And you know, all of us who were sensitive to pesticides ended up being the canaries in the coal mine. We got it off of the streets devise. We got it through reductions at the city. We got it off the highways here in our county. You know, it could be saving people's lives. Thank you. All right, next speaker. Is there any other folks interested in speaking to this item? Okay. One more. Okay. Hello mayor and council members. My name's Alyssa Barnes. I'm a long time community member here. I work at a health food store. I work with people's health every day. And I am here to encourage you not to go forward with these more technologies like the cell tower. I want to explain a little bit about why we're in such a problematic situation with them. The cell tower radiation and radiation from cell phones, smart meters, and other radio frequencies as well as EMF frequencies, even from fluorescent lights and such, are a very different situation than we found ourselves in health wise in the past. These are not chemicals as we're used to chemicals creating toxic issues in our bodies. Chemicals have specific actions. The radio frequencies have a more general action on the body. And they layer and they make things worse as the layers come in. So right now we're in a situation where we have many, many layers from personal cell phones and other items. These layers of radiation actually move through the body and they create an issue. It's looking like the main problem factor is called the gated voltage calcium channels. And this is a very small area on the cell that does work by an electrical charge. And that electrical charge is dysregulated through the radio frequencies. So it's very important, even if you are not now electrically sensitive, that we reduce our exposures. So I encourage you to help the community reduce their exposure by not allowing this cell tower. And to look at why it needs to be there and if we can live without it. Because if we can, we will live longer without it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mayor, council members, my name is Tom Davis. I'm a founder and co-owner of Pacific Edge Climbing Gym over in Seabright. I am here to urge you to please take a strong stand against the rollout of all small cells. This is dangerous and harmful technology in the current rollout of millions more cell towers. So right now the FCC is pushing for 2 million more towers in the United States. We have less than 300,000 right now. It is possibly the greatest threat to life that humans have ever faced if this goes into action. There are a lot of issues with this, but the debate is over. This is not opinion. Two-thirds of non-industry funded research clearly demonstrates that, excuse me, RF and microwave transmitting technology is harmful to people and other living things. Radio frequency and microwave radiation is implicated in numerous cancers, DNA damage, tumors of the heart, which have never been seen before. It's brand new, brain, diabetes, as well as infertility and developmental impairment. It is particularly harmful to children, not to mention birds and insects, think pollinators. We can't live without them. These effect can take decades to appear and this technology has only been prevalent for about 18 years. This means that the first generation of humans that grew up with this technology are barely reaching child-bearing age right now. At the present level of irradiation, there is a looming crisis that will cost us our health, our lives, and billions of dollars in healthcare. If these microcells are rolled out, 40 per square mile approximately are proposed for Santa Cruz County right now, it will be hundreds of times worse. There is no data or studies that cover the levels of radiation we are currently exposed to. We do know that it is millions and millions of times greater than what we experienced in the 1980s. Thank you and feel free to leave the comments if you'd like to. Okay, Mr. Lajone, I think you'll be our last speaker. Good afternoon, Council Members. So in 1996, the Congress passed the Telecommunications Act and that did two really negative things. One was it allowed, it withdrew the power of the FCC to prevent mergers across media lines and so as a result now, 22 years later, there's intense consolidation with a handful of media giants controlling 90% of the media outlets. The second thing it did was it handcuffed local communities from being able to turn down cell tower applications based on health concerns. It just said you can't consider health. It's just like your hands are tied behind your back. So what needs to happen now, and there are people like Zoe Lofgren, Congresswoman from San Jose who've been at this for a while now, what needs to happen now is civil disobedience on the part of local communities saying, no, we recognize democracy means that people in the locality have control over their lives and we are not going to be subjecting ourselves to the domination of major corporations. Thank you. Okay, that concludes our last speaker. So at this time, we'll bring it back for action and deliberation. Well, I do have a couple of questions. So we have in the staff report a statement that a recent FCC ruling, and I understand FCC background and all that, but I'm just reading what the circumstances are right now. Recent FCC ruling severely restricts the ability of public entities to regulate small-sale installations, et cetera. And requires a shortening of the permit approval process for small-sale wireless facilities such as this to only 60 days. So what happens if we take no action? It's effectively a denial of the permit which under the standards that are applicable would potentially give rise to a legal challenge. And what's at hand is- Just to remind the council that the item before you was an encroachment permit for an already issued permit. The only issue is an encroachment permit on public land. Right, so the standards for that are essentially are there adequate provisions to ensure the city against liability in the case of a traffic accident or something of that nature that involves the facility? Are there standards to ensure that the free flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic is maintained? Those sorts of standards are what are applicable to an encroachment permit and the Public Works Director could explain that more eloquently than I could. And just a follow-up, if this were a proposal for an installation on private property, we'd have no jurisdiction at all. Is that a correct statement? We have regulatory jurisdiction over proposals on private property. What's unique or what's new about the FCC regulations is the extent to which they curb our ability to regulate installations on public property. So we are in the process with the Planning Department and Public Works in drafting a new wireless facilities ordinance to make it conform to the new FCC order. I imagine or I understand that will be prepared to roll out later on this spring. We also have a limited time period within which to make our ordinance conform to the FCC regulations. And then thank you. Doesn't entirely answer all my questions, but good start because there are still a lot of unknowns. And then it was pointed out that strictly on the basis of the application, there are a lot of inaccuracies. And so maybe if I could get some sort of answer to that. I couldn't respond to the technical aspects of it. And a whole bunch of inaccuracies were. Yeah, I'm Mike Ferry with the Planning Department. So this was approved at the zoning administrator. The plans that the company submitted were analyzed by the RFN engineer and he talked about those plans dated, you know, whatever the date was, July 17. We analyzed those plans and the results of his analysis was that the RF exposure would be less than 1% of what the federal government allows to the general public. And again, this is not on the bigger picture philosophical issues, but it just seems like the models of the equipment in the application didn't match up with what's being proposed. Did I hear that? Is that a correct reading or not? No, the plans that were submitted to us for that public process were referred to by the RF engineer, including the date that the plans were drawn. And his analysis is based on those plans that were submitted to us. And those are the actual elements that would in fact be installed? Correct. So you're telling us is there is no inaccuracy in the application? Yeah, between the RF analysis and the plans that were submitted, there's no inaccuracy. Okay, thank you. Any further questions? Yeah, and just really quick before you go, thank you, Mayor. Have you had a chance to engage or discuss the claims of inconsistencies in the report with the community members that have very specific items that they've pointed to? I just got those emails this morning, so no. Okay, and is it feasible or possible for us to cross-reference the recommendations from the RF staff member that you mentioned before and the concerns brought by the community and have us reassess after your analysis? Cross-reference. So they brought up some very specific concerns that they've identified in the application process. And it seems like your team has not found those inconsistencies. Is it feasible to say that you could then sit with or receive that from the group and then cross-reference your findings with their findings to try to see if you had potentially missed something? Sure. Great, that is wonderful. And then I also, just on the topic of 5G, want to point to a article in Newsweek that was published in May of 2019, titled Radiation from Cellphones, Wi-Fi is Hurting the Birds and the Bees, 5G may make it worse. And in that document or in that article, they cite that in a new quote, in a new analysis, eclipse an EU-funded review body dedicated to policy that may impact biodiversity and the ecosystem, looked over 97 studies on how electromagnetic radiation may affect the environment and concluded this radiation could indeed pose a potential risk to birds and insect orientation and health life. I think it's really important for us to take that into consideration as well as the health implications that have been reported from our community members as well. Okay, Council Member Cron and Council Member Brown. From what Council Member Glover said, I would then make a motion that we delay this and put this off until our next meeting where folks had a chance to sit down with Mike Ferry and as Council Member Glover said, cross-reference and look at what's actually in the application and what they say they're gonna do and what's not in the application. Mr. Condati. The one concern I would have with that is that I believe the staff report references that this encroachment permit application is also subject to the FCC's permit shot clock. So I would hope to get input from the staff on what the timing of that is. Okay, Council Member Brown. Second the motion, we can get clarification but I'll just second it. Well, and also just say that this is, I'm not prepared to support, to approve an encroachment permit without some additional information. There's so much that could be said about that and I have additional questions which I won't belabor here. But if you could answer on the shot clock question, I'm not prepared to support that. We're away over the shot clock. The applicant's been working with us trying to get the encroachment and entitlements. I wanted to mention one more thing on all of these applications after the install is completed prior to us finally in the permit, we do have a RF engineer requirement that they go back out and physically measure the site. And all of those have come in just at where they were modeled. So they'll physically go out before the final of the permit once the machine is turned on and make measurements and report back to us. Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Cron, a second by Council Member Brown. Any more further discussion and deliberation? And hopefully we can move on. Yeah, I would just, I support the motion first of all, but I wanna just emphasize that while it may be illegal or outside of the policy of the FCC for us to resist the EMF transmitters being installed in local places, we have to keep in mind that historically, things that are legal or illegal are not necessarily right or wrong. And as Dr. King said, it's our moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. And if that is the case, I feel like it's important that we emphasize that now. Okay, okay, thank you. Okay, we'll go ahead and... It's wanna say, yeah, for the record that to reiterate with one of the folks in the microphone said, help the community reduce exposure. I think that is the job of the city council. And can we live without another cell tower in that neighborhood? I think we can. Okay, so there's a motion on the floor to postpone this item and return at a future time. Seconded by Council Member Brown. Question by Council Member Matthews. Yes, it's a question. So apparently we are already over the 60 day shot clock. If this were postponed to our very next meeting, simply for clarification of, to satisfy the discrepancies that have been brought up about the nature on the application. Is that doable in two weeks? And does that in itself expose us to legal risk? We're already... Mr. Kundadi? I would defer to the Planning Department on returning with the necessary information as to the exposure to the risk of legal expenses. I would say that it does, but the risk is probably not that great if it's merely a two-week deferral. Under the FCC rules, the failure to meet a shot clock deadline constitutes a presumptive prohibition on the provision of wireless services. So there's not a high standard to overcome for a company to challenge that prohibition. But also just remind the council that the safety aspects of VMF radiation are specifically excluded from the factors that cities in employing their local zoning regulations are allowed to take into consideration. Whatever that's worth. Okay, thanks. I understand that I'm willing to put it off for two weeks to our next meeting, simply to clarify the accuracy of the application. And we've been told by staff that they believe it's an accurate application, but there's question in the public. So to resolve that issue specifically, I'm willing to put it off and I understand all the other limitations on our decision. So we have a motion to put it off for two weeks by Council Member Krohn, seconded by Council Member Brown. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. So Council Member Krohn, I believe you pulled item number 13. That's correct. I was hoping that Rosemary and I could take two minutes or less even, just to show us a few slides of what our $150,000 is going to do in Loch Lomond. I just thought it'd be good for the Council to see this because I don't know if we all, I really wanted to make a field trip up there and didn't get to before this meeting. Okay, we'll have a short maybe overview and. Good afternoon. I just have a few really quick slides. Thank you for coming and doing that, Rosemary. Here we go. Okay, so a number of years ago, I think around eight, we did a study looking at how to sort of what kind of recreation opportunities and other kinds of programs we wanted to provide at Loch Lomond. At the same time, we did a look at the accessibility improvement needs. So the three areas you see here, this is sort of the parking area and then there's a couple of other spots here that we've done some work on that were identified for accessibility improvements. This is the pre-construction area near the store and the restrooms in the lower parking lot that have had work done. So the post includes sort of striping and various kinds of access ramps that you'll see here, appropriate slopes and what have you and there is a new, very popular accessible sort of kind of projected area out here with a really nice picnic table an area that is accessible. So that's been used. The second place is basically the Glencore picnic area. This is one of our areas that's a little bit further up the road but has a lot of use that with some things that were identified in terms of again access to the pass and this is an accessible restroom facility and these are apparently getting a lot of use by people who are using the Lachlan facility. And then the last one is the lock view. This is the one that's on the agenda for today. The lock view, excuse me, it's this one here, upper lock view area. This is gonna have some accessibility upgrades, parking restrooms and this is an area that's being used a lot for our school programs that we're doing up there. So the access to the bathroom facilities and what have you in support of the school programs are a really important part of what's in this package for 150,000 that's on the agenda for you to take action on today. I have some more slides but I think that probably will do it for you. It's great. Thank you, Rosemary. Any member of the public who'd like to address the council on this item item number 13 of our consent agenda? Okay, seeing none, I'll return to council for action. I will happily move this item motion to approve the plan specifications and contract documents for lock woman recreation area, upper lock view, asexual improvements and authorized staff to advertise for bids and award the contract in a form to be approved by the city attorney. Okay, second. So we have a motion by council member Crone, second by council member Glover. All those, unless further discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nope, that passes unanimously. Okay. We are now on to the item number 14, which is the second reading and final adoption of ordinances related to accessory dwelling units. I don't believe we have any staff presentation. Is there any member of the public who would like to address the council on this item? Okay, please to my left and we will have two minutes. Hello, Carol Paul Hamas. Thanks for listening to me again. I built an accessory dwelling unit for my parents in 2003 after their deaths. It has been a long-term rental. It's a below market rental, by the way. My son and I currently have plans in the building department for a second unit at his house, which we were encouraged to submit by planning staff because they were sure that the new looser requirements would be in place a long time ago, which they're not. ADUs, as you know, the city has spent two years trying to figure out how to incentivize people to build ADUs because they cost nothing for the city and they provide housing. I would like to suggest that market rate housing is better than no housing at all because it does increase supply. Insisting that tying affordability to the greater incentives that were identified by all the community meetings and making them required to be affordable units will effectively eliminate those units because these units cost a lot to build and it will eliminate our unit. So I would just like to say if affordability is a wonderful goal, maybe home owners should not be the ones who are required to provide that because if you do require them to provide affordable units, they won't be able to afford to build them. They're just way too expensive to build. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker. Hi everybody, my name is Merrill Lewin and I'm a resident of Santa Cruz. I am in the process of building an ADU. I have stood in this location before. I extended an invitation to most, if not all of members of the council to come see the dilemma that I'm having and three members of the council have taken me up on that and I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. My concern right now is the parking requirement. I am building a unit for ultimately for my disabled daughter. It's not going to be a money making venture and before she moves in, I have a senior citizen friend who is going to stay there until her senior housing comes through. So again, not a money making venture. This is already costing me something like $50,000 more than was originally projected when I started the project a year and a half ago. My problem is that current requirements are that I destroy the two on-street parking spaces in front of my house in order to provide two off-street parking spaces. This ultimately privatizes two public parking spaces and which I think is not the goal of this ordinance. It also will cost me $20,000 to $25,000 to do this and destroy my front lawn. I'm concerned about destroying it for the purposes of replenishing the underground aquifers. I mean, and it's also nice to have a lawn instead of a parking lot in front of my house. My street has plenty of parking. I know that the parking is an issue in a lot of places in Santa Cruz, but not on my street. I've lived there for 25 years and there's always been ample parking. So I'm asking that the parking requirement either be dropped or possibly looked at on a site by site basis because that would really help me out. Thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker. Tim, we'll be speaking for affordable housing now. As I said last time at the last meeting, affordable housing now supports these incentives. We think they're very valuable in producing more ADUs. There was some confusion, I think, at the last meeting about affordability in ADUs. And I think it was forgotten that the city does have an affordability plan in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. It's a wonderful program where the senior has a unit built in conjunction with that and then the house is refurbished. And so the senior gets to live there and a new family gets to move in. And so you already have a program. I believe there are three units that have been that are in the process of being built at this time since that was approved. But in the long term, having more ADUs is really important to stabilizing our rentals because you're adding more rentals at a time when you may be losing them over the next decade. So these are very important. It's a very important thing to incentivize them. And so we support this. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, are you planning to speak to the item? Okay, is there any other member of the public interested in speaking to this item? Okay, you'll be on this. I don't know if you got my email, but there's a little discrepancy with the city code and the state code. State code says that any ADU within a half a mile of transit is exempt from a new parking requirement. The city has that in its code, but then it goes on to define what transit means. It defines transit as the Metro Center and Pacific Avenue. So for instance, this is at my house. I'm living near Bay and Mission, closest to the best transit in the whole county with buses about every 10 to 15 minutes. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't be exempted. I need to live within half a mile Metro Center. So I'd ask you to please correct that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'll return it back to questions in action. Council Member Matthews. Well, this is the second reading of what we arrived at after a very long meeting and a long discussion. And I will be happy to make a motion to approve this. But as a result of that long discussion, there were some components of incentives and changes that were deferred with direction to link them to affordability or to consider linking them to affordability. So I'm just wondering from staff, what's the timeline on that if I have understood it correctly? Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. Lee Butler, the planning director. And really when we're talking about outreach and analysis, the fastest that we can get something back in front of the council is about five months time. When we're talking about ADUs, we've got another legislative cycle that we'll be considering. So five months from now would put us in July, which there's no council meetings, which puts us into August for council. The state bills are passed in August for the governor's signature in September. There may be some changes associated with that rather than bringing two packages back on similar items. We would likely be in the timeframe of late this year by the time we're back with a comprehensive set of information that evaluates the affordability as well as has conducted community outreach and done research into the issues and also accommodated the changes that we're likely to see from the state. Okay, that does answer my question. So I feel strongly that we should go ahead with what we've got and we understand what the horizon is for considering future changes. So with that, I'll just go ahead and move the motion before us for the second reading. Okay, I'll second that. I just have a quick question for Mr. Kandadi in regards to the public transit definition as brought up by email we received and how we define that. With apologies to Mr. Lajanadi, I did receive his email and I didn't have a chance to reply to it between yesterday and today, but in the email, as you will recall, Mr. Lajanadi makes the argument that the current definition of public transit that's used in your zoning code is inconsistent with the state law requirement that we not require parking spaces for an ADU if it's located within half a mile of public transit. And the last round of updates that the council did with regard to this, the term public transit was defined very narrowly to mean just the transit district. Unfortunately, public transit was not a term that was defined in the state statute. And Mr. Lajanadi cites some guidance that was put out by the State Department of Housing and Community Development that suggests that a broader interpretation should be used. I think it's risky to use a state agency's interpretive guidance as a means of determining what the legislature's intent was. But it seems to me that a court, if this issue were brought up, would likely conclude that the term public transit doesn't really need a technical definition. I think he's got a pretty good argument that our definition is too narrow. You might recall that the original draft that was brought before you would have changed that and made that narrow definition only apply to a second ADU on an existing parcel. So, okay. Council Member Myers. So if we made a, just maybe this is a question for Director Butler, if there was any corrections to this existing version, this would then become the first reading again, is that correct? I just want to confirm that. That's right. Yes, that's correct. You could, however, direct that the staff bring back that particular amendment for introduction at the next meeting. Yeah, I would like to, I think there's, and I guess I have a question about, I was one of the council members that visited the site previously mentioned. Is there a process by which not to add more workload to the planning department and trying to get ADUs? I'm disappointed obviously that based on some of the feedback that we received last, at the last meeting, that we have again delayed the production of a very important housing supply in our community, in my opinion, because we weren't able to get some of these changes ready to go. And I know people are waiting. I know we have a lot of proposed ADUs sitting in the wings right now. So I guess, yeah, I'd like to understand if we can come up, and especially in regards to the jump bikes, which I think are a new recognized public transit opportunity now. We have stations all over the city now. So I think there's reason to look at that definition. And I'm also just wondering your feedback on this off-street parking requirement. Is there any kind of review process or anything that we could accommodate so that we can look at that affordability factor of having to build parking spaces in the neighborhood of $20,000 to $25,000? So if you can just give me some feedback, if that's appropriate. Maybe I'll just add to the question. My understanding, because I walked by the location of that place, is that that would be in the range of the public transit potential if that modification came up at a future time? Correct. I don't know about the specific location of the commenter's residence. However, a couple of points. One, as the council's aware, staff was recommending that the parking not be required. And right now it is only required for detached new ADUs and staff was recommending that that just, that it would only apply in the instance of a second ADU on a property. And that would have addressed that potential inconsistency and issues like the commenters. As far as potential options, there are certainly ways to modify the code to address issues like this and to come up with provisions, whether it's distance to a bike share station or modifications to the definition of public transit that we currently have in our code. So there are certainly things that we can do as far as a process that's in place right now. There isn't one, there is a process for it, but the findings for such a process could not be made. A variant requires very specific findings. And so really we would need a code amendment in order to address this type of situation. And if that's the will of the council, then we can certainly look at options to do that. Okay, so we have a motion by council member Matthews to move the recommendation, seconded by myself. Was that a friendly amendment to return at a future time in terms of the definition of? That's appropriate. If that's accepted, seems to me there are a couple of other definitions. I think what I, I understand, appreciate and am sympathetic with this. We got a lot on our plate. I think I'd rather just pass this clean, but those few people who are interested work on it with planning director and come back with a suggestion. Is that workable? You'd rather have direction. Yeah, I have a suggestion. I don't know, Bonnie, could you maybe put that up if you get a chance just in talking? I just didn't know. I think, were you trying to intervene there? Well, just to reiterate the removal of the requirement that the ADUB within a certain proximity of the Metro Center was proposed in the language that was brought to you at the last meeting. It's not here because the council didn't adopt it, but for purposes of moving forward with it, since it has already been reviewed and recommendations thereon have been made by the planning commission, we would not need to go back to the planning commission for that particular modification. So essentially that you're saying that would be the path of least resistance if I hear you in terms of moving forward if we wanted to make that change today? For sure. And if the council doesn't want to delay the implementation of these ordinances, you could move forward and direct staff to return with that amendment at a future meeting. I'm happy to incorporate that in the motion. Okay. And I'll accept that and that encompasses yours. Okay, Mr. Council Member Cron. Thank you. Just listening to everybody and having extensive conversations with staff and with members of the community that the parking issue is a really big issue and an impediment against building ADUs. Even for people who are very wary of going without parking and not requiring parking for the ADU, they may be in favor of what I've outlined here. And I'm asking for a one year to look at this. I moved to amend the ordinances 2019-03, 2019-04 to remove the parking requirement for a new construction detached accessory dwelling units. Additionally, direct staff to return to city council in one year with a report on the status of the ADU program, including statistics on the number of ADUs produced over the next 12 months and the number of those ADUs that are new construction detached units and the number of parking complaints received from neighbors of the new ADUs. The report should also consider the potential for requiring on-street parking for particular zoned areas. Following that report, council could elect to either continue the parking exemption or return the municipal code to its current wording, requiring off-street parking for these units. That would be a friendly amendment if it's a friendly but if it's not, because this has just gone on so long and I think we've all sort of like wrangled with it and requiring parking, not requiring parking but I just thought maybe a middle ground would be to really scrupulously chart what happens over the next year. Do we get hundreds of applications? Do we get, right now I think we're at 50 or something or a year, 40, 50. And if we get lots of complaints and there's areas in the city that you can actually park in where there's lots of on-street parking and there's some that are really impacted like, say, Sebrite neighborhood, for example. So I would like to see a trial period and how many ADUs actually get built and can we relieve the woman who came to the microphone as Louen, I mean, an extra $22,000 for two parking spaces and she's got to rub up her yard. So I'm just putting this out there. I'm looking for a second. I'll second that. Okay, I'll just go ahead. Was that a friendly amendment or a second? No. That's a friendly amendment. Is it a friendly amendment? No. So we have a motion on the floor by Council Member Crohn, seconded by Vice Mayor Cummings to add this additional language as presented here. Okay. If you have a question, Mr. Kandadi, did you want to add? Wondering if, the only concern I have is that the language is not in front of you. But it hasn't been. I love the municipal code provision. I mean, that's clear direction, but for purposes of introducing the ordinance at today's meeting, that language isn't in front of you. So potential next step could be for Council Member Crohn to work with another Council Member, or essentially to bring that forward at a future time, is that? It's always risky when I do this, but I was hoping that I could try to come up with some language if that's the direction. If I, can I make a, just ask a question to try to clarify this while you're attempting to work? And then Council Member Matthews after. So what I'm getting here is, I mean, there are a couple of potential changes that would require coming back, one around the Transit Center versus Transit Corridor language, and then Council Member Crohn's proposal here. And my understanding is the cleanest way to do that would be to direct staff to come back to us with those, potentially those two changes if we have a Council Member majority agreement about that. So I don't know if it might be worth suggesting we split the two and just move the ordinance and then do the other work separately to just kind of get through this. Okay. Yeah. So we have the next step then for him to withdraw his motion temporarily while we address the original. That could be a friendly amendment if it's acceptable to the maker and the maker of the second. Is that acceptable to you? No, I mean, I would like to vote on this today. I mean, why shouldn't we move? You know, this has been part of the conversation. It's not that we're not, we're doing something different. I'll have Council Member Brown explain some of that. Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that we not do it today. I'm just suggesting that we, I mean, we could vote on this now, I'll vote on it now and then vote on the other one, but I'm just suggesting splitting them so that we can just get through it without having a whole bunch of, well, maybe we will still have discussion, but I'm just trying to be efficient here. Council Member Matthews. It would seem to me the cleanest thing if people are agreeable is to vote on the second reading and then consider future direction. Regarding the future direction, it's true that we've hashed over a lot of this and it has resulted in hunting. I also wanna ask, this is a pretty, has a lot of elements to it. I believe we've already asked for a report in about a year on the experience with the new ADU ordinance. Is that correct? Yes, Sarah Noisy with the Planning Department. We are planning to come back in about a year to report back on any changes in production that we've seen and sort of what. It's a result of, are you? Yes, yeah, exactly. And tracking the interventions. Right, yeah, trying to track if there was a key change that sort of took people over the edge to being able to build. Okay, so that's already in place, just to say that. And I think the, if we give direction to come back with a change in the definition of proximity to transit, and we do that at our next meeting, that is a game changer and that can all be folded into our experience that may be significant. But, and also we are about to launch, apparently, a rental task force which we're looking at a variety of issues related to rental housing and certainly the incentives, disincentives for ADUs is a big part of rental housing supply. So it just seems to me that a lot of this is really implicit in what we already have moving forward. Okay, Council Member Glover. I think I'm just from what I'm hearing, it seems like we, I don't know if this is a middle ground or something that can appease both of the people, all the people, but so that we can move forward and adopt the things for the second reading. Could, to ask Council Member Crohn, would you be okay with changing your motion to move to adopt the second reading of the ordinances and then instruct staff to come back with analysis of, or first reading of the removing of parking requirements and the redefinition or the redefining of transit corridors and some of the other things that we've been talking about? Yes. I'll just say that we already have, we have two motions on the floor, essentially. So one is to do, first motion was made by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Myers to essentially move the recommendation and add a direction around the transit potential coming back. That's the motion on the floor. Then we had a second motion by Council Member Crohn with these additional direct, directives seconded by Council Member Brown. Vice Mayor Cummings. Vice Mayor Cummings. Okay, so that motion, I think we could vote on that and then just go to the original motion because that's how the order of process is correct, Tony. So this is going to be an amendment? No, this would be a separate motion that we'll vote on first and then the original motion, unless... Aren't you supposed to vote with the original motion first? Is it, or is it there? No, if there's an amendment, if there's a motion to amend, then you need to vote on that. There's an amendment. Right. This is a second motion. It's a second motion, no. It's as a substitute motion. So we vote on the substitute motion, correct? Okay. Okay, so we'll vote on the substitute motion, which is essentially your motion. Okay, all right, anything, did you have a comment? I do just want to emphasize that there is a distinction between the original motion and what Council Member Crohn is bringing forward because this adds some very specific analysis in what we'll be looking for. I appreciate that staff is already planning on doing an annual report, but I'm not sure if all of the things laid out in Council Member Crohn's motion are included in that report. Do you know if they are or specifically? At this point, we weren't going to be looking at parking. And so this motion would add to that charge, that report pack, to look specifically at parking and parking complaints and parking impacts. And that's why it's important, I feel, that we find a way to mesh them so that we get the definitions, we pass the existing language and we have the instruction for staff for these very specific analysis around parking. So that's what I'm trying to get to is bringing everything together so we can all accomplish what we want at the same time. Vice Mayor Cummings, and then Council Member Matthews. And I agree, I think that ultimately, if we can pass the first piece of this ordinance and then direct staff to include these data metrics for measuring impact and then come back to this in a year with a report pack on that, I think that that would be something that I'd be interested in doing. So are you proposing that modification to the substitute motion that you seconded on behalf of Council Member Cummings? Yes. But are you saying that you, I'm confused. You do want to lift the parking requirement for ADUs? Yes. Okay, so that, I mean, I would just say that we should vote on the amendment and then vote on the main motion as a package. Council Member Matthews. Talk about confusion. I am confused. So this is a motion to amend ordinances to remove parking requirements for new construction, detached accessory dwelling units. Not all ADUs. And it would be to bring back for consideration that, but the motion also includes additional study, directing staff to study the effects of the following and report back in four months, a whole business about doing renovations under the code under which the original ADU was built. And I mean, think what we're asking our parking, our planning staff to do. And we, they spent a year and a half working on ADUs. They brought us a very complete package as existing prior council members know that got punted to three separate meetings. Yeah. And we got a lot of stuff on our plate. This is adding yet more study on yet more issues. I just put that out there. So I'm going to vote against it. I mean, we can go ahead and move forward. Yeah, we're only voting on the motion to amend the city. But the rest, I think what she was referring to, that's another part of this. Do you want to restate your motion then? I don't know. Are you changing your motion then? No. The motion is the full document, correct? No, the motion is, it's- Let's bear it up. The motion is right here, and then the additional study will come from direction to staff. When? Well, right after we pass this, before we vote on the main motion. I did not, this is a whole discussion here on AB 1226, which I wanted to ask staff about. Mr. Kandadi. I was going to say at the risk of testing everyone's patience, like we get the motion restated, is it verbatim of what's printed up there? The first paragraph. If we want to just have the motion that we're making to lift the parking requirement for assessor dwelling units, then it's just that first paragraph. If I may offer- Additional study, no. There's one typo in there. It's the third line from the bottom. It says potential for requiring on-street parking, and that should say off-street parking. I think that's not what's- Is that correct, Council Member Krohn? Report should also consider the potential for requiring off-street parking in particular zoned areas. Because we don't typically, the city doesn't require any on-street parking. We don't require that. Yes, it would just follow the parking program that we already have in place, the permit parking. So that's a motion by Council Member Krohn, seconded by Vice Mayor- Off-street, yeah. I'm changing it to off-street on recommendation of staff. With the modification of changing it to off-street parking. Bonnie. Before you vote, I just have a question. This addresses two ordinances, and there were three introduced. The third ordinance does not cover parking. So this would be the, his motion should include the third ordinance, right? No, because it wouldn't amend that any further. So this would then, I thought this was a substitute motion. This is the substitute motion. That's what I was trying to get clarity on, but I would interpret the motion as the Council voting to amend these ordinances by today's action, which would mean we bring them back for a second reading at the next meeting, as opposed to directing staff to bring just the parking amendments back for introduction at the next meeting. Which would postpone the item further. Okay. So I think we have clarity at this point. All those in favor of the substitute motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. No. With Council Member Cron, Glover, Brown, and Cummings in support of the motion presented with Council Member Matthews, Meyers, and myself voting against. How did you have a question? And that would lead to 2019-05 adopted essentially by, well, no, we would make the motion. You need to go back to the original motion. Which would now only apply to... No, it would apply to all three. You have a lot of stuff to adopt. This is one amendment that was made to two of the ordinances that addresses parking. And you need to adopt the other three. Okay, so do you want to restate your motion? It's not the motion I intended, but I think it would be that we give direction to bring back for a second reading. The language proposed at this meeting plus changes, additional changes to the ordinance that would remove the parking requirement for new construction detached accessory dwelling units. Period. In terms of an ordinance, that's what it is. Second. Okay. So just for clarity. Yeah. Bring back for second reading amendment to section 24-16-140-2, which is section six of ordinance 2019-04, which currently spells out the parking requirements for each accessory dwelling unit. That would be revised from the reference to historic districts and location or proximity to metro center, et cetera. And it would be revised to say no parking is required for accessory dwelling units. I'm gonna vote against the motion. I'm gonna withdraw my motion. It's just going in a direction I feel is way too messy. So I'll let someone else take a crack at it. Okay. Okay, so. I will move the motion. And your motion is to. Move the, what was the second reading, which will now be the first reading in addition to the motion not requiring parking on ADUs. At all. Excuse me. Adopt ordinance number 201903 pertaining to locations proving ADUs and parking standards. Adopt ordinance number 201904 pertaining to ADU permit procedures, occupancy requirements and definitions, and adopt ordinance number 2019-05 pertaining to ADU site standards and building requirements. So, Kezmer Brown, just a quick clarification. And that, are you including the, so we already have included the one year review. So that's already covered. We don't have to cover it again. That's already being done. There's most. So again, just not to beat a dead horse, but we're introducing ordinances numbers 201903 and 04 and adopting final adopting or finally adopting ordinance 2019-05. My understanding is that we already made the amendment based on the prior vote. That's what I thought too. So this is now, that action has been taken in that past as a four or three vote. So now, the next motion, the next action needed to be taken includes what? Just the other 2019-05. But I just read. We already. So that covered. So why don't, would it work to say that we will do a new first reading incorporating the amendments we've discussed about parking. And we will bring those back, all three ordinances back for a second reading at the next meeting. Is that an accurate motion? It's complicated by having three ordinances. If that's the pleasure of the council. The action contemplated by the motion does not require an amendment to ordinance 2019-05. Right. Because the parking has been covered in 05 today. Okay. So the motion that we seek is to adopt to. So how I interpreted the action was to introduce 03 and 04 today with the modifications proposed and to finally adopt 05. So 03 and 04 has already been adopted based on the prior action. No. The substitute action. They were amended by the prior action. Okay. Got it. Is that the motion you're making, Mr. Councilor McHenry? So is this lifting the parking requirement is going to come back to us next time, but. For a second reading. But the main motion is going to be approved today. Just of 05. The whole thing is going to come back. 05. No, because you're amending 03 and 04 today. That's what the motion. Okay. Proposes to do. And there's a lot of other stuff in those two ordinances. I mean, I think overall the end result is we will have one unified ordinance in about six weeks. Okay. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay. So we have a motion by Council Member Cron. Second. Seconded by Council Member Glover. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? No. So that passes. Okay. So that passes was with Brown, Vice Mayor Cummings, Cron, Glover, Meyers, and myself in support of with Council Member Matthews voting against. Okay. All right. So we have our downtown employee commute survey results and transportation item. Maybe we'll just take maybe a two minute, three minute break. Yeah. And we have no idea what motion we just have. Could you log me on? Do you want to know? Yeah, please. I need a log. Our Chamber staff, you don't? That's where it is incorrect. Try again. No, just accept it. You could come and log off. Just when it comes back up, you shouldn't log off. Sit down. Good job, Johnny. That was good. Everyone was trying to say, I'm like here, okay, this, we're amended these, we're just gonna top this, vote on it. Goal then. Jim. Close. There you go, right there, exactly. Yes. Okay, solid. Now the little one with the scissors. I'm right with the scissors. Oh, is that where it lives? Good afternoon. My name is Jim Burr and I'm the transportation manager and Claire Fleister is here, a transportation planner for the city. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and start the meeting again. We're back in session and we'll go ahead and thank you. We have our staff presentation at this time. Go ahead. We are really excited to be here to present and to actually move forward with this next piece of Go Santa Cruz, which is a fancy way of saying transportation demand management or TDM, those are all interchangeable throughout this. What you'll see today is a direct result of the action taken on June 19th, where a parking rate strategy was adopted that identified dedicated funding for TDM for at least the next five years and hopefully beyond. So we're just really excited to move forward on this. When we presented it at the commission, one of the commissioners thought it was like Christmas. This should be a really great item and here we go. So good afternoon. As Jim mentioned, I'm Claire Fleister, transportation planner, brief overview. I know you have a packed agenda, so I'll try to make it quick for you. We're gonna go through what transportation demand management is, just high level, the background of our approach and how we came to the proposed program we're presenting to you today, a review of our second annual downtown employee commute survey and finally get to our staff recommendations and hopefully implementation of a really, really amazing program. So transportation demand management broadly is just using our transportation system more efficiently, using both our roadway capacity and our parking capacity more efficiently. Our whole goals around this are to maximize the utilization of our existing parking supply to save as many parking spaces as possible by offering alternatives, to maximize mobility for our downtown employees, to maximize options for them to get downtown while minimizing congestion and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. Our approach to TDM and Santa Cruz is we call it meet people where they are, recognizing that there's no one size fits all or silver bullet solution that's going to be the right answer to all employees at all times. We really wanna support our downtown employees with options and incentives that work for their lifestyles, recognizing that we have everyone from office workers, to administrators, and from baristas to bartenders, a whole wide variety of individuals who make up our downtown workforce. Our goal around this and the focus of our survey recommendations are to focus on where we can move the needle. And the big thing here is focusing on our office employees and our drive-alone employees. The second one, the people who are driving, those are the people who we wanna encourage to switch modes. They're the ones who are coming downtown and we wanna offer them an alternative. And then focusing on office employees, and this is a generalized term for those folks who have a regular Monday through Friday, nine to five schedule. It's a lot easier to encourage habit-building changes when you have a regular schedule that you can build around. If every morning you can take the 8 a.m. bus and you can take the 6 p.m. bus home, that's a lot easier than having shift work where some weekdays you have to take a different one and some weekends you take a different one. It's much harder to build a habit around that. Also, focusing on the modes have the most interest. Rather than tell folks that there's only one solution that's gonna work for them and we're dictating that this is the right answer, we wanna offer a wide variety of solutions that some people may say, biking is the thing that interests me and I wanna try that. And others may say, carpooling with someone that lives near me and works near me might be the right solution for me. And finally, focusing on the top motivations, thinking about what is going to be the thing that's going to encourage and incentivize people to change modes and focusing on those behavioral-based incentives. We did a second annual downtown employee survey. This past fall and the results of it are really exciting. We've done the first one in 2017 and after we got council direction in September of 2018, we moved forward in November and December with our second annual downtown employee commute survey. What we found was that 61% of downtown employees drive alone, this is significantly lower than the national average and the next two things that are in a yellow box were the most exciting to me. You may have gotten the press release we put out last week that the city of Santa Cruz has the second highest rate of bicycle commuting in the United States of America. This is huge, we're excited about it and citywide we're at 13.2%. In our downtown, we're at 16.5% of people who bike and this statistic is just astronomical and we really wanna make sure that we're focusing on where we've seen success and where we can continue to build. Overall, you can see the rest of our mode splits here but our overall program goal is to reduce our drive alone mode split to 50% or below. This would be resounding success for us and it's something that we're gonna continue working towards and it's what this program is built around. When we did our downtown employee commute survey we asked people a lot of questions about their commutes. Some of them were how do you currently get downtown now? So this is just a summary of the top three modes. It's driving alone, biking and then walking. And then we also asked questions about when and how they travel and what their work schedules look like so that we can really build our program around that. So on average 68% of our survey respondents work full time. This is again that regular repeated schedule that we're able to build around. 50% start work in that AM peak period of transportation where we do have higher levels of transit service and knowing that we have 50% of people coming downtown at the same time that enables programs like carpooling. And finally 47% of our downtown employees commute three miles or less and what this means is a 20 minute bike ride. It means that we're looking at what programs are actually feasible for our downtown employees and really getting to know what that workforce looks like so we can build our TDM program around that. In our opportunities groups that we identified, the first was drive alone and the second was office. This first snapshot, again, 68% work in offices. They start work between 6 and 9 AM. Again, a high percentage that's in that AM peak and half live within five miles. It's a little bit of a further bike ride more like a 40 minute bike ride but still achievable if you feel like doing it. And the top alternatives when we ask people how would you think about getting downtown? What mode would you be interested in trying? The top was biking. The second was carpooling and the third was motorcycle and that third one was surprising to me. Looking at all office employees, 81% of our office employees work full time. Again, regular repeated schedule habit building. 65% start in that AM peak commute period. Carpooling becomes a big choice that you can make and 71% live within that five miles. Top alternatives for our office employees that they were interested in trying. Again, biking was the top choice. Carpooling was the second choice and walking was the third choice here. So looking at matching programs to what people are willing to try. We ask people when you drive to work, why do you do it? What are the most important reasons? So we could start to get around motivations that we could look at behavior change. And we asked them to ranked choice. They had a bunch of choices in front of them and the top choice that we heard in both the top choice, the second choice and the third choice was that riding the bus is inconvenient or takes too long. People were identifying that transit didn't feel like a choice to them. At the same time, there were people who identified that transit was a choice for them. And so recognizing that there's this variety of experiences but being sensitive that many people feel like transit is not an alternative for them. I'll get into this more later, but just to preface, none of the scenarios that will be before you today include any increase in transit service. So identification here that riding the bus is inconvenient or takes too long, that it doesn't come frequently enough or run late enough or go where they need to go is not addressed in any of the scenarios we're gonna present to you and is the largest barrier that was identified to people taking transit. Excuse me, Claire. Were students a category that was on? Excuse me, Council Member Cron. I'd like to have the presentation and then hold for questions by all council. And if you can, please address me directly. I'm just wondering if students were a category. I realize that you have a question, but if we can, we'll finish up her presentation and then you can ask your questions and you can go through me for your questions, okay? Thank you. I appreciate your respect in that way. Continuing on, we also asked people what, and this is for the entire Universal Survey Respondents, what alternative mode would you be interested in trying? If driving became prohibitively expensive or inconvenient, what would you switch to? And over 50% of survey respondents said that biking was the thing that they would try. The next most popular option was walking followed by carpooling and vanpooling. Again, asking people what are the options that you would try and matching the proposed program to that. We also asked people what would encourage you to use alternative transportation? What are the things that we can do to incentivize this mode shift and make it worth it to you? We know that as long as driving is the fastest, most convenient, most affordable option with the least amount of barriers, people are gonna continue to do that. So what would be the thing that would change your mind, change your behavior? And by and large, what we heard was financial incentives and saving time. And so being able to show that alternative transportation is time competitive with other modes, all things considered, including the time spent parking, as well as what financial incentives could we give people that would make it so that they're not paying for parking. Instead, maybe they have a bike share membership or transit pass. So looking at those things that would really meet their needs and encourage them to try something new. Now we get into our staff recommendations. So to recap, on September 11th was when council made the recommendation to approve the updated parking rate strategy, which established a recommended program budget of $300,000. Staff took this number, $300,000, and we deployed our second annual Downtown Employee Commute Survey. We took the results of that and we developed three scenarios, which this should read scenario one, two, three, and four. I translated this from Google Slides to PowerPoint. So scenario one is bike focused, scenario two is bus only, scenario three is multimodal, and scenario four is a Downtown Commission recommendation. The first three scenarios, bike, bus, and multimodal, were the staff generated scenarios that we presented to the Downtown Commission. All three of those are more or less within that $300,000 identified budget that we were working within. The fourth scenario, the Downtown Commission recommendation, is essentially a combination of scenarios two and three, and it recommends a program budget of $585,000. And before I get into the scenarios to reiterate, because transit will likely be the thing that we spend the most time talking about today, none of these scenarios include any increase in transit service, frequency, or coverage. Scenario one, invest in biking. This was not our staff recommendation, but is the most heavily aligned with what the survey results said, that biking was the most popular mode that people would be willing to try and that biking would work for many, many people. The specifics of this scenario are included in your staff report, but recognizing that we have a packed agenda, I'll move past this to the ones I think we're gonna spend more time talking about. Scenario two is investing wholly in transit. This was based upon a staff level proposal worked on by City of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Metro staff. It would provide transit passes for the approximately 4,000 Downtown employees under a program commonly referred to as an EcoPass. An EcoPass is very, very similar to an insurance pool where you cover the entirety of the group recognizing that only a portion of that group are going to utilize the services. Within this it is approximately $35,000 above the budget that we had established, but does provide for just transit passes and marketing. There is no budget in this scenario for any other programs, biking, carpooling, walking, incentives, but it does provide transit passes to all 4,000 Downtown employees. It is the least responsive to the Downtown surveys of both 2017 and 2018. Scenario three is our proposed staff recommendation and is one of the two recommendations before you today. This is our staff recommendation. It's within the $300,000 that we had established and we think it has the greatest chance of moving the needle towards achieving that 50% drive-alone mode split. There are some real, real high points in here and the components of this program are covered in detail in your staff report. This would include the purchase of bike link cards to give Downtown employees to utilize our bike lockers. It would develop the first of its kind jump subscription membership service. It's something we've been working on with our partners at Jump to be able to provide jump memberships to our Downtown employees. It would have bike commute challenges in May and October through partnership with Ecology Action, our great partners who are already do this type of work. It would also fund a 3X increase in our transit mode split. Right now, as you could see in the Downtown Employee Commute Survey, approximately 3% of our Downtown employees utilize transit to get to work. This would provide enough budget, this identified budget here under transit, $94,000 would purchase monthly transit passes to cover 9% of our Downtown employees. This is a dramatic increase in the number of employees who are able to get Downtown for free with a free transit pass in their pocket over what is there now. This also funds a commute management platform and carpool incentives. Education and encouragement really focused on bringing that education to Downtown employers and offering lunch and learns at different sites rather than expecting people to come to us. Marketing and incentives, so really getting the word out about the program and letting people know about all the great programs we have to offer, as well as purchasing incentives from many of our Downtown businesses to offer as prizes. So say you, we offer a campaign that if you walk to work 10 days this month, you're entered to win dinner for two at Lely Downtown or if you sign up a buddy to take transit for the first time, you're entered to win a cup of coffee at one of our Downtown businesses. So we think that scenario three is a really, really well-rounded program that has a huge opportunity to be able to encourage and incentivize employee mode shift, meet people where they are and offer that wide variety of programs that really will make an impact on our Downtown employees. Scenario four is our Downtown Commission recommendation. And our purpose is with saying, I think there's a couple of things that we didn't do a good job covering at the Downtown Commission. One of the big areas of discussion that came up was the difference between offering monthly transit passes and offering an EcoPass. The recommendation that came out of scenario four out of the Downtown Commission was to take scenario three and add scenario two to it. So all of the benefits I described in scenario three and also add over $200,000 to fully fund an EcoPass program. The discussion that came around that was the idea that the provision of everyone having a transit pass in their pocket automatically would make transit more accessible and easier to use for people. And the piece that I did not do a good job communicating is that the method of delivery for getting transit passes to people would be no different in scenario three or scenario four. We do not have a contact list of all 4,000 plus Downtown employees. We do not have the mailing address to just drop these in the mail and get them to people. There would have to be, as with all EcoPass programs or transit pass programs, a verification that you are a Downtown employee and then you have to come in and get a pass. So that there is a step in between that is exactly the same between scenario three and scenario four. Additionally, in my professional judgment, the money we have budgeted in scenario three to provide for a 9% transit mode split will be more than enough in year one to measure and analyze and see the impact of transit investment. And I do not believe that we would achieve a higher mode split than that would we invest in scenario four. That being said, the recommendation that came out of the Downtown Commission was to combine scenarios two and three into scenario four for an annual recurrent budget of $585,000, which is about $285,000 over our recommended budget. Scenario four also does provide all the benefits that I identified in scenario three and would be a path that we could take to move forward. So to reiterate, our staff recommendation is still scenario three. It is within the established program budget and the direction that we were given from you on September 11th. It really does achieve our goals to meet people where they are in a fiscally prudent way that does provide alternatives and options to all Downtown employees. It really does address the survey data that we heard in both 2017 and 2018 that people have a wide variety of interests and needs in how they travel. And it responds to the high interest that we heard in biking, the most popular program component, and also the tripling of transit ridership. It can be implemented in phases and rolled out ASAP. Moving forward to scenario three, we can go out next week and buy transit passes. Moving forward to scenario four, we'll take probably a minimum six months to establish an EcoPass program with Metro, with board approval, et cetera. And we're really just figuring out the backend data. And finally, I think scenario three is a really smart year one investment. It will allow us to track the data, track the effectiveness, track the utilization, and then come back to you in year two with recommended changes based upon how our Downtown employees are actually traveling and really does recognize the changing nature of our Downtown employment and residents as well as the changing nature of transportation. So that, thank you. And I'm here for any questions you have. Thank you, Claire. Thank you both for your presentation. Now's the time for council questions. Council Member Cohn, if you have a question. Thank you, Mayor. When you did your surveys, was there any category for students when you asked them about how they got around? And then, I mean, because the community that I'm part of is the bus is pretty popular and it does go where people wanna go generally. We did not have a student question, but I think getting- A category for students they said, would you work Downtown, are you a student? We did not ask if people are students. Yeah, one thing that may be helpful to what you're getting at. In many EcoPass programs, and I think what we would propose if we move that way was that people who are otherwise covered by a transit pass, so all UCSC students as well as Cabrillo students would not be eligible for this program. It's modeled off of what Boulder does. You have to verify that you're not a student and you don't already have a pass. Yeah, I just wanna get out of how popular the bus is for some people. The survey, 4,000 on page 15.4, there's 4,054 and then 248. How does that match up with the numbers that survey people say you really need to do to get an adequate survey? Is it 5%, 10%, 3% or no off hand? Does it seem like a low number of respondents for 4,000? Yeah, it was a lower number of respondents than we had in the first round of our downtown employee commute survey. That is likely because we got direction in September and wanted to deploy this as soon as possible. So our survey was slam in the middle of holiday time, which as we know in downtown is a really difficult time, especially to reach retail and restaurant workers. So our second annual survey was lower than our first survey, although the results were incredibly consistent between the two lending me at a high degree of confidence in what the results say. The scenario 4 said doing business flex 50,000, what is that? Oh yeah, I like that one. So one of the recommendations from the downtown commission was a recognition that as I really bluntly and ungracefully put it, we're probably gonna get this program wrong. We're making these projections on what people are gonna try to use and there's gonna be an area that we budgeted too much and an area that we probably budgeted too little and that $50,000 flex fee is, they referred to it as the speed of doing business fee. So if we are oversubscribed in a number of people who want bike locker cards, we can use part of that fee to just purchase more cards out of that budget or if more people want a carpool, we can allocate more funding to that as well. And that's only for scenario 4 but not the other three scenarios or is it in every scenario? It's only in scenario 4, although it could be an addition that you could add to any of the scenarios. And the last question, six months to get the program up and running, that seems like a lot, but what's the obstacle for that? What are the hurdles? Yeah, so between us and Metro staff, we had come up with this staff level proposal. The steps that it would take in order to get it set up and running is that we would then have to meet with Metro staff and negotiate a firm proposal, which we would have to ground truth and figure out a lot of the details. How do you play cards? How do you track those cards? How are you monitoring and reporting? How are you really flesh out those details of a firm scope? We would have to then take that to the Metro board for approval. And then because that contract value is over $100,000, we would have to come back to council for approval as well. And then subsequent to that, launch a marketing campaign and then get fair media into people's cards. So it wouldn't be an immediate thing that we could launch. Council Member Myers? I just have a couple of questions. So my understanding right now is our transit ridership for downtown employees is around 3%. Correct. And your projection, if under scenario three, is that it would triple. It will provide sufficient budget for it to triple, yes. And with providing the 4,000 employees with the eco pass, do we see a difference in that predictive accomplishment or not? I, through all my research, have not found any other transit systems that have increased their ridership significantly solely based on the provision of free transit passes. The largest areas that you see increases in transit ridership are when you provide more frequent transit service and more make transit easier to use. I, in my professional opinion, do not think that we would get a larger number of people riding transit in scenario four than we would get in scenario three. And under scenario three, if based on your calculations and if we made adjustments, if we, for example, ran out of the budget to purchase the monthly passes, we could put a contingency in number three, say of $50,000 that was specific to just bus passes, monthly bus passes. So if we got a high demand, we could certainly accommodate people by adjusting the budget on scenario three, but maybe not to the extent of scenario four. Correct. If you were to make a motion today that included the provision of an extra $50,000 or just added $50,000 to the transit line item, that would accommodate that. Two more, well, one quick question and then just a comment. What, is there a set of metrics that you sort of have in mind, as you, you know, that are maybe best practice to sort of look at how these different modes are going to be able to be delivered and then the data presented to us, you know, sort of after our first year, I guess. Yeah, I am really looking forward to coming back to you and presenting the effectiveness of this program and the reach that we have. One of the elements that's included in scenarios one, three, and four is a commute management platform and there's also a line item for a small contract with the College Action to sign people up for that commute management platform to go out and do targeted outreach to make people aware of this program that we have. Through that commute management platform, it's essentially, it'd be a partnership with the RTC, it's essentially a one stop shop where you can go on and you can see here's the benefits that the City of Santa Cruz is offering and here's all the things I can try and one place I can figure out how to access them. It's also the place that we would have a contact management tool so we could send out surveys, we could ask people what would you be interested in trying and how can we match you up with those resources and then we can have people track the trips that they actually take to be entered to gamify the system essentially, to be entered for those dinners out incentives or bike lights or helmets or sign up for different programs. So we're gonna be able to monitor it in that way and we're also gonna be able to monitor in anyone that comes in, we're gonna ask for their contact information and tally up how many people are using that. So really looking to monitor this program to be able to make those year two program recommendations to you that are reflective of how effective it was. Yeah, I'll just close with I think the most important thing that we need to keep in mind is that we need to have a robust program to lower our GHGs and I think that based on the survey data and others that you've presented us with a solid recommendation and I think that people want to choose how they want to reduce their greenhouse gases at this point and I appreciate you giving us that full picture. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, Council Member Glover and then any other questions before public comment? Thank you. Thank you for all of this wonderful information and for putting it together and looking at all the different angles. I was curious if you know or if any of my colleagues that sit on the Metro Committee know what is being done currently to improve bus transit in the Santa Cruz and specifically downtown area. Do you happen to know if there's a timeline or any kind of plan associated with improving service? I'll defer to Council Member Mattis. This is a task we got someone from Metro in the audience. Yeah, thanks for having me. And refresh the rolling stock, the buses. The addition of articulated buses has been a big goal in that. Get new buses to replace the older ones, adding technology that provides for knowing when your bus is coming, which is really important for making electronic payment, easier, feasible and so a whole package of electronic upgrades that make operation quicker and more convenient for over the hill and in town. Public safety on the buses and for drivers. I should say that the big cost is in personnel and routes and I think most of you were paying attention to a few years ago when the Metro went through its real economic crisis and had to make some very hard decisions on routes and frequency. And there's an ongoing discussion about how do you balance those two issues? How far out do you go remotely or how do you concentrate on the most well-traveled routes? So I'll just say in reference to earlier discussions about access to transit, that's to some extent fluid. And there are a whole lot of other forces. But I would say there's a range of both operational and capital steps. Every meeting, we deal with those. But I honestly don't see addition of routes and frequency as a silver bullet here. Barrow, you wanna correct me if I have misrepresented that? Okay. Okay, more additional questions? Yeah, thank you for that. And then you had mentioned earlier, Claire, that we don't have a list of all of the businesses and employees in downtown, right? We don't have contact information for every single employee downtown. Employee, right? So is there not a system that we could develop that would either catalog how many employees are at each business and then submit the cards to the business to be distributed by the employer or to ask for the contact information of their employees so that then we can send them bus passes directly? Is there something impeding us from being able to do that? We could, there are a couple of different models. That's not the typical model that's been used. Especially for larger businesses, we have many, many businesses downtown who are five employees or less, but especially for larger businesses, usually an HR person is the point of contact who verifies their employee roles. Typically, eco passes are only available to full-time, non-temporary employees who do not have another transit pass such as from a university. So someone at each of those employers is verifying and saying here are eligible employees. And then typically send those employees in to pick up their pass. There is always the possibility of having a different method of program delivery for then distributing those passes in that way, giving them to each of these employers instead. That would be an alternative. Okay, okay, thank you. And then a question from Vice Mayor Cummings. Any additional questions or we'll open it up to the public after that. You have a question? I think I have a question. If you have a question, you can let me. I had a follow up on the question that Councilman Glover just asked. And did I hear correctly that the bus passes would only be available to full-time employees and not to any part-time employees that work downtown? Typically, and we could always change it. Many other programs that are, that this would be based on eco pass programs are only available to full-time, non-temporary employees. And is this also the same for the other bus pass options? No. But you could always provide different direction on that. Then another question I had, looking at scenario four under the marketing and incentives. Sorry. It says that there'll be an additional $20,000 for transit-specific marketing. And I'm just curious why, like where that comes from, because in scenario three, it's just the $55,000. It doesn't really explain why there would be a $20,000 increase under scenario four. If we're gonna invest over $300,000 in a transit component of this program, my feeling based on conversations with other eco pass programs is that that investment should have our full weight behind it and should have additional specialized marketing behind it. It's a significant increase in cost over what's identified in scenario three. And I think that if we decide to move forward with it, we should have our best foot forward and add to the marketing budget there. And just for clarification, is there any information on what the current use of bike lockers is, because I know that's proposed, is something that we would be? Yeah, and I'm sorry, I can get back to you on that information. We're actually preparing the next update on that report right now and it'll be going to our downtown commission at their next meeting. So I don't have that off the top of my head. I'm sorry. And then I have just one more question. Is the, if the programs are successful, what is the anticipated or estimated reduction in the number of vehicles that would be able to anticipate being downtown? Yeah, do you want to take this one? This is a good complicated question on. So if you just use rough numbers, if we get to that 50% goal and you ignore any increases in car share, because we're figuring all those people now either bike or bus or ride, then the percentage difference equals about 440 people. However, I just want to point out that's not 440 saved parking spaces. It is 440 less trips, but we turn over most of our parking spaces at least twice and some of the more popular lots, you know, up to four times a day. So it takes, you know, four less trips to replace one parking space. So because we have a shared parking model in downtown and we have, we're essentially like a 23 hour downtown, many of our coffee shops open at 4.35 AM and many of our bars close around two. So we have people who are downtown being employed at almost all hours. Those people who are coming downtown, it's not necessarily not a seven day stretch of the week. So some people are Monday through Friday, some are late night, some are early morning. So as Jim said, about 440 cars would not be coming downtown, but that wouldn't be a direct one to one relationship between 440 spaces automatically saved each and every day as part of this program. Complicated answer to a direct question. Okay, Council Member Matthews and then Council Member Crum. Yeah, just to point out that what we're talking about here is a reduction in or more efficient transportation modes for employees. It doesn't count residents or people visiting downtown for any number of reasons. So correct on employees. And then I too was interested in the issue of part-time employees for EcoPass and describe to me how an EcoPass works. Is it for a year or? Yeah, typically EcoPasses are a form of fair media. So right now, if you're familiar, UCSC students have their student ID cards and this identifies them as a student and they get a sticker when they go in. And it says this is now good to use the bus for one year. Well, without getting into a whole lot of detail, I'll just say I would support exploration of some variety of bus pass for part-time that could maybe be a whole lot of our downtown employees, our students that could be for a half year or part-time or something. So I think that's maybe a program detail. It seems to me that the target for users of EcoPass is ambitious and by expanding some possibilities for part-time employees, it could actually have a higher usage. Yeah, the direction could. Understanding the students have the student pass, but you know. Yeah, the direction could be to cover all downtown employees or regardless of how frequently they're employed. Anyway, something to look at, yeah. Any additional questions on this side? And then was there a question here? I'm having a bit of a challenge making the numbers add up for scenarios two and three. So I just want to be clear here. I've added them up and they don't seem to match up with the narrative. So I just, I want to make sure that I'm clear here. So scenario three, we're at 200, it says 291, but when I added up was 290K, including bike transit, commute, carpool, education, then the marketing and incentives and a contingency fund under scenario three. With scenario four, including full funding for the EcoPass program, I'm adding up, the addition is $224,000 increase in the transit column. I've created columns here for full funding of EcoPass and then additional $20,000 for marketing and incentives. So that adds up to 525K, which would actually cover the 9K to 10K contingency plus the 50K contingency recommended by the downtown commission. So I'm not clear how there's no contingency. So it was the 225K that you got to, as well as the $50,000 cost of doing business. That gets you to the two. Okay, thank you. Speed of doing business, I'm sorry. Speed of doing business, yeah, and that's identified and my pages aren't numbered the same as you are, but on the top of the page above the recommendation. While the program budget was established at $300,000 per year, the downtown commission recommended to increase this budget by $50,000 to address any emerging needs. So it's not like in a night-to-night size? No, it's included in one of the paragraphs. Thank you. Yeah. Is there an additional question before we open it up? So there's 4,000 full-time employees downtown. Plus or minus, which changes seasonally. Yeah, and would you, you would probably have any idea, like 20-hour, 30-hour employees? We do have that information that's in the survey attachment and one of the slides did present the percentages of those that were full-time employees. No, but also 20 and 30-hour employees, has it covered that? I believe so, I'd have to look back in, yeah. The last question is jump bike. Was that in scenario four as well? And how does that play itself out? How do I, how would I get a jump bike subscription? Is it free? Do I pay something for it? So right now the program that we're working on with jump and they've never done a program like this before, so we're volunteering to be the guinea pig here because we think this is a worthwhile program that they're building for us. It would be something very similar to the monthly plan that we have available through jump right now, but it would be for downtown employees and you would get the city would pay for 15 minutes of ride time a day at a reduced rate and then anything over that the user would pay. 15 minutes of ride time a day is likely enough for at least your one-way commute, being that the service area of jump right now is within the city of Santa Cruz. So it's about on a e-bike. It's about that three mile radius we have from downtown. All right, at this time we'll open it up to public comment. If you're interested in speaking to this item, this is item number 15. Please stand up to my left and you will have two minutes to address this. Okay, go ahead. Rick Longinati from the campaign for sustainable transportation. Glad to be here with you all this afternoon. It's really a nice event to be voting on transportation demand management. Just want to reiterate that the students at Cabrillo College are really an inspiration to me. So a couple of years ago, they voted to tax themselves $40 a semester. Everybody, every student $40 a semester in return for a bus pass for everybody. And when we were on campus campaigning for that, we were running across students that would never use the bus. That's not how they got to school. But they thought that they were doing the right thing. They voted on it again about a year later and it was an overwhelming majority of students voted for that. So that model of that sort of insurance model where we all contribute and everybody gets covered even though there's a smaller number that would take advantage of it. Actually, in this poll that the staff took, 62% of the people who responded to that poll indicated that free bus passes may be an incentive to switch modes. So there is substantial support. There may be more support for bicycling and carpooling, but there's substantial support for running the bus. And lastly, I just want to say that there's something that's going on here today that we haven't even talked about and that's really the social equity piece. If you wanted to do something to affect a household's transportation and housing costs put together, this would be the thing to do. It would be the downtown commission's option four. And that on this chart, we see housing and transportation costs, cities like Riverside have the highest, at 69% of a household's income. San Francisco, 54%. And we know how astronomical housing is in San Francisco, but the difference is people can get around without owning a car. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hi, I'm Brett Garrett. I'm on the downtown commission. Thank you. I'm also a part of a campaign for sustainable transportation. And I'm speaking for myself about why I think it's very important to fund the very full EcoPass program where all downtown employees have access to those bus passes. One reason is on pages 20 and 21 of those SurveyMonkey results that you all got. The question that was asked was what would encourage you, Mr. Employee, or Ms. Employee, to take the bus downtown? Subsidized bus fare or free bus passes? So they're answering would have subsidized, would a free bus pass encourage them to take the bus downtown? 36% said yes, strongly agree. Another 26% said, yeah, I agree. So 62% agreed or strongly agreed that a free bus pass would encourage them to take the bus downtown. I think that's profound. Also, I just wanna point out the downtown commission did unanimously vote to include the full EcoPass and those extra money. It's a wonderful discount. It's a 90% discount on what it would be to provide a pass for all those employees. On the other hand, the staff recommendation is about a 16% discount. It's $54.5 per bus pass that the city would be paying under the staff recommendation. One thing I wanna say about the staff recommendation, I don't agree with the prediction that it will triple the bus ridership. It's 1728 transit passes, that's 144 per month. Which is not much more than the people that are riding the bus anyway. So who's gonna be first in line for those bus passes? Is the people that are already riding the bus? It doesn't meet the TDM goal. I'm all for those people having free bus. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Are there any other members of the public interested in speaking on this item? Good afternoon, council members. My name is P.S. Cannon from College Action. I'd like to thank the staff and the city council for taking on this item. I think it's important to enact programs that have a direct climate change impact. And this program would do so. 50% of the greenhouse gases mission emitted locally are from the cars that we drive around. And also I wanna state in terms of programs versus projects, the city's taking on a lot of good projects to reduce our drive alone trips. But this is a program, and this is a program that can be enacted quickly and gives people who already have the tools, they live within distances to bike and walk, take the bus or car pole to be able to utilize. And so I think it's important as a pilot program that it goes off as well as possible. But it also I think it'd be viewed in the lens of being iterative that you do it the first year and then you make changes. You don't get stuck in one mode and one direction that you say the overall goal is to increase sustainable transportation. There's a variety of modes that people can take besides driving alone to downtown to work. So whether it be the bus, bike, walk or car pole or a scooter that you look at all those modes. And I think in terms of the original staff amount, a 300,000, if we can put in more towards the 585,000 in EcoPass and look at the totality of all the programs that we're serving or forms of transportation, I think that's a good investment. Putting most of it towards one mode of transportation, sustainable transportation, seems like it maybe is not the best use of resources. But I think whatever program you move forward that making sure that's enough resources and also remembering that it is a program that giving someone a free bus pass and then expecting them somehow to just wake up and say, again, take the bus today is not the course. You need to have follow-up campaign to give them the education support to move that forward. Okay, next speaker please. My name is Susan Cavalieri. I'm also with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. I am concerned that only 248 people responded to the survey out of the 4,000 possible downtown employees and I suspect that many of the people commute from places like Watsonville, where the cost of living and owning a house or rents are much less. So if a person can't ride the bike from Watsonville, it becomes necessary to provide them with bus passes. The cost of parking has increased and many of these people may not have the funds to pay for these extra parking fees. The problem is that we can't continue business as usual. The planet will not sustain our children if we don't do something very, very dramatic. So I believe that going with option four is the best way to go. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mayor, council, Jackie Griffith, I'm getting tired. I hope I can think of the things I wanted to say to you. There's some tweaks to this. I would support number four. I think we need to do everything. Excuse me, I'm gonna just pause you. Did we start there? I just want to thank you. Go ahead, I just wanted to make sure that your time was started. So you'll have your full two minutes. Yeah, but am I losing it because you've cut it? No, we... Okay, let's see if I can rattle here. There are some tweaks that I would do to that. I'm not sure about offering somebody a chance to win a cup of coffee or a meal. If that costs us on our staff time, I think that might be a place where you could adapt that. And if you get some freebies offered by a company, great, you can come up with some easy way to pass those out. But it seems to me that if you're trying to trim this in some way, that there might be ways that we could look at, because like Rick was saying, people need to do this, people want to do this, people, I would offer, if I were offering an incentive, I would say anyone who's involved in any of these programs can come to this event and have a big group picture taken and put that in the paper to acknowledge people for they're having taken a step in the right direction towards caring about our climate, rather than giving little things and having to administrate that is all. Oh, the other thing that comes to mind, yeah, I support, it shouldn't just be for people who live in the city, there should be a way for people in unincorporated areas, at areas that cost less to live in, to get here if they work here. I think it should include temporary employees. And I think that bicyclers should have the option of having a freebie a few times, so many times a year because there are times when it's raining or the kids are blah, blah, you know, there's all kinds of reasons why people can't ride their bikes at a particular time. Okay, thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hello, I'm Dana Bagshaw, and I was founding member of Bus by Choice that's been going on in the city for a few years now. Yes, bus is not the most popular way to get to town. And yet, public transit is a way that we can dramatically decrease our greenhouse emissions. So we just need to give it a big push. We've had a lot of people who support biking and it's very visible, and I think it's a good thing. There's a lot of people who can't ride bikes, and there's a lot of people who may want to try public transit. It's just the spontaneity of having that pass in your pocket and being able to just try it for a year and see how it works. I think that marketing is very important. I also would like to volunteer our services. The Bus by Choice, we'd like to go out, collaborate with the city and go out. We're the ones who know how to ride the buses and encourage people to ride the buses. We've gone to businesses with the Keep It Cool campaign. We can do it again. And we just really want to get behind this and I would ask you to rethink meeting people where they are and challenging them. We know now more and more people are getting on board the Green New Deal. Everyone knows we've got to do something and this is a way we can do it. So I strongly encourage you to vote for the one that for number four and the Downtown Commission, the voice of the people. Maybe we can work through the Downtown Association as well to get out to the businesses. So there are possibilities here and I'm very excited about it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Is there any other member in the audience here aside from you who is interested in speaking on this topic? Okay, you'll be our last speaker. Okay, my name's Becky. I'm a manager of a Downtown restaurant, cafe. I just wanted to speak up for my staff. It's 90% part-time. They have bus passes because they're students but we open at 5.30 and we close at midnight. So the buses aren't running at that time. Most of them live without out of your range. So biking is a possibility but I wonder about the safety when the average age is about 20 to 21 years old. So that's something I'd like for you to consider here because right now they're paying $8 which is for a minimum wage worker that's the majority of an hour's worth of work that they are paying to be at work. So I would like for you guys to consider adding something for them if they can get a discount parking, if they live without a range or something along those lines. That's it, otherwise I think it's a great idea. Thank you. Okay, well then we'll close at public comment and return to council for deliberation and action to council member Matthews. Yeah, I wanna first of all thank our staff for several years of good work on this topic. And it's true that not every single downtown employee was surveyed but I think these surveys represented a good effort and give us really good useful information. I very much support the idea of a multimodal approach to this. Just to back up the components of the multimodal I think are based on best practices. We say what are the best practices? Best practices include incentives. Best practices include asking people what will be most appealing to them. And so I am prepared to move option three with the following changes that we under the transit give direction to explore eco passes or similar bus incentives for part time downtown employees and that we take $10,000 from the marketing and incentives and put it into contingency which would then create $20,000 in contingency. My thought there is that could as the popularity of any given option manifests itself that we can then adjust the funding. And if it turns out that the eco passes are wildly popular that's $20,000 to direct as needed. But to me that acknowledges the fact that biking has been our most significant alternative. It's what people wanna do. It incorporates support for transit for carpooling. It plugs into so many different options within the budget that has been established. And I think this is really important too. We just voted on our restructuring of our parking fees and permits. The new structure accommodates a steady cash flow at this point of $300,000 to support TDM. And I think our staff's done a really good job to look at demand options costs and so forth within that budget. I think we can make enormous gains. It's impressive the changes that were made in what, two years in alternative modes downtown. I think everyone who spoke is correct. People know and they wanna do things. And so we're trying to offer the biggest spectrum to improve those numbers dramatically. So I also agree with Piet's comments. It has to be iterative. We expect to be, even throughout the year, analyzing, adapting, coming up with a more effective, more impactful program in the coming year. So with all those statements, I'm going to move option three with those two comments that I made. Can I ask you for clarification on those? The intention behind Snare of Three was that those monthly transit passes that we would purchase would be available to part-time employees, which I think addresses one of the things. And then a clarification of the $10,000 from marketing and incentives. Do you want that move to the transit line item budget? To contingency. Okay, thank you. Which is going to be used for transit. So we have a motion by Council Member Matthews. Yeah, I'll second that. I'm curious if you would entertain a friendly amendment to increase, potentially add an additional 30,000 that could be designated specifically to additional, if we get the demand for additional bus passes that we make sure we have, we have enough in this year's budget that we could accommodate that. 30,000 is not going to break the bank. I'm not willing to double the budget on the TDM. You'll accept the friendly amendment, is that correct? Okay, so, and just to state the obvious, if it doesn't get used, it doesn't get spanned. So the next year, I'll move right now. We have a motion by Council Member Matthews and a second by Council Member Myers. Any further discussion? Council Member Croft? Thank you. Yeah, I just think that scenario four is far superior and it really gives people a chance to who wouldn't normally take the bus to consider taking the bus. I think that's such a step in the right direction. I think that the bolder experience portrays that. And also, they got into those other kinds of buses that would go skip and hop and I see, well, my vision for Metro would be that they do similar things to that. I think the infusion of this capital too into the Metro system is a really positive thing and it helps the whole system and it helps maybe them contemplate adding routes. So I just think that we should go for scenario four. It's really comprehensive and it's doing the best job. Just in seeing it and hearing from the Downtown Commission, unanimously approving it, I was kind of surprised, but they got it, thanks. Council Member Brown? So I just want to say I support the proposal developed by staff for its multimodal approach and significant efforts to collect data to back up the recommendations for our investments. However, I also believe it's time that we take a leap and make a significant investment to encourage public transit and make its use more affordable for Downtown workers. I appreciate the efforts of staff in developing and conducting the survey. I also share concerns raised by Ms. Cavalieri regarding self-selection bias in the survey responses and wonder about many Downtown workers who weren't represented who may actually, if bus passes were made affordable, to them switch their decision-making around commuting from distances further afield than the three-mile radius that is reflected in the survey results. So I understand this is a significant investment in the grand scheme of things. An additional $285,000 seems to me a good investment to encourage public transit. Another speaker, Mr. Alonzo Nadi, suggested that this is really about social equity. And so I would support the recommendation number four, the recommendation made by the Downtown Commission. So I'm not prepared to support the motion at this time. I also want to say that I would like to see future consideration of extension to part-time workers and future consideration for folks who live outside the, so not just for Downtown workers, but folks who live around transit corridors. And I understand that's obviously going to take some more time, but I just want to put it out there that I'm very much interested in hearing more about that from staff in the future. Council Member Glover, and then Vice Mayor Cummings. Yeah, I was struck by the figure that was presented by one of the speakers about the approximately, I think it was Mr. Garrett, Commissioner Garrett, who mentioned the sheer volume of people that said that they would be considered, they would consider using a bus pass if it was made available to them, over 60%. I mean, that's a pretty considerable number of people that would be considered using it. And I do agree with Council Member Brown that it is a significant investment, but I'll call us back to you for those of you that weren't here this morning or this afternoon, and I guess we just spent $925,000 to renovate a restaurant at the DeLavig Golf Course, which does not nearly serve as many people and does nothing to mitigate climate change. So I think that it's within our responsibility to do everything that we can to move forward as expeditiously as possible, so I'll be supporting number four. Okay, Vice Mayor Cummings, and then I have a comment. First of all, I'd just like to thank staff for all the hard work you all have done. I think it's something that we can all celebrate knowing that Santa Cruz is now, in terms of bike riderships, among the employees, the second highest bike ridership in the country, and I really hope that we can continue moving forward to be not only the highest in terms of bike ridership, but also one of the lowest carbon emitting communities in the country as well. So I just want to thank you for the studies and the surveys that you all have done to bring us to where we are now. And moving forward, I just want to also support the recommendations that came from the Downtown Commission. I think that right now we are in an opportunity when we can invest and see how well if we invest heavily into our sustainable modes of transportation, what can come of that. And I think that the one piece of that too would also be, as it was mentioned earlier, that we extend this to part-time employees because not all of them are students and many of them face financial hardships that this would actually help to alleviate a lot of that if they had this as an option. I'm very much hoping that we can track data over time so we can understand whether or not we do have, like what is the increase in ridership, how much our jump bikes are being used, how much biking, because if we can then scale down, I think that it will at least give us an opportunity to see what would happen if we give this our full potential. And so I'm going to be supporting the downtown commission's recommendation today. Okay, I just have a brief, I have a brief question or kind of comment, but in terms of the social equity lens, how, it sounds to me like both, pretty a lot of the scenarios and a lot of the efforts are actually sort of oriented around that. Do you have any response to that? Yeah, functionally they're equivalent. In scenario three or scenario four, if you want to transit pass, I'm going to get you a transit pass. Meet your needs. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I think what we'll do is we'll take the vote on the motion on the floor. And if that fails, then we'll have an additional motion made. So all those in favor? I would like to make one more comment relative to that because I can see where it's going, but the item option four, which I expect to be coming at us next, basically by purchasing an eco pass for every single downtown employee, doubling the amount of funding that's been allocated for this, I think is an irresponsible use of public funds. Option three in my mind has a generous allowance for provision of eco passes to those downtown employees who want them with a contingency that can cover substantially more than anticipated and the ability to change mid-year. But to spend $300,000 on eco passes for everyone, not knowing if they want them or not, I just can't understand that. It does seem to me like an irresponsible approach. I'm just going to put that on the floor. Okay. So we have a vote. Let's go ahead and move the, there's a motion by council member Matthews to move scenario three with a few modifications, which included taking 10,000 out of marketing and incentives and adding that to contingency with a friendly amendment by council member Myers to increase that to 50,000 additional contingency funds for support. So we'll go ahead and vote on that motion and then further discussion. You can go on for the additional motion. I mean, with all due respect, if council member Matthews wants to withdraw her motion after going around for comments, we can, you know, vote it down. We can vote it. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor of the motion on the floors, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. No. Council member Brown, vice mayor Cummings, council member Cron, council member Glover voting no, council member Matthews, council member Myers and myself voting in support. Council member Cron. No, go ahead. Excuse me. Okay. So now we're reopening the discussion and somebody can make a motion moving a different type of direction at this time. I mean, I would move the council, I'd move the downtown commission's recommendation, I think as stated in the staff report. So there's a motion by council member Brown to move the scenario of four, which is the downtown transportation commission's recommendation. Is there a second? Second. Yeah. I'd like to second that just with the response to council member Matthews that it is really interesting just to look at the way that we prioritize our funds. And when we talk about a misuse of public funding, because I'll bring it up again, we heard from the public works director earlier this afternoon that we spent 25% of our overall maintenance budget on one building, which serves a very small population of the community. So this is something that could appeal to and support the entire population of downtown employees. So if I would question the definition of misuse of public funds. Okay. So it's okay. So this is a time for us to continue to move in a direction that's going to lead to policy action. And everybody can have their opinion on how, and you can have your moment as well. But I hope that we can maybe take a moment to remember when we can use our discretion of language as needed. And if it's the interest of moving things along in the direction of the majority of the council, we can go ahead and do that. So at this time, I will acknowledge council member Matthews and then council member Crohn and then hopefully we can move the item as the council desires. Just for the purposes of those who were not present at our earlier discussion, the expenditure for capital improvement at the De La Viega Lodge and shop was a capital improvement, which will result in increased income, which anticipated a payback of those expenditures in five years or less. This is an ongoing operational expense. They're apples and oranges. Okay. So we have a motion by council member. Friendly amendment. One second. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion by council member Brown. We have a second. First scenario number four, we have a second by council member Glover. Council member Crohn, you'd like to be recognized by me. Friendly amendment to actually direct staff to come back with us and figure out how many of 20 and 30 hour a week part-time employees there are. And what does that scenario look like as far as if we were to cover them, how much that would be as well? If I may. Staff, go ahead. The eco pass proposal that's before you would be to cover the universe of 4,000 employees. So we use the high number for the budget calculations. So any of them would already be included in that budget number. It could potentially go lower. Oh, I think you said there's 4,040 hour a week full-time employees. No, there's about 4,000 plus or minus employees in the downtown workforce. A portion of them are part-time. That's really good to hear. Okay. So you remove your friendly amendment because it's encompassing. But think of the greenhouse gases we're saving to and that's an unwritten thing here. So I think that's a part of this whole scenario is that we are actually gonna save money and it's gonna be a great payback. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. No. No. So that passes with Council Member Brown, Vice Mayor Cummings, Council Member Cron, Council Member Glover in support with Council Member Matthews, Council Member Myers and myself voting against it. Okay, the next agenda item. Second, I have a motion that I wanted to make related to transportation. Okay. So number of members of the community have come forward and have expressed that given the changes in transportation demand and different options for transportation in the future, a number of the members of the community came forward and wanted to have a study session on transportation demand management, focusing on parking, pricing, downtown, these alternative forms of transportation, including the EcoPass reform of parking requirements and leveraging affordable housing downtown. It's proposed to be on March 9th at 7 p.m. And the people who would be presenting would be Adam Miller-Ball, Professor from Environmental Studies at UCSC, Pharaoh Emerson, Chief Planner at the Santa Cruz Metro, Patrick Siegman, Transportation and Parking Consultant who worked for 15 years for Nelson Nygaard and Sibley Simon, who is President of the New Way Homes. I'm gonna second that. So you have a motion by Council Member, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Cummings, second by Council Member Cron, Tony, Mr. Cundadi. Might suggest that that be brought back at your February 26th meeting for action. Okay. So the motion could be to agendize it for action at the February 26th meeting. Would you like to make your motion to agendize it for action? Okay. So the motion now is to agendize that for action on the 26th by Council Member, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded by Council Member Cron, Brown, then Matthews. If we're agendizing for action in future meeting, I can make my comments then. That would be the appropriate time to do it because you can't have a discussion about it here. Does the motion to set a TDM study session include the specific presenters called out, or does it ask, is it to direct staff to develop a study session for the education of Council? It's to include the presenters who were announced. No, only those presenters. Vice Mayor Cummings, sorry. If there were other presenters from staff who wanted to be included, I don't see why we couldn't have them in the conversation. I think I'm going to go ahead and stop the conversation. We'll have more conversation. So this is the motion to agendize an item presented by Vice Mayor Cummings to have a study session. I will be voting against this because I feel that there has been already a plan laid out in terms of expectations and various types of study sessions, but if the Council is to go in favor, we can do that. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. So that passes with Council Member Brown, Vice Mayor Cummings, Crohn and Glover to agendize this for the 26th for discussion. Council Member Myers, Council Member Mathews and myself voting against it. Okay, so now we'll move on to the tenant protection item which is item number 16 in our agenda and we'll go ahead and start it with a staff presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. I'm the planning director. Let me go ahead and correct the title of it. I apologize for that. That's okay. So the item before us is the proposal for the establishment of a rental housing task force. I should have read my script. I apologize for that. And we'll go ahead and kick off the presentation on that. Thank you for the question. So thank you, Mayor and Council Members, Lee Butler, the planning director. And this topic really doesn't need much of an introduction but I'll give it a quick one for the benefit of the audience. Back in, well, really for quite some time now, tenant protections have been a topic of discussion with the community and the council. It was certainly a point that was raised many times as part of the housing outreach in late 2017. And then almost a year ago to the day, the council passed some interim protections with the rent control and just cause eviction interim ordinances that ultimately expired following the failure of measure M at the November ballot. And then we received some direction from the council to establish a task force that would look into rental housing issues. And we have provided some options for the council to consider and how that task force could be formed. And then we have also provided some information in response to council direction on a number of other topics regarding an application for a task force and community polling and data that can be used to evaluate both the policies that are developed and the repercussions or the benefits that the policies bring to the community. And with that, I will turn it over to Sarah Fleming and Sarah Noisy who prepared the agenda report and you two can take it away. Thank you. I'll also give a little shout out to Amanda Rotella from Economic Development. There's only two seats here, so she's back here. Thank you, Amanda. Okay. Good afternoon, council members. Thank you for having us. I'm gonna give you a little bit of background here. As you can see in as Director Butler indicated, we have come before you on a number of occasions related to this topic, most recently being January 22nd of this year. And at that meeting there was direction for staff to return at this meeting with a proposal for a task force establishment and with information on several other items as Director Butler indicated. So I'm gonna walk you through three options that staff has put together under council direction for your consideration. So option one, this is the option that staff is recommending in your staff report. And this would be to secure professional services in a task force planning stage. And so that would be securing professional services now. What our recommendation is is that you would direct staff to contract with the Sacramento State Consensus and Collaboration Program. That program is a neutral nonprofit unit of California State University that has a mission to build the capacity of public agencies, stakeholder groups and the public to use collaborative strategies to improve policy outcomes. The CCP approach requires stakeholder engagement that supports constructive and open dialogue, mediating disagreements and encouraging stakeholders to develop durable recommendations and solutions through a variety of collaborative methods. Managing Senior Mediator Dave Seppos has over 34 years of collaboration and mediation experience and a comprehensive background in developing consensus based stakeholder driven processes. And we do have Mr. Seppos here today. So during your deliberation process he will be here to answer any questions you might have about his proposal as well as any questions you might have about the collaboration and consensus building process in general. So some of the pros of bringing this organization on at this time is they're experienced, well-respected collaboration experts. We heard from council that you really were looking for a data-driven approach and we feel strongly as staff that bringing in someone from the academic bent would really be able to provide that potentially in a way that a maybe for-profit private firm might not be able to do. They're a neutral third party. So that objectivity would be I think very welcome and needed given the current state of the conversations and debate. And they would be able to provide objective analysis and recommendations on how to form our task force and make sure that we're ensuring all voices are at the table and that we're considering everything moving forward. The cons of taking this particular approach is that by bringing someone on right away there may be a situation where when we put out a RFP or decide to go through the larger task force process we might end up selecting another firm. So it may not, it may be CCP. It may be a different firm depending on what council's preference is. So that could create just a little bit of a break there. The likelihood of the success of this particular scenario is very high. So option two is to go ahead and pause everything and have staff put together an issue an RFP now for the full process. So what this would mean is that one consultant firm would work on this from initiation to completion. Council could do it a number of ways. It could be a RFP, it could be a sole source. It really depends on how you want to move forward with that. The cons of this is that the staff we would be responsible for developing the full scope for the task force and we wouldn't have that professional guidance and not being mediation and conflict experts. There is a chance that there may be some missteps in developing the scope and putting together the request for those proposals. The additional con here is that the start could be delayed by eight to 10 weeks for staff to put together the proposal, get it out on the market, get all the proposals back or put out the request proposals, get the proposals back, rank them, interview them and then come back to council with a contract. So that takes some time. And it is the most costly when you add the cost, the estimated cost of what the work might be for a consultant as well as staff time, this would be the most costly option. That said, the likelihood, did I spell that wrong? That's a misspelling. Likelihood of success is moderate to high on this one. So option three would be a staff manage initiation and then a facilitated task force. So what this would look like is council would direct staff to proceed with the task force development and scoping and then issue an RFP for facilitation services only. How this differs from the last process is that the last process we would bring on a firm who would do what we're recommending CCP does right now, this kind of situation assessment analysis, interviewing, coming up with a work plan for the task force. Thank you. This would, staff would create that work plan and then hire a consultant who then would come on and simply facilitate. This is pro's immediate start and it does have the lowest financial cost. The cons again are the expertise concerns of staff. There I think are some concerns that the neutral that the staff in city does have might not be trusted by all the stakeholders and I think that's an important thing to note. And then it has the highest opportunity cost because there is such a, and what I mean by that is there is such an intensive role of staff that when we look at the resources that we have, there could be some concerns about what, depending on what department that falls in, what gets dropped or gets delayed in order for the staff to be able to take that on. Whereas if we had a consultant on board to kind of manage that process more, that would free up staff to work on some other things. And then the likelihood of success for this one is low to moderate. So now I'll turn it over to Sarah Noisy and she's going to give some information on some of the additional direction that we see, excuse me, received from council recently and the information request, we're receiving some feedback on that for you guys. Good afternoon. So in this section, we're primarily responding to the direction that we received at the meeting on January 22nd. So motion made by Vice Mayor Cummings and included a whole sort of list of data requests and other things of that nature for staff to turn with. So here we're quoting the direction that we received. This is about bringing back a proposal for an application for membership on this task force, sort of identifying the charge of the task force and then coming up with a list of proposed members that would be on the task force. And we did include a draft application. I think the staff report erroneously referred to that as being the WASAC application. It was based on the WASAC application but we did do some editing to that and tailor it to the housing task force, I'm sorry, rental housing task force. And again, this is a draft. It is by no means final and, you know, any whatever that application may look like at some point in the future will be determined by council or through guidance perhaps from a professional. In this case, we're recommending that this document be further developed with the help of CCP in terms of developing both the application and then the membership and charge of the committee. So, but that said, based on prior council direction, we did understand that where we are now at least, the sort of draft charge to this housing, rental housing task force committee is stated here, the rental housing task force committee will use a data driven approach to policy development with the aim of developing policy proposals that address the needs of both tenants and property owners that could get more specific over time that could be broadened over time. So the next piece here is about the membership and this is based on primarily feedback that we heard on January 8th. There was a lot of discussion from various council members about potential members that could be included in the task force. We might want representatives of all of these various organizations, perhaps some also at large representatives. And this totals, this is already at 10. If there is one person representing each of these categories that are listed here, this is a 10 member task force and we did also hear from council that you wanted to keep the task force relatively small in the neighborhood of nine to 14 potential members. So yet again, we're gonna recommend that CCP guide you through this process and make sure that the right stakeholders are there at the table and part of the conversation from the very beginning. The second item was about doing a community survey or poll with the stated goal here was providing information about the issues with rental housing problems and the possible responses. So there are two different kinds of surveys that we can use that we just had a discussion earlier and there was discussion on the 8th about some of the drawbacks or challenges with using sort of a survey monkey model and just doing an open survey. There are pros and cons to that, which the pros are it's low cost, it's quick to execute. We could get it out there right away. It's very useful for identifying if there is an area of broad community consensus or if we are looking to collect anecdotal data stories that people have about their rental housing experience or for crowd sourcing, any kind of ideas that people may have about policy proposals that can be a very useful tool. And then obviously the cons are things that your council has brought up before there's potential for double voting, they're not statistically relevant. And so depending on the goal, the exact goal for that survey or poll, it may be more appropriate to use a more formal polling process, which would be developed by a formal polling firm and would create statistically accurate data and ensure that it was fairly executed and we got a representative cross section of the community. The cons there are, it takes some lead time and there's a cost associated with that with securing a firm and then designing the survey that would be used. So again, I'll just go back really briefly. The goal, the outcome that you're after with that survey or poll is really gonna dictate what's the more appropriate tool and we're gonna recommend again that CCP guide the council through that process, determining when that's the right tool to use and what the content might be. So item three, identifying some data sources about rent increases and evictions occurring in the city. So the city doesn't currently collect any information about rental rates or evictions. We do have a database of rental properties through our rental inspection program and there is an opportunity there to start to begin collecting that data. We looked around for some models of other places that might be collecting data similar to this and the city of San Jose collects information with as each rental unit is registered with the city and we could model a program after that where we start with our annual inspection we basically as it is now for the years where property owners are self certifying their unit they we send them a form they send it back saying that yes we have smoke detectors and my unit is safe and nothing has changed since you were out here last year. We could also add on to that a few line items that would say what's the rental rate that you're currently charging and have you had any evictions in the past year? That would be self reported data. So that would be subject to current data could potentially be verified with the tenant in the unit but any data that we would try to solicit from those property owners going back in time we would have to basically rely on their self reporting which would be some data but may not be perfect data going back in time. Regarding evictions, one of the challenges with evictions is that there are a lot of times when tenants move out of a unit at the request of a property owner that aren't really a formal eviction that don't involve written notice that don't involve involving the courts that I think that's probably most of the times that tenants move out of units. That said the data sources that we could access are available through process servers through the county courts and sheriffs and that would give us a sense of is there a trend that's happening? Is there an increase or a decrease or a change over time? And that is data that where we could go back in time and get data that's as those filings have happened in years past and we could see if there's been a change recently. And then so finally because so many of these renter move outs happen without any real paper trail this may be a place where that community survey or poll would be a useful tool. We could survey renters and talk to them about in the last two years have you experienced any of the following and collect the data in that manner. And again I'd recommend for that that we allow CCP to guide us through that process because that seems like a poll where we really wanna be sure we're getting statistically relevant data and it probably should be executed by a formal polling firm. So lastly market implications in terms of the effect that this conversation around housing and around just cause eviction and measure M has had potentially on the sale of existing rental properties and then therefore removing them from the market there is that data is also a little bit hard to track because the tendency of a housing unit is not something that we keep track of it's not typically something the city regulates so it's not something we have in our records. That said we do as I mentioned have the rental inspection program where we provide the service to landlords to ensure that their units are safe and the rent that they're collecting is legitimate. We can cross-reference that database with information in the assessors the county assessor's property database to look at transfers and there are some challenges with that that the county assessor is typically six to nine months behind in terms of recording all of the property transfers. So we could probably process data from 2016 and 2017 and in 2018 we probably wouldn't be able to get the whole year yet. So and that is a pretty significant outlay of staff time in doing that level of analysis. So that is one option of how we could figure that out. We also of course could contact local real estate firms or contact some recent sellers of properties multi-family properties or properties that we know have been in our rental inspection program and discuss with them what their reasons were for transferring the property. So item four was about developing outreach flyers. Those were attached to your council item, your agenda item today and we have them here. So we priced out two different options with local print and mailing firms, mailing shops in town and we have somewhere between 40 and 45,000 addresses that we would be mailing to and we priced out two options. One is for a postcard which is shown on the bottom so that would be a two-sided postcard and would essentially let folks know that the task forces, this process is happening and direct them to a website which we would develop. And the other option is a larger format flyer that could be printed on both sides and then folded in an envelope. So there are the different costs for those that they're not radically different. Would it, you know, there would allow to be there to be a little bit more information that's printed and included in the envelope that goes directly out to all residents and property owners in the city. If we are going to choose to do a any kind of community polling activity, this would also be a tool to announce that. And again, we are gonna recommend that your council allow CCP to help you decide the timing, utility and function of any kind of flyer or mailer that we send out. So with that, our recommendation, if it wasn't clear by now, is that your council propose a motion directing the city manager or designee to negotiate and enter into a sole source contract with consensus and collaboration program at Sacramento State University for background and scoping services supporting the establishment of the rental housing task force. We are available for questions. Okay, so at this time it would be appropriate for the council to ask any clarifying questions of staff and then we'll open up to public comment and then return for action and deliberation. Clarifying questions? Councilor Glover? Thank you. Thank you for that wonderful presentation and for coming back with what looks like a lot of what we had asked for in the beginning, which is fantastic. I was curious, you'd mentioned the difficulty of obtaining requests or records I should say from other sources outside of the processing judicial system that went to court. Is there, am I correct in saying that? Sure, yeah. Okay, is there a way that we could request records from all of the registered rental units and landlords in order to make it so that they're in compliance with the city, I mean, you know, be like, hey, is there something that we would have to pass as policy that says, hey all rental units should submit the last two to five years of their rental agreements so that we can track what they've been doing with their rentals or is that feasible? I would actually defer to the city attorney on the legality of that. Any thoughts? Our recollection from reviewing other city's rent control ordinances is that some require that landlords provide notice to the city of an eviction as part of the rent control program. So I talked to the vice mayor about this before the meeting and what I said was that I would need to do a little bit of further research in order to flush that out. But I think there may be a precedent for that type of thing out there. I just have not done that analysis or research to determine if that's legally feasible. I just feel like that would be. I have the sense that it probably, that there probably would be some mechanism by which we could require that information to be provided, but I'm not prepared to respond. Yeah. Absolutely. It's one of the logistics around. And then one more is the sale of the rental units which you'd mentioned in the presentation is trying to track census measure M and impact and all that. During the campaigning process of measure M and the opponents of it, there was literature being sent out by realtors urging people to sell their properties to avoid any overwhelming regulations that they may face should measure M pass. I feel like it would be important to include the data set of homes sold from the pressure and or fear put in them by a realtor company of the ramifications of measure M and not just have those under the category of sold with reaction to measure M because it's a clear differential in my opinion there. I'm now council member Matthews and then council member Brown. Could you quickly go over the four items that you're recommending we refer to CCP? Absolutely. So let's start with item one and go in order. So the first is about developing the application, the specific charge and the membership of the task force. This would be part of CCP's effort to essentially scope the process and guide us through that. So the second item is about the utility and timing and content of any community polling or surveying activity we would do. The third item is about collecting data, exactly what type of data are we gonna need to have a data driven process? And then item four is about the flyer. What's the content? What's the timing? What's the purpose of that? Okay, thanks. I'm very supportive of the idea to contract with a firm that has experienced a third party. I think in all of this, the first thing is to be somewhat clear and we'll need their help on this with defining the charge. In some places, I looked at their description of services. Generally it refers to a rental housing task force in a couple places. It refers to tenants rights task force. So right off the bat. And when we're talking about collection of data and so forth, does it expand to impacts on or trends in rental housing supply? So it raises a lot of question to me is what are we asking them to do? And to my mind, their work on charge precedes the application. I had quite a bit of comments on the application form. I think it's very directed in the message that it sends and leaves out some critical possible participants that could be useful. Similarly with the research, there's an infinite number, amount of research we could gather. I think we rely on them to say what's gonna be significant and doable within a certain budget. The flyers are really the last step, it seems to me. So it's really not worth commenting much on those. That'll come out of their recommendations. I endorse the recommendation and their approach. The main thing in my mind is defining what's the scope. So we have additional questions and then we'll open it up for the community and then we'll come back for statements and deliberations. So Council Member Brown. Thank you Mayor Watkins, I'd like to return. First of all, my understanding is that this is an opportunity to ask questions, clarifying questions rather than weighing in on the proposal itself right now before we hear from the public. So I'd like to go to public comment, but I just want to return to Council Member Glover's question that the city attorney commented on and suggests that I am aware of a number of jurisdictions that have such provisions whether in rent control ordinance or as a separate ordinance on the books within the jurisdiction for requiring notification from landlords regarding evictions notices to vacate and rent increases. So I think that there is some research that could be done to kind of look at what is out there just for your information. And I think, so that was the main comment I had, but my question was specifically if you could clarify based upon any other research about the potential to do that retroactively, I mean, I would guess probably not, but maybe moving forward. So if you, just to put that in the mix for questions to be answered at a future date, that would be something I'd be interested in hearing about. So back to that. That part of Council Member Glover's comment and that would be something that I would look into and I have that same concern, but in my recollection is the same as yours with regard to other jurisdictions. I just didn't want to speak out of turn, particularly where we attempted last fall to modify some notice requirements with respect to evictions and we got stymied in that effort. So, but I'm happy to look into it. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, I'm clarifying questions from Vice Mayor Cummings and then, no, first, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Cummings first and then Council Member Glover. Oh, Chris was first. Okay, good. Chris, Council Member Grun, clarifying questions. Postcards, who's it gonna go to? Like, what's the universe? So what we priced out are all residents and property owners in Santa Cruz and that number lands somewhere between 40 and 45,000. And that was based on the motion made by Vice Mayor Cummings. And I don't wanna, maybe you said it, but the elephant in the room is like 400 to 450,000. Is that what we're looking at, the final price tag of this, if we went all the way? I think that's probably fair. Our estimates in the staff report are just that estimates, but the top level is at about 400,000. And is there a timeline? So each scenario has its own timeline that we have again suggested. These things can be flexible, they can change. I would estimate if you went for the full process, it would be somewhere between 12 months to potentially upwards of, and this is securing consultants going through the process, developing recommendations, bringing them back for action, acting on them, having them memorialized. I'd say for a thorough process that goes through all of the, and again, Dave is here, he can speak to this if you have questions of him, but I'd say reasonably 12 to potentially 16 months. Who's Dave? I'm sorry, Mr. Cipos is here from the Center for Collaboration, from Sacramento State. So he is here to answer questions if you have anything. Thank you. Vice Mayor Cummings? I actually have questions for David if it's okay. Yeah, Dave, would you like to join us? Thank you. Afternoon. Afternoon. One of the questions I had is, there's been a lot of concern in the community around timeline for the process, and I was just curious if you could speak to, walk the community through some of the initial stages of the background analysis report that you'd be interested in conducting, and then how that would lead to the formation of the task force, and then a timeline roughly of how long this might take. Sure. The assessment process, which is what the initial kind of conceptual proposal we put together can be done relatively quickly within six to eight weeks or so, but that will frankly depend on a couple of administrative variables and availability variables of the participants would ultimately be included in that assessment. Thereafter, and I think to the point that staff had already made and has really evidenced in the report, and I don't think I have to sort of preach to the choir, so to speak, and this is clearly a very emotional values laden topic in this community, and in all communities throughout the state of California that are dealing similarly with it. While by no means dogmatic, we have a general approach that we do in our efforts, which, and this is all very directly informed from the assessment process, and the first stage is what we call education. It's one of the things to the data point that the council member Matthews was speaking of, and that's one of the things we would assess. We would look to work with the people we interviewed to start pulse checking, if you will, where the various data sources are. I frankly would applaud for that. It's worth to use council and to staff that you really wove data driven into this because on issues that are highly emotional and highly values laden, data can be a very, very valuable tool to normalize, if you will, where folks are at. And so in that regard, getting a sense in pulse checking through the assessment process of finding out what kind of information is really necessary and the education stage, the early stages, are both bringing external education or information in, if you will, to try to help inform, however conflicting various pieces of information might be, but the education process is also the stakeholders themselves, the journey that they're taking, walking through each other's shoes, if you will, and getting to a point where various stakeholders involved in the task force process or any kind of stakeholder process, they aren't necessarily required, certainly the outset to agree, but we want early on to start getting them to understand the motivators and the needs that each other has. Oftentimes in the process we do that, what people start to see is when we can strip away some of the ideology, there can be an effort of less demonizing, more sharing, more understanding of we're actually looking for very similar things, we just maybe operationalizing it in different ways. Moving from education, then you start going into negotiation, and I use the term negotiation sort of loosely, but we in general start trying to work people through negotiating ideas in principle and then moving folks to negotiating ideas in detail. That's a very kind of coming, you start at a macro stage and then you sort of move in greater detail. I'm just giving you a sense of sort of process here in terms of that process, I think that staff is accurate. This is not a fast process to be very blunt. I can't give you an exact amount, but I think that the target that they set of 12 to 16 months I think is reasonable based upon a number of other cases that I've done in local jurisdictions and elsewhere of a similar size and with a similar level of conflict and volatility. So my underlying message is it's not a fast process and I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I don't, my professional opinion is it's not. Thank you for being here and thank you for answering our questions. Do you have any additional questions before we open it up for public comment? I just, out of curiosity, what's the plan in terms of identifying the stakeholders within this process? Well, I think we would, well, to be interviewed or to ultimately become- To be interviewed, potentially. Frankly, I would look to work with staff and very likely recommendations from council of a cross section of opinion leaders, if you will. I mean, there's a term that I oftentimes use which is an assessment needs to be representative but not exhaustive. You can't have a budget enough to do that. I think that's in some ways where the idea of a poll or a survey comes in, but as is evidenced by the staff report, there are absolutely pros and cons and I agree with what they listed. So you can use various forms to sort of pulse check but ultimately you want a reasonable representative cross section of some opinion leaders, people who've got a, and when I say opinion leaders, I mean folks who have been actively engaged, people who are, to be honest, very well versed in the topic areas and people who have networks. You don't, you want to avoid in a process like this having a set of stakeholders sitting at a table who are principally, even if accidentally, speaking for themselves. You want to capitalize on those networks and frankly oftentimes within a charter of a group mandated that they have a responsibility by virtue of sitting on a task force to be showing steps that they are taking to communicate with their broader issue constituencies and bring that back because that can become a danger because you can have people sitting at a table essentially acting as if they have a proxy and that can come back to bite you. And so you want to try to capitalize on, like I said, you're mandating that networking. Does that answer your question? Council Member Brown and then Council Member Glover. Clarifying question. I just want to say that I thank you for your willingness to step forward with this proposal and to bring us something with a very quick turn around and so I really appreciate that you've put some considerable thought into something that is obviously challenging, highly contentious and potentially leading you down the road of engaging in that public debate. So just a quick question. If you could talk a little bit about your approach to, one of the things I think we've made a commitment to is ensuring that stakeholders who do come forward and represent them on the task force that there be an expression of willingness to not really have any lines in the sand with respect to developing proposals, bringing items for discussion and I know that that's something that has challenged us as we've moved through the process of discussing in particular rent control and just cause eviction. So I'm just wondering if you could talk for a moment about your approach to ensuring that we get a stakeholder pool that where we have people who are really committed to engaging in the process and not just being roadblocks. I know that's kind of difficult to say, to have any real confidence that we can do that but just how you would approach that. Sure, you know, I've been doing this a very long time and I earnestly and sincerely, both in sort of general life and professional, I very much like to believe and do believe that people are benign individuals is what I call it, people come with the best of intentions. There are ways in which they act that we observe and that we may, you know, I may observe somebody's behavior and question it but it doesn't mean that that person's motives are nefarious or in any way, shape or form. We are the creatures of that which we believe. To your point, yes, we can and should assess whether people can come in with an open mind. Most people that I know and most people that I've dealt with would, in that question, would more than likely say, yes, of course I can. But we all come with our predisposed considerations. You can codify those kinds of things and depending on how you define membership, I mean, and I'm not advocating, I want to be very clear about this. I'm not advocating, but I certainly have had groups where through a larger convening entity such as a body of elected officials, you create the terms for membership and some of those terms of membership is how folks will function and I wish I had a better term, but behave, if you will. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that because again, I think that automatically sits a little like a prenup agreement. You're already sort of presuming that there might be some intent other than that. I think at the end of the day, what we want to look for is people who are willing to come to the table and just earnestly look you in the eye and say, yeah, this is a challenging question and it's a challenging thing and I want to try to be open-minded and then the process, however cliche this may sound, the process of a stakeholder engagement, a multi-party method that we use, if you think about standard negotiating and a sort of a binary negotiation, you go to buy a car or something, there's a very binary. The one person wants to sell it for as much, one person wants to buy it for as little as much. The process of getting into a structured, focused, facilitated conversation is a matter of a process of discovery and people can begin to see options that they did not previously think were possible or they didn't even conceptualize and however cliche this sounds, you make the pie bigger. So it isn't about who gets to divvy up the finite space of the pie, it's can you get people into a dialogue and they can start seeing opportunities that previously didn't exist. Again, I admit that's cliche and yet I've been doing this a long time and that's exactly what happens. So you ask people a good question, you ask them to commit and then you let the process play itself out and hopefully that process itself delivers those kinds of options. Thank you. Council Member Crone, I'm sorry, Council Member Glover and then Matthews and then hopefully we can get to public comment. Is there any brief questions? Hello and thank you, good evening. Really appreciate you. Are you from Sacramento? I live in Davis. Well, thank you for coming now from Davis to be here with us tonight. I was just curious. That's a color you're sure, by the way, good selection. Thank you, purple power. I was kind of taken back by the 12 to 16 month timeline. I understand it's a slow process and I work at the Resource Center for Nonviolence so I understand the process of communication and working through conflict and in your experience, because you said that this is a conversation happening in different places around California and I take it this isn't your first rodeo when it comes to dealing with this kind of conflict. What have other municipalities or jurisdictions done to protect the vulnerable people in the community during that dialogue process? Because one of the things that I've been most concerned about is that throughout the process of this task force being structured and then going through the process, that there will be unjust action taking place. In the meantime, there's been a concern from the community that establishing any kind of temporary protections would invalidate the process of the task force because of the seemingly rubber stamping of policy by the city council that then would be pushed into the conversation of the task force. So in your experience, have other jurisdictions done things in the interim while this 12 to 16 month process is underway to keep low and middle income people in their homes? I'm gonna answer that in a couple of ways. I wish that I could give you an encyclopedic response of what other communities are doing and I don't think I really can. I mean, I have worked on this topic and related topics about land use and planning in other places. Conceptually, what you're describing is absolutely a concern and a risk on both sides that you just sort of articulated. Yes, if you start trying to do things early on as a means of protecting whomever you seek to protect, the overarching fear is that that immediate temporary action becomes a proxy or is presumed to be a proxy and I think that there's frankly a danger there. And the flip side to that is also true that if you do not do something, then you have an unprotected class of individuals and so there's no easy answer. So a process step, again, I'm not going to say I recommend this in this case because I haven't done an assessment but a process step that I commonly do and in fact, as a city, you are involved currently with another project I am working in this area which is the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin and Santa Margarita Agency and your Director Menard is very actively involved. Who by the way, Director Menard is an extraordinary resource on this topic. She's, I've worked with her in the past and she knows this topic about collaborative multi-party negotiating. One of the things that we do oftentimes and one of the things that we did early on is that rather than setting framings of what can or can't happen, oftentimes advocate early in a process to develop what I call and it can go by various names of guiding principles. What are the principles that right out of the box we can agree and we can get a group degree and I can be a living document that starts articulating the shared interest and the shared values. That's not necessarily to be clear. It undo itself protecting a class of citizens but it is setting forth a messaging that what this group is about and what the people that have been asked to sit at this about are universally committed to a set of principles and they're gonna be guided by those principles. They're gonna quite literally use it as a totem and refer back to it to help guide when increasingly challenging decisions start happening. It is symbolic by no definition or by no argument to that. However, and almost every case that I've done or some that or some to that effect, I see members if you will of a group like that regularly then referring back to what we said we were committed to do this and we said we were committed to sort of abide by this kind of we hold this truth to be self-evident kind of statement and that's a very valuable and powerful thing that can be even if it begins symbolically relatively through the process, it becomes quite applied. So can it achieve all the things that it sounds to me like you're trying to achieve? Probably not. Can it set a framework in going forward and set a different tone? I firmly believe it can. Thank you. Thanks Council Member Matthews, yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to understand the process. So as I'm reading this, I'm under the impression that you're talking about two groups of discussion participants. One is early on some, you're calling them influencers or thought leaders or experienced people that you will interview individually or some other member of your team will to get a feeling for the topic. And out of that, I'm trying to abbreviate, out of that will come your recommendations for how to define the charge and how to structure solicitation of members and the active public task force of it, like two different groups of people. There may be some overlap, there may not. There oftentimes is overlap. I'm not really even sure, to be honest, I'm not really sure I would define the first set of people. I'm using semantics here myself, but as a group, it's just a set of people that you go to. Individuals, yeah. Individuals. There is oftentimes overlap. I think that to the point that, frankly, you earlier made in your comments a few minutes ago about, these are my words, not yours, putting the car before the horse, I would tend to agree. Putting an application out on the streets right now, I think it's premature. It's all like buying construction materials for a building you haven't designed yet. And because you have a whole set of processes to get put in place and decide on, such as how would a group, how would this actual task force be seated? How would the decisions ultimately be made? How many who selects what cross-section, et cetera, et cetera? Are they appointed, are they not? For background purposes, for you, what existing work are we looking at? What data do we wanna collect, all of this? That would come out of a defined group, again, for the mayors, I guess, and staff's suggestion on how to give you suggested names of people that you might want to include in the initial interviews. And then you do that, and out of those interviews would come the plan. Right, and to be honest, in my proposal, that number of participants was fairly modest. I'm not saying that's inappropriately, so it just was. As you may have noticed, I recommended that I interview or one of my staff interview, all of you as council members, because one of the most single detrimental things that can occur is have a group formed and then begin its process and accidentally go a field from where the elected body wishes for things to go. That is a loss of faith and trust in a lot of different forms. So you would be part of that. I just wanted to get clear on that. Yes. Well, thank you so much for being here. Clearly, you're an absolute expert in the work that you're doing and describing, so we appreciate you taking the time to be here. I think at this point, we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment and then we'll return back to council for action and deliberation. Thank you very much. I just wanna start with acknowledging, and I'm sorry, Mr. Longianotti, we have a couple of groups who will be speaking to us first who've requested additional time in advance, and then that is Lynn Renshaw from Santa Cruz Together and Cynthia Berger from Santa Cruz Tennis Association, and you each have four minutes to address the council. Who do you wanna do oral communication? And you'll be given four minutes. Okay. Lynn Renshaw, SantaCruiseTogether.com. Santa Cruz Together is a coalition of thousands of local business owners, community leaders, homeowners, renters, and housing providers. Personally, I've lived in Santa Cruz for over 30 years. My career is software marketing, and I'm a volunteer. The rental housing task force requires a complete reset from measure M. The task force scope should be a range of rental housing solutions. Santa Cruz Together agrees there's a severe, affordable housing shortage and is willing to participate in an authentic data-driven analysis of options and their impacts on the rental housing supply and rents. A complete analysis would cover immediate impacts, potential repercussions, future rental supply, and rents a decade later and beyond. Measure M alternatives could include means-tested housing subsidies, affordable by design housing, a workforce housing initiative, and more. We need robust dialogue, facts, and evidence in a proper amount of time. Task force materials suggest starting with device of measure M. The outside firm, CCP, outlines its background research as a study of measure M. Why not instead study best practices from other cities addressing the West Coast affordable housing crisis? Task force applicants are asked how measure M should be changed? Why not ask applicants about their housing expertise? Just cause evictions are an identified objective. By implying JCE is the outcome, this process is already further eroding public confidence in the council. JCE is one of the worst policies in decades as evidenced by broad voter opposition. The political will of the community will not support JCE. Voters expect normal contract law to continue where end dates of mutually agreed upon leases can be enforced. JCE is a bridge too far. It's toxic, divisive, and perceived as forced on the community by a small group of activists. Your job is to hear the community. The council received over 1500 letters opposing JCE with less than 35 letters in support. 19,000 voters said no to JCE, but a margin of nearly two to one. At some point, defying the majority will catch up with you. 60% of homeowners are expecting the freedom to live their lives with flexibility. The city should not pass laws that restrict what they can and cannot do with their houses. We need a complete reset and rental policy study, particularly now that Proposition 10 failed, and Measure M and JCE are a spectacularly bad fit where 75% of renters rely on single family homes that can be easily repurposed as owner occupied property. It's a spectacularly bad fit for all future renters since rents are unlimited on all future rentals. And it's a spectacularly bad fit for homeowners that want to live their lives without city interference. The affordable housing shortage is self-evident. The majority of our community understood that Measure M will make the affordable housing shortage worse. The task force should reset and automatically look, authentically look for solutions that work now and in the future, sanacruzdegather.com. Thank you. All right. And now we will hear from our representative of the Santa Cruz Tennis Association, and you will also have four minutes. Hi everyone, thank you for this opportunity. I'm Cynthia Berger with Santa Cruz Tennis Association. I've run the county's only bilingual Tennis Rights Hotline for the last five years, and I have a list of over a thousand people who have called me ready for any kind of survey you'd like to possibly do personally with them. I'm concerned that renters, tenants be heard from in this issue, and it's not only about building housing. There's other issues besides building housing that need to be addressed and that are more immediate and that involved human lives today. As far as the task force, I'd like to say I've always had a great landlord and paid really reasonable rent. Just want to let folks know that. I think that I had some questions. I agreed with Cynthia Matthews about the name. It was confusing. My preference is that we discuss tenant protections because there aren't any. Housing is another issue for other people, and it's a whole completely different issue than tenant protections, which we don't have any on the books here. We have a lot of housing regulations, though. I think that all the flyers and the applications were also premature. I have some questions about the appointment process for the task force. The Brown Act apply to members of appointed bodies, and if so, how does it affect communications among members when they're meeting outside the committee activities? And that's the main question I have about that. I just wasn't clear on that. I just want to know that the city of Santa Barbara did this exact same kind of thing in about 2017, the same kind of task force, and it didn't have the greatest outcome. You can read all about it. I'd like to also point out that tenant protections are controversial even to academics. As many local academics took public positions during the recent rent control campaign, and we'd just like some assurance that Mr. Seppo and the facilitation team will examine their opinions and assumptions and biases before beginning any such job as this. I don't believe that they have conducted a similar study, facilitated a similar exact kind of study about tenant protection. So this is a facilitation where you may be dealing with one side that has extreme power and another side that has this extreme lack of power. That might be a little different from other facilitation, I don't know, but we just want like to make sure that you examine any possible unconscious biases before beginning this job. The only folks I know who don't have strong feelings about rent control are my unhoused friends, pretty much. Renters, in order to walk in people's shoes, I think renters need to be able to examine the books of several landlords to understand their claims, and they need to be able to look at the financials. So that would be something I think that a committee like this could be useful for walking folks through as the education. The city does need data and like many California cities dealing with their rental emergencies, they realize there are no collection mechanisms established to get that data. So I have a list that I will share from the city of Long Beach, they had an extensive study session on this also in 2017, and I will forward you the list and then have some sort of innovative things and you can. Thank you, and we'll look that for your email. Okay, so those are the two organizations that reached out in advance for additional time. So now we'll open up to public comment and members of the public can address the council for two minutes. I oppose all of the recommendations for a task force and I would think that the staff should go back to the drawing board and come up with a different kind of task force, one that concentrates mostly on how to build low cost to construct housing, because that is the only kind of housing that will be affordable. If you build a $400,000 ADU behind a million dollar house, it won't be affordable and it doesn't matter how many of them you build. But I actually wanted to read this, so I'm just gonna go ahead with that. Measure M is the vampire zombie that is never allowed to die. A task force that has any objectives of any part of Measure M is once again violating the will of the people. I voted against every word of Measure M and it's time to put its stake into every part of Measure M and bury it. When two parties have the same goal, they can talk and compromise if they have differences in how to reach the goal, but that's not what we have here. That's why some of this mediation idea is not that great. We have two parties with different goals and very different problems. There cannot be any single resolution to that condition. I won't get into the goals, how they're different of landlords and tenants, but I will talk about problems. The problems landlords face is an oppressive government who seeks to grant special interest favors to tenants at their and housing industries considerable peril and expense. Their earned property rights are in jeopardy by a city council that seems not to understand inflation is beyond their control. That involuntary regulation of retail prices and contracts create housing supply chain havoc besides just being morally wrong. The damage will play out over a very long time, but damage it will be. The problems that tenants face is none, none of the unproven, unsubstantiated spews lies of oppression. Thank you for coming. Thank you for your time. Can I submit this for your? Absolutely, you can. Hi, Rick Longinati. I've just noticing I think already you're, just talking about a task force and a community dialogue process is kind of mellowed things out. I had a similar reaction to Council Member Meyers or Matthews that about the charge of this task force not being as defined as I think it could be with the Water Supply Advisory Committee, we had a clear charge from the council. It was to analyze potential solutions to deliver a safe, adequate, reliable, affordable and environmentally sustainable water supply. And so we were constantly reflecting back on that charge and I think it would really help expedite matters for this committee if you got clear. But I want to suggest to you that you've already got the charge because you've had a process, at least since 2017 when Mayor Chase was doing her listening sessions and it came out with the Santa Cruz Voices on Housing Fall 2017 Community Engagement Report. And there were three topic areas, housing production, housing protection and community vitality. So the Housing Blueprint Subcommittee that some of you were on submitted recommendations to the council based on those three areas and the one area that was kind of left up to the voters was the housing protection and the voters voted down Measure M but the need remains for housing protection and I think that word protection is key and I think that forms the basis of your charge for this committee. So I think that just the timeline that the Water Supply Advisory Committee was given a one year timeline it got extended for six months. I think there are reasons for that that we were not one of them being we were not all up to speed about what could possible solutions there are but in the world of trying to... Thank you and you're welcome to submit just let me finish my sentence. You know I try to keep it really consistent so that everybody gets their equal amount of time. So I appreciate that and your understanding that. Thank you. Okay, you have your chance. Hi there, I'm Nate Alex dot Kennedy at gmail.com and what I have to say I think is one of the most important things that we need that isn't really being addressed here is mandatory rental inspections before anybody can rent a room, anybody can rent a house, we need to have the places inspected. We need to have it so that any deaths or suicides in a property that have happened within the last five years should be mandatory disclosed which I personally have experience with. We also need it so that one of the last place or one place that I rented a long time ago I had to move out within about two days because the place was had bedbugs, it had old garbage in the room that was listed as furnishings on the rental agreement. There had been heavy meth use in the house, so heavy that like when I was there for two days I could hardly get to sleep because of what I felt, what I had been inhaling from the previous tenants. We need to really take care of this. I think that mandatory rental inspections should happen with every single property that is being rented, whether it's a whole house or just a room. It is, this is that important. And the place I had been at with the bedbugs, the meth use, the plumbing didn't even work in the bathroom. There were so many reasons that this place should not have been rented and it was rented to me and all these problems together slammed me so hard that I was forced out within about 72 hours and I never even got my friggin' money back. So Drew, Justin and Sandy, can you all please get back to me ASAP? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks speaker. Hello, my name is Elena Cohen and I'd like to thank both the city council and the staff for really putting together a very thoughtful option description. And I'm very supportive of the staff recommendation for using the CCP and having data-driven analysis. And I'd just like to respond to some of the comments that have been made by other people here. I think that we all actually really want to have fair, improved, affordable rental housing and the controversy really is is what's the best way to do that. And so I think that building affordable housing is absolutely crucial but to me that seems like it's outside the scope of this particular task force and I would like to see the task force focus on looking at these issues objectively. I think both sides have talked about some of the undercurrents of our prejudices, known or unknown and I think it's really important to not to start with measure M and just cause eviction but rather to start with our currently existing laws and talk about how we can improve it from there because I think that if we start from these very confusing and divisive options that we're really going to get, we're going to go off on a tangent that is not helpful. And so and I think the last thing I'd like to say is that an interim action, while I really understand how important that is, can really cause homeowners to feel that they don't want to get involved with renting and thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay, next speaker. Good afternoon council. My name is Fred Antacchi. I've been involved in commercial and residential real estate here in Santa Cruz in this area for the past 30 years. I want to just echo something a previous speaker said about the focus, there's three part focus of the creation of housing. There's a preservation of housing. There's overall community health. I think those three things are related and they can't be separated. So I'll just read what I wrote, which is I applaud you guys for your cautious reason to approach to a contentious emotionally laden issue. My experience has shown that there's agreement on the problem, the shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing, but there's deep disagreement on the solution to that problem. Protections need to be provided for everyone's rights, renters and property owners who need to be fairly represented in a broad coalition of community stakeholders. It's laudable to commit the time and financial resources but I'm also concerned that council not forget its obligation to focus on creation of housing. If no concrete actions are taken, my concern is that we will lose logo control and instead have the state step in and set standards with more generic mandates to create housing. For that reason, I hope that's not forgotten in the process of discovery and collective problem solving. And thank you again for what you guys are doing. Thanks. Hi, Carol Paul Hamas. Thanks for listening to yet another of my comments. I was part of the short-term vacation rental task force and as you get ready to set up another task force, I would like to share the feelings that some of us, many of us had on the short-term vacation rental task force, whereas Cynthia said it was sort of directive. The way it was set up, it was directive. It was too directive. People felt like there was already an agenda. There was already a staff bias for lack of a better word. And that's something to be avoided at all costs, I think, because people are volunteering their time. This is a really hotly debated subject like that was. And if people, if you really want to get people's most creative ideas, it needs to be fair. It needs to be objective. It needs to be transparent, as little guided as possible in my humble opinion. Not, I mean, we're not gonna have like a 12 year task force, but maybe a timeline that's guided, but not an agenda that's guided. I just think that's really important. I think people do have creative ideas. I'm really grateful for the opportunity that you have helped us, you know, present the city to talk about it because there are multi-layers and multiple solutions. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hello, my name is Shelly Keneep. And I'm a housing provider in Santa Cruz. Bear Watkinson City Council members. Anyone on this council who votes to retain any of the procedures outlined in the defeated Measure M is not honoring the will of the people or the principles of democracy. To go against the majority of voters, smacks of autocrassie, tyranny and dictatorship. Measure M was defeated by a two-third majority, woman up or man up, and gracefully accept its defeat. Please, stop being sore losers. The women and men of Santa Cruz have spoken. We don't want Measure M or any part of it. Please, stop thumbing your nose at democracy and those who provide housing. Please, stop putting the blame where it does not belong. To do otherwise is oppressive, repressive and unjust. Previously today, there was a proposal based on a model of Boulder, Colorado. I lived in Boulder for 34 years. I raised my family there. City Council of Boulder looked at rent control about 15 years ago and what they decided after looking at the facts of the studies is that they decided not to implement rent control. Why? Because it ultimately hurts those in poverty as Bernie Sanders has also said. Thank you. Hello, council members. My name is Fazz. I wanted to thank you for really getting this process going and doing what previous councils have failed to do, which is really bring people together on this discussion. And I think having the city facilitate this is really a good step forward. I've heard what people from the opposition have been saying about housing supply. I also have to agree with one of the women who just came up to speak and saying how that's not really part of this conversation. This conversation isn't about housing supply, right? I think tenant protections and housing supply are two completely different issues. You have to protect the people who currently live here. And I think that this task force should be centered around tenant protections, whether it be about rent control or just cause evictions or any other potential policies. I think if we really want this process to be comprehensive, then we have to look at everything. But I think housing supply and talking about creation of affordable housing is just not relevant to this specific issue. Renters have an immediate crisis. The people who live here have an immediate crisis. And the discussions in this task force need to be centered around those who are most marginalized and the most displaced and most affected from the housing crisis. I also wanted to just say that I think in regards to the timeline, I understand this needs to be a thorough process. I would also like the council to keep in mind that because we don't have any temporary protections right now for renters or we have very minimal protections, I think it would be worth considering to find a way in which we can shorten that timeline because renters need protections as soon as possible. And also to consider what kind of timeline we can have that will make it short but also make it a thorough process. So just like the council to consider that moving forward. Thank you. Good afternoon, council. I just wanted to start out by saying this might be one of those extremely rare occasions where I'm like really in agreement with city recommendations. I wanna point that out. So I have to say I was not too happy when I first started hearing Justin recommending a task force and I thought that with the power differential, excuse me, differential as Cynthia brought up that it would be unlikely that we could have a task force that would help in a more fair way. And due to the level of oppression that I think the power differential, it's really real. So anyway, I'm getting, I wanna make sure I'm watching my time. So first of all, I have heard wonderful things about mediation process and it sounds like Mr. Seppos, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, is extremely well versed. I especially liked what he said about how in an emotional and value laden situation like this, having a data-driven kind of directive really helps to take people into a more neutral place. The other thing was guiding principles. I think that sounded extremely helpful. So just all in all, I really like the sound of it. One of my main concerns is somebody who has been deeply investigating homeless, the in general homeless populations, homeless providers, city government and all this. I just wanna say that homeless people absolutely need to have representation on this task force. Please don't overlook that. So many people think the number I'm gonna run out of time was 3,000 in 2014, 2015, according to the grand jury investigation now, it's being cited as 1,500, where did all those people go? Some of them are in their cars. How are they gonna get a postcard? Please consider this thoroughly. Please, I recommend this, you vote yes. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, my name is Jeff Vesey and I've been a Santa Cruz landlord and resident for 37 years, a long time. So I'm in it for the long term. I have six rentals, I don't wanna sell them. I don't wanna convert them to anything else. So I really like the idea of this task force. I think that it definitely needs to be a reset. It needs to start from ground zero and we need to have people from like that list was great. And I fit on that because I have six rentals. I would volunteer in a minute to be on it. I work part-time, I could do it. I don't know who I need to talk to about it. But anyway, so let me continue. I support this, the task forces as it said, because it's data driven and we have lots of data. I mean, not only here, we don't have too much data here, but there's data from San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica, a lot of cities that are put in rent control. We know what happens when you restrict landlords, their control of their rental properties. And so the question is, I really think is, how much do you wanna restrict their control? And it's really gonna come up to the city council to decide because the more you restrict it, the more landlords are gonna sell or convert properties. So it's gonna be a balance. And I really think it's gonna be your decision. I'm not even saying what's right or wrong to do. It's gonna be, it's a balance. And that's why the data is so important. We need to understand, like one thing, for all the landlords and maybe developers, you need to find out what are their three key concerns as far as like landlords not selling their property? What's their big concerns? You need to understand that so you can see the sensitive point. Same thing with developers. What are their concerns as far as building more? That's really, really important. And I think it was Councilman Glover was talking about the inspection plan. That's apartments now for rentals. That's a perfect place to gather more data. I've got 15, 20 years of data, I've always had. You can get rental agreements, 30-day notices from tenants, eviction notices, deposit returns, like when I return a deposit, it says how much was there, what they did. There's lots of data out there. And I think mostly if landlords are smart, they keep it because people can come back a year or two later and have questions. So you keep this stuff for all that's there. Thank you. Yeah. Hello, my name is Barbara Childs. This is so reassuring to me. We are all on the same side. We get this wonderful staff recommendation which recommends a really respected, decades-old organization from outside the city with experience and expertise. And then the main opponents of Measure M are in support of it. And the main opponents, supporters of Measure M are in support of this recommendation. This is a very auspicious beginning for a task force. We all want this to happen. We all think we have lots of data. And let's spread it out on the table. This will make a wonderful process of community education. It couldn't happen in the heat of the battle. We just kept seeing signs that were wildly distorted. It didn't give us any information. This is our chance to educate our community, raise the level of consciousness, dispel the fear on both sides, and maybe come out with a wonderful, really creative solutions. Conflict resolution can produce solutions that neither side ever thought of. And I'm extremely hopeful and very happy at this moment. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Deborah Wallace and I'm a local property manager. And I support the staff recommendation where a third party is hired at the beginning to objectively structure a data-driven task force. I also request that the task force be balanced with all parties equally represented. Measure M was overwhelmingly rejected by the community and should not be used as a starting point. Voters found just cause eviction to be one of the most objectionable aspects of Measure M, so listing just cause eviction as an explicit objective of the task force is not honoring the will of the majority. We need a fresh start. Actual data needs to be collected, verified, and analyzed in order to formulate a plan of action. The majority of your constituents do not want lease end dates to be invalid or for tenants to be able to move any number of family members into rental properties without the consent of the property owner. The task force should work toward an ordinance that will expand the rental supply rather than shrink it. As a property manager, I experienced the fallout of the emergency ordinances and concerns about Measure M firsthand. Our office saw several long-term rentals sold to owner occupants. Owners do not want to lose control of who resides on their property and for how long. Mom and pops just aren't going to take the risk. The woman before me said it very well and I think this is a good place to start and to work together towards some really good solutions. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello, City Council. I'm just here to spread love on the situation. Y'all see there's this heart attack sitting up here and out here, we need to break it down. I'm about love and I just want to acknowledge your work and y'all look like you come from good families and whatever decision you make, go back to what grandma said about empathy, love, compassion for the people who without are people who don't have money. I mean, take a look at that when you make that decision. The empathy, I know it's there. You was at a program the other day talking about compassion. I made sure I remember that and I'm so proud to see two black bands up in here at the head of the board. This is our honor and I'm speaking up because it's Black History Month and it's time for a change and you who elected these guys to come up in here, I honor you and I respect you. And I want, if I use up my time now, can I use it at seven? I mean, we go ahead and pause the time, William. This is on the item which is before us which is the establishment of a rental housing task force. Yeah, so I can't, at seven o'clock I can come back. If you have additional conversations. Okay, I don't want to mess that up because that's the serious stuff. But back to acknowledging who you are, I have respect, but my deepest fear is not that I'm inadequate. My deepest fear is I'm powerful beyond measure and you all gave me that 33 years of clean and sober and listening to your counselors, your groups and things. I am on fire with what's coming up for me. And it's all about love because all the racism, the bigotry, I have to jump through those hoops. And I see love in here and I just saw your work out there and I don't hear it up in here. I see everybody talking about their money, their 20 houses. I live with a woman named Jack, my rent up yet because I'm out there cleaning it up. Thank you. I ain't done. But you'll have an opportunity to come back at another time. Thank you. I just want to remind if I could be before you begin that we have moved public comment at oral communications, excuse me, oral communications is now at 7 p.m. And so it had been moved and it was originally at 5 30 p.m. So many folks who are here for oral communications, which is items that are not on our agenda that can return at 7 p.m. to address the council then. And currently what we are addressing and hearing public comment on is item number 16, which is the consideration for the establishment of a rental housing task force. Excuse me, is that a new time from now? Yes, it's a new time from now and that was changed by the council. Okay. That happened well, it was, what happened, it happened for two months ago. Yeah, so no problem. Okay, you're welcome to go ahead, go ahead. Just as the gentleman before you, I have great respect for all of you. And I hope you will respect me by either closing your laptops or paying attention while I speak, thank you. Consensus and collaboration, two great concepts often presented. Are we going to pursue consensus and collaboration in tackling the most serious issue our cities faced in pursuit of affordable housing and fair practices in the provision of rental housing? Starting fresh would be a great approach, taking that deep breath, seeing that big picture, involving interested parties from all sides of the issue who are experts in providing housing, as well as those who seek it. Fresh means fresh, not using an already overwhelmingly defeated measure to guide us. Voters said no once, so why revisit what was already defeated? Consensus and collaboration, are we capable of it? Absolutely, I believe we are. Will we do this correctly for all parties involved and not just the most vocal anti-establishment ones who shout and click and declaim? This council has an opportunity to earn back the trust of the very citizens whom you represent. You have experts ready, willing and able who are knowledgeable about providing housing. Use these resources, ask us to help, facilitate a civil discussion, and an agreeable outcome will follow. The starting fresh is key. Consensus and collaboration can bring about healing to this divisiveness. Please hear us and work to develop consensus. Thank you. Thank you. Before you begin, is there any other member of the audience interested in addressing the council at this time about this item? Okay, you'll be our last speaker if that's okay. Okay, go ahead. My name is Neil Langholds. The rental housing task force appears to be on the wrong track before it even begins. Do the majority of voters know that the task force appears to be setting out to prove that the rejected measure M is the right solution? Why are we ignoring 62% of the voters that don't want measure M? Trying to pretend that only a few small details need to be changed is disingenuous. Changing a few details will not make it so that just cause evictions don't restrict homeowners freedom to do what they like to do with their homes. Least end dates need to be enforceable. Anything less will continue to destabilize the rental housing supply. With the failure of Proposition 10, it should be very, very clear that rent control will not work for a majority of the renters in Santa Cruz. It also won't work for future renters or any renters that move since rents are unlimited on all rental housing when people move. This picture is very clear now that Proposition 10 failed. The council should be careful in setting renter expectations. The council and staff need to need a reset. The task force should look at a menu of options to solve the affordable housing shortage, not force overwhelmingly rejected measure M on the city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. I think to say that somebody that is a landlord doesn't care about housing for people is for the most part disingenuous. A lot of the rental property in this county is owned by people who have been small business people who have not had retirement money coming from government or from a corporation. And owning rental property has been the basis of their retirement. When we start making things difficult in terms of flexibility, you are creating another subclass of people that are victims and victimizing somebody else doesn't necessarily solve the problem. What I think that needs to focus on is how we can create systems where people that can afford to own do. Maybe it's a restructuring of how things are financed. Maybe it's creating some version of a co-op, some version of the legal structure of a mobile home park is set up, the ones that are owned. But we need to broaden out to solve the problems. It's not just about protecting a few people. I have a friend who is a section eight person who's just gotten a notice that she has to move. I'm hearing from the federal government that funding for section eight is going to change and there's going to be less of it. So we've got more coming in the pike. The changes in the septic system laws are going to make a lot of the properties in the San Lorenzo Valley less able to be rented or even to be sold. So we've got more stuff coming in addition to that. So I want the task force. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. I want to speak in favor of the proposal for a tenant protection task force. And let's be clear that anyone who can afford to rent out another property besides the one they reside in is almost a millionaire in Santa Cruz County. If they own two properties, they're definitely a millionaire. And the people who are tenants have no protection by and large month to month. Most of the people I know are not on any kind of extended lease. If that happens at all, it's for the first year. So I just want you to be mindful when this task force goes forward that the tenants in Santa Cruz currently have no protection due to the decision not to pass a temporary just cause measure. The exorbitant rent increase ordinance does not protect tenants because landlords can simply evict the tenant arbitrarily and then raise the rent beyond the limit. So it really does not provide any rent stabilization. So any proposal that the task force considers, there has to be some form of control regulation of the reasons for eviction, just cause eviction. And I want to make it clear also that Prop 10 did pass in the city. So voters in the city did not reject rent control over and over at the door. I heard I'm for rent control, just not this measure. And there's one or two things that I would change and then I'd be for rent control. So if that was true, I hope those people will come out again and speak for the type of rent control they favor. But I think that people need to be realistic that the loophole where a landlord can simply arbitrarily evict a tenant for no reason and then raise the rent to whatever level they desire, that's not rent control. Thank you. Okay. Hello, my name is Sherry Sherry Peterson and I've spoken to several of you before. Well, she just touched on a subject that rang a bell to me, I wasn't thinking of it, but I became homeless four and a half years ago when my landlord smashed into the side of my car that manager of Redwood Commons and she was drunk on chemotherapy and doing meth. So the police came and it was a hit and run but I got evicted and I lost my voucher, I lost my $1,000 deposit that's never gonna be returned to me and I'm the one in the street. I'm legally blind, I'm in my 70s, I shouldn't be in the street. It's really scary to hear. I'm delighted to hear you're finally addressing housing, praise the Lord, but I'm scared that this guy's gonna gather data for a year and a half and where am I gonna be? Waiting in the corner or, you know what, I mean, what about providing shelter now? What about housing now? What about housing? The university dumped 10,000 people on us, what about housing now? We're behind in building housing and that housing at the end of the Pacific over there being my friends were watching it going up, going, oh, we might live there. And now they paid whatever small fee it was to not have to have old people like me or homeless people in there and so they all rent to rich people and you keep renting to rich people, like the sixth story place that's gonna go up is all for rich people and it's really depressing. You know, am I ever gonna live inside and this guy's gonna decide in the database where does that leave me besides the gutter? I'm glad my son provided me a van to live in. I'm glad I have someone who loves me that lets me stay there. You know, I'm grateful for that because I've been waiting for the city to move on something. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for your time. Thank you. All right, thank you to the community for coming out and speaking to us and addressing us on this topic. It's now time for us to return to the council for action and deliberation. Is there an interest in a motion to be made? Council Member Brown? Just a couple of comments and then I'm ready to make a motion. First of all, I wanna thank the public for sticking to the topic at hand and not doing another postmortem on measure M for us today. I really appreciate that. I wanna thank staff for your considerable efforts to bring us this task force proposal, to move us forward on a set of issues that we all know have generated significant and contentious debate within our community and to do that in a timely and responsive way with a whole lot of demands from this council. And I am really pleased that staff has identified CCP as a third party academic institution that can guide us through this process. I truly hope this approach will engender a high level of trust among all stakeholders and the public in general. I understand the concerns expressed about using measure M as a point of departure and I agree with that wholeheartedly. I don't see the CCP proposal to engage with stakeholders in establishing this task force as an overt effort to bring back measure M and nor do I see consideration of tenant protections including but not limited to just cause eviction as an intention to circumvent the will of the voters. So with that, I would like to move the staff recommendation and I believe I could just leave it at that but I am happy to reiterate it if you would all, I can reiterate it if you'd like. I'll second it, too. Okay, so. Okay, so we have a second it. Okay, so I can reiterate it but it's right there on the screen and we have it in our public documents though. Okay, so we have a motion by council member Brown to move the recommendation provided by staff, second by council member Myers and then council member Matthews did you, I saw you raise your hand earlier, did you have? You know, I'm just going to add, I appreciate that the recommendation is broad. I think that's good. The principals, the community has heard the range of opinions and walk on water please. Okay, is there any further comment at this time or are we ready to move to item? Council member Governe? Thank you. I, so thank you to the community members that came to speak. Thank you to staff for putting together and thank you to our representative from CCP for coming into Santa Cruz. I do support the staff recommendation so I'm really happy to see that the motion was made and seconded. I was curious, I just want to put it on the record for some potential data to, that I would be interested in seeing incorporated into the analysis of what's going on. You can take it or leave it. One is the costs for landlords over the last five years or increase in costs with regards to taxes, mortgage payments, all those kinds of things that would be used as a reason for increasing rent. Rent raises for landlords or rent increases put together by landlords as far as the rent increases that were associated with those properties. Then also looking at the length of tenancy before the tenants are moved out and also the rise or drop in wages over the city in the last two to five years, which would be really interesting to see in there. And then also just to respond to some of the things I want to appreciate, especially Barbara and Curtis for their wonderful statements of positivity and love and compassion and coming together in empathy. I did also want to point out and respond to a couple of things that were mentioned that caught my ear. One of them was the talk about democracy and trying to circumvent democracy by having a process with a third party contractor to come in and have the discussion and incorporating the concepts or thinking about Measure M. I don't believe it's in there specifically Measure M but looking at different aspects of stuff. However, it's constantly brought up that it was defeated by a vast majority. I think it's important to show that according to the numbers that were reported by the people today, that would leave 48% of people in the community that did support Measure M or some form of renters protections and rent control. So it's important that we have equity in the representation of what's going on. And then also just on that topic of democracy, I would really bring up the issue of money that played in this last selection and really start to ask ourselves on a policy level within the city, if it's possible to limit the amount of money that comes in from outside the area because the vast amount of money that was spent on the opposition to Measure M was funded from outside funding sources and did contain a lot of, in my opinion, half truths that led people to some strange notions, including of which was mentioned by, just as an example of something that's kind of concerning to me, is that the claim that was made twice so far that Prop 10 failed in Santa Cruz, one of that by Ms. Renshaw made that claim. And it's really disconcerting to have that claim be made on the record when it is completely false if you look at the data. So I just want to emphasize that and put that forward. I do appreciate this and I'll be supporting the recommendation. Okay, we'll go ahead and maybe call the vote unless there's any further discussion or deliberation at this time. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Okay. Yes. So we have our first of three study sessions on local government finance and trends. I just want to acknowledge that we are over the estimated timeline. So likely that will have to be shortened just a touch in order to get a short break and return as best as possible at seven p.m. So, yeah. Honor and bounce. Honor and bounce, yeah. So we'll go ahead and ask Marcus. Yeah, thank you. Is Marcus here? Okay. I'm gonna give my heads up to your approach. Wait, I don't think he answers. Oh, okay. There he is. He gives the time to give us standing ovation. Please. That's fine. Just, I just can't do it. You can go back to what you think. Let's be saddled with the responsibility. It's something we can all agree on. All right. It's awesome. Thank you. Here's a half a million right there. Got a lot of money. Okay. So we'll go ahead and ask that. We're gonna move on to the next agenda item. So if you can move your conversations to the outside and we're gonna go ahead and move on. So if you could keep your conversations down or move them outside, please, that would be much appreciated. Thank you. Okay. So Marcus, I apologize. We had a longer consent agenda session than anticipated and we will likely have to cut your presentation short and hopefully elements that aren't touched upon today could be incorporated in part two. Perfect. Okay, thank you very much. You anticipate going to maybe 6.15? I anticipate 6.15 or 6.30 at the latest. How about I focus on painting broad strokes and there's some detail that we can come back. This is the first of three study sessions so we can hold off on the detail and just focus on broad strokes. Take a note of any questions you might have and follow up in the next two study sessions. Thank you very much. Marcus Pimentel, your finance director. I'm here today with Tracy Cole, our principal management analyst, new to us in the role of a budget person. Congratulations. Thanks. We had planned a tag team. I might just plow through it just to go for a speech. Thank you very much. Marcus. So why we're here tonight is the first of three study sessions. A, we certainly have some new council members who are very familiar with our community so a lot of this shouldn't shock you. And B, we have a budget process that's starting off. Staff have already been working on their budget proposals and reduction scenarios and what if ideas. Beginning in May we'll have a one day budget hearing and the end of May we'll be presenting the proposed budget for adoption and the budget will be released in April. And over the next couple of months we have a lot more community engagement and public hearings to get through. So tonight's just setting the stage very high level about what's to come. You've probably all heard or seen we're not in the greatest financial forecast position and it's not just us. This is a statewide issue. There's nothing unique that we're doing to cause this. There are major influences that we'll be talking about. And I'll repeat them again. Local government, the economy's been in a boom cycle or certainly a recovery cycle for well over a good decade. We haven't seen that same level recovery cycle and there's a couple of predominant themes. Mandated costs are going up that we've talked a lot about like a pension, pension costs. And revenue isn't behaving like it should be. Investment returns have been stagnant at one or 2% rates for over a decade where investment returns used to be at 4%. Sales tax isn't acting like it used to in recovery periods. We're seeing three, four, or 5% growth but not six, seven, eight, nine, 10% growth. Property tax is doing okay. That's a stable predictable source. But some of our bases are shrinking. Utility users tax, some of the base is starting to be chewed on on the ends with streaming videos. So there's things happening and that require state wide reforms. We've been active with statewide legislative committees talking about those reforms, but they're still years away. So until those reforms are in place, we keep seeing revenue acting differently because of a disruptive new economy where people are spending their money differently. We also believe that there's credibility that our 10-year recovery cycle will eventually end. All things do come to an end. We're soon gonna be the longest recovery period ever. As noted by this next slide, we're in the number two position since 1845, we're 1854. We've not seen a recovery period last longer than 10 years beginning to end and we're getting close to that longevity point. That alone doesn't mean that, hey, at 10 years it stops but it does mean we're in uncharted territory. Most recovery periods are about five, six years. So we are in uncharted territory, we're close to. And there are a lot of things while national economists are saying, hey, jobs are great, unemployment's low. So this thing could keep chugging along regionally and certainly in our state there's bigger issues with cost of housing, debt costs, interest rates going up with the changes that the Fed is doing. And the fact that 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending, once consumers start being constricted, they act really quickly. Unlike businesses that might invest and plan for long-term, consumers will stop spending quickly. So we're concerned about a lot of factors that we believe it to be credible that California, if not this area, might see a slow down coming in the next year or so. Pension, so I mentioned some of the, one of the biggest changes we've seen where we're in a 10-year recovery period doesn't, I can repeat that over and over again, yet we're seeing increased in pension costs. We've not seen this before in a recovery period. In recovery periods, pension costs stay stable or even go down. We've not seen one where we're poised to double again our pension payments. From 2012 to what we're making today, we're paying five million more a year in the general fund. It's five million more a year for the same benefit. We have an enhanced benefit, in fact, we've reduced them. That's five million more a year just gone. In five more years, it'll be another five. So we'll have doubled twice our pension payments during an economic recovery period, largely because CalPERS has not been hitting their investment targets over the last 10 years. What this chart shows you is, there's a pie chart there with a big red box and a smaller black box. The big red box shows that they are underfunded by 29%. They have 71% of the funding they believe they need to date. If they had just followed the market or what they've done in the past with investment returns, they'd be fully funded and we wouldn't be seeing any increases in these last five years and going forward for the next five years. So the underlying issue is CalPERS hasn't hit their investment targets. When they don't hit their investment targets, where the backfill? Because they went old for conservative for reasons that they made on their own hand, they put more pressure on member agencies to make up the difference. So members throughout the whole state are feeling the same level of pain. Again, we haven't seen this ever before or in a recovery period investments aren't hitting their marks and they're passing those shortfalls on to us. That's new to us and it's very big, very significant. We talked a little bit about the disruptive economy and at all levels you see it. Your kids or your neighbors, they're buying apps and not toys. We're spending money on services, not buying trinkets. You can buy your, my latest one, you can buy your tax software at Costco, but if you downloaded this non-taxable, there's so many different things consumers are choosing to do that are taking it out of a taxable space. We're buying services that are non-taxable instead of goods. The demographics are changing. We're becoming an older country where we're spending more money on healthcare and not taxable goods. So just a lot of things are happening where the base of taxable goods is shrinking, the market of taxable goods is shrinking and the state tax system has not come up to those reforms. There have been a lot of discussions over the last three years, a lot of discussions, but there hasn't been really a clear message that something's gonna come. You can take that and apply that to gas tax and utility users tax. Gas tax might be a great story, right? Fuel consumption going down, but bottom line is governments have funded their roads based on fuel taxes. So as fuel taxes have gone down, we haven't seen that. Now last year the state took some action on that and we appreciate that, but still there's an overall concern that ultimately the longevity of fuel taxes are gonna fade and we're gonna go into a different economy and how fast will we be ready for that? Utility users tax, Netflix, non-taxable, Comcast, taxable. Same service you're delivering and watching a video, but one's taxable under our UUT, Comcast and the other isn't under our Netflix. So there's just a lot of things happening in the economy that are eroding our revenue base and that's why we're not seeing the same robust increases as consumers are spending more money, but it's not going into taxable products. And then our own story, that's a story replicated throughout all of agencies. Capital investments, the general fund has not had sufficient capital investments over the last 10 years. It's been a long time since we've made significant investments on capital programs, probably 2004 or 56. We should be making $5 to $10 million a year in general fund contributions to maintain our facilities and infrastructure and over the last several years we've had essentially zero except for what we thankfully got out of Measure S last year which funded some critical core projects, but one and a half, $1.6 million is not near the five to eight million we might need annually to invest and maintain our facilities. And we've seen every year, I talk about it internally, we've seen every year, the surprise project, whether it was way back with, anyways, we've had road issues, we've had community golf course, I've got that on my brain, sorry. Soccer field, where we had soccer field issues when I first came here, every year there's been something that's caught us off guard, West Cliff erosion caught us off guard. There's a lot of investment that we must do and we're not able to do that. So that's our story and we're not alone. We saw this last year, we updated our data, Tracy did a wonderful job looking, diving deep into budgets of some of our fiscally comparable agencies and they have much bigger deficit issues than we have. So we're in a good position, but we're not alone. Everybody's facing certain levels of shortfalls. It's just inherent in the system. When you see cost doubling twice, major cost components and your revenue is not catching up. We're fortunate others have not been as fortunate. So that's our quick recap. I'll dance quickly through some quick details that we could come back to the next meeting. This was just meant for context information. Last year we spent a lot of time and this council activated, ultimately there's three different subcommittees of this council that worked on different topics and one of them was the budget ad hoc committee who came up with some brilliant and wonderful outreach strategy ideas and some budget principle ideas. There's a lot of great work done on our outreach side and we want to keep replicating that going this year. So we're really excited about things like our focus group, things like our budget one-on-one study sessions and more outreach. We wanted to remind council members in this year, our public that everybody thinks of our property tax and sales tax and all that money flows to us. We get slivers of it, 16, 17%. We get a portion of every dollar in property tax. We get about 16 cents on the dollar and the same with sales tax. We get a little bit more but about a buck 75 for every hundred dollars spent. So we get slivers of these revenue bases, largely the state and county jurisdictions get the bulk of those funding components. So it's not the property tax and sales tax, we get components of that, not all of it. And revenues for us act differently. So we've got some iconic images, the top slide is in us, but the other slides are. We have different revenues that are more responsive to economic concerns. We're concerned because sales tax and transit occupancy tax are big revenue bases for us. And those are the first when consumers stop spending, we see that in months. We see those trends come in place versus property tax that might take a year and a half before the slowdown hits us on a cash flow basis. So sales tax, TOT, once a consumer decides not to travel to Santa Cruz or spend the same level of money in Santa Cruz, we see that within months hitting our economy. So they're very risky to us. And two of our top three revenues, property tax, sales tax and TOT, sales tax and TOT are in that high risk category where if the consumers choose to stop spending, it's risk to us. There's just information about our different risks following the vulnerabilities in our revenue bases. I'm on the stretch for home run we've done some great things. We can come back to it. A lot of you saw an award we got earlier today. There's been, this council's for years, for decades has led forward with the idea, I joke about this, no money, no mission. But how do we think forward, think long-term about sustaining our services? And this council's been doing that for decades and I applaud them for that. We've got on board, we can talk a lot more detail about our fiscal 2023 sustainability strategy. It's really identifying that in fiscal year 2023, if we can build that fiscal bridge, we've talked about that to get us there. By that point in time, most of our cost increases will have leveled out and we can start catching up. And then by 2030, 2031, we'll be in good times. 2030, 2031, that's projections. But there's a lot of things we've done on pensions. Left side is things we've done. Right side are things we can do more of. You've got a fresh slide deck. I forgot to mention that. And this slide deck will be online in the next couple of days. So the left slider, we've done a lot of things already. We've led essentially a lot, been the leader in a lot of ways on what to do with pension costs. When this League of California cities produced a report in 2018 of January, last January, we looked at the report and said, well, I guess we're done. Because everything they recommended, we already checked off years before. So this, that's what I mean, this council, this administrative team has been very proactive with, what can we do? Let's try to do it now. There's more things we can still do with the right side are things we wanna talk about more. And we hope to maybe spend a little bit more time at the next council meeting on that. Finally, maybe some detail that we wanted to cap on. What are the things you must, as a council body, be tracking on? What are your major responsibilities? Certainly adopting a budget and setting those limits of us are some of the key components that we have. Just the highlights of, right now we adopt a one-year budget. We fund the first year of a capital investment program. It's a three-year program moving to a five-year program, but we're only funding the first year of that. So those are your primary responsibilities, adopting a budget that then sets the maximum authority for that next year. And then we've added some nuance there that might be just helpful for you about the different levels of what council approves and what must come back to council for approval. So new funds, transfers between funds, that's what you saw today. There was a transfer from general fund money to a capital improvement program that required council approval. We've also listed some other ways that you guys have already set the limits and set authority levels that we want to make sure you're aware of that is your responsibility. Living wage will be coming to you at the next council meeting. We talk a little bit more in depth about that, but the city council sets the living wage by way of example. Recap, this is different. These are different times. We've talked a lot about that over the last couple of years and it continues to be different. The league of California cities, California legislature, they've identified that things need to be reformed, but the agreement on what to reform and what that is, isn't there just yet. And if I had to guess, it's still two or three years away from happening. And typically it's when things break, when we're over the cliff is when the reforms will happen. When the highway 99 corridor and there's a lot of cities start going, having real challenges. I think that's when unfortunately you'll see action. We're not really great at doing things proactively a lot of times. I'll list, is there what we have next? Again, this is part one of a three part budget study session. Next meeting we'll be spending, recapping some of this in a little bit more detail, but also getting a deeper dive into the numbers, what's going on within revenue streams, what's going on within our expenditure accounts. And then March 12th, we'll preview our capital investment needs where we should be investing and our resources haven't been and where our gaps are at. I was gonna leave with things just to ponder like what types of things should we be thinking about? And I know the council budget committee that's already formed for this year is already thinking about things like, let's look at a committee to focus on the needs assessment for capital improvement projects and how we fund that. But these are things that we might wanna spend time on a pitch and study session. We've talked about that over the last couple of years, but we haven't just found the bandwidth. And I'm happy to talk about it at length over lunch or boba, boba, budget, boba, some of my staff are joking. We had budget in brews and that didn't seem to work, but boba and the budget maybe. We're always happy to do a deeper dive one-on-one about pensions, but at some point in time it might help to deeper dive into that because it's not about the benefit, it's about the shortfall in the investment side. And I think the benefits get hit far too often on that. So that concludes my power run. That was quick. Thank you. Thank you for being flexible and for your presentation today. I will just simply add that I sent out a email to the council and some of the city manager staff just in regards to how to sprinkle some of the information throughout the upcoming months in preparation for our budget hearings and anticipation that we want to have deep dives and general overviews of our various functions prior to moving forward with the budget hearings. So that is something to keep in mind. Perfect. We're moving forward and we discuss that in our ad hoc committee as well. So this is a study session. It's an opportunity for us to listen and learn. Is there any member of the public who would like to address the council on item number 17, which is the mid-year review, part one study session on local government and finance trends? Okay. Seeing none, at this time, it's an opportunity for council to make any comments. And Councilman Nutt. I just had one question. I was surprised. Dispeltably low reserve levels because I thought we were doing okay on that. It's too big. We just drawn them down. It's more to our exposure. So we do not have a catastrophic emergency reserve. Our reserve levels were set at a lower level several years ago with anticipation of trying to get up. We, if I recall correctly, we set reserves at a two month level. The recommendation was three months, but we, at that point in time, the pain point to get to that funding level would have been too great. So we wanted to aspire to get to three months over the long period of time. It's a deeper dive question that we can get more into it, but there's different complexities. Our reserves are not sufficient, necessarily with all the different risk factors that we have, whether it's economic or environmental or what have you. Zaster. Exactly. Any other council member comments? Thank you. Thank you very much. So I think we have one more item before we break for our 7 p.m. Session which begins with oral communications and that is the review of the meeting calendar and I will ask the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar at this time. I have none. Is there any other? No, no. Okay. Okay. Do we need to take any type of action at this time on that? No. Okay. Okay. So at this point then I will adjourn the meeting until 7 p.m. for oral communications and 7.30 to begin our item for. Okay. Okay. Alrighty. If I could call to order our 7 p.m. session and ask the chamber to please grab up their conversations. Good evening everybody. Good evening. Welcome to our 7 p.m. session of our February 12th, 2019 meeting of the city council. And I'd like to now ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Council members Cron. Here. Glover. Here. Meyers. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice mayor Cummings. Here. The mayor Watkins. Here. Okay, so we have moved our oral communications time to now be at 7 p.m. So from 7 to 7.30 is now when we will have oral communications and oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. And are there any members of the public who wish to address the council by show of hands please indicate so now. And this is for oral communications. This is for items that are not on the agenda. It's not for the 7.30 item. Okay. Okay. So if you can please line up to my left and you will each be given, so let me start. By show of hands can you please let me know. Okay, you'll each be given two minutes and if you feel comfortable please do feel free to sign in so we get the correct spelling of your name that's not necessarily mandatory. And we'll go ahead and start with the folks who indicated that they were in line first which are here in the front. Good evening. Good evening Madam Mayor and members of the city council. My name is David Thorpe chapter president of SCIU 521 and an employee at Santa Cruz public libraries. My bargaining team and I have met most of you and I'm pleased to have this chance to talk to all of you together. More so I want to introduce you to a few of my colleagues and friends and the friends and family they support. Anyone here that is a service employee for the city or here in support of one would you please stand up. These are your people. They cherish and love Santa Cruz and are dedicated to working hard behind the scenes to make your city the best it can be. For everyone you see standing here there are many more who would like to be here but cannot. They're working their second and third jobs to make ends meet. In fact, this weekend I lost a valuable member of my bargaining team as he finalized his plans to move to Oklahoma City. This coworker is leaving the city he grew up in for a home that is one fifth the price. We've lost a very talented coworker. You're facing many challenges this year and you'll hear about them here tonight. We will be part of the solution and all we need is support in addressing the high turnover and fair compensation. As time permits I hope my colleagues can talk to you about the work they do. Thank you for attending to us. Thank you. Good evening mayor and council members. My name is Juan Molina. I have been an employee for the streets and traffic department for over a year. Behind me are my coworkers and I will be speaking on their behalf. As you notice two of my coworkers have been in the department over 10 years. While the rest of us have worked two years or less we continuously have vacancies. We are a department of six workers. Go ahead and pause your time. No, no, no, no, no problem. We'll go ahead and start your time over. Sorry, thank you. No problem. Okay, thank you. So at this time we'll go ahead and start your time over and if we could just allow for our individual speaker to have his time and maintain as respectful as possible. Please go ahead. In my department we see a high turnover of workers on a constant basis. Since I've been in the department, six workers have left. This department provides an opportunity to obtain a class A driver's license training and other certifications as it is a part of the requirements for the job. Once my coworkers obtain their license and certifications they leave for similar job at a higher pay within the city or at other agencies. I understand why they leave. The starting pay in this department is less than the living wage ordinance. The high vacancy rate affects our workload. It increases causing potential injuries. Our job consists of patching potholes with hot asphalt constructing and repairing sidewalks, gutters, manholes, et cetera. We are exposed to hypodermic needles and human body fluids on a daily basis. We are asking the city council to address worker retention for my department and throughout other city departments. Thank you for your time. You know, my name is Sherry Sherry and I'd like to talk about, well, a couple of things. One, I hope you don't put the library under parking as I would never go to the library. I'd have to go to the live oak library or library less toxic. And another thing, I was listening to Gary Patton talk on KZSE because I get around and I listen to the cool radio stations. I love that one. But he was talking how that pristine meadow over there that they're keeping, that they're gonna put 50% of the land, they're gonna give 250 students and then the other 2,000 students are gonna cram into the other 50% of the land. And I, you know, it's appalling that we get 10,000 students dumped on us and you, the city council could stop that. But it's the region, they have no clue how to run the university and that's why they're overloading already overloaded housing situation here. So I'm just asking you to ask the chancellor to get a clue on what they're doing with the planning commission. I think we all need more planning commissions planning for the planning commission. It's really depressing. What's going on? There's no housing for me and all the students, I shouldn't get mad at them because they have to pay $1,200 per semester and live with four people. And we're all having a hard time. I'm just asking you to use your conscious, use your heart and build more houses for all of us, please. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and speak on behalf of our service employee unit. My name is Neil Christon. I've been a city employee for about six years now and I've worked in various capacities and I've worked long enough to build to understand the many negative effects of the rate of turnover that we've experienced, the increase in rate of turnover last many years. We're here as a group asking for change. We're asking for your support to aggressively counteract this trend of being a training ground for many departments throughout the city. We can no longer sustain this. We know this, we look at our membership, we look at the negative effects. I personally represent a stubborn group of employees that are not only from Santa Cruz and they have to work a second job to provide for ourselves and our families but we wanna be here. I've made meaningful contacts and relationships with community members and employees throughout the department and being faced with the opportunity to say, well, you can make more money somewhere else based off your training, education, and experience. That's not something I wanna do. I love my community, I wanna continue to be part of my community and provide services to my community but we know across the board that we need change and so we're looking to you for your leadership and providing that change and providing whether it's creative budget issues or whether it's finding that funding somewhere else with that budget, it's time to make that happen. And so please, if we could be a resource to you and trying to contribute to that effort, we're here and we're willing to work but we just, at this point, we need that leadership. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker for oral communications. And just a reminder, this is to have oral communications. This is the time to address the council for any item that is not on our agenda tonight. Good evening council. My name is Lee Broca. I read newspapers, I work on the other side. I want to give you some idea of what the rest of the other Bay Area is saying. From recent Bay Area newspapers, December, 2018, East Palo Alto largest landlord announced his plan to tear down 160 controlled apartments and replace them with 605. The current residents will be relocated to similar apartments and allowed to return at their same monthly rate. What would Sherry Conable do? January 18th, 2019, regional Bay Area agencies, Metro Transportation Association, Association of Bay Area Governments are in the process of creating a new agency, CASA, a committee to save the Bay Area, which will bring rent control to nine Bay Area counties. What would Sherry do? January 30th, after 41 years of renting a Section 8 apartment, Joseph Halakey rent was increased from 1467 to 2467. What would Sherry Conable do? January 31st, Menlo Park ordinance limiting rent hikes is pulled, what would Sherry do? February 4th, new affordable housing in San Jose designated for formerly homeless foster youth and developmentally disabled is proposed in Roosevelt Park. The city council is considered a $9 million loan to support the project. What would Sherry Conable do? February 11th, Menlo Park council gets plans for rent caps. What would Sherry do? Let this be the mantra for the city council of the calendar year of 2019. Let's move the ball on housing, the homeless and those who work here. Let's be guided by one question. What would Sherry do? Hello again. My name's Satya O'Ryan. Thank you, Lee, for mentioning Sherry. I was missing her a lot tonight. This is the first meeting I'd been to when she wasn't here. What I would like to ask tonight is that we bring back the three minute sharing that gets on the agenda. I know it used to be this way. I know there's times when that can't happen, when there's way too many people, that it might need to be shortened, but in general, when it's possible. I know many other towns do this, and so I request that get on the agenda sometime soon. Thank you. Because I'm speaking on behalf of Conscience and Action, you gave me four minutes. I'm gonna go ahead and pause the thing. We will be addressing the 730 item, which I believe is the item you wish to speak to us on, but this is now oral communication, so that would be later. And yes, you are already identified. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hello, my name is Elliot. I know I don't have a lot of time. That's one of the things I'd like to point out is that you're not giving us a lot of time at a lot of these meetings. Mainly, I'm here to request that the city council look into things related to harm reduction, which I know is a philosophy not all of you are unfamiliar with, and I don't need to explain the whole thing. I'd just like to point out that if you care about the city, you should be reducing harm in it. And there's a whole philosophy of tactics around how to do that that you could be looking into. Also, the people outside were saying something about a loudspeaker. I'm not sure if they can hear what's going on in here, and I think that maybe you should look into that. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello, council. My name is Ben, and I also would like to speak to you all about harm reduction. Essentially, what I want to talk about is the fact that harm reduction is largely shown to, well, I mean, it does what it says on the tin, reduce harm, providing services like free HIV testing, providing safe sex contraceptives, free niocin, opiate overdose, reversal kits, free hep C testing, first aid and supplies and access to clean needles and responsible disposal. In general, these all are ways to protect the public at large. Not only people who unfortunately are addicted to drugs, but those who might be sort of secondarily affected by things like needle litter or perhaps even, I mean, just having things like Narcan available it's protecting people from things that are scary like death. Like it's to protect the public. Thank you. I'll just also make a brief announcement prior to going, excuse me, that for our 730 item, we will have a capacity at the Tony Hill room. I'm not sure if that announcement's being made, I'm assuming so. That will be available for folks that aren't able to be accommodated by the space that we have here if you're interested in going to the Tony Hill room, okay? Go ahead. Thank you, thank you everybody. How many of you were working in 1972? Can I see some hands? Anyone on council? 1972, nobody? Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and pause the comment. This is the time for you to address the question. All right, all right. I'm just doing a little opener. 1972, the real wage is adjusted for inflation, cost of living and among other things, guess what it would be at, 34 bucks an hour. Guess what we're getting paid, not even 15. 10 years ago I was working for $12 an hour in retail in New York City. I'm here and I can't even make more than that in this town. Something is terribly wrong. If you want us to thrive in this next generation, it's time to pass the torch and realize that your city's revenue depends on low-income spenders. Your revenue depends on a lot of sales and that requires a lot of people. You don't get a lot of billionaires buying 35 pairs of jeans. You get a lot of single individuals buying a gene here and a gene there. We need $20 a minimum wage right now, $25 by 22, maybe even more. But what we need to talk about here is city revenue would increase with more low-income spending across the board. We're getting paid below what we're worth. If you value us and you value the city, I think you will see that $20 minimum wage is not a whole lot to ask for, especially living in one of the most expensive places in the world to live. We can do better. We can do better for each other. And guess who's the low, who tends to be getting paid the least? It's not white guys like me. I'll tell you that much, okay? It's our Mexican brothers and sisters, our Latinx brothers and sisters, our people of color brothers and sisters, and non-gender identity people. We love you all, but $20 minimum wage folks, let's fight for that. Thank you. Good evening, council. I'd like to raise a concern and also propose a change to the relocation payment ordinance. How do I get that up? Go ahead and pause the time, or I'll start the time over for you. Just a minute. One second, are we okay? Okay, perfect. It shouldn't take long. I'd like to raise a concern and also propose a change through the relocation payment ordinance to rent landlords from evading the ordinance by terminating the tenancy and raising rent on subsequent tenants beyond the rent crap thresholds. You can simply make it unlawful, to terminate a tenancy for the purposes of evading the ordinance. I've included language from both the Los Gatos Municipal Code and the California Penal Code that does something very similar. Staff considered including the Los Gatos language when the ordinance was up for consideration, but ultimately opted not to do so. I'm not sure why, I think they might have had concerns that it would be vulnerable to a challenge, Costal Hawkins challenge because it included Costal Hawkins exempt properties. I don't think that it actually does. However, I do think the ordinance as it's written is vulnerable to a legal challenge because the rent cap thresholds are so low they really don't pass the SNF test as a large rent increase. And there are two areas of California law that implicitly define a large rent increase as a 10% annual increase. So, and that's also been a discussion among legal circles. There's no case law on it, but it is an active discussion. So, just those two things, I think you could strengthen the ordinance, both making it less vulnerable to a legal challenge as it currently is and also stronger so landlords can't evade it. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Kate. I'm here to talk to you about harm reduction and kind of maybe jump on a couple erroneous facts before they're even put out there. Harm reduction is an evidence-based practice that has been repeatedly backed up by peer-reviewed research, claims that harm reduction encourages or enables drug use are erroneous and not based on academic research and created by anti-drug lobbyists. There have been multitudes of peer-reviewed studies that confirm that harm reduction does not increase drug usage and that it does maximize intervention options, reduce the rates of overdose by providing Narcan and other overdose reduction supplies. Reduce the risk of HIV and Hep C transmission and improve the quality and length of life for drug users. 69% of overdoses in Santa Cruz County occur in the city of Santa Cruz. All harm reduction efforts should be supported in Santa Cruz City. Thank you. Thank you. How much time do I have? You have two minutes. Two minutes. Okay. My name's Marilyn Garrett. I'm a retired teacher. I'm part of wireless radiation alert network because this wireless radiation is very damaging. This is a detector of radiation. This is just an indication of what we're getting in here. These are not natural frequencies in nature and it's a big factor in killing the bees. I went and we can't live without the bees. They've been on the earth for about 40 million years and predicted to become extinct in one decade. This brochure is titled Mobile Communications, The Cause for the Global Disappearance of the Bees and explains how our electrical signaling and that of the creatures is put askew. We have functional impairment. Their major illnesses we're seeing now that are linked to these exposures like diabetes, heart problems, mental health issues. Every time there's a cell tower put up, there are about 300,000 across the United States. These are emitting microwave radiation and the documented health impacts. There's a list of people experienced insomnia, heart problems, fatigue, memory loss, et cetera. And we need to stop this and stop the new rollout of the 5G technology which is military wave technology and they need to put these antennas on every light poles and electric utility poles right in front of your homes. I refer you to whatis5g.org. I'll leave you with these three. Okay. Oh, well, if you could just, if wait, we- Are you directing me again? We haven't started your time. We're just waiting for a quick second. Oh, I'm sorry. Is there any additional members of the public who would like to adjust the council for oral communications? That is for items, oh, for oral communications? Items not on our agenda for this evening. I can need to extend time. It does. No, no, we have until 7.30. We have a half hour allocated for oral communication. Council members, decide, that's what you have until. There's two more out there. What we could do is potentially, if interested, they could potentially come speak to us after our 7.30 item and or if they're not, they could put their name down and we could acknowledge them at the first of our oral communications at our next meeting. One minute. Council member wants your attention. Council member Glover. Thank you. I just wanted to ask the city attorney, is it feasible for a council member to make a motion to extend public comment past 7.30? Wonderful. Oral communication, excuse me. Wonderful. Then I'd like to make the motion to extend oral communications by 15 minutes to allow for people to participate in their democratic right for First Amendment speech. Second. Could those people come in, please? Okay, there's a motion by council member Glover, second by council member Crone to extend oral communications to 7.45. Is there council member Matthews? We have a very long meeting ahead of us. You brought babies. I just want to, if I can just maybe. I'd like to suggest that the mayor get an accurate count of how many people want to speak and give them a minute each and that should. About 30 seconds. Okay, well there's a motion on the floor to extend the call to question. Council member Brown, would you like to call a question? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, those opposed? No. No, okay. So that passes with council member Crone, Glover, Cummings and Brown in support of extending oral communications to 7.45 and postponing the evening item after that. So we will hear oral communications until 7.45. This is for items that are not on the agenda and then we will convene to have our evening item. You'll have two minutes. Members of the community, I'm glad to see that four council members are standing up for your right to speak in this line. It's a very brief right, but it's a very important one. And this looks like a revolutionary change. I hope it continues. Mayor, one minute, Martine Watkins, and I call you that because, I call the mayor that because of what she did at the last meeting has doubled down on her insult to the community moving from muscling speakers, shrinking speaking time and excluding those waiting hours to speak to gagging city council members. And I'm referring to the fact that the agenda tonight does not contain items that three council members tried to put on. I'll be talking about this further during that actual agenda item. But this is also a matter of procedure at this city council. If the mayor can unilaterally with the collusion of the city manager and the city attorney, stop items from going on the agenda that three council members want on the agenda, we don't have any kind of even pseudo democracy here. She's refused to agendize the Glover-Crone proposals and substituted instead the city manager's dog and pony show. And sadly, the four progressives, who I've called out and will continue to call out on this and I'm glad when they respond with the power to block this today, allow this freeze while we dawdle, move along to nowhere deportation policy to spin forward. And that has to do with the Ross camp which I will talk about later. Last meeting we saw rent, control and just eviction whose advocates were elected to office, silent sideline and dumped, tabled. More endless task force games as landlords evict tenant activists and drive us deeper into gentrification, producing more homelessness. The civic auditorium was supposed to be available for these meetings. Why aren't our council members demanding this be done? Thank you. Council members, I got up to speak and a gentleman took my seat. I'm hoping to get it back. I found that hugely disrespectful so I just wanted to say that because I came early to get that seat. Okay, I am going to be talking about creeping fascism in our country and in this city. A lot of people may want to believe that Santa Cruz is oh so preciously exempt from the creeping fascism that's everywhere in our country right now. But it's not. Madeleine Albright was here warning us about it which I find a little dubious but hey, I'll take it. And I want to refer as I'm speaking to the Sunday night meeting that was held in the civic auditorium. The Lakota People's Law Project called attention to the abusive treatment, the absolutely racist and horrible treatment of Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder. Chase Iron Eyes was there and a very esteemed attorney that I believe is one of our most just activists. Daniel Sheehan, he is based at the Romero Institute, warned us again of the fascism that's taking place. So what happened on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is now sort of history for those that heard about it. But at that civic auditorium event just the other night, Sunday, February 10th, many representatives from the Native American or First Nation representatives from around the country were there, such as Chase Iron Eyes. Daniel Sheehan warned us about such public relations firms as the behind the scenes public relations firms, like talk about a name that calls you're on BS out. Hey, these are the people that represented the about face change of spin that that young Catholic little boy made when he took back his admission of his treatment. What I'm saying here is don't think it's not happening here, it is. Our city council is engaged in deep and profound attempts to wed business, incorporate interests with the government. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. I am Nate Alex.Kennedy at gmail.com. And some of the first things I gotta say is bathrooms are a huge issue in the city right now. You're often 15, 20 minutes away from one when you feel that you gotta go. And when it takes 15 minutes to get to the toilet or the porta potty, your body gives you about 10. Now I have even personally had it where I've been walking down the street and quite frankly, shit my pants and had to drop it right there. And I'm one of those people guilty of shitting on the sidewalk because I had to. Go ahead and pause the time. I just, if you could please keep your language. Understood. I only felt that the words were appropriate in the manner they were said. Okay. But we have a public setting. Yes. So anyway, I will admit it. I am wearing a diaper right now, an adult diaper because I do not want to have to poop somewhere I'm not allowed to. And so what we really need is to have a city wide ordinance requiring that all places that have a bathroom, bathrooms that say no public restrooms, that if it's available to customers, I should be able to make a $2 deposit on purchase to be able to use that bathroom before, because if I'm ready to explode, the last thing I need is to be choosing what kind of coffee I'm about to drink. And thank God for Starbucks leaving the restrooms open to everybody. I've had the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company kick me out for asking to use a bathroom, swearing at me using all those words you don't want me to use as I'm being forced out. And then I cross the street directly, go into Starbucks and at that time they did not have any locks at all on the bathroom. So I was able to use that. So anybody looking to use a bathroom, thank God for Starbucks. Go use theirs if you have to. Thank you. Hello, my name is Sarah Smith and I'm here today to talk about a wonderful program in our city and it's called Casa de Aprendizaje. It's a bilingual family daycare home that's run by some friends of mine, Adriana and Pedro Castillo. And I'm just wanting to highlight the importance of this program. I've known Adriana and Pedro since Annie was two years old. She's their oldest daughter. And it's been an incredible journey to see the work that they've done to build their program. Adriana graduated with honors from Cabrillo in the early childhood education program. Her site is considered a mentor site by the ECE department and they use it for training ECE teachers. And it's also just an incredibly vibrant community of parents. And so part of what I wanted to let you know is that the parents who are attending her program have been concerned about safety in their around the center. And they weren't able to come tonight and they said we can't come at seven o'clock because we're putting our children to sleep. And they said it would be much better if we could come in the afternoon or if there was some way that they could make their voices heard at a time when they weren't in the middle of doing night care, getting their children ready for bed. So it's a wonderful program and they have an incredible staff and the parents are committed to thinking about the entire community. They know that we have lots of issues to deal with in our community. And they are working together as a community in the family daycare home to try and think about what they can do to also help improve the safety in our community. So I just wanted to bring them to your attention. Thank you. And I'll just remind you that this is an opportunity for oral communications to address the council for items that are not on tonight's agenda. And if you could please lower, you could either hand it around or please lower it because what happens if you hold the sign up then folks can't see behind you. Okay, you'll have two minutes to just. My name is Melissa Freebear and I'm a registered nurse. This is my expertise, harm reduction. If the city and county want to run a meaningful harm reduction program, then you need to run it properly using best practices. Having three kiosks to dispose of your needles is inappropriate obviously as our children and our locals are stepping on needles in our beaches and our parks. And it's unacceptable and we're not going to take it anymore. If you want to allow people to come to this town and shoot up dope and provide all the necessary supplies to do that, including Narcan so that they don't have to access medical treatment and actually get services and get help for their addiction. It's not going to come on our beaches anymore. We're not going to allow our children to step on these needles, these cookers. Okay, it's unacceptable. I am a registered nurse. This is what I do for a living. You have 80 homeless people this last month that were given over 200 plus needles, not safety needles, needles that as soon as they toss them anywhere, where do those end up? They end up in our watershed. They end up on our beaches. They don't end up in the city of Capitola. They don't end up on the West side for a reason. They end up on the beach flats and we're paying attention and we're sick and tired of it. It's our money. If you're going to give our money away for this program, then run it properly. The county has already been informed. They've been given solutions and if you do not take action, they said the city was unwilling to put sharps containers because of the symbolism behind it. We're way past that, okay? When you're handing out needles, boxes of needles at Camp Ross, okay? We're way past that. Then you need to provide sharps containers because I, for one, I will hand deliver these needles every day to you until you do something. You'll be given two minutes? Yes. Okay, so my name is Jennifer Landford-Brown and I'm also going to touch on harm reduction. Harm reduction, I remove personally over 6,000 dirty needles a week off the streets. I go out and supply sharps containers, tons of them to the people at the camp. They can buy them. Here's a list from the SCAP program. They can buy them themselves. They do buy them themselves. They don't have sharps containers to put them in. The county is not providing any needles that they're not taking out of the community. The city is not providing any needles that are not being taken out of the community. Providing Narcan is not continuing opiate addiction. I live on Falker Street. I have received my 90-day notice because my lease is after five years. I work with the homeless. I'm a harm reductionist. This is critical. I worked at the River Street Camp, the 1220 Project. I was at the heart and forefront of pulling the people out of San Lorenzo, giving them trauma-informed care and harm reduction is important to implement that together. We have to. The same people that I helped into housing, navigating to housing, are in the camp. Do you realize there's over 200 people suffering? And they don't use Narcan to continue their opiate addiction or to avoid medical services. They're waiting to get into Janus. They, I have never met anybody who wants to be a drug addict, not one person. And they're desperate. They would love to get off the streets. People who have received housing and stable housing have gotten off the streets. So I did want to remind those that are interested in speaking tonight that we're still in oral communications. And this is the time for you to address the council on items that are not on today's agenda. Mayor, council, this is public service announcement about Warming Center. We're open tomorrow night. We open when the temperature gets really, really. I'll go ahead and buy. You are actually on the agenda in terms of a specific addition to the finances. Is that correct? I'm announcing an activation and a challenge to council. I think it's different. Okay, just making sure. My challenge to new council, I'm not making any assumptions about your relationship to the conundrum of homelessness, but my challenge is we're open tomorrow night. We're open for an extreme rain event. To this moment, we have not received one penny of funding. It's all community-supported, all volunteer-oriented. So we give blankets, but my challenge to council is, before this winter is over, I encourage each one of you to volunteer because it's just a volunteer program. We make sure that nobody has to sleep outside on the coldest nights. We've reduced the reality of hypothermia on the street. That is done. We never have to worry about real hypothermia, at least at 38 degrees or less. So I encourage you, sign up via warming center program at Gmail. Thank you. Hi, my name's Sarah Bravo. I'm a UCSC student. I'm here speaking on behalf of the UCSC snail movement. We're a group of students who are a group of houseless students who are living in our vehicles who have been affected by the housing crisis. We are struggling because we don't have safe places to park and sleep. When we've been sleeping on campus and we are woken up by the university police every night, they come to our vans at 2 a.m. and shake our vans and bang on them and try and search laces in them. And they threaten to cite us and tell us if we don't come out. And then they tell us to go out into the city and park and sleep in the city. That's not okay. It doesn't have to be that way. And we need help. We need support. We are pressuring the university to provide a safe parking program and designated lots on campus, but we've repeatedly been denied. So we need your help. I mean, we shouldn't have to go out and sleep in the city. The university has the space for us. It's quiet. It's safe. It's monitored. There's just no reason for this. So that's it. Oh, and also, yeah. Please look out for our petition soon. And my email address, we're also looking for donated legal assistance to help us interface with the university better because what we are doing is not working. So if anyone could please help us. My email address is s as in Sarah W Bravo. Like Bravo, you did a good job spelling my name at UCSC.edu. Thank you. I wanna remind the community that we will be hearing an item on homelessness and update in direction at which time we will also allow for public comment. So this is a time to address the council on an agenda item that is not on today's agenda. Yeah, I'm not sure if the university's harassment of students is specifically in your agenda, but that's happening. It's happening every night and it's escalating. The more we speak out and voice our experiences about it. So it's not like we don't like the infrastructure to support the homelessness. We lack the moral capacity to support the homelessness. The university has talked with us and said that there's no way to pursue any action regarding homeless students. Why? Because of profit. The university profits from the students. The housing market, the student housing market is one of the biggest profits that the university is getting. So why don't they wanna approach the homeless students with respect, with compassion, because it doesn't give them any profit. So please, please help us expand your compassion to homelessness, to homeless people, and to homelessness in general. That's all I have to say. Good evening, council members, Mayor Martín. This is not on your later agenda. I believe this is a sweeping comment that won't help that kind of a conversation, but needs to be said. I've been reading in the paper and hearing, which is even more fun, because you can't prove it one way or the other, about the city's desire to get in on the nine to $10 million is supposed to help alleviate homelessness here. And I think the city needs to get rid of why your criminalizing laws or at least begin that process before you start asking for money to serve people that you've proven you don't like. I really need to see something more than Pamela Kahn's stuck and Cynthia Chase floating a wonderful idea in your staff. I'm not criticizing city staff, but policy is lacking, creativity is lacking, and I need to see a willingness. I really do, are you guys gonna watch me booping in the street, I guess, but that you can make something small and still chase this nonsensical developer money. You don't have to choose between status quo and what does this person right here need? That you can make decisions that are informed by what you see, if you don't trust what everyone has to see, trip over, try to pick up, try to get sitting or dry, but just from what you know for sure, add the human element and you'll get a better outcome. You know that, you know I believe in adversity and I bet every one of you knows why it's dynamic at times. So I've been watching, maybe more than 40 years, how we treat people we wanna ostracize or just not see. And I've been talking about Mitch Snyder all over town for nothing, it seems like. And I would like to see the city embrace an opportunity that everybody's trying to embrace but that I can show you about 50 nonprofits that are ready to handle, do something creative. Thank you, thank you, your time is up, thank you. So at this point, we have. I appreciate your challenge. We've concluded oral communications, we extended the time in additional 15 minutes. So we will hear oral communications at the end of the item if there's time or have you be the first to speak. So we're no longer having oral communications. Okay, we have an evening item before us and I'd like to start by first acknowledging that this is a very complex and intense item and I wanna thank you all for being here. I want you to understand my role as the presider of this meeting to ensure that everyone has a role and opportunity to be heard, that when they have the opportunity to speak that they can feel comfortable to speak to us and be given their time without disruption. That's the job of the mayor and the job of the facilitator of the meeting. And one of the things that council has gone through is a process where we established norms. I'm gonna go ahead and read those norms and then I have a brief statement. So the council interactions with each other include to be respectful, to engage in open and honest communication, to be honest and truthful, to address difficult issues, to find areas of common ground, to be open to different perspectives, to give the benefit of the doubt, to role model good leadership and to be considerate of each other's time. I also have a brief statement that I'd like to read before we go ahead and kick off tonight's agenda. I will read my statement and then I will turn it over to our staff for their presentation. We will open it up for public comment where we'll have an opportunity to hear from you all and then we'll return to council action and deliberation. So I'd like to kick off our discussion of homelessness before our staff begins the presentation by reflecting on my hopes for tonight's proceedings and the apparent challenges we face not only in developing policy that will make a difference in people's lives but in a way that we as a council treat each other and work toward effective governance. Tonight's discussion will no doubt be challenging. We are trying to alleviate pain and suffering. We are trying to make a difference. As we deliberate tonight, let's try to recognize these common values and build from there. Even through our disagreements, even through our frustrations with each other, let's work towards consensus and do that by listening to each other and the public. This is our time to learn and listen. And to that end, as I mentioned earlier today, I will be striving to ensure our dialogue is respectful and productive and that each of you has an opportunity to speak without interruption. And I ask that you allow me to do my job as effectively as I can and have the patience as I navigate this process with you, staff and the community. And for the benefit of the community who have come out to take part of tonight's proceedings and for those who are at home watching, there is an issue I want to address before we get started. And I'd like to speak to the perceptions that are floating around in the community to say what I understood to be true and to recognize what many may be thinking. And I bring these up tonight to say them out loud, to address them and to hopefully set them aside so that we as council members, as staff and the public, can hold the most productive dialogue for our community that we can. For perceptions that are unnamed, that are often not addressed, if allowed to fester, can sometimes further divide us. And my hope is to bring us together. And so I want to understand that there are perceptions that my colleague, Council Member Glover, has intentionally attempted to smear my character by suggesting I arbitrarily disallowed for this agenda item, excuse me, this is the opportunity for me to address you all and we'll have an opportunity to hear from you as well. I arbitrarily disallowed for his agenda item to be added to tonight's discussion. As to my own actions, I don't believe that either this perception to be true. Council Member Glover worked toward an agreeable path to providing an opportunity tonight with myself and staff that will allow him to bring his ideas forward. And I'm open to hearing about those ideas. We have created space to hear them with our existing item, and we have a process to ensure that our meetings are well planned and structured. I received an item request to agendize that on the morning of our agenda review process, and that did not allow me the adequate amount of time to add them to the agenda. And that's the reality of governance when we have so many complex issues to address and seven Council Members who have varying issues and items they'd like to bring forward. There's no lack of understanding the urgency of human suffering, and there's no lack of understanding the importance of the public process. We are all here because of those values and we all share them in an attempt to make a difference. I also understand that there are perceptions that my colleagues, both Council Member Glover and Council Member Crone, are intentionally bullying me because I am a woman. That if not for my gender, if I were a man, there would not be this question of my integrity. There would not be this question of my character. And I say this perception out loud not to validate its truth, but rather to stand alongside my fellow Council Members, staff and community Members who may feel pushed around or bullied. I say this perception out loud to name it, to set it aside and continue to speak my mind. Continue to do my job and to work on these tough issues. Continue to do the job of Mayor, which I am honored to be in, and to take it very seriously. I hope that we as colleagues can do the same and work together with each other as we begin our conversation tonight. And with all this in mind, I would now like to turn it over to our staff for our presentation. Go ahead. Point of order, Mayor. I would like to go ahead and say. We're not done with oral communications yet. Oral communications generally matters presented as oral communications. You were not recognized. And I appreciate your respect to address me. And I'm addressing you, I have a point of order. Do you want to look up to City Attorney what point of order actually means? I'll show you right here. I don't believe you have to be recognized in point of order. And while he's looking, I am profoundly saddened and I apologize if there was ever anything that I did that because I don't know, David was the mayor before and I did lots of points of order and many. We'll go ahead and pause your comments if we could for a moment and allow our City Attorney to respond to the question before you. I'd also love a chance to respond. Any council member with the exception of the presiding officer may call for a point of order to bring to the attention of the Council a violation of the rules, an omission, a mistake, an error in procedure and to secure a ruling from the presiding officer on the question raised. Point of order should be raised immediately after the violation, omission, mistake, or error in procedure has been committed. Council member who wishes to call for point of order may interrupt the Council member who has the floor at the time but shall not explain the basis for his or her point of order until subsequently recognized by the chair or by the presiding officer. The presiding officer in his or her discretion may allow the Council member who was interrupted to conclude his or her remarks before ruling on the point of order. Point of order is not debatable. However, the presiding officer may consult the City Attorney or City Manager for ruling on the point of order. So confirming with you, City Attorney, you mentioned the point of order violation has to occur and the calling has to be immediate, is that correct? That's right. So is the point of order violation something that immediately took place or is that something that has passed? I was actually trying not to interrupt, waiting for you to finish. Generally matters presented at oral communication will require, this is on page 21 of our Council handbook, will require further investigation or information, shall be referred to staff. And if the Council determines that action is required, the item may be placed on a future agenda. I have two issues that folks brought up during oral communication. I would appreciate the staff looking into. One is by David and the SEIU team, SEIU bargaining team, there's two workers. They said that their wages are lower than the city living wage. I'm just wondering if the City Manager or Lisa Murphy, our HR person can get back to the Council if that's in fact true. The other question I had is the city really unwilling to place sharps containers around Santa Cruz. That's another one if you can get back to us. So I know that you can't respond, nobody can respond, but I would like it, it'd be nice to have a report back. Okay. Okay, we'll go ahead and move on to our staff presentation. At this time we'll hear a presentation from staff. Then we will open it up to the Council for questions. Then we'll open it up to the public for public comment. And then we'll return to the Council for action and deliberation. Thank you, Mayor Watkins. Good evening, Council members. I'm Tina Scholl, the Assistant City Manager. And with me presenting this evening is Susie O'Hara, the Assistant to the City Manager. You've seen us many times previously talking about the issue of homelessness and that's what we're bringing for you again this evening. The last time the Council addressed this issue was in December 11th and that was a compendium, a large recap of all the activities in 2018. This item today is specifically related to the County and City of Santa Cruz Joint Action Plan for emergency shelter provision and encampment management. This is an issue. We know the Council is eager to take up and we are eager to bring forward to you as well. So the agenda for our presentation follows along four main points. Setting some context, talking about current challenges, describing the funding and collaborative opportunities. That is why we find ourselves in a different time and place right now in talking about this issue. Three, talking about the actual joint action plan for shelter provision and encampment management itself. So going through the details of how that works. And then fourth, reporting out on the Board of Supervisors who took up this item earlier today in their meeting, reporting on their action taken. Ms. O'Hara was there to watch and participate in that and then also go over the recommended council action we have for you today. So first, talking briefly about current challenges and really nothing on this slide is gonna be anything new for this Council or the community members here tonight are watching is that we are legitimately in a state of an unsheltered homeless crisis. The council last January 2018 declared a shelter crisis and made the findings that we have such acute circumstances that we're not able to shelter our homeless population. The latest census point in time count showed about 1,204 individuals homeless in Santa Cruz and the countywide average sheltered is 80% of that total population. So about 960 people were estimated to be unsheltered in the city of Santa Cruz. Now to the point in time count, there was just the recount happen on January 31st. I participated as did other staff members and other people. So we look forward to those results coming out and that will be likely June or so because there's a series of steps and follow up that has to happen in analysis. But we do look forward to reporting that. Based upon the anecdotal evidence in our community, those numbers going up is an anticipated outcome but we will see. So we are definitely in a crisis state. We also have a critical need to provide additional emergency shelter beds. This is a unified position of the city council and all of your policy actions for at least the past two to three years and we've been working toward that end. We talk to you frequently on this issue. And then the most immediate challenge facing us is of course the encampment that's happening along Highway 1 and River Street by the Gateway Center. That has been the most acute homeless crisis that we have, the most tangible example of a lack of shelter and the human suffering and the need we have in our community as well as impacts on other community members, residents and businesses nearby, as well as impacts on the environment. And we heard about needles and the watershed. It's a very complex issue that was referenced earlier but so this really has is the top of our priority to discuss and we'll be, we have an action plan around that to discuss with you. So what makes now different in terms of opportunities? We've had a lot of energy, staff time, council support to work on homelessness and yet we do feel that we are poised at a very different point in time and it's very exciting for tangible real things to happen and we have opportunity in two forms. The first is funding and we've spoken to this council many times about this, is that we have about $10.6 million coming in from the state, these are one time monies, but to have this revenue flowing in and to be able to put it to work pretty quickly is such a change, such a change for us and really presents so many opportunities for program and partnership and making real service delivery on the ground. So for an update on that, the proposals, so an RFP was issued, request for proposals and around a certain set of different categories and priorities and those proposals are due February 22nd and we expect the funds for that to be dispersed as early as April and May and I will note that $9.7 million of this money has to be spent within two years so there's a very rapid spending horizon for the majority of these funds. But a new piece of information that I don't believe has been reported is that when working on this RFP process, there was a sense that even though April or May sounds quick, it's really not quick enough to deal with the acute suffering out there today and so we worked hard with the county and the city of Watsonville, which are all entities that have declared a shelter crisis to say can we do an emergency allocation from this heat money to get dollars at work more quickly and that was able to move forward so we have about a million dollars that were set aside and had a more rapid proposal process to try to get those dollars going so we hope that these monies could be released as early as next week and they would do things for like hygiene services, immediate, some of the sheltering programs you'll hear about, et cetera, so that is good. We do, there's this urgency, we do have this money hitting the ground very, very quickly. And so here's just, this is a slide that just shows the cash in the heap, those are the two grant programs. You've seen a majority of this content before but just pointing out the lowest row on here, the emergency sheltering LOI which is a letter of interest process which is a simpler procurement process for hygiene and also community engagement but we won't talk too much about that tonight. All right, so the other aspect of opportunities why today feels different, why we feel like we're poised for a change is the collaboration is currently at a place with our other cities in the county that it really hasn't been at before. Having a single-minded focus, having everyone at the table really working and talking in a way, we haven't seen it. And I think what we're gonna present today really exemplifies that and I will point back to the two-by-two committee. The two-by-two committee, this was one of the recommendations out of the council's homelessness plan from 2017 which set forth 20 different recommendations and one of them recognizing that, excuse me, we'll have an opportunity to have you as our community weigh in. At this time, if you could please remain quiet and how if I acknowledge that there is a person who does speak out, I will let you know that you have a warning and then if it happens again, then I will ask for you to leave at this time. So at this point, we'll go ahead and return to our staff presentation and we will have an opportunity to hear from you. Go ahead. Thank you. And so the two-by-two, this was one of the recommendations from that 2017 plan that said that the city and the county have a unique responsibility and partnership role to play. So let's create this designated committee of two city council members and two Board of Supervisors members, so the two-by-two that will come together specifically to talk about homelessness coordination. And so already this year in 2019, the two-by-two committee has met twice represented by Mayor Watkins and Vice Mayor Cummings and on the county side by Chair Coonerty and Supervisor McPherson. So already these four individuals prioritized meeting, set aside time in their calendars and met very quickly and with urgency and said that we really need to see solutions and came up with their own guiding principles. So they're here on this, I know the font's a little small so I hope everyone can see it, but there were some four guiding principles that came out of the two-by-two and as part of this action plan. And this also can be found as an attachment to the report, the first part of the action plan. And these guiding principles all go through them very quickly and then in case Mayor Watkins and Vice Mayor Cummings which just make some comments from your participation in the two-by-two that can happen. So the guiding principles were the provision of services and alternatives to people living in the encampment must be balanced with the health and safety benefit of clearing the camp by offering outreach and alternative shelter options. Basically saying that the camp to be moved, there have to be other things supporting these individuals to move on to a better place. And also beginning immediately, though until the camp can be managed and there's other alternatives, the health and sanitation and safety were of importance and there's a number of actions that were taken to ensure that. The third talks about preventing future encampments. In order to do that, there's this goal, this aspiration by July 1st, 2019 to have an increased year-round shelter capacity to prevent this and then also the fourth one is that there should be future discussions about common policies and procedures and coordination. So in sanctioned encampments can be addressed in a way that is more responsive and quickly we don't have this growth of a large population like we're seeing today. So with that, I just want to over that quickly. I'll turn it to Vice Mayor Cummings to start. Sure. I just want to start by saying that this process thus far that we've been doing, combining myself, Mayor Watkins and two county supervisors has been a really productive conversation. All the people who have been involved and I'll add the city staff and county staff have also been very supportive in who we've been working with. Have really been trying to find the most compassionate way that we can deal with the situation that we have right now to try to minimize harm, to try to find people's shelter within our community. I mean, we have a range of comments that we receive on a regular basis. There are some people in the community who would really prefer that we maybe just shut the camp town tomorrow and push everybody out. But we have made it clear that we're trying to do the best that we can to find alternative viable options for trying to get people into housing as quickly as possible. We wish we could do it more quickly, but we're trying to work at a pace that is gonna get people into housing and also try to reduce the size of the camp and get people into the best forms of shelter or the best programs possible. And so we've been taking a lot of input from people in our community, some of whom work in these programs to try to see what they're working on, how we can work with them, encouraging them to apply for the funding that's available. And so I just want folks to know that this isn't something that we're ignoring. We are trying to do the best that we can to move forward with trying to reduce the size of the camp and get people the services and the help that they need while also addressing the concerns of people who live in the surrounding communities. Thank you. I don't have much more to add other than that's already been shared today. So I, and for the interest of time, I won't say a whole bunch more other than that. You know, it's really encouraging to know that we have our colleagues on from the county and on the board of supervisors really interested and committed to having an ongoing dialogue with us so that we can most proactively and as best possible address all of the different elements that associate with this challenge that we experience. So it's encouraging. We're committed. They're committed and we're ready to get to work in alignment. And so I'm very hopeful in that regard. And just one more thing is that I just want to thank everyone who's reached out to us to provide comments to let us know how things are affecting them, how we can do better. And I also want to thank everyone in our community for their patience as we try to deal with this issue that we have in the most humane way possible. Okay, we'll go back to our staff. Thank you. All right, thank you so much, Vice Mayor Cummings and Mayor Watkins. Vice Mayor Cummings laid a really nice foundation for my comments and I wanted to specifically give a little context as to staff's role in helping to develop this action plan. So as you may probably know, Assistant City Manager Schull and I have been working with the CAO's office for what feels like several months and I think it actually is. In really trying to shepherd the programming around additional shelter beds in this community. As this council knows in the previous council as we've tackled homelessness over the last couple of years, the issue of siting, the issue of community acceptance and compatibility of homelessness programs has been a significant challenge for the city council as we've tried to move forward with programs. So staff's role is really just trying to continue to beat that drum, having the CAO's office at the table with us has been incredibly helpful and that also goes to the Health Services Agency as well as the Human Services Department as well and across the board with our city staff as well. This has been a significant investment of time and energy into coming up with solutions. I did wanna give that context and also let you know that we did activate the Emergency Operations Center several weeks ago and facilitated by our fire chief, Haiduk. We are meeting on a weekly basis. We know that conditions change out there day by day, hour by hour. For instance, we're expecting a heavy rain event tomorrow and thanks to Brent Adams for opening the warming center. There are things that we have to be responsive to and this is a giant effort on behalf of the city and the county so I wanted to give you that context as well. So to speak to the action plan, there really are two tenants to the action plan. One is to immediately increase our shelter bed capacity and as I mentioned, finding new suitable sites that the community has acceptance around has been challenging for the last several months and perhaps a couple years. So this immediate plan which will be funded through the LOI that we are reviewing tomorrow and hopefully we'll be making some decisions very soon as early as early next week will be focused on our current sites. So where we have or where we have in the past had shelter. This morning the Board of Supervisors did approve a contract amendment for the Salvation Army to open the Laurel Street Salvation Army Building for women, families with children and adults with mobility impairments. The Salvation Army Building on Laurel is the only building that has an ADA compatible, accessible bathroom and shower as well as an elevator to the second floor. So really it's critically important for us to get the folks that are at the VFW to be moved over to the Laurel Street site. So that will be hopefully happening later this week as soon as tomorrow and which will free up some spaces at the VFW site as well. As mentioned in the staff report, we're also exploring the concept of moving back to the 1220 River Street site and the LOI and during our bidders conference we did describe the kind of operating scenario we would expect to see there. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. So we've had a successful program out there that had specific neighborhood compatibility structure that was included in the operational plan. We given the environmental considerations that the site is adjacent to our intake that serves 100,000 people. There are additional environmental conditions and concerns associated with that site that we might not see in a parking lot or in another more hard surface site that's not adjacent to our river. So given that we really are looking at feasibility at this time, we do think it's possible to find an operator to run a program there but last time we weren't able to find one so we're gonna have to work really hard with our community partners to see if we can see who has capacity and who can work with the city and the county support to stand up a program there. That site is also limited in time by a construction project to replace our 20 inch pipeline that goes from the intake up to Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant. It is our most critical raw water pipeline and it is expected to be replaced starting in July of this year. So we do find ourselves in a situation where this site is really only available for a short period of time and we had questions from Vice Mayor Cummings about what would be our expectation in terms of transitioning folks. We'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through the presentation but it continues to be very complicated but we do have more people at the table and we have more money to spend so there is opportunity there. We are also recommending the continuation of shelter services at the VFW. So there is currently capacity for 60 beds at the VFW in Live Oak. That is currently funded through April 15th. We would expect to extend that through the fiscal year so through June 30th. We are working with the Association of Faith Communities to expand their satellite shelter program, hopefully double that number as well as initiate a small scale safe parking program. They're poised and ready to go with that and so I expect through this LOI process that we'll be able to move forward with that. We are exploring any other sites where their sheltering operations have we've had previously existed. So if this, you know, if A through D don't come to fruition we're gonna keep looking and we're gonna keep hammering away at it. And then also the provision of additional warming center capacity. So as you'll note in the motion we are recommending a small contribution to the warming center for the purposes of provisions of blankets and other materials that Mr. Adams has requested. We also are working with him to open up the Harvey West clubhouse and that will be a site for the warming center through I believe the end of April. So have been working diligently with Mr. Adams on that as well. So that, this will be somewhat, you know, 12 months ago we were having a similar conversation. So we're hoping in the next couple months with the heap and cache RFP process to determine the feasibility of opening either an interim or a permanent year round shelter. So as you'll see in the notes here we'll work with our nonprofit community partners and that will be through the heap and cache RFP process to provide year round 24 seven shelter sufficient for at least a hundred people to be operational by July 1st. And we wanna report back to you on how that process is going. So we're all very clear as to the feasibility of that. So within 60 days the city and the county team will determine whether there is a suitable site and operator that can meet that deadline. And then we plan on returning to those prospective governing bodies by April 30th to talk about the plans for implementation. Sorry about the font here and I will paraphrase because there's a lot of information. So the second tenant of this action plan is to really ensure to the best of our ability with our combined resources and this immediate disbursement of heap funds to alleviate human suffering. We really wanna focus on management of the encampment and those to kind of mitigate the immediate public safety and health risks. We're gonna focus on three things, health and hygiene. City parks has been responsive to county public health in their request to ensure that we have sufficient hygiene facilities out there. So we have increased capacity. I think we might be up to eight port-a-potties with two ADA port-a-potties and hand washing stations. We will continue to monitor those numbers and make sure that that is sufficient. Yesterday, the county health services agency installed a syringe disposal kiosk. So that has been done. The county will coordinate and the dispatch of teens from HPHP and the human services department. So that's the homeless persons health project to continuously conduct outreach to ensure that we've done smart path assessments, provide the clinical support, health support for folks that are out there including infection control and wound care and then also talking about public health prevention and education. And then we will continue, this is the city's parks department to manage the waste that is created there through a contract that we have with an outside contractor. There's obviously a significant amount of waste that we are managing on a day-by-day basis. So that contract is kind of a week-by-week operation. We will be balancing that health and hygiene approach with increased public safety presence. So as you'll see in the first bullet there, Santa Cruz police department will side a mobile command van and conduct enforcement operations on those committing crimes at Gate White Plaza, the Tannery and Felker Street, request the assistance of our other local law enforcement agencies. This is critically important as SEPD is highly taxed on getting as much patrol and enforcement as we possibly can out there. So really trying to lean on the sheriff's office, you see SEP police as well as other agencies that might be available. Then also work with probation in the Santa Cruz sheriff's office on the focused intervention team which was actually discussed at the county board this morning. They are currently in a pilot phase with that started three weeks ago. So we're able to make referrals to that focus intervention team as well. So that's good news and refer those eligible encampment residents to the team. The city and the county will also develop a volunteer coordination effort. We have, it's wonderful. We have a lot of volunteers out there ensuring that folks have access, ensuring that we have some management of volunteers out there is something that we think is important for the coming weeks. And then ultimately the abatement plan. So we will together with the county develop a noticing and abatement plan to transition interested encampment residents to alternative shelter as they become available and fully abate the encampment by March 15th. And that is obviously per the council direction that we'll receive tonight. So I'll talk a little bit about the county board action from this morning and then recommended city council action. So this morning the county board of supervisors unanimously approve the joint county city action plan with the following additions that I wanted to bring to your attention. They also, in addition to what you see in your packet with the first attachment, want to provide 24 hours security to minimize neighborhood impact as the encampment is transitioned and abated and also move the encampment fence. So it's currently directly along the levy pathway, directly adjacent to the pathway, maybe six or eight feet back to establish a bit of a set back from the levy pathway. So they did add those two additions to the action plan. In terms of funding the security, that's something that we'll have to have a conversation with the county about how best to do that. I'm not entirely certain security is something that he will pay for, but that's something that you can consider as well. And we will come up with a strategy with the incoming dollars. So this recommendation for your motion is in the council packet as well, but I'll read it for the benefit of the public as well who might not be able to see it. So one is to approve the principles of and direct staff to implement the county and city of Santa Cruz joint action plan for emergency shelter provision and encampment management, including. And we wanted to have a lot of clarity around the dates so there wasn't any confusion moving forward as to what the council direction was. In collaboration with the county, provide gateway, applause, encampment residents with alternative shelter options through concentrated outreach and navigation to begin tomorrow, February 13th, 2019. In collaboration with the county of Santa Cruz, fully evaluate the site and operational feasibility of and implement when feasible the temporary shelter options as noted in the action plan, including but not limited to the new Laurel Street Salvation Army program, which again, the board did approve that contract amendment this morning, a new program at 1220 River Street, which was the former site of the River Street camp, expansion of the Association of Faith Community Shelter program, initiation of a small scale safe parking program, expansion of warming center capacity and continuation of the Veterans of Foreign Wars program in Live Oak. And then the C here is in collaboration with the county of Santa Cruz, provide 30 day closure and shelter transition notice to the residents of the gateway encampment on February 13th, 2019 with a plan full abatement by March 15th of 2019. And last but not least, motion to fund the warming center in the amount of $5,000, we did receive a proposal from Mr. Adams for the provision of bedding and supplies. So we'll take your questions and I'll return to the motion. So at this time it's an opportunity for council members to ask any questions of staff. Are there any questions on this side? You have a question? I'm a member of the question. Okay. All the council member, Glover, go first then. This is time for questions, for clarifying questions. That's what you said, absolutely, yeah. Thank you. So thank you for that wonderful report staff and for all of the work that you've done in addressing the issue of homelessness. I was curious, I noticed in the plans of action that it was to locate, and I think the language is a syringe disposal kiosk. Could you go back to that slide, please? Thank you. So it's a singular kiosk there, is that? So it's one of the large scale red, big bear box kiosks, yes. Okay, great. What do you need from us to install more of them around the community because I know that there are more high use sites. I met with supervisor Coonerty and he identified at least two or three other high use sites around the San Lorenzo Park area and also near the beaches. So what would you need from the council in order to move forward with more locations? Yeah, so about 18 months ago, the neighborhood safety team did start conversations with the health services agency on a pilot program to install syringe kiosks in three different locations. With the previous council, those conversations did stall out. So we are poised to regroup on that and work with our parks director as well as the SSP team and Dr. Leff to move forward with that if that's the will of the council. Wonderful, thank you. And then how many people are in the camp now currently? So by most estimates, it's anywhere from about 150 to 200, but not necessarily everybody sleeping. So there are people that, excuse me, there are people that utilize the area during the day and don't necessarily camp there. Okay, and thank you. And with the proposed relocation to the different shelters, are there enough shelter spaces for that 150 to 200 people? That is fully the intention is to provide an opportunity for everybody who is interested in shelter space to provide enough opportunity in shelter beds to transition everybody who's interested. So in terms of what we are shooting for, we are shooting for kind of a one-to-one match between what we assume to be the number there. And when you say shooting for, can you let me know what that means? Like, is it that you have that many number of locations secured through the proposal and then it's just a matter of getting people into those places or you're hoping that you'll have enough for the total amount of people in the camp? So as I mentioned in the slides in the staff report, the operational feasibility of all the sites still needs to be determined. The big question in terms of feasibility is the site at 1220 River Street. There is capacity there to serve 50, 60, 70 people depending on what type of structure we use if we do a campground again or if we try to do an indoor structure. It really does get to do we have operators that have capacity in our community that can operate this type of program. We'll know more when we're done evaluating the LOIs. Should there be a question about whether we have operational capacity, we'll have to return to the council and talk about how to make a program happen there. Okay, great, thank you. And then is there an estimated funding level that the city would be responsible for for a motion 1B, just an estimation on the city's contribution to the establishment of those additional shelter areas? So as mentioned in the staff report, it's expected that the action plan will be funded through the HEAP and CESH process and that state funding. At the, I think it was at this December 11th meeting, the previous council did allocate an additional $100,000. So between that and the state funding that's coming in, we fully expect that these 1B shelter programs will be fully funded. The reason why I ask with regards to that and I appreciate you specifying that it was the HEAP money which I was aware of because of the report. But I'm just concerned about the cost associated with the implementation of this model of shelter programs because as we saw previously, the River Street camp running initially at $90,000 a month and then ending a bit about $75,000 a month. And there are proposals which I've brought forth, which were some of the items that weren't agendized tonight that would offer the opportunity to establish encampments that could run as little as $150,000 a year. So do you think that having those kinds of options available to you may make it more possible for us to better utilize those HEAP funds instead of putting them all into things when they're kind of in my opinion overpriced? So given the fact that this funding is coming in and for this time we have a lot of money to be working with, I think it's more a matter of citing. I do think we have enough funding to fund 1B it's really about looking and maximizing as many different options as we possibly can and then deciding where those might be able to be placed. Thank you. Council Member, I mean Vice Mayor Cummings and then Council Member Crone. Any other questions? Thank you for this report. And one of the questions I had and I've brought this up a number of times is to my understanding this abatement process is gonna start hopefully tomorrow. And then if we're able to find shelter and space for all the people there, the hope is that by March 15th then we'll be able to fully relocate folks who are wanting assistance. But during that time period I'm just wondering if there's any measures the staff is taking to keeping the camp from continuing to grow. So as we find people beds, is there any measure in place so that we just don't continue to see more people come in and by March 15th we have 200 people there who we have to deal with at that point in time? Yeah, I mean I think you've brought up one of the most challenging operational considerations that we have. And so this week, tomorrow and Thursday we are gonna be meeting with county staff to talk about the board direction and the council direction and develop a guiding policy document for the operations moving forward. That guiding policy document will be, excuse me, will be handed to an operational team and we will be trying to address some of the stuff that you have asked questions about. Whenever there is a void, people will be potentially filling in that void and we are very aware of that. So it's a matter of putting some structure in place to ensure that we do have some operational standards in place to try to make that not happen. I think that is something that's gonna be very challenging and I bet that we're gonna work on it. Council Member Cronin and then Council Member Brown. Thank you, thank you Susie for every, you've been at this for a long time and really appreciate your coming back and just keep at it, thank you. Thank you to everybody also out here who's doing it too. And I see many faces who I've encountered working with homeless folks and who are homeless too. My one question really has to do with C and I'm just wondering how the decision making process went, how did we decide March 15th? Well, it was full plan to start abating it on February 13th and then full abating by March 15th, 2019. And is that even, well, go ahead and have a follow-up maybe. Yeah, absolutely, thank you Council Member Cronin. Yeah, the timing, the dates, that was the topic of a lot of conversations because there was a sense universally from everyone, City County staff, City County elected officials, this needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. For the people living in those circumstances for the community members around it, it needed to move quickly. So I think some people would wish it could be changed tomorrow. And magically if that could happen, I think that's an outcome everyone would wanna see. So we were balancing this need for speed and to move very, very quickly but also being pragmatic and being practical and thinking about, well, if we want to actually provide some alternatives to identify siting, identify shelter space that takes a little bit of time. So that was one thing that we confronted, I'd say rather quickly, to come up with this action plan ideas, to come up with 150 bed spaces. But then also providing 30-day notice for folks. So we wouldn't wanna just go in tomorrow and let everyone know you're leaving today. So we're providing people adequate notice, intensifying the outreach and opportunity for people to get enrolled in benefits to consider their options, to think about a housing plan. So that was part of it. It's balancing, moving as quickly as we possibly could with a feasible plan that provided people the maximum notice and opportunity. Oh, just wondering how the process went. Are we saying that the two by two, along with Happenheap, came to consensus on that date? Just, I was just seeing, could I didn't see any, and there could have been a memo. I just didn't maybe see it. Sure, so this really started with staff. So staff started working and staff between the city and the county led by the city manager who got ahold of the CAO and said we really need to be coordinating and talking very seriously about this issue. So thanks to the city manager for getting the county at the table with us and they were willing to do so, but he did initiate that. So we were talking back in December and saying, okay, what is happening? What's the plan? What are we gonna do? So we started working initially on the outline, the framework of this. The two by two committee very quickly in New Year said we want to meet. And so we met with them and heard very clearly the policy direction of we would like this to move as quickly as possible. Staff, can you please go back and work on this and bring back an action plan that balances all the things I talked about. So it was really a combination, but I would say I mean this entire plan from the initial germination to what you're seeing today happened in a matter of weeks. Last question, Mayor. Can the city make any commitments to the folks at the camp behind Ross Justice for Less that we will find them a place by that date March 13th? Is it? 15th. 15th, excuse me. It is our intention to get as much possible to do that. So can we absolutely guarantee? We're trying really hard and we have the most feasible plan. We already have the Laurel Street approved. That's 40 new beds. The others are coming online with certainty. So I would say that we have plans that are, I'd say 80% mature. So these aren't just exploration. We're well well past that phase. So we think that there is concreteness in reality to what we're presenting. Council Member Brown? Did you have a question? Yeah, so I am very sensitive to the urgency related to the Ross or the Gateway Plaza encampment. And I'm also sensitive to the potential for displacement. People who are really truly in need of a safe space to sleep. And so I'm just wondering if there's a plan and I understand this is a very quick turnaround time if there's a plan for the council to get some kind of report back at which point in this 30 day period we might be able to make a decision about a continuation if necessary, if shelter availability is not possible. So just if you've thought about that and then two, this is a separate question, you could take them both. The amount of high $5,000 for expansion for the provision of bedding and supplies for the Warming Center to essentially expand its services. What it seems to me, it's a big ask for a very small amount of money. And so I'm wondering how that amount was come to. And if it might be possible to consider a larger contribution to the Warming Center. All right, I'll talk about the second one first because it's an easier one. So Mr. Adams also has a purchase order with the county for the expansion and the amount of $20,000. And so that was really a collaborative effort between the city and the county to ensure that we had that moving forward. So that $20,000, $15,000 is supporting the expansion of the Warming Center. So that's increasing the number of sites that are available and then having the opportunity to double the capacity. $5,000 is to support the storage program on Fokker Street. And I believe that purchase order is complete. And yeah, the $5,000 was an additional request specifically to the city for the purposes of ensuring that there's enough provisions of bedding and supplies. So between those, that is the proposal that we got from Mr. Adams. As to the first question, I think a lot of our potential moving forward really does hinge on the potential of using 1220 River Street and finding an operator for that. I can speak from experience that as we went through this process a year ago, it's extremely challenging finding operators who can expand up for a short period of time and then have to expand down. But I do think that we will see with this LOI process that there are a few nonprofits who are willing to come to the table and have this conversation. So I'm really actually quite optimistic. I think we are at a different place than we were last year. But I do think we'll know soon if 1220 is a viable option. And if that is not a viable option, we probably would have to return to council and talk about what the plan would be like moving forward with regard to additional shelter beds if we'd need to look for a different site and how that might impact the encampment abatement timeline. If there are no further questions from the council at this time, we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment. So I've received four organizations who requested additional time. And I'd like to first invite up Mr. Robert Norris representing Huff and you'll be given four minutes to address the council. Members of the community and city council. I wonder who picked Susie O'Hara and Tina Schull to deport and disperse the Roth campground without consulting with the campers. That's the one group you may notice. Take it in one. The joint action plan as it's described is words on paper without substance. What is real out there tonight the next week and the next month is the real shelter that real homeless people have provided for themselves out of sheer necessity. That's the shelter this proposal would strip away from them in a month. I gain no confidence by hearing that, oh, you can go back in two weeks, maybe change it. You're gonna terrify a bunch of people and drive them into the community is what you're doing. It was largely built and managed by the homeless themselves. You can see this community from highway one as you drive into town, rag it overcrowded and makeshift, but real. This is a community we're speaking of. It must be spoken to, listened to and appreciated. Not merely a place where mills, cops parade through with submachine guns. Yes, that's where they were two weeks ago as a training exercise or a show of force. Not just a target for abuse by take back Santa Cruz wannabes, taunting residents or a fundraising source for our staff here. The Ross camp for several hundred people is the only shelter these folks have. And no glowing promises of the city manager, eerily similar to the promises of last fall, last spring and the fall before from these same two individuals before the council, most of them the same, many of them the same. It's the same deal again. The city manager and the mayor have replaced the Cron Glover Resolutions, Glover Resolutions, sorry Drew. These were imported by three council members, introduced by three council members, prepared on time well ahead of time with accompanying staff reports that we could go. We heard a sort of apologia from the mayor but she didn't allow the council member to respond. Interesting. Or the public, thank you. The Glover Cron proposals include necessary homeless emergency declaration, not here in this proposal. Reopening closed bathrooms, not in this proposal. A review of discriminatory ordinances, not in this proposal. A safe parking plan, a real safe parking plan with immediate relief for those whose vehicles are their homes. A transitional campground permit process so that people like Brent and other people can actually work on setting something up without having to deal with this endlessly doddling, delaying, and babbling staff that we have to listen to for hours while each of us, except for me because I'm representing a group, gets two minutes. If three council members can't agendize the most basic and essential initial steps and instead we witness instead the proposed destruction of existing shelter, that's the campground. Are we really gonna swallow Susie O'Hara's pipe dream of a navigation center that navigates nowhere? A fantasy of housing first that doesn't exist? Or Tina Scholl's promise of a few extra tents crammed into the boneyard barbed wire river street campground that served only 60 out of the 1,000 to 1,500 homeless at a huge cost. Or a handful of beds at 7th Avenue and the Salvation Army that can in no way replace the tent city that the city manager proposes to destroy. Is this our vision? Is this what we expect those outside to accept? Sure, folks surviving in tents must prepare for the midnight wake up calls of Mills Police. The sorry, no public bathrooms here, policies of Tony Elliott, Carol Scourge and Iseth Ray. This council tonight can attempt to adopt an alternate agenda. And we're gonna be told it violates the Brown Act, but this council must try to do that and not succumb to this nonsense. Thank you. I'll go ahead and, before I invite up the next organization to come and speak, I want to remind those that are speaking before us that we have council policy that is driven behind how we can be respectful and to keep all comments to the issue at hand and at all times avoid personal attacks on either council or staff. So at this point, I'd like to now invite up Yasmina Porter, who will be representing the Tannery Leadership Group. Thank you, and Yasmina, we'll be given four minutes representing everyone. Thank you, everyone. I think I'm speaking mostly to the vice mayor because you're the only person I haven't really got and we haven't gotten a chance to work with. I want to just say that I'm here on behalf of the Tannery community that includes a lot of businesses and families, the arts council, John Stewart Company. And first I'd like to hand it over to my colleague, Linda. Hi, thank you. My name is Linda Kover. I live and work at the Tannery Arts Center. I'd like to stress the support that we have for your proposed initiative to manage the camps and disband the Ross camps. In addition, and we already have done this, is made it possible for the walkway to be used by pushing back the porta-potties and places where people are hanging out so people can walk by. That's a good thing. As the city did last year at the River Street Camp when it was active, we got a security for our Tannery campus. We are requesting that again, just like you did last year, that's why the River Street Camp was a worthwhile. The last, was that, is that what I got? Go ahead, go. You're good. I'm just gonna ask if everybody who's here to support what you're gonna vote on today, if you could please stand. So the proposal that you guys prepared that we read about. And if you could raise your hand as well. Some of you are already standing so we don't know. Thank you, you can sit down. So I'm almost on the verge of tears because I got a paper that called Tannery People, they called us names, some kind of name. Anyway, one of the things that really is missing that I noticed is actually talking to the people in the camp, which I did and we have been doing and some of them are here. I didn't see anybody else but me that has been going out and talking to people in the camp and bringing them here. So the one thing that I would like to say is if possible, I would like you to adapt the proposal as is but adding that they should be offered gift cards or Safeway cards to the people that are voluntarily moving. And I also wanna state misinformation that people have been putting out. The Supreme Court said that people have a right to sleep. You cannot make them move if you don't have a place for them to go. So don't not vote for it just in case they don't find a place. If they don't find a place, they can't make them go. That's the law. Thank you. Okay, was that our time? Okay, I just wanted to reiterate that we really, as a campus, we support what you're trying to do and get housing for people. And something decent that gets people in a place that works as part of their community too. Since we still have time, I wanna also share that when I was at the County Board of Supervisors today, they said that this, first of all, this is really, really, really important, everybody in this room because there's funding right now from the state. And if they don't vote for something, that money just gets taken away. That's what happens. So what I'm hoping is that you're gonna vote yes for what's on the table and then get back in there and put more in it than what Chris Cron and Drew Glover are talking about. That's what I'm hoping that you're not gonna just fight amongst each other and then do nothing for the homeless people. Because they are my friends and I have been homeless and she has been homeless. So I hope you'll take action. You have the money to take action. And what I heard from the County Board of Supervisors today is that we were the first community, the Tannery and Felker Street community, to say, put it in our neighborhood. We're not saying move it away. We're saying take good care of them and do it right. And now you have the money, so make it happen. Thank you. Well, if I still have time, I'm still gonna say this, that I support you for going forward. Just go forward. Please keep in mind you're gonna need a lot of housing. And I appreciate you're trying to do this finally. And we're not the nimbies. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so our next speaker is representing conscious in action and that's Steve Fleisch. You'll be given four minutes as well. Thank you, Mayor. As you can imagine, having just heard this report has kind of taken some of the hot air out of my presentation that I worked on all afternoon. And I want to really make an ego decision that I won't give a bunch of emotional hyperbole. And I wanna do it, Martine, for this reason. I thought what you said was really important when you made your introductory comment about your relationships. Your relationships cannot be separated from us, the community. And I think that's one of my biggest bones of contention, Martin, with the way this has happened, is that we activists, and as Serene just pointed out, a lot of homeless people have not been a part of this decision making. And therefore we have felt alienated. We have felt alienated and not involved. And I think that's what causes some of the emotion, you know, of accusation that it's not healthy. I wanna say to you, I'm a rabbi, change the commandment. Instead of saying love your neighbor as yourself, say love your fellow council person as yourself, with respect and the caring that you want to have from each other. But in doing that, invite those of us who are activists and who have worked hard on this to be a part of the process. And I particularly want you to know how grateful I am to Chris and to Drew for all the work that they put into their proposals. But Chris and Drew, because of what I've just heard, I'm not sure, you know, I wanna think about this process, but especially because I'm hoping that you will make the effort, first of all, to treat each other with respect and kindness. I'm the father of a son who was on this council and who came home and cried too many times. So I know what it means for you to respect and love each other. Lastly, include us. Make us feel that we're a part of this process so that we don't feel alienated. And then hopefully in consultation with Chris and Drew and Sandy, I can come back in a couple of weeks and say, well, it's going forward. So thank you for allowing me the four minutes. And our last group is, oh, I'm not gonna pronounce this correctly. Casa de Aprendizaje Preschool, and that's Pedro Castillo. Thank you, Mayor Joaquin. I'm a city council. My name is Pedro Castillo and this is my wife, Adriana Castillo. We just wanted to let you know that we're a compassion people and then we really understand that you have a real hard decision to make. And then there's a big problem that we face on our city. And I'm here not just to talk about ourselves but also to talk on behalf of the families. My wife has a family home day care. And she's been running for over 12 years. And then she provides services for children. And I ask for children also for the families. She provides classes for parents. And then it has been disturbing for the parents when it's time to drop off their children. They've been having encounters multiple times on the day, sometimes during a pick up or drop off. My wife has to get up all in the morning and do cleaning on the street. I just wanted to give you a brief picture where our day care is located. We're located on Ferker Street at the end of the cover stock near the levee. So we're right by the pedestrian bridge crossing. And then, so on the one side, we have the homeless shelter. And on the other side of our street, we have the MLI in services. And also there is the food and liquor store. So what happened is this is not new. This has been going for a long time. Our street has become a highway for people to walk from the homeless shelters to the MLI in services to the liquor store or to get food. And then so we've been impacting ourselves also our neighborhood, our community. And the parents being seeing this and then there's parents that when they go and visit the program, they see the street and they get afraid, they get scared. And then so there is kids, they've been lost to, or they've been missing to have a education that my wife provides because some of the parents, they get afraid of what's going on on the street. But really here is we're asking for your help and then to help our families that my wife provides service to. But what we actually need from you is, there's a lot of things that we need, but if we can get some help while the, these things that move forward and everything. I just want to mention that really support what you would like to vote for. And also we support that the people needing housing, they really, we support that they should have good housing and a place to stay. Nobody should be sleeping on the street. You know, we really approve that and then agree with that. So what we would like to have is some street pick up trash, pick up trash on the street to have more police present, it's like that we got approved. Reactors from our school, there is a program, Day Night Storage, and then it's being conflicting with our daycare. So we'll ask them if it can be located. And I just wanted to say, you're welcome to submit your hopes to us and we can go ahead and review this as well. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so that concludes those that had reached out to me in advance representing organizations. So at this time we'll open it up for public comment and that's for any individual who would like to address the council on this item. And if you could please line to my left, you'll be given two minutes. And if possible, please show the respect that you hope to receive when you're standing before us and allow them their two minutes to address us. Go ahead. You in line? I'm sorry. Okay. No, I mean, sure, go ahead. My name is Scott Imzlin and I live on Price Street and family got to come up from Felker and have a comment. And I came with a few people here from Price Street and we feel the spillover from the homeless camp and the bridge and all the traffic that comes through. And I just want to support the police presence that happens specifically on Felker and Price Street in our area. It's really super helpful. I thank them and our neighbors always thank the police for coming upon our calls and just having a presence through the Denny's parking lot, through the hotel's parking lot. There's a lot of activity that goes on and I'm sure you're aware of it and the police are aware of it. And I talked to them and I have friends in the police department that I surf with and they're great guys, they understand the problems in that area and I just want to, the security patrols that were a private company that came through our area had a huge impact on the drug dealing and what trafficking goes on in that area. If you live in the area, you see it firsthand and knowing people in the fire department the police department and also old city council members and mayors, they know exactly what's going on down there and I'm coming from a side that won't be necessarily what's in this house tonight but I see the negative aspect of the camps and all the bikes that have been stolen from my family and all the neighbors, all the cars that have been stolen personally, three are broken into. Thank God the police department found them all within 24 hours and got them back actually in great shape, they weren't destroyed and that was really how the police department did a fantastic job in the Highway Patrol. So, I'm sorry. Thank you, thank you very much. Okay, thank you for being here. Okay, all right, our next speaker. First of all, I'm very angry. I'm gonna try my hardest to channel Sherry Cannibals Energy and she was always very respectful so I'm gonna try to, please Sherry, help me. October 10th, 2017, not all of you were there, just Cynthia, I believe was on the console if I'm not mistaken and you guys had said within zero to three years you were gonna do a number of things. Secure storage, I'm just gonna go through a few of them Secure storage, that would have been easy to do. Don't tell me, oh, Brent Adams is fulfilling that, he is, but it wasn't from your help. He did it on his own, not because of you guys and thankfully he did that so I'm happy but it wasn't because of you. Restrooms and showers, where are the showers? There are some restrooms over by the camp. Navigation centers you were gonna talk about. You were gonna talk about secure electronic device charging resources, no place like home. I could go on and on, recovery center for crisis. None of these were done. Oh, I'm sorry, there was one that was done. Homeward bound, yes, you've been able to get that one easily where you can send people home. So I'm gonna, what about all the people that are living there that have pets? Are you sure the places are gonna supply that? Are you sure that, what about people that have partners, families? Are they gonna be able to live in those places? What about people that have drug abuse, a drug that are addicted to drugs, that are addicted to alcohol? Are they gonna be able to go to the Salvation Army to the other places? No, you are not gonna be able to move those people over straight away. Please do not end the campground, please. Your time is not. All right. Hello, my name is Vicki Winters. I've been going out to the camp with my fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America Mutual Aid Solidarity Group, and we went to the camp this afternoon and talked to folks, mentioned what was on the proposal for the city council. I don't know if any of them, I don't see any of the people you talked to here, but they wanted us to pass on these messages. The council should come out here and live for a couple of weeks. During severe storms, there should be a way people can stay in hotels. When we mentioned that you're discussing 10 million in funding for homeless, they said it could build an apartment complex, but it will go in someone's pocket and they'll keep shifting us around. You don't wanna move every few months, but they keep shifting us around, shifting us around. One man who said he was a builder, said that he should have a tiny home village on city land. If he said that's a battle I'd be willing to fight. People just said treat us as human beings, not animals, we're human beings. They should respect our privacy and not rip up tents. When I mentioned people who are familiar with the Ross Street Shelter, when I mentioned that a River Street Shelter, sorry, mentioned it might be opening, they just rolled their eyes. So that was an expensive thing that did not do much good at all. And then had a long chat with someone named Justin, coincidentally, who was identified as a veteran. And he said that in his mind, the value of Ross Camp was that he could spend a few hours every day not focused on basic survival needs. He knew where he would sleep at night, he knew where he would go to the bathroom, and that freed him up to be able to access veterans resources at the library and look beyond basic survival. He, we talked about these kinds of encampments they have in Eugene, where there might be a communal meeting space, and he was really excited by the idea of communally preparing food and participating in decision-making. So in my mind, I think we need new creative solutions and it looks like you're more on the old way. Thank you. All right, we'll have the next person to mind. My name is Ursula Reed. And after listening to the committee's recommendations, I don't think so. Simply because from my understanding from the Ross Camp, there are 200 tents out there, if not probably more going in. Not only that, there are not just one people in most of the tents, there may be a few, but most of them have two or three or maybe more. So 150 serving just 150 people is not gonna work. And the thing of compassion and empathy, if you really want compassion and empathy, put yourself in that place. If even one person winds up out on the street because this camp has gone down, then you're doing a disservice. It could be you, think about it. It could be you, don't do it. Thank you. Hello, I'm Nate Alex.Kennedy at gmail.com, three, four, six, nine, eight, eight, eight. Now right now I've got my tablet taking dictation from verbal into text. We can put subtitles up here. We really should, but on more serious note what we're talking about, what I think we need to do is open up as many campgrounds as we possibly can, but make them fenced. So they're fenced in, you can exit, but as soon as the door closes, you can't come back in at least without somebody letting you in. And not only that, I mean, Harvey West, several open-banked lawns all over town. There's plenty of places we could do this, but something I think is what we should do to make it more effective and more self-sustaining is actually charge rent. And I'm talking anywhere from $2, if that's all you got for a night, up to 50 or even more for a night for people that would otherwise afford to go into a hotel room 100 and 150 at night, but they're in town just for the night, they need some more to crash, and they would rather do it in a sleeping bag on the dirt than in a room and $150 a night hotel. What we could have is even a trailer that for police to be in, that would also have a property manager that could handle taking rent and letting people in. And just that whole, the whole idea is we need, we could do it at Grant Street Park, we could do it in Harvey West, we can do it in a lot of areas with public land, we can do it elsewhere. If we have several, not one, but several campgrounds for people to go to, then I can see the logic behind stuff like the sleeping band, the camping band, but if we don't have anywhere for these people to go, we need to repeal those laws, let people pitch a tent right on Pacific Avenue if they want to. Thank you. Okay. Hello, thank you. My name's Mike Dealey. I would like to start by offering a quote I believe from Bernie, Senator Bernie Sanders, poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich. That unfortunately is true here. We saw it with Measure M, where homeowners went against those who are most vulnerable. Some people, elders who I spoke to, terrified because they worked their whole life looking at the end of their life on the streets, maybe prior to that. Tonight, I want you to consider, and I want all of us to consider that we are living in an economic storm that has been waged against the working class and the poor for decades. So this is a formidable obstacle, not an excuse to say it is out of our hands and above our heads. We have to do something, but we have to also recognize this obstacle. Homelessness, I say they are economic refugees. And we need to think from that point of view, not how they're draining the system, but how the system has been drained all of us of our hours of work just to live, just to put food. Here we live in a bread basket of the world and we have children going hungry. We bailed out the banks for three at $5 trillion in a matter of days at 0% interest, but we can't loan that money to our own Americans. We have more homes owned empty and owned by banks than homeless people in America. Now, how can we look at this from a micro, from our own perspective as city residents? Well, we have a police department, but is that their job to manage the homeless? I'm not disrespecting those who serve in our force, but I do question the function of that office and our park rangers office. How much are we spending on gas for them to be rolling on their cars on our bike path? How much is that gas? Do we have the budget? I don't think so. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Jennifer Lanford Brown. I'm back again. This time this is really serious. We have to bring back 1220 River Street. We have to, to be able to get the people out of the campground. And I know this from experience. I've worked at Salvation Army. Okay, pause the time, please. I'm sorry. It's okay. We'll go ahead and start the time and then we'll allow you to speak and please if you can speak into the microphone and we'll have others. I've worked at the Salvation Army. I've worked at all of the homeless programs at the Armory. I would pack it full by myself overnight, 115 homeless people a night. I've housed people for 20 years in my life, senior mortgage loan officer for Chase. Right now I got my 90 day notice. That's what landlords do. I'm facing homelessness. I was homeless for seven months with a handicapped husband and a wheelchair and my 13 year old daughter now. I live at 155 Felker Street. I support 100% what the city does. I trust you guys. I was assistant manager of the 1220 River Street program. I helped implement the whole harmless agreement. It is a program that works 100%. I was at the forefront of pulling the people out of San Lorenzo. You cannot put them in a extremely high barrier place. That isn't increasing the beds that we've normally had because when we had the Armory open, I could throw 115 people in there easy. Same funds from the emergency shelter program from HUD. Why can't we just open it up again? There are people all over the place who can do it. We have to run by the same policies. You guys can do it and it works. But right now, Justin, you said finding people housing. I help people get into housing that are in that camp now. The reason why they're not being evicted, they follow the rules and they're scared. Landlords put them on month-to-month leases and then when they decide, they're out. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have a prepared comment this time so I'm just gonna be off the cuff. I just wanted to bring up a couple issues with the plan that I see and that is that if SmartPath is your primary way that you are assessing people into housing, it's an ineffective program. I'm a SmartPath assessor myself. I have not seen people house through that program and also it does not include race or LGBT status in factoring in people's vulnerability which is a big factor on people's vulnerability in the streets. That should be completely rectified. I've brought it up multiple times to other people involved in that and nothing has changed. I don't think that it's an effective program and I also wanna bring up the deterrence focused initiative or however it was rebranded. The focused intervention team, that's it. I don't think that the city, I know that it's a county program but I do not think that the city should support it or work with it. It's basically a program to criminalize homelessness and specifically people that are homeless that have mental health issues and people that are homeless that have mental health issues that don't want treatment that has traumatized them like they should not be forced into treatment and it's a program to offer a carrot of housing that doesn't actually exist and saying that if people don't follow the program that they'll be penalized more heavily. It's really a terrible program and I'd say this also to the community, like this is really, you should be active about not allowing this to happen. Yeah, it's really, really terrible and there really is no housing and commercial lots are erected. Things are commercial lots that could be residential lots. There are spaces for housing but I guess a commercial lot is more revenue so that is prioritized. Lots should be prioritized for housing and don't dissolve the camp. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, oh, good afternoon, evening. Sorry, I was dozing a minute ago. Good evening, mayor and council members. I just want to point out how great this conversation feels as opposed to a conversation about RV laws and blue boxes on the Pacific and this feels like a solution-oriented conversation. I'd also like to point out that this year we are not facing a hepatitis A outbreak because of hand washing and facilities and I'd also like to point out that the river, the Caltrans property there has, there's always been some tents there and I know there was some concentrated efforts along Coral Street and Lime Kiln to move people along because that was impacting businesses there so sometimes I think what we're seeing now is there's no, right now there's no tents along Highway One, like if you're headed up towards Mission, they were there years ago so I think people have kind of coagulated there so it seems so huge but a year ago it was much more dispersed and I also want to point out another wonderful, beautiful humanitarian thing that is happening at that encampment. I go down there a couple times a week and I removed used syringes and I also give out anywhere from 15 to 40 boxes of Narcan twice a week. It's getting used up, sometimes one woman, two people in one morning and I don't know if, of course you remember but at the Benchlands campground there were two fatal overdoses in a very short period of time. I don't haven't got the report from the coroner thus far, she'll have it in a few weeks but every day there's not a fatal overdose at that encampment, it's a miracle because there's about a couple hundred people there and that's from a community that's doing a lot of outreach, HPHP and the people are empowering themselves to take care of their community and saving lives. It has nothing to do with not wanting to wait for 9-1-1 and thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay. Good evening, my name is Amy Liebichuk and I'm a social worker with the county. My primary concern with the Ross encampment being shut down is where are folks gonna go and I realize that there are these shelter plans available and I think that's great that we have plans in place. My concern is the reality is we have a lot of folks that have mental health issues and substance use issues which is gonna impact their ability to fit in to the rules and regulations of the shelter programs that are available. As a society I think we need to decide is housing a human right? If you have mental health issues, are we still gonna house you? If you have substance use issues, are we gonna house you? The reality is even if folks want to address their substance use, we have wait lists at Janice Detox. Are we gonna get all these people in? It's not a reality if we have, I don't know the percentage of folks at the Ross encampment who would want substance use services but we couldn't get all those people in in a timely manner. So we need to come up with solutions for that. The second thing I wanted to address was the proposal for all this funding that's coming down. That's awesome, $10 million is a lot of money. My concern is that as we've seen with the Section 8 program, I meet hundreds of families who have Section 8 vouchers, they've had them for months, years. They can't find housing so it just turns into a lousy piece of paper. And I'm concerned that these rental assistance programs are gonna turn into the same thing. There's money available but there's no housing for these folks so we need to build affordable housing. Thank you. Hello again, my name is Elliott for those of you who did not catch that before. I don't have any specific policy suggestions or anything, just some concerns. One of them being that it strikes me as upsetting that suddenly we're all so concerned about homeless people just because they got together to do something for themselves and set up a camp when these same people have been homeless in this city for years and years and years. People have been homeless for a while and we're only upset about it because they're organizing themselves. And that's concerning to me. Also it concerns me that one of your solutions is to bring in more law enforcement when things that are considered crimes in this town include things like sitting within 14 feet of a building which is something that people who live in houses do all the time and don't get cited for. So anyway, also just I know I have limited time but I wanted to point out that I also have concerns with some of your behavior, Mayor Watkins and I'm also a woman so I'm pretty sure it's not like internalized misogyny, it's just your behavior. Good evening, I'm Scott Graham. One of the problems that I see is that none of these places that people go to, these service centers, the Salvation Army and these other places, none of them work for real people. You have to line up at four o'clock, get on a bus, go there and then get kicked out at five in the morning. Now somebody that's homeless can find themselves a part-time job and that part-time job goes from six to midnight, how are they gonna go to one of these places? It doesn't work. Right now the people at the Ross Encampment have free will. They can go to their tent, they can come and go as they please. Homeless people that I've talked to when they had the boneyard campground, they called it a concentration camp and that's the way most of these services are run. These are human beings, these are not cattle, they are not criminals, you have to treat them as humans, they have to have free will. So you have to come up with a solution that treats people like a human being instead of like a cattle, like a criminal and it's like most of these places work like the work release program at the jail. That's not a human thing. That's something for criminals, that's something for animals. These are humans, social and compassion. Come up with a program that works for a human with free will, thank you. Mayor, city council, there was a bomb drop at the beginning here, I wish we had a little conflict resolution about what happened the letter that the mayor read about some of the behaviors. What I see is just maybe software council behavior, somebody issuing something too soon and not having the process, right? I really wish we had a clear hearing of what you wanted to present. I hope you get time, maybe in a coming council, meetings up. Maybe tonight. I really have a lot of respect for what the city's doing. It's taking on a really big dragon and yet we're talking about this encampment. Here we are again, it's the same time this year that we were last year, we're talking about encampment. We're not, I operate the warming center and we're just proving that there's a completely different subset of population, 80, 100, 150 people downtown that aren't even part of this camp and we're not even addressing that. They're not making it into the winter shelter. I wanna talk about homelessness in Santa Cruz as a community, we should wrap our hands around this problem, not say why are they here, how do we make them go away, but this is a reflection of us. If we were gonna take better care of ourselves, what would that look like? 10 million, 10 million, whatever, money comes and goes, all the millions we ever spent, this problem just keeps getting bigger. Let's pretend we don't have any money. Then what we would do? We'd have to be way more inventive and I've been trying to talk about transitional encampments to this body for years. I still haven't had a hearing to it with the city manager's office. There's a reason I can't do that right now, but I do actually want, if we're gonna go ahead with an encampment like this, I mean in the 22 recommendations, 20 recommendations, we said we would never do a declaration of emergency. We wouldn't do any encampments. Here's our second renegade drug camp and here's gonna be our second police-oriented encampment. We're not gonna try transitional encampments that show data-rich all over the Northwest. There are dozens and dozens of these. I've seen them, but here we are, flying with blinders. I just said, let's get real and do transitional encampments, thanks. Good evening, Mayor Watkins and members of the City Council. My name is Jim Brown and I'm the Arts Council's Deputy Director and Tannery Director. I was hired more than a year ago to help the Tannery Arts Center live up to its promise as a thriving arts community. The arts are a force for good here in Santa Cruz and I'm privileged to have the opportunity to work with these folks. However, art and creativity can only thrive in a safe space. Tonight, some people have spoken about the challenges neighbors face with the unmanaged encampment on the Santa Rosa River. Some have spoken about the challenges and needs of the people living in the camp. Both of these are worthy concerns and valid for the council to be considering. The City County Joint Action Plan on the table for this meeting is a valiant attempt by city staff and the council members and the supervisors who participated to craft a middle way that addresses the health and safety concerns of the camp neighbors with the genuine needs of the people living in the camp, expanded shelter beds, reopening the successful river camp and connecting those in need with services. While it is not a perfect solution, it is a step in the right direction. And in my view, it's a step that could have been taken months ago and prevented the crisis that we're in now. In the interest of supporting the Tannery Arts Center as a safe and vibrant home for the arts and in the interest of making real progress in one of the community's most contentious issues, I urge you to support the action plan presented by staff and unanimously approve the county supervisor, the plan that the county supervisors approved today. And I would ask you amend the plan to include the security, the additional security resources that the county supervisor approved. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hi, my name is Serge Cagno. I would like to very much state my appreciation for, I very much like to state my appreciation for everybody who's sitting down trying to solve the problem. I mean, there are a lot of really smart people that are really dedicated and really trying to do the best that they can. I do this work because I enjoy connecting with people and sometimes coming to these kind of things feels like there's a lot of headbutting and stuff and for myself, I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you. For the two parts of the recommendation, I like, of course, I like the idea of more services that there's a second part of it of closing the shelter on a certain date. So the idea is we're maybe going to have a bunch of programs that are going to happen at that time is a phased rollout thing. I mean, you know the problem, that the phased rollout of when the beds are going to be available, we're definitely going to stop it at March 15th. So there's not going to be beds for people. And to count the VFW of continuing that contract on 7th Avenue, April 15th, there's 60 of the beds of 100. Well, those people are actually going to be on the street too and are going to need beds. So that's not, yes, it's more than would have been otherwise, but it's not going to be putting beds for all the people that are at the Ross camp. The Ross camp, for me, I think Rabbi Posner said it, that we all just want to have a voice with Mayor Watkins. We're the Youth Homeless Demonstration Project. The Youth Voice is actually federally mandated that they get to choose which programs get to move forward to get voted on. But we're not mandated for that for adults, so we just don't do it. There is no adult committee of homeless people that get to actually say, well, you guys want to continue, do more of the rotating shelter, but we need bus passes to be able to do that program. So I'd like to ask for adult voice, but also for the Homeless Action Partnership general board to be allowed to. And you're welcome to email us also. Hello, council, members of the community. My name is Zav Hershfield. I'm a tenant advocate in this community. I would have speak to one aspect of the council and recommended action for council about part C of section one. I read that and it's pretty upsetting to me to read that camp described the term abatement as though people are roaches or rats or termites or pests. It's pretty dehumanizing language. And I think the basis of any kind of action that this body takes, the city takes is based in the language that it uses. So that's pretty disgusting. As someone who follows how programs like a navigation center worked in the Bay Area, they're a joke, and part of the reason they're a joke is there is no housing for people to be navigated to. So if you close this camp, if the council decides to close this camp in 30 days, like the social worker from the county said, many of the people there will not be able to use their vouchers in order to find housing. Like some of the other folks who have spoken before me said, people who are addicted to different kinds of substances, which makes them ineligible for other kinds of shelter programs. People who have pets that they stick with all the time because that's the one thing holding their sanity together. People who have partners and they're not allowed to live in a shelter with their partner will not go into the shelters. And those people are going to go onto the street into illegal encampments. It's really upsetting that some of the proposals that three council members put forward around examining how laws and Santa Cruz criminalize houseless people, especially for example, the one that Elliot said about 14 feet being a criminalizable offense for sitting next to a building. Most of you weren't on the council several years ago when ex-police chief Vogel talked about what percentage of tickets are paid. I think over 90% of tickets don't get paid. They go to collections and they tank your credit and they mean you can't get into housing. Hi, my name is Nita Hurtel and I am here to, for one thing, say what about, you started out with a number of like 900 people estimated in the city that are homeless and then you start talking about the 150 that are living at this encampment. And I second what this person said a while back. The only reason we're looking at that camp is because it's an eyesore and it's visible and people don't like to see that. People are driving by coming through town saying, oh my God, there's a letter to the editor saying, I used to live in Santa Cruz and what happened to Santa Cruz? Well, I just came back from Portland, Oregon. There's a lot more people up there that are homeless that are on the street but there also are solutions that the city itself are supporting like Dignity Village which has been in existence for I don't know how many years and they allow people, their own little structures that they can put in a designated parking lot, parking area. They've been there for years and it's a stable community. This is a community. And like Zava said, these are not rats. These are our citizens. They're residents, they live in our town. You may want them to go away and you want that camp to go away because it's an eyesore. It's in a shopping area. There's a lot of traffic that goes by. Well, these are human beings. Do you think they want to be there? I was listening to the hail come down the other night and all I could think of was how are those people surviving? How are they living through this? And how do you not go mentally ill and how do you not become a criminal if you are pushed against the wall and you live in a community where there is no support? I know you're doing what you think you are, you know, you're doing your best ever but I want you to have some imagination and go and look at other places. See what they're doing. Talk to other communities. Talk to other city councils. Talk to the city council in Portland. They passed rent control. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Michael Archer. I've been living here in Santa Cruz since 1980 and this has been a problem. You know, I've met people living on the river since then and I'm gonna say for me for the last year or so I've been living with my head in the sand just kind of ignoring it and I pulled it out yesterday, looked in the Sentinel and saw the county and the union was today at nine and I went to it and I'm encouraged. I wanna know who I write to the state to thank that gave us $10 million to address this. Should I write Gavin? I mean, where did we get the money? I'm thankful. Really, I'm thankful and I'm thankful for the hard work this woman made putting together the summary from that meeting today and the two women that are heading the council to figure out how to spend this money and my request is that we try to figure out a blueprint that we like many of the people I hear say include them in the conversation. Go to them and say, how can we do this? What do you need? And I think I got 50 seconds. I'll see if I can kick it out. When I went to Australia, she heard this story, I went to Australia, my friend and I drove about 3000 miles around and I kept finding, we kept every now and then we'd see an abandoned Chinook, Winnebago and I'm like, what's that all about? And he says, well, the government was upset about what they did to the Aboriginals and so to resolve it, they decided on their own to give their Aboriginals Chinooks or Winnebagos, whatever they were and the Aboriginals said, I don't want these. Do you talk to us? And so that's why you see them like abandoned every internet. And so I'm just, I'm very thankful, bottom of my heart, this speaks to who we are, how we deal with this. So thank you. Thank you. Hi, good evening council. I'm Michael Gossair. Vicki Winners mentioned the visits that the DSA committee has been making to the camp the last few weeks and I was with Vicki today when we went to the camp and we thought it would be a good idea to let the residents know what was happening because unless they'd read the sentinel, of course they wouldn't have been consulted about the closing of the camp or even informed that it was gonna happen. Some of them knew because some of them had read the paper but most of them were not surprised to my surprise because they're used to this. Some of them are so cynical that they weren't interested at all in us bringing what they had to say to the council because they had no faith whatsoever in the process. They know better than anyone that the history of dealing with homelessness in Santa Cruz is a history of harassment. We all know that. I mean, I'm not an expert on this at all. People here are. People have already talked about this. This is a long history of spaces that are open and not being used, being closed off, places where it's illegal to park for arbitrary reasons which are clear if you just begin to think about it. They know what's gonna happen. They know that even if there aren't enough spaces or if there are and new people move in what'll happen to that little niche there where people could live and are actually living is that it'll be fenced off like the other places that like the corners of the walkway across highway one on High Street not used for anything but arbitrarily fenced off, right? So that's what a targeting homelessness in Santa Cruz is and really there are cities and states and counties like Cumberland County, New Jersey, like the state of Utah, like medicine had Alberta that have realized that this is serious and two things. It's not just an issue of, it's not just humanitarian issue, it's cost effective to have long-term, permanent solutions like housing first, like the transitional encampments that Brent talked about. This involves radical solutions. I mean, fine, this is a tiny beginning but don't close the camp. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Marcos Negón. I represent the Grant Park neighbors. It's about a thousand addresses east of Ocean Street and some of the businesses along Ocean Street and we're growing pretty rapidly out of necessity. It started off with the park, needing to keep our park safe, clean, so we can have our families there, see our kids off to school, that kind of thing. And personally, I've lived in Santa Cruz for about 30 years as a resident and Santa Cruz County foster parent. So I know a thing or two about helping hand to mouth and about compassion. I'm really glad that the neighbors and I have figured out how we can effectively work with the city and work with parks and rec to keep our park clean and safe and just here to represent them and tell you that the decisions that you make affect us as residents. And I'm glad that you're putting attention to it. That's about it. Thank you. You're a good pen. I need a back. Okay, hi, my name's Elise Kasby and I'm a longtime activist and investigator of homeless issues. I also became homeless due to domestic violence issues in my life and I hope not to talk about that too much, but I do want to start with one metaphor that was extremely helpful to me. When you are getting battered, especially the psychological side of battering is about confusion. You're extremely confused. You love this person. They're telling you they love you and then they hurt you. It's so confusing, especially if you're not getting hit. So I just want to say Patricia Evans book called, I forget what it's called, darn. It was so clarifying for me. There's about five books that I would recommend to everybody to read if you were ever battered or you're somebody who's recovering from domestic violence. The reason I'm bringing this in is for a victim like myself, there's two boxes. There's the box that your oppressor is in and they're telling you, hey, things are okay. I'm trying to work with you, but then they're harming you and things don't feel right and it's not going well. And then there's the box you're in, right? You want to believe them. You're confused. You're smart. You're trying to figure it out. You're not getting the help you need. There's finally a little bit of help from some people saying, you know, your batter is in another box. Their reality is different than yours. And you start to validate your own feelings and activities. And this is what's happening to homeless people in our society in this city. Karl Rowe's strategy was in a nutshell, he taught a lot of people how to lie. And there's a lot of lies going around this community. Phil Kramer writing an editorial for the Sentinel stating that he housed 296 people. I'm sorry, I want to see the evidence on that. The money we've put into rangers, the money we've put into harassment, people sitting in this council, people sitting in this staff for oppressing homeless people. And I say, we need a new body to give us new solutions. Thanks a lot. Hi, my name is Brooke Butler. I've lived in Santa Cruz since 1984. The first decade I was a renter and since then I've owned my home for 20 years. I'm one of the lucky ones. And I haven't really concerned myself very much with this except, you know, incidentally as I go around town, I do notice the difference and it is bleeding over into the neighborhoods in a way that is an impact in the last couple of years. I am encouraged that you guys have done such a thorough report and that there's efforts being made to do something, hopefully on a more long-term basis. I think anything temporary is just putting a band-aid on the problem. And I'd like to see some more creative thought as far as every time we talk about a tent city, I'm thinking tents are not any protection from the elements. These people are freezing cold and in the mud and even in a parking lot, I can't imagine the level of discomfort on top of the desperation and that we can do better. And if we're spending $90,000 a month and that's somehow not enough, I'd like to know, I mean, it's gonna take more time than we have tonight but I sure would be interested in seeing how that money got spent and why it was so expensive to put up 50 tents. I keep thinking back to the days after the earthquake, that first year after the earthquake, we had pavilions downtown that housed all the businesses that were displaced and the people of Santa Cruz supported those businesses 100% shopping every day in those pavilions and it was a beautiful solution and I know FEMA paid for those but I'm curious to know if that's something that we could come up with using some of this money to buy a bigger space. Thank you. My name's Alicia Cool. I know a lot of people at the Ross camp. I seen a little shelf hands earlier and I actually wish that I could do that right now and ask how many of those people would like to go and live at a shelter versus staying at a camp or at the Ross camp itself. So I have a couple of suggestions. Although offering shelter beds are great and we should always have those available because we know that that's not going to work for everybody. I mean, for all the reasons that have been discussed, pets, displacement, all those things. I don't need to go over all those things again but because we know that a lot of people will not leave the Ross camp perhaps and that won't work for them, offer the shelter beds, see what happens. Put off any closure or talk of closing the Ross camp, see what you can do by offering those shelter beds and see what happens. And in the meantime, while you're doing that, continue to work on the proposals that we worked with Conscience and Action and Huff, Drew and Chris, the interns, put forth those proposals because those proposals address a broader spectrum of issues. And if you close the Ross camp without addressing and putting forth those proposals, all you're gonna do is put those people back into the community, back under a bush. It doesn't do anything for any of us, the homeless or the community, if you don't address all of the issues. So I say don't close the Ross camp but offer the shelter beds and see what happens. All right, my name is Trey John Spinner and I'm not from California and I really don't know the statistics about what's going on here, but I'm pro for people that don't have places to go because I also, for a few years, I stayed on the streets. I don't feel like you should exile those folks or us. We should have places for the people. It's a lot of people that's lost causes but it's a lot of us who also want to do better for ourselves, we just need that extra help or that extra push. So I feel like we should have the places to help those people get to those places, and don't, you know, exile them. And that's all that I have right now. Thanks for having this issue discussed in the community. On Sunday, just as we were done, I had run out of food, a woman comes, maybe she's in her 60s or so, and she's all bundled up, and fortunately somebody had donated a blanket so she could wrap herself in that. And she goes, like, is there a shelter? I just can't sleep outside again another night. And so we mentioned the homeless service center. She said she'd gone there, but there was no room there. And so I called Mel to see if I could find, you know, the face, community shelter. I called Brent Adams' number and they didn't have a warming center. It was bitter cold, it was terrible. And it's just heartbreaking to just look into the eyes of that woman and say, man, there is nothing I can do. I can't, I don't want to bring you home. I'd like to bring you home, but I can't because I don't have control of my home. So, you know, this is heartbreaking. These are, and people have said some amazing things. I was gonna say what Abby Samuel said. She pointed out exactly more eloquently than I could. This whole idea of having this study that grew out of two years of us sleeping on the sidewalk in solidarity, but we got to go home and take a shower. These other hundreds of people, they don't. And it's just heartbreaking that we don't take this, we've been up here for years. We talked about buildings, SROs back at the time of the earthquake. In preparation for this day, when there would be so many people living in our streets, these are economic and political refugees. They're internally displaced people. I think the city council should ask the UN to drop food aid in here and start solving this problem. Good. Hi, my name is Laurie Egan. I'm the programs director at the Coastal Watershed Council and I'm here today to ask you to approve this plan. The Coastal Watershed Council works to inspire people to explore, enhance and protect the Lower San Lorenzo River. I wanna acknowledge the council and the city staff who have worked so hard for the progress that has been made to date. Today, I urge you to hear the concerns of the people who live along the Lower San Lorenzo River. Regarding the management both inside and outside of the camp. I wanna acknowledge you and urge you to continue your effective collaboration with the County of Santa Cruz and to continue to communicate publicly about these efforts. Thank you. Hello, my name is Brian Shulman. I'm the producer of the BTS Presents Show. Last year, we did a series of shows on real estate behind the scenes in Santa Cruz County and Silicon Valley. This year, we're working on shows about the Community Cafe, which is the subject of community discussions. That's fine, hi, mayor. So I just wanted to let you know that a few years ago, in 2014, there was a mayor's challenge nationally for ending veteran homelessness. At that time, I did a television show on ending veteran homelessness in Santa Cruz that Mayor Don Lane had taken his oath as a mayor to fulfill on completing ending veteran homelessness and by the end of the year. At that time, there's a point in time count of the homeless people in Santa Cruz County and it was 3,500. So today, when it's brought to your attention from the presentation today, that we're down to 1,200 as a point in time count, I think it does not occur that there is an emergency and therefore I think the consideration for taking action today is relevant, but I don't think that we should declare an emergency. Hello mayor, vice mayor, council members and staff. My name is Ari. I was born in 1995 and I've been a resident in Santa Cruz County since when I was 17 years old. My mother terminated my residence at her household. I'm sorry to interrupt you just second, sorry, okay. Go ahead, please. My mother terminated my residence at her household when I was 17 and I've been homeless since then, on and off. During this whole time, I've held employment. I just got done working at Woodstocks for two and a half years. I actually have a member behind me who's my coworker who had no idea I was homeless until this point. I mostly lived in my car for the last year and that got me in trouble with the law enforcement for purely sleeping in my car and I would do my best not to be in neighborhoods and still got in trouble. And it made it almost impossible for me to keep holding employment at my job. And also there's something that I haven't heard brought up once tonight and Santa Cruz is a big location for transients because it's warmer than all the other locations, especially in the wintertime we have more homeless people come to Santa Cruz to find shelter and refuge probably than any other town in California because of the weather. And being homeless for the time I have, there's so many more homeless people that we can even account for. I would estimate numbers 3,000 to 4,000 easily. I went to Ten City for the first time today because someone stole my phone and I located it there and had the chance to talk to everybody there and meet them and met amazing people. People who offered me phones, offered me food and gave me clothes while they're in worse conditions than I am. And the biggest thing I think too about them is there's a lot of drug issues there that really aren't being thought of. And for a lot of these people if they were just to be sent to a shelter problems would keep pursuing and they wouldn't get the full benefit they need. A lot of these people need help if they wanted. And there needs to be more communication I feel like with the people that are actually homeless to see what is needed because these resources wouldn't help me being homeless. I need more job opportunities and I need more food opportunities. Thank you, council. I'm gonna try to keep this short. It's getting awfully late. I think, thanks you guys. I've met many of you. I really appreciate what you're trying to do. I'm out there in the audience torn between the get rid of those people and how dare you even consider it. And frankly, I find that all just very upsetting that it's so divided and frankly, so disrespectful. Some of my friends back there are like, you're not cynical enough. Well, I'm not cynical enough. I think you're trying to do some really good stuff. Is it gonna work? I think so. Is it perfect? No. I guess what I really wanna say tonight is I would really hope that besides what you're looking at, we look at some things about how we define housing. I had a friend who is a retired teacher, very respectable person, was gonna buy an old convalescent home which would have housed like 20, 25 low income people and she couldn't do it because it only had 10 parking spaces instead of 15. I mean, come on. I think we have to get our planning stuff. I mean, maybe we're stuck with a uniform code act but maybe there are exceptions. I realize that's not where you are today but I think part of what's gonna help all of this is if we redefine what's housing in this county because besides our huge suffering homeless population, how many of you have kids, grandkids, who you will not see because they can't live here? So you put just put that into the mix while you're doing this and I appreciate you. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening. My name's Linda Weaver and people having to live outside, that's cruel. Closing the River Street camp, it was cruel and I very much wanna be respectful for all the work that all of you are doing and you are serving. But over the years I have to be honest, my observations have been that this all looks to be kind of helter-skelter but tonight it was actually described as being lots of stall out. And that is what I think I have been observing over the years is stall out. The only clear action proposed in that is the closing of the camp on March 15th. Everything else is about when feasible, which sounds like possible, stall out. I see this as actually an opportunity. The campsite is an opportunity. You have 150 people who have gathered and have the possibility to become transformed community. So repurpose the Ross camp to a transitional encampment based on the proven models in Seattle and in Eugene and other places as well. So delete C in your action. The unsheltered, and I know this from working with people, the unsheltered need consistent long-term solutions. It is cruel and non-productive to not give them consistency in one place. Thank you. So they can regain their stability. Thank you. Oh, dear God, please be up in this room with me and tell me what to say. Can I have permission to speak from my heart? I love you, Mary. They might be not with you right now, but I love you. All that stuff that ain't right, which I did in front of us. I stayed down there three days at that camp. I built a little old box shed for this woman and these three kids. Thank God the next day I found the place for this woman and they have to take her out to Watsonville with them three little kids, y'all. That was sad and I'm touched behind it. And I'm touched behind all them drug addicts, dope fiends down there. And I can talk like this because I was a dope fiend. But I got 33 years clean and sober and I know there's help in this town. There's resources all over the place. If these folks wanted help, they would reach out and go get help. And I ain't got no pity party on nobody who don't. You talk about compassion. You talk about empathy. You talk about 150 people. You who got shelters here, take one person at a time. Take one of each of those and take them home and have the patience to go eye to eye with them. Go here to here with them and watch them over to the AA program, the NA program. It's a lot of racism going on around here. And that's what I'm up against. I go to the Hopi Revolvation. Those people take me in and I don't even know my name. And they live in a box. All them folks have got open communication. And I look at you talk about empathy and love and compassion. Thank you. Then let's take action and do that. Good evening again, Council. Cynthia from Santa Cruz Tenants. I had to hear this litany of landlords talking about their threats to have a referendum or recall bailed threats and kicking people out if there's any tenant protections passed. And it seemed like they don't like to have someone tell them what they can do with their property. But they're not really that concerned about their property values, as I know on Felker Street, someone just bought a small four unit building for over a million dollars. It's 48 years old. The carpets have been changed in 48 years. They raised the rent $400 on each of the four families. They do things like cook for you and clean for you in your city. Are those people going to take advantage of the new little ordinance and move? No, they're trying to hang into their place. So this, I have empathy for the Castillo family. I do because there's children and it's probably really an adjustment. But I have to say, if people are pressuring you and worried about their property values when homeless people are in their neighborhood, that's just bull because over a million dollars this guy bought the place sight unseen because I was there when he was inspecting it. And he told his tenants to lie to the bank and tell them that they pay $400 more a month so that he could get the loan. And then he raised their rent $400 from $1,400 to $1,800. So there's no problem with property values. And the sick thing is the landlords don't care. They just kick you out because they know even if there's a bunch of people who are homeless on the streets, they can still sell their crappy old place for over a million dollars. So you figure that one out. Hi, my name is Dennis Outlaw. I've been a resident here in Santa Cruz for about 30 years now. And like many others here in the audience thought that we had a new city council that would address issues that had been avoided almost since I've been here and longer still. But what I see is that the old way of doing things is being resurrected and being pushed through. I look up at this recommended city council action and what I see is simply put, the same old, same old. Bonnie, before we start your time. Are there any other members who are in the chamber who are interested in addressing the council before us at this time? Okay, seeing a few more. Okay, please go ahead. Hi, my name is Luba Capanskaya. I am a student at UC Santa Cruz and I just wanted to offer a suggestion. I am originally from Los Angeles and I've been working with an organization called Homeless Health Care Los Angeles for many years and they just opened up a center called the Refresh Spot. The homeless problem in Los Angeles is also very big. There's over 64 blocks of individuals experiencing homelessness in the Skidrow population and I recognize that funding is a huge issue and I can't even fathom how much it costs to run a center such as the Refresh Spot and how people even receive funding. But I can vouch as someone who has spent lots of time volunteering there and will be there this Friday that the opportunity for individuals that are unhoused to take a shower and have access to restrooms, which is what the Refresh Spot is, is invaluable. I have seen people from the ground up being able to get jobs because they're able to get a shower and go to job interviews and get back up on their feet. It's a fantastic idea and maybe that's something that could happen here in Santa Cruz. Again, the Refresh Spot, which I haven't mentioned, is like seven trailers with fully equipped with showers and laundry stations and it's all free and it's open 24-7 with security and their electronic charging stations and it's a very comfortable safe spot for people to be. I recognize it's so expensive and I don't know how they do it. From Mayor Eric Garcetti, who I guess approved a grand permits for that, but it would be really great if we could have that here. I don't see anything like that and I've seen it, again, like I've said, change people's lives. Thank you. Thank you, Robert. My name is Cherie Peterson and once again, it seems like I've been addressing this for 7,000 years, the homeless, I've been homeless since way before I was born, it feels like because I'm just tired of it. Today, crawling out of my van, I can only find two different shoes, finding, just clothes to wear is a problem. I go to Cabrillo, I make aids at Cabrillo. I'm not gonna let it stop me. I've looked at over 2,000 apartments, I don't have a credit score because I don't believe in charging money I don't have. So therefore, I don't fit in, just like the people that are drug addicts and have dogs or whatever people mention aren't gonna fit in the shelter beds. Actually, I'm sure that you know, you have to go to building K and be medicated with psychotropic to be in one of those shelter beds over there. You can't sign up and say, oh, I wanna come in, I'm homeless, no. And then the other places over there are all running with meth and heroin. I don't know if you know that, but that's really true. I know people that have moved out of there because of the rampant drug abuse. It's appalling and you're just not looking at it, not looking at us, the real people that are like, I almost died and right before my grandbaby turned 12 in September and it was lucky my friend Kale rushed me to the hospital or I wouldn't be standing here right now, begging you, begging you to have temporary housing, to open that yellow building over there, to serve macaroni and cheese tomorrow at four o'clock at the homeless thing. Get real, get real, give us real solutions. Not this crap, oh, close the camp, close anything that works. What about us? What about here? No one will, the architect won't have any plans because you'll plan to figure out that it doesn't matter and that's appalling. My understanding is that we have one additional speaker. Is there anybody else in the audience who wishes to address the council? Okay. If you could line up to my left, oh, okay, you will be our last speaker. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Wes White, I'm from Salinas. I'm president of Salinas Homeless Union, also on this California Homeless Organizing Committee. Wanted to bring your attention, there's, first they came for the homelessness in Berkeley and they're in between, they're on Bart land and they're in between jurisdictions and what they do, they put a fence up and now those same people are next to the road. So you have to be careful, you're not putting people in worse harms way. Sacramento is about to close the Stockton encampment and it's between city and county property jurisdiction. Again, they're put up a fence, they're gonna drive people out. How are we actually helping people? I mean, people deserve food, clothing and shelter. That's basic human necessity. If it's just a piece of dirt or whatever they deserve to be somewhere, sign them up for the containment of care. If you need to identify them and assess them, know who you're dealing with, separate the harmless from the homeless. That's what I need to see happen. And that continuum of care is about the only thing you're gonna be able to identify with which is all dirty talk because it's about hungry hippos and some money, mental illness and drug addiction. You don't think how people have mental illness or drug addiction? I mean, what we're doing is a drug addiction in itself. You're spending a whole lot of money hurting people and human suffering is what's paying for it so that we can feel good about ourselves. Are you kidding me? There needs to be spaces available. Martin versus Boise, public, private space, make a collaboration. You need warehouses, you need something. You need a place to put these people. If you take them out and there's nowhere for them to go, you're violating Martin versus Boise, which is constitutional and you're being completely illegal. All these camping ordinances, they need to be stricken from the books. That's just the way it needs to be. You need to start dealing with people, treat people like people. You treat them like little kids. What do we do with the, oh, I don't want to deal with that, Brad. Let's just get rid of them. You know, that's abusive. You're, are city parents? You need to take care of your children better? You need to stricken C all together. A is just pass out a piece of paper and B is maybe we'll come up with stuff. Thank you. You need something. Hello, my name is Travis. I've been here for, well, I've been a resident of Santa Cruz County for 20 years now and I also have had a residency in Brookdale for up to seven years. I had lost my social security and I've been homeless in Santa Cruz downtown for the last 10 to 11 years and the only carpet I've been seeing laid down has been being pulled out from underneath me and all of the weather that I've been seeing. I don't have any place to go anymore. There's no, there's no overhangs. There's no area where I can set up a tarp. There's no time period for me to be able to sleep anywhere. I have grand mal seizure epilepsy and I've had over six seizures last year just because I've only had two to three hours of sleep every night. All I want to say is just become friendlier people. Don't rev your engines, slam your car doors in front of people that are sleeping next to you. They're just as afraid as you are and they do not want to hurt you. They do not want to be hurt. I am a more afraid of shuffling feet and people that are rattling my tarp when I'm sleeping in the rain and I am a police putting handcuffs on me and going to jail in the morning. So please have some love in your hearts. Have some empathy and have some sympathy. Okay, acknowledge that. I believe that we have had everybody who's wanted to address the council speak. Is that okay? Absolutely, this is, this would be, you would be our last speaker unless there's any other member in the audience that. I have one quick suggestion for taking one second. I'm sorry, I can't because you already had your time. And we, I know everybody, everybody gets one opportunity. So I appreciate that. We have everybody for talking and listening. Okay, okay, thank you. Okay, thank you, thank you. That was, okay, we'll have your turn. Let's go ahead. Hello council, my name is Alex Laundos. I'm tired and I'm really not in the mood to talk to anybody here, but I felt there was a few things that I wanted to mention. So as we deal with global issues, the human population will continue to see more disasters related to climate change. Like we saw the 13,000 houses burnt down in paradise. We're going to continue to see more floods and people displaced because of climate change related disasters. We're going to continue to see the divide between the rich and the poor grow because of our capitalistic society and AI replacing people, technologies, software, different computer programs. And we're going to continue to see more homeless people not just in the US, but around the world. So I just got back from a long duration in Europe and I saw very few homeless people in there. Maybe it's the way their society is structured. So I'm mentioning all this because I haven't heard one mention of tiny homes throughout this entire talk. I think there's a lot of people that live in huge houses. They live outside of their means. They own things that they don't need and that don't serve a purpose. A lot of the people in our society in Santa Cruz with the amount of money people make per capita, they see people that live in houses because that's how they want to live. But there's a lot of people that are in the homeless population that may be more mental-less than the average person. They may want to live in a smaller house, a smaller dwelling. I know that San Jose is starting to implement the tiny home village as are other communities around the world. A lot of third world countries that I've been to, there's a lot of people living in shacks and shanties and we don't offer the size of houses has to be a certain size for people to live. So I would think for women, children, disabled families that you would consider some sort of tiny home village or implementing that or discussing that somehow and how that might work for this homeless population here in Santa Cruz to help them and for the minimize the environmental impact of a single person. That's all, thank you. Thank you. So, okay, okay, it's okay, thank you. I want to, I'll go ahead and bring it back to the Council for Action and Deliberation. I want to thank each and every one of you for being here and taking the time to address our Council and acknowledge that no matter your position, I think we all share a value for seeking solutions. So I'll go ahead and bring it back to the Council for Action and Deliberation. Okay, I'll start with Council Member Meyers. Cummings and then Glover. Just in the interest of time and I know that we will be deliberating, I'm sure for a while, I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to move to, I'm going to put a motion to approve the staff recommendation as presented and then add a few additional items as well to be consistent with some of the intent from the Board of Supervisors this afternoon and then add just a quick comment after it but I'd like to add that we make sure that upon hopefully these facilities getting open as quickly as possible that we also make sure that they are operated with models that provide adequate management, staffing so that people can be properly cared for and feel welcome into the situations including security and understanding how to communicate about this with the surrounding communities and neighborhoods. I think also we would want to make sure that we're aware of or establishing the ability to understand who's coming and going from the shelters that we have a proactive neighborhood outreach plan and good neighbor policy to ensure strong connection and communication between the operator and the neighbors. I think we've heard some success stories from the River Street Shelter on that that we maintain 24-7 hygiene and safety standards so that people are safe and able to maintain their wellness in the facilities and that we have well-structured and enforced shelter rules and regulations and including establishing a set of norms that the community and the residents of each of these facilities when they're open can communicate about and agree upon and then in keeping with the need to continue to work to address the other 900 plus people in our community that need help, I'd like to add that we continue to collect information on the clients served at these facilities to make sure that we are understanding the demographics and the circumstances of those served similar to the continuum of care model so I'll put that motion out there. I also just want to also potentially request that the staff, I'll request that the staff come back after the outreach is done, starting tomorrow. If we could get a report in a couple of weeks to understand how many folks are going to be looking at taking us up on some of these facilities so we get a sense of sort of how many people are ready to move into the other facilities that would be helpful, I think, to continue to work on this. Okay, so there's a motion by Council Member Myers and to move the recommendation with additional. I'll second that motion. Vice Mayor, come in. First off, I wanted to acknowledge one of the things that I heard in the audience this evening. Santa Cruz has, and the downtown community, or the community that we have has been, has a population of people who have been living homeless and I think that in addition to the people who we have who are being put into homelessness due to a variety of reasons including not being able to afford rents or being forced into evictions or orders to quit that end up putting them on the streets. I also want to acknowledge that the university is playing a role in this as well and that by putting students who are homeless on their campus by not allowing them to sleep on campus, that's further adding to the situation that we have to deal with and I so would wanna ask staff if they could reach out to the university to find out and encourage them to see if they are, if they're able to provide alternatives for their homeless students, I'm allowing them to sleep on campus and also if they're parking options and opportunities for students who sleep in their cars to sleep in their cars on campus so that we can have some help with addressing our homeless population and that the university is actually helping us by helping to provide alternative sleeping arrangements for students. In addition to that, I would like to make an amendment to the motion that's been provided around the date of the abatement and I would like to make an amendment to the current motion that this come back to the council on March 12th at our meeting for us to evaluate the camp currently or at that point in time to see how many, how much services we've been able to provide and determine at that point whether or not it would be a point when we would wanna close the camp or keep it open and consider other options. Well, the maker of the motion had to step away so we'll go ahead and have that on hold until the maker of the motion comes back to accept the amendment at this time. Okay, Council Member Glover and then Council Member Brown. Great, thank you. So first of all, thanks to everyone for coming out and sharing your perspectives and opinions, a lot of really important things to take into consideration with shared experiences, individual experiences of being homeless yourselves or people that are coming from neighborhoods and running businesses concerned about safety. So I really appreciate you bringing all that forward and sharing it with us. I want to address what was said at the beginning of the meeting, specifically, and I wanna point out that I think it was a rather inequitable decision for the mayor to make a lengthy statement at the beginning of the meeting, reference me personally and then refuse to let me respond. So to respond, so to respond, after weeks of working with fellow council members, interns, community members, advocates, people experiencing homelessness, residents of the Ross Camp who actually live there currently and people who live in cars, so making sure that there's that representation, we created a set of policy proposals. The policy proposals were refused for the reason that it would take too long, which is something that we heard a little bit earlier is that it didn't have time to get it on the agenda. I saw the draft agenda so the community knows and it showed an estimation of this meeting time ending at 9.30. So that's only two and a half hours to discuss such an important issue of homelessness that was allocated on the draft agenda. With the issue of homelessness, the sheer volume of suffering taking place to cite time as an obstacle is disappointing. If we have possible solutions that can be explored and discussed, we need to be here until 2 a.m. if necessary. I have a job, I have a dog, I have responsibilities, but I was elected to do what's best for the city and that will require sacrifice and at times long meetings. So the concept of trading my time for another person's suffering is, in my opinion, abhorrent. Mayor Watkins also brought up her gender as a reason for the, I don't even know, for the community organizing approach maybe or for me educating the community about what's going on, but I wanna emphasize that that really shows how little she knows about me. I'm an advocate for the rights of women, girls and trans folk. I sat on the city's commission for the prevention of violence against women where I urged the commission to recommend the city council, adopt the convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and I'm pushing, and it's one of the reasons I'm pushing so hard is because all of the women, girls and vulnerable folk that are sleeping in the camp have no, because they have no place to go are at risk of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation right now. I want the community to know that I'm a community organizer. I care about inclusion. I care about representation. I want to assure Mayor Watkins that I would have taken the same approach of building community support if she was a man or a woman or a non-binary person. The issue is not about gender or race. It is an issue of morality and principle. It is about prioritizing time over prioritizing people. I think we see this not only with Mayor Watkins' refusal to agendize the items for action, but instead gave me the option, so instead of agendizing them, she gave me the option to make a motion with direction and I wanna make sure that the community understands who don't know the process, that if an agenda item is not on the agenda, then we can't take any action on it. So at the earliest, any of my policies suggestions, a five point policy plan that I brought forward, the soonest anything can be deliberated on for actual action is at our next city council meeting. That's two weeks away, 14 more days before we can start actually looking at innovative and as some people mentioned, radical solutions. So I hope that we can work through whatever this conflict is, but I must say that I find it offensive and in some ways irresponsible for her to try to belittle my effort to educate the community about the process and the impacts of her decision. So with that, I will make my motion. I'm gonna pass these around. Here you go, if you could pass them that way, there's one over there. We have a motion on the floor, so you'll be making- I'm gonna make an alternative motion. Substitute motion. Yeah. That is not- So here's this and these going over here this way. All together different. So I wanna make a motion. So get ready for it. It's about a page and a half long because I had to put everything into a single motion so that I could have the community hear what's going on and ideally have the support of my colleagues to instruct staff to move on these issues. It's a point of order. We have a question of point of order. I assume that Council Member Glover is making a substitute motion. Yes, he's making a substitute motion. Yes, so if the Council accepts the motion to make a substitute motion, then you may vote on Council Member Glover's motion. Okay. Do we have a second to your effort for a substitute motion? A second and a question for the city attorney. So are we gonna, we can vote on this right now or we can vote to agendize it? Well, this is- I haven't heard the motion yet. I have to make the motion. But this is a vote for the substitute motion, essentially. Council Member Glover, I assume, is about to articulate a motion, a substitute motion to substitute the recommended action with a substitute action. And so we have to vote on that at this point. You have to vote whether to accept the substitute motion. And then if you do, you have to vote on the motion. Okay. Council Member Matthews. Again, I'm just trying to get clarity on process here. My impression is that you want to move to agendize these to a future meeting. Is that correct? Well, that's part of it, but that's not all of it. So why don't you wait to hear the motion first and then you can pick it apart? And if I could just finish my thought, it may be that some members would want to support the motion at hand and some additional items. Okay, so if I may all acknowledge Council Member Brown, then I'll propose maybe a possible path forward and then we could potentially get to both. Okay, Council Member Brown. I have a pretty good sense of the motion to come and I'd like to support it. However, I'm also wanting to kind of clarify because I don't necessarily see it as a substitute motion but as an additional set of proposals. So I'd like to be able to support both. Okay, we have a chance to hear from the committee. So anyway, I mean, I don't know that it's a substitute but I'll just wait to kind of see where we are. If I'm hearing maybe might be a pathway out where you'll be able to have your motion come forward is if you were to draw the substitute motion at the time we could potentially move the motion on the floor and then you could introduce your motion after. No. I'll make, I'm going to make the motion. So you made a motion to have a substitute motion that's seconded by Council Member Cron. Mr. Kandadi. Can I just say the motion first? Well, yeah, final needs. Thank you. And I will say I find it interesting that knowing that I was going to make a motion to do some certain things you chose to call on Council Member Myers first who then made a motion which would have if we didn't have this clarity blocked my ability to make this motion really, really frustrating but that's okay. I move that the City Council adopt the recommendations of the city staff for one A, one B, not C, and number two. I also move in that same motion which now you can find the rest of this here that to direct staff to put on the agenda the following items for Council consideration and action between now and the next City Council meeting on February 26th instruct staff to A, provide a resolution to the City Council for the City of Santa Cruz to proclaim a local homeless state of emergency and B, a report identifying all potential locations for a transitional encampment on city-owned property and any identified opportunity sites on private property within the City of Santa Cruz or city-owned property in unincorporated Santa Cruz County and C, an action item to recommend to remove overnight parking restrictions on Delaware Avenue between Swift Street and Schaefer Road. D, a report and recommendations based on the ordinance submitted this evening which you'll find in your packets. The establishment of transitional encampments for people experiencing homelessness and an interim use on publicly-owned or private property within the City of Santa Cruz, including E, if necessary, a draft ordinance amending the municipal code to establish a permit process for such encampments and F, a report and timeline to enter into negotiations with UCSC with the intention of leasing the vacant lot at the rear of the UCSC administration building at 2300 Delaware Avenue for the establishment of a safe parking program. G, the first draft of an ordinance based off the framework submitted this evening in your packets to come back for a first reading at the next City Council meeting to hear community input and response with regards to the safe parking program. H, a report from Parks and Rec regarding the reopening of public facilities and bathrooms based on the material submitted this evening in your packet. I, to direct the city attorney and to coordinate city staff efforts to examine specific city ordinances concerning the disproportionate effect on residents without homes and to examine the potential conflicts with both the specific law and the spirit of the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Boise decision and returned to the City Council with this data within 90 days of camping, sleeping ordinance, trespassing ordinance, urination and defecation ordinance, then G, direct staff to make data available in an organized format in the following ordinances to allow the council and the community to monitor the potential disproportionate impacts on residents without homes. This data shall include the address and the race and gender of the person cited, the charges, the location, date and arresting officer or ranger, concerning stay away orders, the length of stay away orders and shall also include conduct in parks, obstructing sidewalks and benches, obstructing sidewalks and benches after night, sitting, next page, line, 24-hour stay away orders, smoking bans in public places, dogs downtown and elsewhere, arrest three infractions without a warrant, authority of the city attorney to reduce misdemeanors to infractions to avoid due process, open containers, parking garage loitering, median loitering, safety enhancement zones, youth curfew laws, aggressive solicitation and vendor licensing required for handicrafts. So I would love to make that and submit the motion for consideration by my peers so that we can not only move forward with this, but then also start really taking tangible action on making sure we can solve these problems so that we can address the concerns of the neighbors that are inundated by the impact of a camp structure like the one at the Gateway Plaza and then also working towards a sense of compassion, justice and equity. There's, I'll close my motion really quick with a quote from Dr. King to try and encourage my council member colleagues, which is, we're all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Now's the time for us to have deliberation in action. Did that set off the alarm? Okay. So. Set off the alarm. Okay. So we have a motion by council member Glover as seconded by was a council member crown, Mr. Kandadi. The motion is to substitute the main motion with the motion that was just, articulated by council member Glover. Okay. And so. So if you approve this motion, then you can proceed to vote on council member Glover's motion. Okay. Is there a, okay. Let's go ahead and vote on whether or not we approve the motion at this time. Is that correct? Okay. Council member Matthews. You'd think I'd know this after all these years. Okay. I just again want clarity. Are we voting on whether to consider the substitute motion or on the substance? So the substitute motion. Whether to consider the substitute motion. Okay, thank you. Okay. I'll go ahead and vote on whether to consider the substitute motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Okay. So that passes with Crohn, Glover, Brown and Weissmeyer Cummings approving. Matthews, Meyers. Okay. So we'll go ahead and vote on, or unless there's further discussion, we'll go ahead and vote on council member Brown. Well, I mean, I feel like I'm now in, at a place where I may be injecting a bit of a tangent, but I was hoping we could have a bit more conversation about kind of the proposal that we received from staff and I want to thank staff for the efforts that you've put in. I want everyone in the audience as well as my colleagues and staff to know that I'm really coming at this from a place of empathy, respect, a little bit dismayed by the divisiveness of the conversation. I really hope that I'm not contributing to that in any way by making these comments and asking some additional questions. I realize this seems like a tangent, but I just do want to ask, one, I understand, this is for staff, I understand that staff have been in, again, total tangent, but I don't see any other place for it. I understand staff has been in conversation with the Warming Center regarding a gate and concrete pad at the end of the property where the Warming Center currently operates at storage facility. I'm just wondering if, and Suzie's a little bit busy right now, so sorry, if we could have just a reply to where that's at, if that's anywhere. And two, I understand that the availability of the armory as a possible shelter location has been up in the air. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I'm wondering if we could get an update on the availability of the armory as an additional shelter location, possible shelter location. Don't want to take us too far afield. Again, I don't see where else to have that conversation. I'm wondering if it would make sense to divide the motion or divide the question, essentially, to divide aspects that were part of the substitute motion that encompassed some of the recommended city council action, vote on that, and then move on to the additional suggested language. Yes, as the presiding officer, the mayor may divide the motion into multiple questions after a motion has been made and seconded. The council member may request that the presiding officer divide the motion into multiple questions after a motion has been made and seconded. If upon request, the presiding officer declines to divide the question, any council member may make a motion to divide the question. The presiding officer shall desire whether or not to allow debate or limit debate on a motion to divide the question. When dividing the question, the presiding officer or the requesting or moving council member shall clearly state each question to be the subject of a separate council action. Okay, so I think the best, or one path out that would work would be to divide the motion into what is before us and then have the council vote on that and then move on to the additional recommendations. Does that feel comfortable for the majority? Okay, with a comment. Oh, sir. I would like to add back to the motion regarding the recommended city council action item C. And I want to state the reason for that and I'll make an amendment to do that. And please, I would like to have a discussion with respect. This represents significant progress in our relationship with the county and getting the county health services agency, human services to work with the city and all the other departments and partners. Finally, for the first time in this very difficult discussion, we actually do have significant money available to us. We're trying to figure out how to begin using some of that money for immediate services with the goal of spending the bulk of it on real physical facilities for longer term assistance for homelessness relief. This was the action adopted by the county. I think it's really important that we mirror their action. And I think if you look at C, it could be, it talks about a planned, I would say closure. I agree with the use of the word abatement of a planned closure by March 15th. You don't get somewhere without having a target. Excuse me, I'm trying to explain my logic here to my fellow council members. What's intended here in B is a really serious, aggressive effort to get shelter, a variety of shelter facilities up and running, some in the city, BFW in the county and working with the faith communities with aggressively pursuing small scale safe parking programs. And there are other possibilities as well the armory was mentioned. I know that's, and that is included in this discussion here as shelter options that have previously been used or something like that. So I really want to fully encourage that we take this opportunity of available money and an unprecedented partnership with the county and get going on this. That the impetus for doing that will be the intention to close the Gateway Plaza encampment. We can come back with reports at both of our upcoming council meetings as to how that's going. So I would like to make that amendment to the motion that as I understand it currently sits on the floor that would add item C back in there. Just mentioning a planned closure by March 15th with reports back to council at our upcoming meetings. Okay, so we have an opportunity now for our council to take action and to deliberate and we appreciate you being here and talking to us and we appreciate all your opinions but now's the chance for us to find areas of alignment for movement and action in an effort to meet the needs of our community. And so I appreciate your respect in that regard. Everyone has an opportunity to speak. So we have council member Matthews putting a request to the maker of the motion to reintroduce C as a potential possibility knowing that there would be updates before the 13th date but as a estimated approach. Okay, and that's the maker of the motion. Well, I put that to the maker of the motion as a request. So I'd be interested, now can I ask to hear from my fellow council members about their thoughts around that before I either accept or refuse it? Okay, I'll go, can I acknowledge this vice mayor because he mentioned he wanted to. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Okay, vice mayor and then this council member. So the first thing I want to say is to the community and I just want to encourage folks that we're in working with the county and having worked on the two by two committee with staff and having reached out to people in the community. One of the things that we really need from the community is for you all to continue to reach out to people around you in the public and private sector and find out who is willing to actually allow us to utilize their space for providing more homeless services because that's a big thing for us is that people want us to do something about the homeless situation in Santa Cruz but nobody wants to offer the space in their neighborhoods. So we understand that currently where the Ross camp, the camp is at the Gateway Plaza that there have been people from those communities, some of which are low income communities and have already been facing some of the bigger social injustice impacts that we have in our community and they're some of the people who are coming to us asking that we do something and they're not telling us to just rush and push everybody out, what they're asking us for is help in finding alternatives and they're also asking us for making sure that their neighborhoods are safe. And so with that, I would just like to say that having worked with the county on this, I think that as we move forward with regards to letter C of this that we should, and I also want to point out one other thing too is that it's 1040 and I do understand that we want to address these issues as best we can and by bringing this forward and in support of the decision of the mayor to not include these items, I do want to say that we're just getting to one item right now and if we had had five more, given the fact that yes, we should be spending a lot of time on this but at five o'clock in the morning, having been sitting and meeting since 11 a.m. will we be making the best decisions that are going to infect our entire community? And I think that as a sleep deprived city council, we would not be in a position to be making the best, most effective decisions for our community given the fact that we will not be in the best states of mind. So I do want to keep that in mind that we are trying to be mindful of time when we're trying to set up these meetings. I personally think that we are trying, tonight we're proposing ways that we can start addressing this issue starting tomorrow. So I think that our intention was to make sure that we start acting on this immediately and I do want to, with regards to C, rather than having a plan, well, we can plan the closure for March 15th but I think that what would be a friendly amendment would be that we revisit our situation on the 12th and we can determine at that point in time whether or not we'd want to move forward with the closure of the camp or if we should have alternatives at that point in time. I support that. I support that. I'm trying to vote for you, Jessica. Okay, we, okay. Okay, that's essentially the friendly amendment that I believe was offered on behalf of Council Member Matthews. I believe there were two friendly amendments offered at this point. Okay, so again, we have an opportunity to now deliberate and take action. I could take a recess and we could reconvene to be able to do that by appreciate it if you keep your comments to yourselves and allow us to now find time to deliberate and find areas of alignment. Thank you. The next interruption, I will ask that we take a five minute recess so that then we can come back and deliberate. Okay, I wanna make sure that we're really clear on where we're at with this. We have a divided motion, one that encompasses the recommended city council and county action that is now having on the table a amendment to modify C to essentially basically say planned closure by March 15th to be revisited at our upcoming council meetings. And I would say both upcoming council meetings. Okay. And that essentially covers what I believe. So we would revisit this on the 29th. Oh, sorry, 22nd. On the 12th. Okay. Does that accept, we'll let council member Brown and then we'll see if that's accepted by the mayor. I mean, I'll just make a comment that I'm uncomfortable with setting a date without, you know, I'm comfortable with setting a date at this time. And so I just wanna make sure that I'm clear. Vice mayor Cummings and council member Matthews, if there's a difference there in the amendments that you're proposing related to item C, whether we're talking about setting the date for March 15th or we're talking about coming back to the council on March 12th. I know what your intention is. I'm just wanting to make sure vice mayor Cummings that I'm getting your intention because I feel like there may be two potential amendments there and I just wanna be clear what we're talking about before council member Glover decides on whether or not to accept any amendment. An amendment if any. So I'll just say before my understanding and you can correct me vice mayor Cummings is that you're proposing that we move forward with C but knowing that we'd like to have an update prior to the 15th to ensure that we're on that path or if we need to make any changes. Is that correct? My intention with this is that on the 12th or beforehand that we can revisit whether or not closing it on the 15th would be an appropriate action to take. But including that as the action now, which is essentially the same thing as what I'm hearing. So they are the same amendment. 22nd and the 12th. 22nd and the 12th. Okay. So as I understand we would do the 30 day notice however on February 26th and then we would check in with the council to see if you still wanted to keep with that date. And then again we would check on the second meeting in March which is the 12th and to check to see if you still wanted to keep to that date. So we can do that. Yes. I would be open to extending the 30 day period to a 60 day period and then have a re-evaluation at the next two meetings to find out if that 60 day closure period will be sufficient. I would also move or add to my motion to remove the term abatement and replace it with something less dehumanizing. Okay. Well, I think, okay, so maybe the, okay, so the friendly amendment is not accepted as my. I did not interpret that as acceptance of the friendly. Okay. So I think what would be, I'll go ahead. So what I think would be appropriate is if a council member wanted to make an amendment to them and then we could vote on the amendment. If that passes, then we could go back to the original motion. Is that seem appropriate, Mr. Kandadi? Yes. A council member could make a motion to amend part one of the main motion. Okay. Is there a motion to. Yes. So I will amend, I will move that we add item C, return item C to the recommended action, changing the word full abatement to closure. With the direction as previously outlined. With the direction to return to council with an update at both of our next meetings. Okay. Is there a second? A progress. Okay. Is there a second? Second. Okay. So there's a motion and a second. A motion to amend the main motion to incorporate that language. We could go ahead and vote on that and then move on to the other. This is on the motion to amend the main motion. This is on the motion to amend. All those in favor on the motion to amend the main motion. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. That passes with, no? I'm sorry I didn't hear your vote. Yeah, no. Okay. That passes with council member Matthews, Meyers, the vice mayor Cummings and myself in favor council member Crohn, Glover, and Brown voting against. And now we'll return to the vote of the amended. Part one of the main motion. We'll return to. As amended. Okay, we'll return to part one of the main motion as amended. And that's essentially what we see before us. One and two. That is except as modified by the. As modified by the amended. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay, so that passes with council member Matthews, vice mayor Cummings, council member Meyers and myself in support of that action. Council member Brown, Crohn and Glover voting against. And now we'll move on to the final component of the motion, which is essentially the recommendations that were handed out by council member Glover. Correct? Motion for part two. I believe that was one and two. Good. I believe it was one, A, B, and C as amended. And two. And two. So we all voted. That's right. So now we'll go ahead and move on to what is before us, which is to essentially agendize the following outline provided in regards to specific actions for the next city council meeting, which would be on February 26th. Correct? Correct, yes. Okay. And that is a motion by council member Glover, second by council member Crohn. Again, tangent, but I just, I'm hoping to get my questions answered regarding the armory and discussions with the Warming Center about Locked Gate at the end of their facility there. Yeah. So I can answer the question about the Warming Center and then Tina and I can talk about the armory. Sergeant Carter Jones and I met with Mr. Adams on Friday, did a walk around on the facility and did speak to some of the tenants that were in the same building as the Warming Center storage program. There is accessible, an accessible pathway from the levy path to the levy side or the west side of the building. That would be a much more direct access to the Warming Center storage program. I'm in agreement with Sergeant Jones that that's something that we should consider helping out with. I do think it would greatly lessen the foot traffic that goes all the way around the building to access the Warming Center. So you have to go all the way down Falker, enter through the front of the building through the parking lot and then go to the very backside to access the storage facility. So I have advised Mr. Adams to apply for heap and cash funding for the capital improvements bucket to think about kind of the bigger scope. I know that he has other things that he would like to see done. For the purposes of immediate action, I do think we should help to facilitate opening up the fence in one section so it can be a gate and possibly putting some hard surface down so folks that might be mobility or impaired or have push carts or whatever could access the storage program from that side. So I would like to work with city staff to figure out how to spark him with that. Just a quick follow up question there and thank you for that. Is that, will that be coming back to council or is that just something that can move ahead? We don't need to take action. Okay. No, I don't think so. Great, thank you. And then, or Martine or Tina can talk a little bit about what we've learned in the last couple weeks as to the armory. Yeah, thank you for that question, the armory. So council might recall last year when we were working on the siting question that that is the one side council actually provided direction on go ahead and try to use the armory facility for a six month period for our phase two of our three phase plan. I believe that was your emotion, Council Member Brown. And within 10 days, literally of that council action we heard definitively back from the, I afraid the exact individual at the rank but the armory management that in fact it would not be available because this planned renovation of the facility would actually going forward. They'd had it funded budget for years and nothing was happening and we thought it was inactive. And they said, no, we're actually gonna start. So that was supposed to commence in October of last year. And we learned just this past week that nothing has happened with the armory. So some sense of significant disappointment there. And this is something that we're interested in following up on. So earlier in our presentation I think there was a part D like the plan and also talking about exploring other sites as possible. So that's clearly up there and something that I think and validation from the council that that would be of interest would be helpful as well because we can reach out to our state representatives and our partners also to assist in that. So if that's an alternate site that still would be of interest that would be good to get that sense. Quick follow up question there. Would you need that as a motion to include that or just as a consensus taking consensus? A motion is always wonderful to have that clarity and that clear expressing interest that that's always helpful for us to have that council interest. I wanna make sure I'm not out of order but I do wanna make sure that that motion gets made that we that I have the opportunity to make that motion. Before we close this agenda item, thanks. Okay, can you manager? I just had a couple of quick things. One was just wanted to clarify with respect to the main motion whether the council had wanted to consider the additions that the county made to their motion with respect to the security and the and the allocation or the reconfiguration of the encampment. Just wanna be clear whether that was something you wanted to include or not. Yeah, that's my motion, right? So that we can assume that was included. Yeah, it was the alignment with the county stuff. Okay. That was my motion. That was her motion. Let's have it on the record. That was in the motion that Donna made. It wasn't in the one that exactly that's gonna wanna make sure that. Okay, so then do. Okay. I'd like to suggest we clean up this one before we go on next. And so. So that one's been voted on. That much has been voted on, but I'd like to add to move that we add to this motion the additional direction given by the county, which was provision of security to minimize neighborhood impact, moving the encampment fence back from the levy. And again, I think the importance here is that it's a collaborative plan. We're in order. Isn't there a motion on the floor currently? It's the second part of the motion that you've broken into. You can have multiple motions on the floor. Okay. That was just a question with respect to. And I wanted to just clean up. Outstanding things. And then you've got yours too to keep on the list. And then the other one with respect to your motion, just wanted to point out that with respect to the items here, just to be clear that some of these, we may not be able to fully complete in two weeks, just simply because the timeframe to get these completed would be, the packet goes out on 21st. So it really just gives us about six days to get all this complete. So we'll certainly do our best, but we might not be able to have all the ordinances drafted or all the calls made and all the communication back from the university, for example, and that sort of thing. Well, we can do an update on where we are with each one of them, but I just wanted to be clear. So the expectation is that there will be 100% completed. Because that's probably unlikely, given the short timeframe that we have between now and the next council meeting. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor. As my understanding is one motion at this time with other potential motions waiting for. Part two of the main motion is still on the floor. Part two of the main motion is still on the floor and that's the only motion on the floor. Okay. As far as I'm aware. Okay. So why don't we go ahead and vote on part two of the main motion and then revisit the additional conversation around the alignment with the county actions, as well as the recommendation that was brought forward by Council Member Brown. Yeah. I thank you. Yeah. Okay. Well, let me just go ahead and pause here for a second. Why don't we go ahead and take a brief recess. We'll take about five minutes. We'll reconvene and then we'll discuss. And at that time, we'll have our opportunity for deliberation and action and I'll ask that the community allow us to do that. Okay. So we'll take a five minute recess and then we'll come back. I'm like a time out. Yeah. I know. Did this, did this come in? You all please take a seat or close your conversations. Okay. We'll go ahead and bring it back for some last areas for clarity and for movement. And I'm going to go ahead and ask again for you to please all close your conversations and allow us to have our deliberation and action take place. There are a few areas where we still need to see where we can find alignment and movement. Okay. So I'll just summarize where I think we might be at. And then I also failed to mention that we received a letter from our colleagues at the County in our two by two committee expressing their appreciation of the participation and collaboration as well as further explaining their support of the recommended action with the additional considerations as listed by previous council members which incorporated some security as well as movement of the location away from our river then. So that came in earlier today from the Board of Supervisors. So I just want to acknowledge that. So that's the components that we still need to get to in regards to the main recommendation before us tonight. In addition to that, we have the pending half of the divided motion which is the recommendations provided on the screen before us. So I'd like to go through that and then we can open up the opportunity for additional motions to encompass some of the other aspects that council members brought up. So we'll go ahead and start with the divided motion before us that is the proposal by council member Glover seconded by council member Cron. Is there any further discussion or debate on this before we vote on this item? Council member Matthews and then council member Brown and then council member. What does the end up first? So go there first. Thank you. Mayor, does that work for you? Can I go? Well, you know, I think I, you know, one of the things that I'll just briefly say is that as mayor, first of all, I have only so much ability to sort of see and I do my best to acknowledge both. And I do also want to acknowledge just my role and that I didn't create the role. This is the role that has been designated by our city government for me to adhere to and I'm honored to serve in the role. And part of that requires me being able to maintain deliberation, action and decorum. And so I just, I just really want to clarify that. So if I'm not looking one direction and I realize that that's the case, it's not necessarily personal. I want to also think that, you know, if council member Brown does, if I see three hands or if I'm looking this way and there are three hands that didn't come up or one was up before and I didn't acknowledge that for pointing that out, given that I'm happy to acknowledge you and then I'll acknowledge council member Brown and then council member Matthews. Go right ahead. Thank you. Thank you, council member Brown and Matthews for acknowledging my hand up first. I will say that it has been a pattern throughout the evening that you've looked to your left first before you've looked to your right. So that's why I was kind of like, come on. But that's okay. I want to emphasize that there is a lot encompassed in this document and I will acknowledge that and I totally understand what city manager Bernal is referring to with regards to time associated. I will point out though that some of them are to come back within 90 days. So specifically lines I and J are to come back within 90 days. So that should loosen it up a little bit. And also I want to emphasize for my fellow colleagues because unfortunately since these weren't agendized I couldn't share all of the documentation with you to review ahead of time effectively as it would have been in your agenda packets if it had been. So I understand that there's the desire for there to be more community input and a little bit more opportunity for people to not only share their perspectives but also for us to be able to dig deeper into some of these different issues which is the impetus of me bringing this forward tonight so that we could have the staff. The only actionable item that I'm asking to come back for on the 26th is items A and items, oh no, just items A and item C. So item A which is we're coming back with language which I believe after speaking with city attorney Kandadi we already have the language for the resolution proclaiming a homeless state of emergency and the logic around the homeless state of emergency just because some people get it confused with shelter emergency is we declared a state of shelter emergency so that would be applicable for us to receive the HEAP funds, the nine million dollars that we're talking about we had to declare a shelter emergency. The difference with the declaration of homeless state of emergency is it opens up the bureaucratic barriers that tend to slow down the process of establishing different kinds of transitional encampments as well as it makes it so that we can kind of circumvent some zoning regulations so that we can get us into places and find more applicable locations where we can establish transitional encampments. One of those models is Dignity Village which was referenced before. And so I wanna just let that be known just to clarify in case anyone had any questions and then also yeah so the second half from I down is all 90 days and then everything else is to come back with a report of feasibility or just the perspective of the staff and then for discussion and deliberation at the 26th meeting. Okay, we have Councilor Brown and then we have Councilor Matthews and then Myers and then Brown. So can I just ask for clarification because what I just heard Council Member Glover say is not consistent with the way I read the language of the motion. So the action items that you're requesting for the 26th are A and C and then a report back on the 26th on items B and D through H and then items I and J to come back within 90 days. Correct. Okay, I understand. Thank you. Thank you. I think that my I'll preserve my comments because I think it's been covered. Thanks. To me, this is just overload. There's so much in here. Each one has a different level of review of probably process both for the public and going through commissions for one thing or another. And honestly, I'm happy to look at it but I don't feel at all comfortable putting this yet additional workload on our staff. All the stuff we loaded on them this afternoon. Everything implicit in getting these programs up and running, you know, I appreciate the intent here. There are a lot of things, a quick glance at them. I see some that makes sense to me but others I would be absolutely opposed to and I'm just going to vote no on the package. And then, I'm sorry, I think it was Council Member. Not enough time to process. Okay, yeah. So Council Member Meyers and then Vice Mayor Cummings and then back to come up. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate the information and the packet that's been provided to us and I'm happy to try to look at these things. My biggest concern right now is to try to make sure we have staff resources focused on getting people into shelter. That's what I'd like to see done with our staff time and I'd like to make sure that's done in a way that's predictive for the community that is done well and that we focus on that. We need to get these people who are living in those conditions into other types of housing right away. So I appreciate that this is a compliment, a set of additional ideas that deserve attention and we can pull these up. There's a few things in here that I just not, for example, the hours of public facilities, that's a big conversation. And there's just a few things in here that I feel like are going to take away from the focus of trying to get people in shelter right now. I do have a question, Council Member Glover, about the safe parking residents here. I'm just curious, is this different than what was in the staff recommendation? There was in the staff recommendation that we voted on. There's mention of initiation of a small scale safe parking program specifically. Is this a different safe parking program that you're proposing here? It is and we've met with the Association of Faith Communities to compare notes and talk about the differences. There's our smaller with potentially five vehicles. This would be to establish a parking location for 15 to 20 vehicles. Okay and I'll just remind us that we don't want to get too in depth with discussing the content of the items. I'm good, thank you. Vice Mayor and then Council Member Brown. So first I just want some clarification. Would we be bringing back action item A on the 26th of February and item action C? Yes. With the anticipation that we will have community input on item C and then make an informed decision on how to move with staff after that. And then we'd have staff addressing B, D, E, F, G, H. What would happen with those items? Those ones would, since we've, I've had interns working on doing the research and kind of pulling out the backgrounds and recommendations on everything as well as working alongside local advocates. The content is here essentially. All the research has been done that can provide the preliminary analysis of the proposed ideas. So this is for, this packet essentially is for staff to be able to take, look at the work that's already been done, come back with a report based off of what they perceive from the reports that we have and then come back so we can have a conversation about it at the 26th meeting so that we can decide either if we want to move on any of the things based off of staff recommendations or whether they identify that they need more time in a report of the progress they've made thus far. So my understanding is that we're gonna bring the language back as is of A and C on the 26th for discussion and then items B, D, E, F, G and H, you're directing staff to look into what you're doing and then to bring a report back to see if we could put it on for the 26th or could put it on later. I'm just trying to get this to have a good understanding because while I do, same thing, this is a lot to take in and I know that staff is also has a lot going on is trying to get this stuff moving forward. That being said, I do wanna respect the time and effort that you put into this because I think that there's a lot of good things in here that we can, that'll probably help with our efforts to deal with a lot of the homeless situation. I do wanna be respectful of people's time and our ability to do this in a way that we can do it well and make sure that it's something that not only is effective now but it's something that we can use moving into the future and so I just don't want us to do this with too much haste in the sense that we might not be able to do it correct the first time. Council Member Brown. I'm gonna support the motion and I just wanna make the following comments. I understand that what we're doing here is a direction to come back for the one for particular actions but also for consideration of these additional provisions and some of which I wholeheartedly support, some of which I kind of contingently support and some of which I have concerns about but what I understand here is that we're opening up the opportunity to have that conversation. I trust that staff will let us know in a staff report back if they, how much of this information they've been able to gather, how much of a recommendation they feel comfortable making at that time and staff will do what they do and they'll get us the best information they can for our deliberations and it may be that we continue the conversation. So I don't think that supporting this motion here tonight suggests that we are going to demand that our staff take on all of these immediately in lieu of the other efforts that have been undertaken and so without I'd say I'm going to support the motion. Forward to a conversation. Okay, Council Member Myers. I'd like to just call the question. So we have the call to question for the motion as before us. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? No, no. Okay, so that passes with Council Member Crone, Glover, Vice Mayor Cummings, Brown voting in support. Council Member Matthews, Myers and myself voting against. Okay, so at this point we'll go ahead and end that part of the discussion and we're not done. So at this time I'd like to ask if there would be a motion to put on the floor some modifications to the recommendation of the agenda item that we previously voted on encompassing some of the additional direction potentially and then we can go from there. Did we add, oh, let's, if we could pull up the language that the county added to the first part of the main motion. Yeah. That we add provide 24-hour security to minimize neighborhood impact, move encampment fence to provide setback from the levy pathway, a proactive neighborhood outreach plan to ensure strong connection between the operator and the neighbors and direct collection of basic data on clients served at the city or county funded programs and facilities in order to better understand the demographics and circumstances of those served. So is that a motion to encompass the language? Okay, there's a motion by Council Member Matthews. Is there a second? I'll go ahead and second that. Okay, all those in favor, please. Could you repeat the motion back just real quick? Yeah, okay, it's this, those two. And then I added direct, let me see here. Oh, I'm trying to piece together two different things. Move the encampment fence, develop a proactive neighborhood outreach plan to ensure strong communication between the operator and the neighbors and direct collection of basic data on clients served at city or county funded homeless programs and facilities in order to better understand the demographics and circumstances of those served. The purpose of that is simply to know the variety of needs and circumstances and who we're serving so that we can better shape. Yes, please. Sure, I'll do that in the future. Okay, thank you. Can I ask a point of clarification from staff's perspective? Yes. So what I'm hearing is potentially a conflation of Donna's motion that is more relevant to future shelter opportunities. And what the county approved was specifically for the gateway encampment. So I just wanted to make sure that those. That's clear. Okay, exactly. So I would say implementation of homeless services in the city will have a proactive neighborhood outreach plan provide 24-hour security or security during hours of operation. I'm going to put it that way because they're not all 24-hour. The implementation of homeless services in the city, including the proposed shelters will provide security during operating hours, proactive neighborhood outreach plan. The other language, Bryn, excuse me, Bonnie. I did a little time work. I'll get you the exact language here. The proactive neighborhood outreach plan to ensure strong communication between the operator and the neighbors and directing collection of basic data. Okay. So that's the motion. There's a second. At this time, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? This is unanimously. Okay. Council Member Brown. I would move that we direct staff to include the National Guard Armory in consideration of potential shelter spaces and report back to us. When does staff think that might be feasible for report back? I think we should try for the 26th. Okay. On the 26th for consideration. So there's a motion by Council Member Brown. We're going the same place here. Yeah. We're going to second that. Can I make a friendly amendment to that? You shouldn't offer it to her. In addition to the recommendation earlier, that we actually direct staff to reach out to UCSC to look into ways that they can, like potential opportunities for them to house homeless students or allow for homeless students who sleep in their cars to sleep in their cars on campus. If I could just for clarification. I believe that was encompassed in the other motion. I think this is different. I think what's included in here is to lease the, yeah, to lease the building at Delaware. Okay, sure, yeah, I think that's a great idea. I'll be reaching out to Chancellor Blumenthal when we meet tomorrow morning about this very issue. Okay, is there any further discussion on the motion? Any clarification on the language needed? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that too passes unanimously. Okay. So, I think that's the remainder of the discussion for the various motions. And so we'll go ahead and close the item. Thank you to those who were able to stick around till the very end tonight. At this time, I will go ahead and adjourn the meeting without any additional action to take. So we're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.