 If council members are back, if you could turn your cameras on started. Good afternoon. Welcome to our 1215 session of the February 9, 2021 meeting of the city council. I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of Santa Cruz. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely. I want to thank the public for staying home to view today's city council meeting. If you wish to comment on an agenda today, excuse me on an agenda item today, call in at the beginning of the item you're wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming. So if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it is time for public comment, press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Watkins, Callentary Johnson. First presentation today is the parking for hope check presentation. And today I'm pleased to announce that the City of Santa Cruz in partnership with the Santa Cruz Downtown Association will be presenting hope services with the seven annual check collected from our parking for hope holiday program. For those who don't know, hope services is a Santa Cruz nonprofit that provides training and support to adults with developmental disabilities. In doing so, their crews have helped keep our downtown streets clean and welcoming for 22 years. The funds were collected from downtown meters the week before Christmas when the usual parking rates applied. However, all proceeds that during that eight day period were designated for donation to hope services. This included all of Park Mobile's transaction fees, which they generously contributed as well. Given the reduction in parking caused by the COVID-19 stay at home order, we are especially pleased to announce that we collected $18,439 this holiday season. We are delivering a check in this amount to hope services. This brings the total amount collected for hope services over the last seven years now to $202,525. So congratulations and thank you to everyone that came downtown and used a parking meter. And unfortunately due to COVID, we won't be able to present our traditional giant check to hope services today. But please know that all of the council members are very supportive of this program and we are very proud. And thank you to all of our staff and everyone that and shout out to our partner on this downtown association as well. So thanks everybody. Congrats. Proclamation declaring February is Black History Month in Santa Cruz. And I'm going to read a couple of lines from the proclamation and then call on Brenda Griffin, president of the NAACP, Santa Cruz County, to say a few words. Whereas National Black History Month in February affords special opportunity to become more knowledgeable about black heritage and to honor the many black leaders who have contributed to the progress of our nation. Whereas acknowledging and understanding the struggles for equal rights in the African American community can strengthen the insight of all of our citizens regarding the issues of human rights. The great strides that have been made in the crusade to eliminate the barriers of equality for minority groups and the continuing struggle against racial discrimination and poverty. Now, therefore, I, Donna Myers, mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the month of February 2021 as Santa Cruz NAACP Black History Month in the city of Santa Cruz. And encourage all citizens to participate in community practices that ensure equality for everyone. And thank you, Brenda, for being here today. We really appreciate it. And we'd love to hear a few words from you. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Vice Mayor Brunner. Thank you for this proclamation. And we really appreciate you acknowledging the value and the importance of black history, which is actually American history. So I just want to thank you again. And we accept this award on behalf of the this proclamation on behalf of the NAACP Santa Cruz County branch and on behalf of all of the black history makers and leaders in our county. And there are several and hopefully we will acknowledge all of them. So again, thank we appreciate you acknowledging this. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here by if you have any local Santa Cruz County NAACP brings to our community and, you know, it's one of the largest recognized civil rights organizations. And truly has been Health Matters Initiative, the Santa Cruz County Black Coalition for Justice and Racial Equity from Martin Luther King Jr. this year. So thank you for all that you are doing and that the NAACP is doing in our community. Thank you. I appreciate the remarks. And again, you know, it's a collective effort effort. We have some great leaders in our city and county. You know, seeing that we do every year and recognizing this and I just really appreciate your comment that black history is American history and we have to acknowledge that and we should be acknowledging that every day. And we are we are one nation and we've we've got to we've really got to start thinking that way and acting that way. So I just appreciate the work that you guys have done over the last year especially and just have a lot of admiration and respect for for everything you've been doing. So thank you for all your all your work and and all of your colleagues and folks who have been working hard this past year. So thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, we will move on now to our next presentation. And I'm going to call up Rosemary Menard, our water director. She will give us a preliminary water supply outlook for the year 2021. Welcome Rosemary. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thanks for this opportunity to trying to share my screen here we go. Thanks for this opportunity to give you a quick update. I know that we've had a fairly dry winter so far and that generally when that occurs here in Santa Cruz generates a lot of questions about, you know, what's going to happen in the coming summer and I want to just give you a quick update about where we are and talk at as we do this preliminary look in February and kind of where the final look will be kind of somewhere in the early April timeframe. So just to kind of give you a couple of times each winter kind of typically in the mid to end of January, which is kind of the halfway point in how we're doing a rainfall stream flow in the San Lorenzo River reservoir storage levels in the cumulative discharge of Santa at the San Lorenzo River, which helps us to kind of assess where we are with water year classification. So this presentation is typically given at the water commission in the first meeting of February, which we did last week, and a little bit of update has happened since then. This is the cumulative precipitation chart, and you can see that this line here, this kind of pealy color line is the current year until really right at the end of February. We're looking pretty difficult here. We had the Atmospheric River that came through a couple of weeks ago that gave us a big bump. In our situation, this is the 20, this sort of more blue line here is the 2020 water year, which was classified as dry in our, you know, system of year, water year classification type. So we're going to see the chart about a little bit later. It didn't squeak over the line between critically dry and dry until right at the end of kind of the springtime. The greenish line here is the annual average, and then we had a wet year in 2019. So we had quite a bit of rain that was sort of tracking pretty early on through the sort of early part, mid part of January along the kind of long-term average. And then we had quite a bit more rain in the later part of that year. Moving on to looking at stream flow that are the long-term average. And you can see that stream flow for this year has been pretty below average. You know, I think it's one of the reasons why we saw, for example, the lagoon and the San Lorenzo River was closed for so long. There was just so little water in the system to push open the entrance to the lagoon and let the water kind of move out in the more typical winter fashion. We will see some changes in these numbers as we relate to going forward just because we've had a little bit more rain in the month of February. And we're looking at some additional storms looks like later this week and maybe early into next week. So this chart is updated annually, but so far this is not looking too good, right? And then finally we're looking at the cumulative runoff, which we classify these years into critically dry, dry, normal, and wet. And you can see that the years that are shown here, the long-term average is this blue line. This is the 2019 water year that was a wet year. As I mentioned, this was last year where we just squeaked over in between critically dry and dry conditions in kind of the late part of the spring. And this is kind of where we stand at the end of January this year. And, you know, again, this is not looking too good at the moment. And we do have another couple of months of the water year, you know, the wet season left and we are hoping that we'll get some more. But this is a not a very good situation at the moment. And then finally we do a projection that looks at where we are starting the reservoir storage level, Lachlan storage level in the first part of April and how that would decline between the first part of April and the end of October, which is kind of typically the end of our dry season. And you can see that we're looking at reservoir start because we didn't fill last year due to a number of issues, including construction work at the Tate Street Intake as well as some of the impacts associated with the CDU fire. We've been on Lachlan more of this winter than would typically be the case. So we're starting a little bit behind even what we might have seen under other circumstances where we've been on the river more during the fall, for example. And we're looking at getting down to just under about two thirds at the end of the demand season. This forecast includes fish flow releases as well as assumptions about customer demand that has been unrestricted at this point. And that is certainly one of the things we're weighing as we look forward about whether or not we need to bring a recommendation to the council in the spring later in the spring in April to implement some form of water restrictions. Now, the good news about the sort of our kind of a little bit longer term forecast for the summer is that our customer demand is pretty solidly down at a level that is very efficient. And so to some degree, the question about whether or not we will need to put restrictions in place is a big open question related to kind of what do we see as we're looking at reservoir storage. If we get some additional rain and this line sort of stabilizes, we probably will not put restrictions on or not recommend that we implement restrictions, even though it's been very dry, because again, our customer demand is very efficient already. And there's somewhat less to gain in, you know, further restricting a and already very efficient water use patterns. I will tell you that at your next meeting, I'm going to be bringing forward a major rewrite of our water shortage contingency plan to reflect the current demand characteristics and patterns. And that will bring some quite big changes to the way we would do restrictions and what kinds of restrictions we would do from the very get go of the of the stages that we have to plan for. So there's there, I'm going to be asking the council to, you know, take some action on giving us authority to go ahead and implement that plan in the coming summer so that we can have in place the right tools for the job in the event that we need to do restrictions. So that's what we've been planning for updating our current plan that's done from 2009 and is quite out of date for some time. My final, you know, just a couple of Noah charts here looking at this is for temperature looks like we're looking at, you know, higher than normal temperatures in the next three months. This is for the month of February, March and April, and then this is the precip. So the whole West has got this sort of equal chance of being either above normal normal or below number normal. There doesn't seem to be any kind of, you know, more specifics at this point, but we obviously follow this information on a routine basis as well. And then finally just a couple of notes, you know, we monitor water conditions on an ongoing basis. We update our reservoir projections in late March and to inform the conversation with the water commission in early April and with the council as needed in April regarding whether or not we need to recommend restrictions. And with that, I can take your questions if you have any questions from the council. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you, Rosemary, very much for the report. And I think we all do realize that I won't geek out on the water stuff. But yeah, it's a pretty sobering winter so far. And I do want to recognize too that the work that you your your department is doing on the climate change modeling is just very important at this point in time. And so, you know, really understanding when it's not raining is one thing, but understanding when it's not raining in the context of some of the climate change modeling you've been doing is it's very telling to our future. So yeah, I did happen to watch a webinar yesterday on atmospheric rivers and how they're becoming a much greater source of, you know, more intense storms and the particularly related to the number of events in California where atmospheric rivers are providing a huge portion of the total annual rainfall for the state in a relatively few hours. And that trend is quite concerning with respect to the assumptions we're making about how we operate our system and how big our system storage needs to be to, you know, help us get through drier periods. So there's a lot of work that's going on where we really are trying to figure out how is the future going to change and what do we need to do to adapt to that. Yeah, it's interesting growing up here in California. I, you know, it's remarkable how different it is now and how it's been so different in the last 10 years. It's pretty chilling. So thank you for everything your department is doing. We appreciate you. Okay. Next up, we have presiding offers, officers announcements, and I do not have any announcements this afternoon. Are there any statements of disqualifications from any of our council members today? None. I'll move on to, are there any additions or deletions today, Bonnie? I'll make an announcement about oral communications. Oral communications are a time for community members to address the council for two minutes or less about any matter, not on the agenda. And that will be held later on this evening after our last item of the day. Mr. Condati, city attorney report on closed session, please. Yes. Good afternoon, Mayor Myers, members of the city council. This morning the council convened at 1045 a.m. the zoom to discuss the following items in closed session. Prior to entering into the closed session, the council voted to refer to closed session. The real property negotiations matter involving property identified as APN numbers, 00515148, 00515134, and 00515135. There are city owned properties commonly referred to as parking lot 11 and a small undeveloped parcel on the corner of Laurel and Front Street on the river side of Front Street. Council met with its real property negotiation, negotiate, excuse me, negotiator Bonnie Lipscomb and gave direction there was no reportable action on that item. Second item of real property negotiations involved the property at 902 Pacific Avenue and designated as APN 00515230313233 and 005. Again, the council met with its negotiator and gave direction, but no reportable action was taken. Second item involves pending litigation. First is the matter pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court entitled Regents of the University of California at all versus the city of Santa Cruz. The second item is a matter pending in Alameda County Superior Court entitled Lauren W. Brown at all versus AGCO Corporation at all. And the council received a report from the city attorney's office on those items, but no reportable action was taken. Thank you, Mr. Kandadi. I will going to take one step back to the presiding officer's announcements. I do want to just make sure I read this correctly because I did skip over it. And then we'll move on to our regular meeting. So today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, city of Santa Cruz dot com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, instructions are provided on your screen. We will provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda item that will be open for public comment. Please note comment is only heard on items council is taking action on and not regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers nine through 20 on our agenda. And again, for oral communications that will be occurring today immediately after agenda item number 20 on the agenda. If you do wish to make comment during oral communications, please call in towards the end of item 20. I'll now ask city manager to report and provide updates on city events and business items. Thank you, Mayor. I have a, excuse me, I have three items that I wanted to update the council on today. They are the update on the beach area vendors, how we won in nine encampment and on vaccination status. I'll start with the beacher vendors and for that I'm going to have Ralph in America from our office providing updates and working with the vendors and businesses there. Hi, good afternoon, Mayor Myers and council and to be sharing this brief PowerPoint presentation with you all. Yes, around the America management analyst, the city manager's office. And here's just a outline of today's update. I'll be sharing the timeline as to how we end up here or how we end up yet here. Describe the outreach efforts we've had, give some context as to how we determine what the next steps work and our goal is to be ready for the 2021 beach season, which is March April. So here's a quick timeline, just to kind of give a summary to the new council members. On August 14 2020 executive order 2016 was signed and now that prohibited beach vending on each street on August 25 staff direction was provided. And I have a summary of what that was coming up. And then on 30 September we held our first meeting with the vendors with community bridges. September 30 executive order 2021 was signed, which really extended the first executive order and tied it to the city's emergency. Yeah, health emergency. And that executive order 2021 pretty much said that as long as the city's health emergency is in place, vending on beach street will continue to be prohibited. And then on January and February, we held our second after meeting with the vendors. This was the direction that was given to staff that was to continue working with community bridges to develop a more structured and equitable system that would accommodate each area of vending. Our outreach efforts, we held three meetings. They're moderated by community bridges, translation services were provided and invitations were extended through emails and calls of an English and Spanish. So there were some things that popped up during our vendor group discussions. And in all three, we had the opportunity to share concerns, both by vendors and city staff to really communicate and get on the same page to what the issues were and what we were trying to solve. There was a need for clear guidelines and share expectations both in the city and vendors. And the competition over coveted sites created a lot of issues last season, which we're trying to address this year. Now there's a desire to work with the city to create opportunities to then in 2021 this year. So this is the contact that we took into consideration when trying to determine what the next steps were. The first one was SB 946 and this Senate bill really decriminalized street vending and it limited local regulation of sidewalk vending. And it was adopted in 2018, took an effect January 1, 2019. So a relatively new Senate bill and state law. So as cities were really trying to, you know, follow this line update the ordinances. We ran into our current pandemic, which added a whole other layer to this issue. We have the executive order that is pivoting beach vending and extending it through the city emergency declaration. And we received direction from council and we also considered the physical limitations of the area. It's a really unique area that really limits a number of vending sites that are possible with social distancing. And we also took into consideration feedback from our outreach meetings and city staff. So this is just a quick image of Beach Street and this is off season. It's just, you know, even when there's just one family walking down the sidewalk, you see how congested it could get and how it really is difficult to add vendors here the way it's currently designed. This is where we are suggesting three of the six new vending sites be placed. This is right next to the bathroom here ideal restaurant and it's that one patio. Here's an aerial footage of the vending site that we're proposing and we have three here and another three over here and ideal fish to extend their patio into this section as well. So in 2021, we're rock vending continue to be prohibited due to health and safety concerns. We're working to post signs in the area as soon as February or early March, just to make sure that the community and vendors understand what the rules are. And we're proposing issuing limited permits at designated sites, which I just showed. We're also adding additional requirements for vendors. So in addition to having a business license, you know, your vendor generally required to get a city issue permit for vending in this area. If you're vending food, a county health permit will be required. Submission of information on the vendors proposed operations will be required and that's not determined if they need a health permit from the county or not, they're vending food. Compliance with the city's ordinance and trash bin moved after each business day to the next step. We're going to make sure we're going to continue to communicate rules and regulations with the public so that the whole area understands what the rules are leading up to the speech season. And that really is going to be done through signage along Beach Street. We're also working right now and navigating through a new administrative process. And this permit system is something new for the whole city staff here having limited vending sites at this area and vendors voiced at the community outreach meetings that application assistance would be nice to have. The community bridges will be working with us to make sure that vendors are able to have the time and resources to apply for these sites and time to matter. And then we're trying our goal to issue permits for these site spaces before spring and of course continue to be fair, transparent, responsive in this process. It's a relatively new issue that we're dealing with and there's a lot of variables in play. So we want to make sure that the whole time we're being fair, transparent responses to everyone involved. So if that concludes my update, thank you for your time. I could take any questions. I have Council Member Conner Johnson and then Council Member Brown, please. And then Council Member Cummings. The presentation Ralph. Very informative. I have just a couple of comments, questions. One is many residents in this permitting process, including those for who are from South County. I'm not sure where all the vendors are from, but we can prioritize those who are within Santa Cruz County. The other question I have is, you know, I understand the need for restrictions due to the COVID health and safety concerns. However, and not however, I see a lot of congestion congestion downtown as well. So why the restrictions on Beach Street vendors and not vendors in other areas of our communities that are also congested and setting parameters for health and safety. So those are my questions and comments. Thank you. Well, after that, the reason why we're focused on Beach Street right now is really the item or issue that came in a focus at that time. SB 946, which the city passed an item in August, I believe, to update our own city ordinances to kind of align us with SB 946. That gives the city council the authority to revisit any work into the regulations in life, and if that's something the council wishes to do to address issues in downtown, something that the council can definitely agenda for a future meeting. And John is on the call to you, so John, if I'm saying something wrong, please. And then as far as prioritizing Santa Cruz County residents. I think where you're going with that, but at the same time, there was a tendency from vendors from declaring where they were residents from, or we want to be sensitive to that. And that's one of the things that is what that we're working on the application with moving bridges on just to make sure that this application is culturally sensitive to the vendors and we're not putting anybody in. We are predicting that they want to be in. But we could, I could discuss that a little bit further with us. It's a question that has to come up. You had a little bit with respect to just the overall approach of just to clarify. One of the things that I'm looking at the beach area in particular was to try to come up with a model that would work. Hopefully on ongoing basis, because recognizing that each could get super congested in normal times with the bikes and people wanting to sit and people going back and forth. So part of the goal is to try to come up with something that would be workable on ongoing basis as well. And I'm working with the vendors to find that balance where they could have a location that work, but also work just from everyday normal conditions. I think John wanted to add something. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, John. You muted John. You muted John. Sorry. Can you hear me now? Yes. Just historically, even before Senate Bill 946 went into effect, we had street vending legal issues on Pacific Avenue. And those were implicated by court decisions that held that certain types of vendors had a First Amendment right to use the sidewalk to display and sell products. So even before 946, the council historically had to deal with issues on vending on Pacific Avenue, knowing that they could not outright prohibit vending on Pacific Avenue in the First Amendment context. And so their approach was the time, place and manner approach, which focused on allowing the activity to an extent that it did not unduly interfere with pedestrian vehicular traffic on Pacific Avenue. And so historically, the council identified locations on Pacific Avenue where this type of protected vending activity to take place with the passage of Senate Bill 946 as the council learned in August when it adopted the updated ordinance. It sort of turned the whole program upside down, and the council now has the authority to say where it cannot be prohibited, provided they have data, objective data that documents a health and safety reason for not allowing it at those particular locations. If you have any further questions, Council Member Calantari-Johnson. No, thank you. Okay, thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you. Yeah, some of my questions were just answered. I just have a couple more. First, I want to thank you, Ralph, for for going through this process for, you know, for coordinating the, you know, the logistics. I know it's been difficult at times to get people together and on the same page. And so I really appreciate your work and also appreciate community bridges for being willing to step in and help out with the, you know, the application process and transmitting the information. So that's, so one of my questions is related to that. I'm, I am just wondering, you know, because, you know, part of the challenge seems to me that it will be how to proactively signal to vendors that we have this process in place and kind of avoid the, you know, the kind of having to just do it on the enforcement and to make people go away. And so I'm wondering if you've talked about, and how you're planning to handle or community bridges maybe is planning to handle, you know, getting the word out about this so that people can be brought in early. I know you mentioned April and trying to get it done early. I think that's a great idea. But just how to kind of mitigate the potential for, you know, disruptions with the new system. And then my other question is about how many, you know, what the, what the different what that's going to look like in terms of how many vendors had been kind of regularly or at least recently been present on a regular basis compared to what the, you know, the sighting that's being offered. So we are working with community bridges closely and they've done a great job with outreaching the vendors and provide translation services as well. And at our last meeting, we discussed the importance of this process and moving forward in a way that included the specific needs of other vendors, which, you know, some might need additional resources, applying for their business license or just translation services to the application. And we're going to be working closely with them to even look at the application before it goes out to to see if there's anything that needs to be removed or added in that application. And we're going to be working with them on an electronic flyer that's going to create and resources, community resources available to vendors who need extra assistance applying for these permits. And we also have a really good sort of outreach process finally worked out where they're able to communicate with the vendors directly and confirm that communication was received and all of that. The number of vendors that regularly were out there, it's interesting because last year we didn't have a limited number of permits and we didn't require permit holders to have their permit on them on site. We had a couple of vendors who had satellite stations that you could call them where they were all working off of one permit. So the number was really difficult to come up with or pinpoint exactly. We had around 12 vendors, but there was about six permits that were issued out. So it was difficult to track. Okay, I have a parking dog in my house. Sorry about that. Council Member Cummings, please. Vice Mayor Brunner will receive special event permits and it's just not the self-adancing will continue this year, but we understand the regular time and date that they're usually out there and we want to factor that into when vendors will be available to you, the space or not, and really trying to find a process in which we could share the space with the whole community, including the self-adancers. So it's one of those things where it was difficult to make a decision because of COVID and we're kind of just going to take it and move along as we go. But keeping sort of the self-adancers on our radar and letting the vendors know that there may be dates and time we're vending may be limited because of special events at the site. Vice Mayor Brunner. Thank you for this update, Ralph, and also would like to acknowledge the work of community bridges in this process. My questions, the first thing I thought of were there are six additional sites identified there on the deck next to ideal barn girl. How many sites have been identified? Really at any site at this point, but we looked at a narrow view of the location near Beach Street and this seemed to make the most sense when you factor in social distancing. And so six is a number we came up with when you measured out safe distances from the public and the right of way. And we had public works out there measure this out as well. And it's interesting that you'll have some sites say that six is too much. And then the other side will say six is not enough. So, but at City Manager Martin Brunner said it really is sort of just initial pilot project almost to see how, you know, we can have a process in place to really regulate vending and make it fair for everybody, both the community and the vendors and have the set sort of rules in place to for everyone to follow and understand. So just for clarification, no sites along the sidewalk there. You would create too much of a congestion. So, okay. So only those six sites. So that was my next question, which council member Cummings brought up was the regular weekly. I mean, now we're in COVID, but the regular weekly falsely dancing that occurs there. So the permit process, I don't know if you already have gotten that far in discussion, you know, how that permit process gets issued with respect to shared space. I think it's important and the markings and signage, which council member Brown brought up signage will be key so that, you know, vendors who show up and maybe aren't familiar with the process. There will at least be bilingual signage that indicates what, you know, the process is. And thank you for that. We are finalizing the signage right now. And that's one thing that did pop up during our community outreach meeting to a police officer who are not the first city official that vendors wanted to interact with. So, you know, some signage would be good and we want to make sure they don't really contact if they have any other questions. Part of the plan for permit goes and all of that. And we'll continue to work with Parks and Rec to make sure that that site is shared as a whole community, including stuff that they asked itself. Thank you. And council member Cummings. I will add in what actions they're taking as well just to make sure we're approaching as best as possible. Council member Watkins with the other council members questions and comments. But I think it'd be good to have one more update prior to the summer months just to sort of make sure that some of these have been reconciled in terms of next steps moving into the high tourist season and official as we gear up for a lot of people in our community going to our beaches. On that note, I might suggest that when it does come back for a follow-up report that it be put on the agenda as a separate item so that the council can give specific direction should it choose to do so. I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to do that. Absolutely. Okay. Any other questions from council members? Martin, you can continue. Thank you. Thank you, Ralph. And thank you, council members, for your questions. Let's see. Next slide. We could ask Lee Butler. He could just provide an update on the Island 1-9 in campus. He's been doing work with Caltrans and others to look at what we can do there to try to address some of the health and safety issues that we're experiencing. So kind of go ahead, Lee. Thank you, Martin. And good afternoon, mayor and council members. I wanted to give you a few quick updates. I'm sure you've been hearing a lot from your constituents about the situation out there, particularly as there are more and more people that are occupying the area. Right now we have authorization from Caltrans to place a series of 96-gallon trash bins out there. Those have been placed out for several months now, and we are emptying those five days a week out there. So our team is out there every day doing that trash collection. We have also coordinated with Caltrans, CHP, and the county on shoulder closures for dumpster placement. Two of those have occurred thus far. Those are for larger items or just for accumulation of trash. And the next 30-yard dumpster placement is scheduled for this Thursday, weather permitting. We're still, you know, we're expecting some rain, but it looks like it might be later in the day. And so typically we do those closures from 8 a.m. until noon. And we have them planned for every other Thursday through March. And again, that'll be weather permitting, but that's the schedule that we're anticipating. Why through the end of March and not ongoing after that? Well, as you all know, we have the Highway 1 and 9 widening project that is going to be kicking off in April. And so we are coordinating with Caltrans and the county on how we will be clearing that area to make way for both the construction and the staging. And we're in active conversations with those entities regarding that. We've got another meeting tomorrow with the county and Caltrans on outreach. And another meeting on Thursday with our public works team and the Caltrans folks. So the work there is ongoing. We're also requesting that Caltrans address the number of additional vehicles that have been increasing out there. We're concerned with the presence of those vehicles and pulling onto and off of the highway. And so our overall approach is ongoing and it's still to be determined about how that clearing will actually occur. But we are having those conversations and the issue is imminent given that we've got this construction project that is coming up fairly quickly here in April. I'm available for any questions that you may have. Council Member Golder and then Council Member Cummings. I want to say thanks for that update. And I know a lot of people in the community have reached out to me with questions on who they can contact when they see dangerous situations like people have reported. And I've witnessed it myself, individuals crossing where there's no crosswalk. And really people are going kind of highway speeds coming and going off Highway 1 with a light screen or not. And the cars that are coming and going. And so aside from the trash and erosion and the other things, it's just more like a danger to drivers and pedestrians. And so I've had people call 911 and then they say you have to call the Highway Patrol and then it gets dispatched to the police department. It's like everyone that has told me that it's got these weird like cycles where it's kind of like point, point, point, point. And then no one comes out to resolve the issue. And so I can't speak to that. I haven't personally called, but I just wonder if you know where someone could call or when calling. Who could they request to come out to help with dangerous situation? CHP covers that area. That said, you know, if someone's crossing the streets, you know, it's not that CHP probably isn't going to come out and address that. What I will say is that because of some of those safety concerns, Caltrans has acknowledged that there is a problem there. Right now, Caltrans requires that the governor's office themselves approve any clearing of individuals on their properties. And so given the safety concerns similar to those that you've highlighted, Councilmember Golder, they have been willing to pursue this. And, you know, there are a lot of steps leading up to that. That's that's a part of the outreach that the county has been doing out there and that we've been doing with the trash cleanup and that we're continuing to coordinate on, you know, even tomorrow. But yes, there are definitely safety concerns and Caltrans has acknowledged those in expressing general support for moving folks from that area, both for the construction project and to address the safety issues. Can I add that we are also prepared a letter for the mayor to send to the governor that has a number of requests including that the governor intervene in trying to assist the city with addressing the situation there. And in particular with the locating individuals because that is a major concern is to where individuals will go because we don't want to just displace the problems under the location. And then the other requests are related to funding both with respect to COVID funding and long-term homelessness funding that the state will look at a more equitable approach to funding homelessness related and COVID relief for small cities versus larger cities, particularly small cities like ours that have a high level of homelessness in our counties that have bigger impacts than a suburban type city. For example, in the last round of care funding, we received $12 per capita versus larger cities that received $85 per capita funding. That's a pretty huge difference and that would have made a huge difference for us if we could see the conflict level or even, you know, even half of that level. So those are the other things that we're working on just to try to make some systematic and policy changes as well to help us with addressing these situations. And councilmember Watkins and councilmember Cummings. I think my question is pretty brief. My understanding and I welcome that section if I'm wrong is that that is the most has been identified as the most dangerous intersection in the city. Is that correct? Highway 1 9 to the right in that area. I'd have to ask public works if they. Here's Christian. I heard great. Good afternoon. You're frozen back home. Okay. I have a part two to the question while he's waiting, but and that is if there was some sort of, you know, a horrific accident. Is there a liability to the city or would the liability go to the state in Caltran? The state, the state intersection and well with the city is doing work right away. We were doing that under a permit. So it really is the responsibility of the state. All the right away that's occupied is currently the state right away. I would expect to the question about safety is if anyone sees any immediate danger that's occurring. You know, I think what we've emphasized to the state so far. You know, the intersection has had some major collisions. Last year, there was a huge truck fire. No one died. But if that had occurred a little bit closer to where the encampment is, there would have been some significant injuries, potentially deaths. And so we, we really do emphasize this is a major safety issue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There has been some significant injuries, potentially deaths. And so we really do emphasize this is a major safety issue. Thank you, Chris. Council member Cummings. This is taking the stance that well, these are, this is our city residents and this is city trash. trash. They have expressed a willingness to partner with us. We're pushing for having them to cover both the cost of the trash removal as well as the closures. In fact we were inquiring about well can we put a dumpster off you know not within the shoulder but you know further off of the right away, farther away from the vehicular area and then you guys cover the cost of that. We did not get anywhere in that conversation. They wanted the shoulder to be closed. They offered to have the Caltrans folks put up the signage and close the shoulder as well as CHP to be out there. They're actually on duty during that closure so that four-hour period Caltrans there and excuse me CHP is there. And what I have mentioned to them is that even if we were doing a cost sharing that approach may not be equitable and I expect that that is the case given the five times a week that we're doing the trash and the the dumpster costs as well. So I've indicated to them that we will be tracking our costs. I've encouraged them to do the same and rather than belabor the issue and not get to a resolution and have trash pile up we said let's let's make this happen now and we can work through that cost sharing at some point in the future. They're aware of our position whether or not we ultimately get more funds for the actual trash removal is still to be determined. It's included in there is sort of consistent with the council adopted policies and approaches. I think I outline basically the major ask which is you know assistance with addressing the situation. They're relocating individuals trying to deal with safety and also some of the equity issues but yeah certainly council members can forward any suggestions or thoughts to the mayor and we can incorporate them into the letter. It hasn't gone out so we're trying to. Yeah we're drafting the we are drafting the letter. The most pressing issue obviously is the Highway 1 and 9 and we are focused on that so we do need to get the letter out. We've been working on it for I think almost two weeks now so it's something we actually need to expand as the governor's office fairly soon but I'm happy to gather any comments very similar to the letters that were put out in the last year by the mayor and vice mayor. Mayor Cummings when you were mayor asking obviously for long term funding as well as more equitable funding for under COVID relief and we have also met with assembly members Stone, Senator Laird and Congressman Panetta in the last week to help them understand the issues that we're facing and we are working very closely with their offices as well as supervisor Coonerty and McPherson's office as well. So we've been doing a lot of this work and staff's been very helpful in trying to get this information out and get the request to the state as soon as possible based on the need as described by Mr. Schneider and others today. Find a way to make this less dangerous, less hazardous and management issues. I know that it's a serious problem and so I have a couple of questions. One, the people who are there in the I mean are parks and rec workers are there other city kind of workers and I'm just wondering about the cost of that as well for Martin afterwards just a quick one. It's behind the scenes including you know the coordination with Caltrans. It's actually the public works department is the one that is doing the daily trash removal. They are not going down and picking things up off of the grounds. So you know the bins that are placed up at around 5 a.m. each morning they are coming through grabbing them dumping them and going on their way and then the public works is also servicing the dumpster on the will be bi-weekly basis. So those are the folks that are out there most regularly and then you know between public works on the not the refuse management side but the public improvements related to Highway 1 and 9 there's been substantial coordination as well as our coordination with the outreach teams at the county and also our coordination with individuals who are out there volunteering their time to help clean things up. They have been helpful in taking some of the trash that's on the ground and getting it into the bins and getting it into the dumpsters and so our team has been coordinating with those individuals as well. I just wanted to kind of get a handle on that because I had heard that there are volunteers and that some people in the who are staying there at the moment were involved in you know at least getting trash into the bins and so that's great and I want to give a shout out to those folks volunteer teams and Ron Perrigo who was you know really pivotal in getting doing some of the hauling when we weren't we were quite there with Caltrions. So my other question is Martin if you if you could remind me I think I may have known and I just can't remember if the the governor's order to not allow clearance on state land and camp and clearance on state land is blanket or if that is without a relocation a place to relocate without some kind of relocation plan is it just no um you know I mean I know the CDC guidelines say no disruption of the encampments which I support I'll just say that but in terms of our inability to do anything about it is that is are we stuck because of the relocation issue or are we stuck because we just can't do anything at the moment. And at least the one that's had the most conversations with the state official because I think it's there's some variation out there um and but I think I think in general the the position they've taken is that they don't want to move individuals without having an identified place for them to go and I think that and we can add to that if there's more. Yeah I would just add that we have requested that Caltrions provide their own properties for relocation and if they do not have or cannot provide their own properties then they work with partner their partners at the state to identify locations whether that's uh state park lands or elsewhere and so those conversations are ongoing and um I think the outcome is still to be determined but um I think from everyone's perspective our preference would be to have a specific location where individuals can go. We also have some significant timing concerns in terms of the grant application that we have and the need to move forward with the commencement of construction and our ability to continue to receive that grant funding is contingent on the start of construction so um there are a number of factors that need to be considered and we're trying to move forward expeditiously while also hoping to um identify a specific location. Yeah and that's that's always the case that you know our strong preferences for individuals to have place to go uh that's appropriate that would be always the ideal situation um and we'll work with them to try to choose that uh you know uh scattering people throughout the city is not an ideal outcome that we'd like um and more over obviously there's some issues around pandemic and being honest um uh but that at times has to be balanced as you know with the the conditions that can arise there um and so we're trying to see what we can do to again balance those two things in a reasonable way. Thanks and just a quick one other thing and now and more of an announcement so as so uh Lee mentioned the meeting on Thursday I just want to say uh thank uh Mayor Myers for bringing this up at the Regional Transportation Commission uh where we have a Caltrans representative who was very well aware of the issues and we will be have it will be part of that meeting and um we also will um uh we'll have two supervisors um uh Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor McPherson whose uh you know districts kind of overlap with the um the Highway 1 and 9 uh space there so we are we will have um you know elected officials in the conversation as well uh so that's an opportunity to share our perspective so if anybody does any other council members want to weigh in I'm happy to take uh hear from you uh in advance. Any other questions uh I appreciate the council's discussion and question on this it's um and just for our community who may be listening um some very very difficult situation um and every every one of these situations sort of has its own flavor so we are um very much trying to make our way through a difficult situation I really want to recognize Lee and Martine and other city staff who have just really been really daily working on this trying to get resolution trying to make sure that um something very bad doesn't happen there I think our whole community has their eyes on this situation and we are trying to move as fast as possible but we are definitely hampered by the way the state is um sort of looking at the situation and uh again also with no real solutions on where these folks can go unfortunately so we are in my opinion really caught in the middle in a very bad situation but uh just want to let our community know that we're working on as as hard as we can um Martine do you have any other items on your report just a very brief update on vaccinations um it's uh yeah that's great which I can do or I can uh yeah please please go ahead Martine we're off on all right I'm gonna uh just share my screen real quick um a couple of items uh with respect to vaccinations uh one um first of all with respect to the overall picture in obviously there's a a lot more demand than there is supply and so that's the obviously there's a lot of frustrations around that and concerns not just here but throughout the whole country um but uh in terms of at least one measure that I received this information about just a few hours ago about how we are doing here the county relative to other counties with the the vaccine that we have received and and how they've been allocated um we're we're just far uh number nine out of 58 counties in terms of the uh level of vaccination per 100,000 and here you see in this chart the different counties um listed uh by um the the new county the population the number of vaccinations and then that proportion that's been given out so we're we're number nine that's that's pretty good all things considered so we've uh we've got a rate of 14,608 per 100,000 and the total of almost $40,000 40,000 vaccinations uh issued and then uh to remind everyone as to as far as where we are in this chart you can see that these are the tiers that have been created by the state as in so far as how the vaccines will roll out phase 1a which largely comprised of health care uh staff in in the various areas such as uh doctors and nurses and ENT and paramedics and uh those folks that within uh in home supportive services and the like that here is in phase 1a and those have been completed um in our county um and we are currently in phase 1b which uh is uh uh includes uh at this point individuals 65 and older although I do know that some interest that's been made in terms of workers in education and childcare within agriculture and law enforcement as well but that were essentially in the in the in the the first bullet of phase 1b uh and then after that uh once that's completed and it's all based on really the supply of uh vaccinations that that come in uh then you know it'll move on to individuals that are between the ages of 15 64 and then younger individuals that have at a high risk and then workers in particular uh in just uh essential areas like chemical communication, IT, defense, finance, government operations, community-based organization, and water and wastewater which is a concern to us too for those essential cities for the city and then it moves on from there so that's where we're at and again there's a lot of frustrations and questions and that are going on around the the uh the limited supply um but at least on one measure you know we're doing pretty pretty well go to the two other counties and that concludes uh the report. Thank you Martine. Any questions from council members on the vaccine update? Oh no it looks like they have uh oh I'm sorry here to go yeah they didn't pop up right right away for me um council member Golder and council member Cummings. Thank you Martine for giving that update and that's great news that we are you know doing so well compared to other counties in the state. I'm wondering for members of the public how can they um find out what it's their turn? I know there's been some confusion around that I was wondering if you could share that. Yeah so there is a an app uh and a website even going to it to register it's called My Turn um and if you just google My Turn uh California it will direct you to that and then you can uh you have a smartphone you can uh or you can register actually and then uh online you have to have a smartphone for that you can just register and then it will notify you uh through your smartphone that you have a smartphone as to when your turn is to get vaccinated so they have a system of registering folks and then they'll be able to make those assignments so they ask a series of questions so that they can determine which cheer you fall into. I imagine they might have some certification that'll happen as well but that's one good way and then of course the other way is to go on to the county's uh vaccination website which is where that chart was that I just showed that gives a kind of a status as to uh where they're at. It also shows where all the various vaccination sites are and the status of each of those and of course also check with your um your health provider as well. It goes to the places I would check check and look at regularly to look at what your options are. For providers uh the organizations to do that I'm not extremely familiar with the everything they're doing but I do know that that is a concern and there's a variety of issues also that relate to equity too. Sometimes the the demographic of age you know creates a particular issue for example one that's been raised that's interesting is that in some cities is the demographic of 65 over uh has very few for example in Latinos in that group to end up sort of disproportionately allocating the vaccine again those are all issues that that are digging into account and that I think are being looked at and adjusted but yes we will certainly work with the health department to try to as much as we can based on uh what we have and what's available. Yeah and I would chime in that the um the county has a very yeah has a very thorough plan on how to reach people that um are not connected virtually um and obviously have been working through a lot of the non-profits but also the different medical providers throughout Santa Cruz County so trying to utilize people's uh you know personal doctors or clinics such as Santa Cruz health clinic and others so there's definitely a very large-scale effort to try to get the word out to as many people as possible about availability and scheduling that's right which is great um any other questions from council members calendar and Bonnie is there any updates to our meeting calendar there are no consider taking a quick five to seven minute break does that sound good um we'll come back in at let's make it 150 so 10 to 2 we'll come back and we'll go through we'll start up with our consent agenda so for the public we're going to take a break until 150 and then we'll come back for consent consent agenda items 9 through 17 thank you members who are back if you can turn on your turn on your cameras we have pretty much everyone back we will go ahead and get started hopefully council member Cummings will join us shortly I'm sure uh next up we have the consent agenda these are items 9 through 17 on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time for you to call in if you want to comment on items 9 through 17 instructions are on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device press star 9 to raise your hand and listen for the cues saying you have been unmuted all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment or pull any item we are I would look are there any members of the public that would like to speak to any item on our consent agenda with the exception of items pulled we have not pulled any items today please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set to two minutes sorry Sandy did I miss your hand obviously when you are about now no I was just going to move the consent agenda but I'm probably I mean if we have anybody in the public I don't think we do I don't see any public okay we have a motion by uh second by council member Watkins I'll move on to our next item and this is item numbers 18 consent public hearing for the second reading and final adoption of ordinance number 2021-01 through 902-912 and 920 Pacific Avenue and 333 and 423 Front Street for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in and using the instructions on your screen I would now like to ask Ryan Bain senior planner to provide council with a brief announcement on this item yes good afternoon mayor and council members I just wanted to let you know that we made a clerical update to the ordinance just basically to clarify and reflect that the rezoning is also a local coastal plan amendment so this has no material effect on the approval and is consistent with the approval that the council made on January 26th but we just want to make you aware of a couple of small changes in the ordinance how's it thank you mr. Bain are there any council members who wish to pull item 18 for discussion not seeing any hearing none uh if there are any members of the public that would like to speak to the signing now is the time to do so please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set to two minutes public you do not see any members of the public requesting it so I'm now looking for a motion on this item is 18 hang on one second let me just look here item number 19 which is our fiscal year 2021 budget adjustment and information on city's financial status for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action we will go ahead and uh have we repeat the alamos our finance manager please um provide the staff report proud to introduce the item thank you thank you welcome cam thank you mayor uh council members uh we have our mid-year budget presentation uh this afternoon and so the pita will go through the fiscal 2021 adjustments and I will do the like fiscal 2022 outlook um so in the we have some adjustments to revenue and expenditures for 2021 we have some position changes and then we have a fiscal 2022 strategy and outlook and then I'll turn it back to Lupita to go over the calendar for next year great thank you cam council members we beat that along budget manager um and we'll start off with revenue trends and in regard to trends um chances are still in the recovery phase of the pandemic um having this active purple care helps and we hope that with the administration's vaccines um will continue to be gradual improvements to the economy um tourism uh and elastic revenue resources associated with it continues to be heavily hit by business shut downs um with major area attractions being closed um admission tax taxes uh revenue source um will continue to be impacted the city typically receives about two million in this revenue source and uh we receive these from the festivals um the theater museums and and the boardwalk being a major source of this revenue likewise um tot tax is within or is below our 2020 levels um and with the summer being the highest revenue generating period um fiscal year 2021 will um most likely not see a full recovery in tot um city fees especially those collected um for recreation programs will also not see a full cost recovery while the parks and recreation department have done a great job at adapting um to the circumstances and finding creative and safe ways to hold programs they're not operating to the extent to their normal programming so we'll be um defined in this revenue source UCSC continues to operate remotely um impacting the economic benefits of the university population contributes to the city um and on a positive note property and sales tax uh which is a large percentage of our revenues um continues to hold steady so real estate sales have benefited from a lot of the virtual tours um the real estate have adapted to and sales tax from construction and online sales activities um has definitely helped figure out revenue streams review some of the adjustments that we'll be covering and that are also listed in detail and attached to the report um I will be just covering some of the highlights um that are listed and as of typical every mid-year cycle um adjustments are made um resulting from administrative cleanups implementation of new programs or any response to any excuse me unanticipated needs um the following list highlights what they did in the report as I mentioned and we'll start off with the general fund it'll be reduced for going to reduce that would be like two million um the next bullet on this list is the fire department is expecting to receive about 1.4 million in reimbursement for from the state for the strike team uh response to several of the large um fires and emergencies such as the cpu fire um the additional revenue reimbursement to the city um or excuse me the um reimbursement to the city covered personnel costs equipment costs and administrative costs um and any uh revenue will offset immediate expenditures also being requested by the department such as 4 000 here listed for fire vehicle um maintenance the park department is requesting 25 000 for unanticipated major encampment clean up clean up costs um of the San Lorenzo park and also the planning department building a safety division is requesting 250 000 to provide inspection plan services um the division has been impacted um by these vacant fees and ongoing recruitment challenges um the funds will support a permit tax as well as other tax support for upcoming ramp use system upgrades we'll see a reduction also in four million in water sales and um service revenue and this is most likely also due to covid related operating um restrictions and also an adjustment of about 168 000 in response to cpu fire as well and covid related expenditures um and most of these expenditures are expected to be reimbursed by FEMA um the expenditures include um fire control measures that facilities located in the vacuations zone um new equipment needs to address possible water quality impacts as well as erosion control in the burning area adjustment listed here include 120 000 for the water rights project 70 70 000 for the replacement of a water distribution dump truck and 50 000 for the treatment water as far um the change is requested in the information technology i see funds in the middle column here um there's simply a movement of funds um these do not reflect any new appropriations and um that reflects operational practices so on to the public trust fund we're making an adjustment or recommending an adjustment for 100 000 um and this is requested for the downtown library to use um project for the development of the um parking portion of the project and then finally listed here is an adjustment of 1.8 million from the um affordable housing trust fund and this is to pay for the acquisition of 325 and 329 front street properties um and this is for the development of affordable housing on to position changes by department and here we have um city manager public works in water making this new um changes to their personnel compliments and we'll start with the city manager's office they'll be requesting to add one um FTE deputy city manager one two positions the two levels allow the department to still the vacancy internally um utilizing an existing department director um at which time that director's position would be frozen and or in the future for hiring without assuming city responsibility um the current recommendation as listed in in the attachment is reflecting the cost of hiring an existing department director at a partial cost is about 7 000 i'm convinced and a significant area of responsibility to the deputy city manager would be um managing the current length of the homelessness issues which actually will result in some cost savings because um by having this additional responsibility the department would also be freezing the homeless's response manager position also in their compliments requesting to delete one FTE senior waste water plant operator three position this position has been vacant since 2017 and is no longer needed so the deletion would reduce cost to the waste water and funds the department is also requesting to add 2.6 FTE um facility maintenance officers um excuse me facility maintenance assistance positions um and these would be supported by the parking fund um the positions would address operational needs um it would enhance continuity of services um it would help promote health and safety and abbreviate inconsistencies due to staff turnover um and finally in the public works department requesting a position with title change engineer to transportation manager um and the change in the title better reflects the current position's responsibility and the change does not result in increasing supporting funds the water department personnel changes they're requesting to delete one FTE senior plant maintenance um mechanic and um this has been replaced by a new classification of water facilities mechanic supervisors um and delete one FTE water resource supervisors um which was never built since its creation um as the San Lorenzo River work that this position was to support has been re-prioritized and cancelled um so this position will reduce cost in the water funds due of the report and um the total revenue adjustments are reducing uh 3.9 million that about 2.2 million is um general funded requesting and then our next slide we will um camera will be covering the budget out where we do the outlook do you have any questions on the adjustments from council members and council member Watkins I do have questions on the adjustments but it's probably going to lead to a more substantive conversation about the the personnel compliments so I've just pulled those it so as not to take us off track okay thank you and council member Cummings after council member Watkins thank you I welcome for fiscal 2022 and the assumptions that we're using for the in the management partners fiscal model you can go ahead Lupita thank you we are projecting a bit of a decline in the transient occupancy tax or hotel tax uh the admissions tax recreation uh fees and other city permitting revenue and Lupita just talked about that a little bit in the fiscal 2021 so the admissions tax uh for fiscal 2021 was budgeted at about 2.2 million we typically get between like 2.6 and 3 million and year to date through December we had collected 35 000 so we made that adjustment in 2021 to reduce it by 2 million and then we're also projecting uh like a decline in 2022 assuming that we're not going to be back to full recovery by the summer and looking at our transient occupancy tax due to the additional lockdown that Lupita discussed we're also projecting that that that may not be back to full recovery either in 2022 the 22 22 assumptions do not include any continued furloughs it does assume that vacant and frozen positions are being filled however approval to fill will be based on the department budget solutions from the targets they were given for reductions their operational need and the overall impact to the general funds so this city manager will be reviewing those and making making a recommendation to the council it does assume a modest increase in operational costs of course continued increase in pension costs as the city's unfunded liability goes up and it does not assume any additional federal or state aid and while there is state aid federal aid included in biden's near president biden's new plan we do not know a dollar amount for that so none is included at this time next slide thank you so we put together some budget scenarios on base based on the questions that we commonly get and this is from the management partners forecast for the reductions on the expenditure side of the budget or have any new revenues and this is based on the revenues that were presented to council in october you can see uh we have a sort of blue line is our reserve goal which is 17 percent of general fund expenditures so that's government finance officers does practice and then the red line is what the forecast is coming out with with the revenue projections from october and no additional cuts so the structural deficit is when that red line doesn't keep pace with the blue line so that means we have to make adjustments to our budget to keep that red line near the blue line by 2026 we're out of money in the general fund the next scenario we assumed the revenue estimates that we made recently which is a two million dollar reduction in 2021 and emissions tax and then an additional four million dollar reduction in 2022 for transient occupancy tax emissions tax and reduced parts and recreation revenues so this one the the cliff of the red line is quite a bit steeper so we have to make adjustments based on uh these projections in this scenario we run out of money by 2023 so it's kind of similar to the management partners forecast uh from last august where it was kind of a really steep decline uh based on the revenue estimates from back then in october we were feeling a little bit more positive uh as you know things had kind of opened back up went through the holidays where everything was closed down again and revenues are greatly impacted you know the sooner things open the the better our scenarios will be yeah i can go ahead with peta thank you we have a new revenue source and you know it takes a long time to ramp up new revenues so we assumed a new revenue source of about three million dollars starting in the fourth quarter of 2022 and it also assumes that we don't make any adjustments on the expenditure side so we're still assuming a six million dollar revenue reduction in 2021 and 22 but we're adding a new revenue starting in the fourth quarter of 2022 on the red line but it flattens out then in 2022 2023 as we collect new revenues and then we kind of continue to grow but we never get back to the blue dotted line of our reserve goal the next scenario the the other question that we get is well what about federal aid or state aid if we get that will that will that fix our problem our problem is structural so it doesn't fix it it does help but it doesn't fix it so we added federal aid in in this scenario and we still included the the three million and the new revenue so the federal aid we just used three million we don't have a real estimate yet we also assume that we don't make any adjustments on the expenditure side so as you can see the red line doesn't drop as far down as the red line on the graph on the left but it still drops below 10 million and and then it just it it goes the same as the red line on the left it's just a little bit higher but we still never get back to our reserve goal please thank you and in the gray that's kind of what we think our realistic scenario is so we have the continued lowered revenue estimates in 21 and 22 and then the target that we gave for departments to reduce is a total of 3.75 million in structural and one-time cuts if you recall the original management partner forecast was 12 million over two years last year we requested the departments to reduce six million we ended up with about five point two five point three million and those were a mix of one-time and structural cuts said okay it's it's not likely we can get all structural reductions so we're going to do a mix of structural and one-time cuts with no new revenue source and no federal aid we would have to do that two years in a row and then we would get our red line back to our our blue dotted line in 2029 although we get really close to it in 2026 being for our the budget that will be presented to you in May and we took that scenario on the left the realistic scenario and we added some federal aid and as you can see it still doesn't keep us from having to do structural and one-time cuts in the second year it does keep the line from getting as low the red line and it does help us return to our reserve goals sooner but it still doesn't keep us from having to make cuts in fiscal 2023 thank you repeated yes so the general fund reduction target reduction that we gave to departments is three point seven five million overall we did have a mix of structural and one-time cuts focused on non-core programs and services we also have some department it's not across the reduction target isn't across the board like we did in fiscal 2021 budget so we gave some department specific reductions based on their prior year reductions so departments that turned in one-time reductions for fiscal 2021 they received that target again so we asked them to make structural reductions this time in the amount that were one-time reductions last year we also analyzed the professional services and supplies budgets of every general fund department and looked at their their unspent fund trends so if they had more than 12 percent of their services and supplies budget between their adopted budget and their actual expenditures remaining every year then we took that amount and we gave them additional target so two departments received an additional target for unspent funds that exceeded 12 percent of their adopted budget and then the rest of the the balance which is from the three point seven five million it's it's about one point nine million that was distributed among the departments we're continuing to look at greater cost recovery with planning and parks we're also still looking for federal and state aid and we recently met with our legislative representatives to lobby for additional resources back revenue subcommittee meet starts meeting this week to discuss options for a new revenue source strategies from the interim recovery plan that hopefully will help us recover sooner economically and then we also need to develop a strategy to address our capital investment program which isn't really being addressed right now and it is still a need to cover just the next steps of what we planned to move forward with fiscal year 22 operating in CIT budget calendar as we mentioned the council ad hoc revenue committee will have their first meeting this Thursday February 11th and then between February and May staff is spending time prepping for their operating and CIT items so departments will be proposing their budget solutions staff will finance that will be doing revenue analysis revenue and analysis on fund impact based on those recommendations and then we will refine those as clear 22 budget recommendations would be in budget city manager and director and then in May CIT will be will start being reviewed by the various commission as the dates are secured we'll go ahead and update our calendar and then we'll have our public hearings scheduled targeted for May 26th and 26th this is typically a time when departments make presentations and some CIT public engagement and questions on the budget being put forth and then our target for budget adoption is scheduled for June 8th 2021 and with that this is our presentation and the recommendation for council is written here is written in the staff report we have any questions? Thank you Lupita and Kim I think we we all know sort of the impacts that we're all experiencing regarding this I'll take up just a few questions I just want to I do want to open this up to the public but and then we will and so if we do have council questions right now I'll go ahead and have you ask those and then we'll take it out to public comment and then we'll come back for deliberation and action council members who have questions please raise your hand Mayor Brunner council member Brown council member Rock Watkins you guys always raise your hands just like that uh council member Calentari Johnson and then council member Cummings thank you uh CIT of level position that before the budget is approved and it was also mentioned that other positions would be frozen um which wasn't listed can you speak to those please you're muted Martin sorry about that uh yes okay now I can see why you were wondering what you don't have a barking dog at home I guess yeah I started speaking and yeah nobody heard to answer your question I did hear a question basically right now we have a number of frozen positions you know every position it becomes vacant uh we're keeping frozen and we have have kept frozen just because of the uncertainty of the budget and then there's an internal process where they are exempted if there's an operational need or it's absolutely necessary to fill those positions so we go through and review requests for those positions that are necessary to fill and we do exempt them you know based on uh operational need in particular and budget impact but typically automatically whenever a position becomes vacant it is frozen in the case of the homeless resource manager that position became vacant after we had well we had early on we had a difficult time hiring a position we could hire somebody the person left the position and we just really had a hard time filling that position uh there was a interest in in uh filling that position because the coordination of homeless issues is such a major uh issue for us as you are aware are well aware of and just really required a significant level of coordination and communication with the county with all the stakeholders it's a significant uh resource need that we have and so as a result of the challenge that we've had with filling the position and being able to allocate that function in that role what we did instead is really reassign the work uh internally just to existing staff and so what we did there was essentially reallocate the our planning director and assigned them an additional job basically to be our homelessness coordinator and lead at the at the at the uh at a high level uh being the person that's living uh principal contact with the county with the two by two committee with electives and then coordinating you know citywide internally our homelessness response efforts we also actually assigned our emergency services manager also to assist in this regard in addition to the staff that was working on the on this issue so that is uh what we did in order to be able to have uh to be able to respond immediately because it was ongoing work and again we were not able to fill the position so with respect to the deputy city manager position uh what that is it's really not an addition of a position we're not adding a position all we're doing is providing a flexible option for when and this is very common we used in municipalities and counties and and governmental agencies where when someone has given an assignment there's a way to recognize that additional work and in the case and usually it's used as a budget saving strategy whereby um you instead of having two people fill a position you ask a person to take on an additional role sometimes it's in the form of you know a director overseeing two departments where there used to be one department that they were they were overseeing and so that is really the intent of this just to provide a way to achieve savings as well as to effectively use the existing staff that we have and acknowledge the additional work that is being done to be able to fulfill that function so that's what we're trying to do here simply provide the necessary and appropriate level of resources to the homelessness response function which is necessary within the our existing parameters and uh and allocate that and acknowledge that appropriately so that is the intent behind that it also provides flexibility uh for in the future if you want to have the ability again to essentially ask someone to take on two jobs to be able to uh uh have them uh compensated and acknowledge appropriately so that that that is the intent behind that is that your only question sonia excuse me vice mayor bernard yes for now thank you okay thank you i have councilmember brown next please yeah my questions are actually following on uh vice mayor bernard's question about this uh position addition and i understand the intent and i um i think that that makes a lot of sense and you know so i want to support that but but with respect to this uh message that we need to make structural changes to the budget what i see here is actually the potential to increase our costs with an additional executive level position um so it's not so just because that's the way it's going to work in this moment doesn't mean that the way it's we're being asked to approve it would not lead to a significant additional costs at the executive level and so you know we're not going to free as the planning department director positions forever i imagine um and then we will have added another executive level position that would need to be filled either with a different department head or you know some other uh you know through some other arrangement which could be an additional whole that executive level so i am trying to understand how um we can i mean we can consider this in the moment uh minimal cost addition but there's really not going to be any savings and the minimal is going to it's going to get bigger over time most likely so i'm trying to figure out a way to um support the intention but i also want to call attention to the fact that we are in a fiscal crisis and we are being asked to approve a non-essential position executive level position so if you could just talk a little bit about that i have questions as well yeah let me clarify this this action does not add a position it does it does not authorize the addition of a new uh position or a new person all it does is allow when you make an assignment for that existing department head to have a different classification while they're doing that role does not add an additional position it does not add to the budget in that respect all it does is gives a five to ten percent uh adjustment and pay so at most it would be in the range of you know seventy five hundred dollars that is if uh if all the positions are filled but in this particular case because we're not filling the homeless resource manager it's actually a net reduction in cost and it actually saves funds but it does not add another position that we have the authority we don't have the authority because it's not funded to go out and hire an additional person and put them in this position it only allows us to uh assign this position to an existing position so just to clarify that and it will result in savings to the general fund so this does not add it already has result we already have achieved savings in general fund by not filling the homeless resource manager position so it's it's not in addition to the budget at so I have a follow-up question on that why am I seeing uh job description that does not indicate that I see a job description for a deputy city manager which is yeah in addition okay let me clarify that so it adds there's a difference between having positions that we have in our job in our job classifications that are available between that and also between funding them so we there are any number of positions that we have in our in our south in our rooms or in our conference in our conversation in our positions summary in our positions listing many of which are some of which are not funded so in order to be able to have a position and to fill it you have to have both and in this particular case we only will have a job description we won't have the funding for it we're not asking for that it's not available so therefore you can't fill it you can't you know have another body that be placed and the way this is structured too it only you can only be assigned if there's a vacancy in an existing department head so the way this is being structured does not allow for for that to occur and that is that is the intent in the way it's structured to work I don't know if Lisa you want to add more to that in that the HR department the structured in such a way to again simply make it such that we could assign additional roles and responsibilities and acknowledge that's the intent behind it that's correct and so I didn't hear the first part of the what you're asking me to clarify I apologize I think Alton Brown was wondering whether this would allow us to just go ahead and hire a deputy city manager irrespective of whether the the other positions were filled okay so what I want to clarify we have always had a deputy city manager position description in the in our compliment if you remember it was filled by dot coms and when he left then we chose not to fill it so it's been there and now of course we're revising it but I believe by this action we're one updating the job description increase it creating it by advocating it as a one or two and my understanding by this this action you are not exactly you're not adding the actual position whereas it's easier to use names we as the department head who's already getting a a specialty pay that's why it's not neutral is going to then we'll assume that title and and we'll freeze that position and he's going to fill it at the at the two level because he's a he's going to be a director and as a and the homeless the other responsibilities that he's had I understand what's the intention for what's happening right now okay so but if that's all you want to do why are we not just revising the planning director position for example and you know adding that that additional pay in the scale it makes sense to me particularly when I think about the fact that we have you know you know land use is really the city's responsibility and we hear all the time that homelessness response is not our responsibility I argue that it is so I'm not trying to backtrack on that but what I'm saying is if we if we just get really clear about what the city's responsibility is it's for land use decision making and that rightfully I believe belongs in planning and so I again I'm trying to understand how we're I mean I just I understand that it's not going to happen right now that there isn't funding we have a hiring freeze a hiring freeze is going to go away eventually funding will be available and we will have competing requests for where that funding goes that fact that there's a position there means that we have the potential and we are making that decision right now to create that potential and I'm not comfortable doing that I'm really okay with the achieving the goal of getting Lee additional pay for doing the additional work that's not my issue it's the way it's being presented to us and what that means over time I'll answer two parts I understand you're right it does create a potential just like we have any other you know positions that might we are not they're not funded in the budget and you're correct so once let's say three years from now come as a solo position and that's why you are absolutely correct in that matter when it came to how we were going to address with Lee and that I hate to use it as an individual a department head position was because it that the flexibility rather than adding to the department director the planning director specifically position to add these duties onto there the flexibility was remains in that any director then really could take on that role as opposed to you maybe at the other some other point in time it may not be the the focus of the to do the homeless response let's just say that for example so maybe it might be something else and maybe another director let's say the IT director has those capability skills the skill set in which to be able to operate in that matter so then rather than coming to you and say okay let's amend that position description let's just have one that's a generic one that we can utilize and be flexible with so that's the that was the inception to not make the adjustment to the the specific director but I do want to reiterate you are correct in your assessment of by creating a job description it allows for that opportunity to come back and fill it separately but again that would come before the council to make that determination they were going to that would have to be funded again being clear that there are job descriptions that exist but they have to be funded in order to be filled I guess the other example of this is for example in other communities what they've done again it's a generic position in order to for example you've had a case where you've had a director in a in a difficult budget situation retire and so in order to achieve budget savings what they do is they assign another director to take on the role of directing both departments and then they give them the deputy city manager assignment because it's against a generic classification to deal with whatever circumstance might arise this happened for example to some extent over at the county when they made budget reductions and eliminated the parks department they had their public works director take on that role and so they they had a public works assistant CAO classification so it's it's just sort of a common way to provide flexibility to be able to again merge operations as as as circumstances merit that it's just a tool to be able to do that that's flexible and that really is the intent behind it's generic it's not necessarily an attempt to create a new position that all of a sudden is there and they can be filled I get that this position the deputy city manager position has existed in in in terms of being on the books but it hasn't been funded so it hasn't been filled obviously because that funding hasn't been in the budget and that hasn't been proposed in fact we propose to I propose to reduce it when that vacancy occurred also for budgetary reasons so anyway I hope that answers your questions um well it's you know with all due respect it it kind of I mean it answers I mean I think Lisa answered the question that in in fact what we are doing does open up that potential and so I just want to do I have another question now and I'm I'm hoping that I can just again this is really to make the point about adding executive level positions or the potential for that kind of hiring my understanding is with a with the hiring freeze for the planning department director or any department head that's not a decision that the council necessarily needs to be a part of that you have the authority to unfreeze positions so we are opening a door to you know possibly getting into this this kind of situation and I'm again it's not about the intent it's about the structure which is what we're being told we need to be cognizant of and so I'm just that's just a statement and my question then is what what are the what's the plan for the positions in the city manager's office by my count I see a city manager assistant city manager deputy city manager assistant to the city manager a communications manager and a senior program I can't remember Ralph classification I'm sorry Ralph and a homelessness response manager some of which are filled most of which are filled some of which are and and all of which I think to some extent get funding from other sources than the general fund so what's so what's happening here is the is the plan to maintain all of these positions with the potential to hire for them because that's an awful lot of executive level and senior level position for non essential personnel we are in a situation with furloughs we are in a situation where we are asking every department to you know do these make these structural cuts and I'm just seeing you know you know I'm seeing you know us being asked to make a decision that really could have significant ramifications so of the positions you listed all are filled except for the homeless resource manager which is filled which is I'm sorry which is not filled and funded but that's frozen the deputy city manager position is not funded and again to be clear about that it exists on the books at the classification but it is not funded so I do not have the authority to fill it in any way it has to be included in the budget and haven't had that authority so for all practical purposes it doesn't really exist other than as a dog disruption which again is what we're trying to create here that flexibility but in any case that is that is really the the status of those positions so with a lateral transfer of a department head now that leaves a department head position open at work if if you know a deputy city manager is then in that position department the planning department head then no this action no this action does not authorize me to hire the additional we only have the funded position this is not fun again I'm just trying to distinguish between that this is not fun an additional position so it's either one or the other it can be we can assign it to an existing department head and have that classification and not have the other we can't do both I don't have this is not allowed for provide the authority to all of a sudden have another executive level position so I want to be clear about it doesn't do that all it allows us to do is to have a department head be assigned an additional function or duty and they give in that classification in order to address that circumstance that's it it doesn't create and typically what that does is result in savings because typically it means that well it depends on the circumstance and in this particular case it's also the fact that it by doing this we're freezing the deputy city manager I'm sorry the homeless resource manager position so it does result in savings but typically again it's just a net increase in the the pay between the deputy city manager and department head which is not significant um in order to be able to provide that additional assignment so that's all it does okay so and then another question is your intention to at any ground you and I'm sorry that I'm belaboring this but it's really important to me I mean we this is about fiscal responsibility and a fiscal crisis and um you know I just feel like we need to understand fully understand what we're being asked to do so um I guess I'll just leave it there for now the my my other question is really about the expansion of the city manager's classifications and the one that I actually will before I stop is asked is your intention to eliminate any position currently in the city manager's office personnel complement whether funded or not funded as we reported to we have a budget deficit and we've assigned a reduction goal for everyone the goal however is to not lay off anybody um and so um we're not we're not we're not targeting positions we're not targeting anyone to to make reductions we have reductions that we have to make in our budget just like every other department has to do and we'll be looking at what we can do to suggest you're targeting anyone I mean there's a human there's a homeless response manager position and that's not filled and we're hot gear we're saying we need we're going to have somebody else do that job so will that position remain on the books as well for example the the homeless resource manager yeah because the the intent is again for now because we're trying to achieve savings and because we weren't able to hire in that position it'll remain vacant but I think long term I think that's something that has to be analyzed I mean I think the hope is that uh if we can get to a different model we'll see how this model works maybe this is a good model and that's what we intend to do and what works out but um it's on the books we could certainly eliminate it if it turns out that this is a better model um but at this point it won't remain making for the foreseeable future when we do as you noted we do have a budget deficit here and we have to try to achieve savings and again this is this is just our attempt to basically operationalize and be able to respond to this this this major issue with the staff that we have now in a way that's responsive as possible and so that's what we're trying to achieve now and if that circumstance changes in the future we could look at other ways of doing that but there's no plan at this point to fulfill that deputy uh homeless resource manager position we're running pretty late on this item so just council member Watkins next and then council member Calentary Johnson and then council member Cummings. Council member Brown got some of my questions specific to this position clarifying questions to that to how long do you anticipate this individual needs to serve in this capacity of an expanded role. The definitive uh time frame I think I think certainly it would be for at least the next fiscal year um as as uh in particular has been taking on the additional role of having to speed up and learn uh all the various you know homelessness functions I think you know it does take some time to to do that and then to really take on the leadership role he's been doing them very quickly he's uh he's very smart and a quick study in that regard um don't have a definitive you know time frame um I think it just depends on on on how it goes with respect to um again being responsive to what needs to be done and again that is you know leading the city with respect to uh coordination and communication with the county and and so Lee for example is is the counterpart to Robert Ratner who's the new homelessness coordinator at the county so now we have someone they can you know directly uh and on a regular basis coordinate and work with Robert uh a person who's in charge of focusing and working with the two by two committee and staffing out and being responsive to the work of the two by two committee as well as coordinating all of our internal efforts uh with respect to responding to homelessness issues um as well as all the advocacy and legislation and all that so I think that's going to take you know a little bit of time for for him to sort of uh take on that role and to and to make some progress in that role um and he's willing to do it so um I think as long as it works it's a good model to have and if I if I follow then your logic with this then the assumption would be that uh or the person who takes on this special assignment will eventually go back to the original director job or and or assume a different kind of more elevated position I mean it could be that that's a you know that's a good model is that it states that it makes sense to have you know homelessness and and the planning director combination if that works you know for the future it could keep that way um and it's or or or if it doesn't work then we could go back and and try to hire the homeless resource manager um and try a different model um but it would not result in in creating a new position or adding a new position and then I think I mean and I'll try to keep my question brief but um I think to councillor Brown um questioning I think it's confusing to a certain extent and it does send a bit of a mixed message considering where we are financially and um we're asking our staff you know the hits that we're asking our staff to take in terms of wanting to increase somebody's compensation for additional work is confusing right and so you mentioned that there's something that's already on the book so I guess my question then is what's on the books and why can't that work one and two is there another way to compensate somebody for additional work without changing their title essentially the okay I think we took an answer that question there is so currently on the book is a deputy city manager position which I believe was approved probably around 2016 um and it was just a it was a little more limited in its job description and less salary than and it was um in the past and then then when Scott Collins last we froze it and didn't fill it and so then through the years now looking at how the job description was taken sorry I haven't found any now the duties have been expanded and to include the ability for a department director to fill that position at the at the two level or not have a director and just have a uh straight deputy city manager fill it out the one level so and again the duties were expanded so then it gives a flexibility we do that often with with a one two um so that's where the the genesis it was there um and then being revised and you are correct there is another methodology and that's what is in place right now in that for the additional duties that the current planning director is doing in this work area is an additional special compensation pay that we do for any employee who we find is is doing taken on a special project is kind of what we call it so because he's taken on a special project yes he's getting an additional compensation in recognition of that does that answer your question yeah no it does I appreciate that because of course we want to see this individual compensated for the additional you know position and work that accompanies that I think that the confusion lies within the job that's sort of the classification title and um sort of the mixed messages that sends to um that we're grappling with one but I think that's also the rest of the city and the community but you know absolutely making that change it's good to know that that individual is still being compensated essentially without the title right and I can take kind of a little stab at that the intention being that if a director was going to fill that role which I think for the law right now at least in the the short term being three to five years is what I'm just going to guess but a director is going to assume that additional role and that's and if that's the case as it isn't this one that director's position will be frozen and that's where the city manager is saying it's it is um basically it's sort of a net neutral because that individual is already receiving a special compensation so it's not necessary that the individual is getting additional pay but that director position then is is um being done it's not but it's frozen in that department in terms of the funding so that that's the net neutrality if that makes sense the other thing I would I would add is that you typically we do have a special projects pay it's called um but that typically is relatively short term and it's people that are assigned to a project and here we're looking at changing the role and so I think that was really the intent and I apologize for the confusion but really here the intent was to really provide a new role for an individual in assignment that we that was significant that was going to really give you know it's not just a project it's really an entire new function that's being assigned so there's a distinction between a project and really an entire function that includes overseeing additional staff and taking on pretty significant new new responsibility so that's that's a distinction as opposed to project you know in this particular case when it's used in other jurisdictions they can't they take on an entire new department or an entire new function so that's that really from a HR the way municipalities do this that's it's just a common approach so we just thought we would recommend what is you know typically used out there in the community and not to confuse it even just a little bit more but because of our personnel our compensation plan the rules that we have and our budgeting rules it makes it even that much more confusing when we tell the council you have to literally you've got to add this title like we're doing today you need to add this title to the to our classification plan in the budget for to follow the rules however there's no dollars necessary there's only seven thousand I think is associated with that because really the funding's still sitting there in the planning director's position it's it's really a it's a it's a paper rule that we have to follow to have the title added even though there's no additional it's just the seven thousand dollar funding I'm hoping that helps with your discussion yeah no I mean it does I think I understand the classification process and I understand the logic behind it I just think for some of the kind of reasons and concerns that have been brought up by my colleagues that fusion there and I think that as we think about sort of get also falls within the context of our interim recovery planning and strategies and so on so I think that broader context will help kind of inform that it feels a little like oh we're just changing this one position do you know what I mean that's I think where the confusion lies for me I'm going to have councilmember commentary Johnson and I have councilmember Cummings and then if I say a brooner this item was scheduled for an hour we're only we've already gone through the whole hour and we're still not gone out to public and we haven't deliberated so I just want to again just remind everybody we do have the we do have item number 20 scheduled at three so I do know that there's a number of people obviously are going to be attending that afternoon councilmember commentary Johnson and thank you Kim and Lupita for the presentation a lot of my questions have been asked and discussed so I won't repeat those I wanted to go back to the budget projections and assumptions part of your presentation specifically the part the scenario I can't remember which scenario where we left ones yeah the revenue the new yeah the realistic scenario with the federal state aid scenario and then zeroing in on a federal and state aid piece I'm just wondering if you can share I know it's hard to actually know how much we would get but I wanted to ask if you could share how where that number of three million came from are our lobbyists giving any projections and it does seem low to me again of course we don't know how much we'll get and then maybe maybe it's not appropriate right now especially since we're running out of time but if we can at some future meeting talk about how we as a community are getting grant ready as a city I made something up but the three million dollars I really just pick the number and put what the estimate yeah maybe okay that's fair future projections we can see if our lobbyists have any thoughts or ideas on that of course we can't we we can't have a definitive number so we can we can have a conversation about that thank you thank you councilmember so the the the proposal is really net the positive to the general fund but yes that's essentially it information come up again um because we're being asked to approve these adjustments at you know level position is exactly dealing and the cost associated or if you said it's it's like a classification or compensation plan that's presented to you and it's been presented separately and we tried combining it using and made it more difficult for you so lesson learned for us thank you yeah it is structurally we we're doing with our staffing versus sort of adding something that you know reads in the staff report is sort of a new a new obligation that may never go away depending on how things are managed into the future I think that's where a lot of the confusing them where might some of my confusion came in as well my only other comment I guess is I think that there's this duty in city government of managing homelessness be that most cities in California do not have a good handle on and when you look to see where these positions are put into city government it varies all over the place I mean some are in the housing division some are in city managers some are in police and fire it's a new animal it's not a service that a city is necessarily built to try to accommodate and um truthfully really probably doesn't really have a very good job description for I would imagine um and it is one of those duties that um I think it's just difficult to understand departmentally where it fits and by nature it sort of has to be multi objective which in a small city like Santa Cruz that tends to land in the city manager's office um and so I do think there's confusion but I think for the public to know that um the city of Santa Cruz a tremendous amount of money and the money comes from the general fund um we've spent close to two and a half million dollars just this year trying to deal with homelessness and so having the ability to have a dedicated um focus through a staff person um that is at pretty high level I do believe brings benefit but I do agree a lot of the rollout was very confusing and and seemed to obligate the council to make a decision to actually add a position that you know was not really clearly articulated in terms of of the of the the the actual expense costs offsets and et cetera so um thank you for everyone to try for trying to clarify a very complicated um subject for us this afternoon I do want to open this up to the public and um then we'll come back to the council and we'll uh take uh take look for deliberation and action so I'm going to just see what we've got here morgan morgan you'll be unmuted in a shortly go ahead please morgan you are welcome to speak bonnie are you she was she's unmuted now okay you're ready to go now seven six please thank you um mayor and council this is robert acosta I'm a city resident and a city employee and I try to separate those but as you know that really doesn't exist when you live in the same city um I appreciate all the answers that I was concerned about because um you guys have really clarified a lot of stuff and it was this I was a little nervous to call in because of the people that I work with who I really like and enjoy but um my concern about this is just the extra funding at a time when we're told that there are going to be structural cuts um in every city I've lived in you know youth and teen health and well-being has been important to me so if I'm going to talk just about my program you know our teens during this pandemic are going through a lot of $10,000 but I think if you ask any supervisor in the city if you had only $15,000 more could you do something good with it and everyone would say yes um let's resource manager position when we have been told to speak on this item get back to council and I will look for additional comments or questions or needs of clarification from the council and uh let's do um entertaining emotion at some point uh council member watch it thank you mayor and um thank you robert for feeling comfortable to call into us I um I guess I think you know holistically and sort of on the on the on a meta level and I appreciate your comments mayor in regards to sort of this is a new thing right you know I would my comfort would probably feel um at more at ease if this was discussed what we're being presented in terms of the budget and and and thoughtfully in terms of really uh I mean not too potential of being able to get things home with me to the city um that this is going to be a long-term issue that we're going to need to have uh ongoing investment in and I prep my my comments in that way because I feel like that supportive of the actions that are brought forth I I appreciate the projections that our finance team has um you know shared with us and some of the modifications and outside of that with this position it just sort of feels a little bit muddy to me um and I think it also it deserves a broader conversation as well so I'll leave my comments at that I don't know exactly what in terms of emotion and and I also know that that could not be changed at this individual it sounds to me and I'm and I welcome any corrections that they're still being compensated in a way to um get um the additional funding associated with the additional duties absent this this change really in terms of the hr components of it and so um anyways I'll welcome any input from my colleagues thank you cal vice mayor bruce remember what can it look like in terms of um this item not being part of these adjustments and and kind of um understanding you know what is current you know equal to what is currently being compensated for the extra work um the actual rule um could warrant more of a and discussion thank you vice mayor brunner council member brown please thank you so yeah I'm um I'm not really going to go into much more uh you know detail in terms of my quiet line of questioning I think um that um I've made my position clear and I want to be clear that this is not it is confusing absolutely but I don't believe that I misunderstand uh what's going to potentially happen if we make this kind of decision right now and I agree with council member walkins and vice mayor brunner that this is a conversation that we ought to be having more holistically as we think about our recovery plan and um and so I'm I'm going to go ahead and try to make a motion that gets us to um kind of a way to address the situation without making that decision uh about you know the overall kind of personnel uh executive level personnel uh in which department uh it belongs so I would uh go ahead and I move the staff recommendation which is um uh what the finance department's recommendation to adopt a resolution amending the fiscal year 2021 budget uh appropriations to all funds as listed in exhibit a in the and then you have the low language everybody should have the language in front of them um if you don't um I can read the all of it but I think it's it's it's pretty clear uh and two um thank you thank you Bonnie appreciate that um uh adopt a resolution amending the city of Santa Cruz personal compliment and classification and compensation plans for the following department public works and water city managers classifications or compliment and classification plan they're into number four authorized the city managers to allocate budgetary changes within the applicable funds and departments so I believe that would change in number one the number the exact figures but I I might have no um ability to do that kind of math on the spot but um that would be the only other change um whatever it takes to get the figures to be accurate with that change of the um decision about the city manager's uh positions you just see if I've caught this so that before I get them before I uh look for a second um sorry Bonnie can you put that so is that look right council member brown I'm looking for a second to that seconded by council member Cummings and I have uh council member Watkins and then council member Cummings appreciate the motion and I just have a clarified question for our city manager in terms of the financial changes does that change what this individual is already receiving in terms of additional work compensation additional compensation for the work that they're being asked to do on behalf of the city in this regard you're muted Martin currently the special project space being assigned it doesn't change that oh it's not at the same level as the as the change I have just one follow-up question in regards to that I know that we allocated some head dollars as well as some other kind of dedicated funding towards homeless resources is that uh accessible to this position potentially as well so I don't I don't think that can be applied to uh for salaries okay to achieve that that did I hear that correctly um Martin that it's not at the same level um because if so I'd like to add something to the motion to either change the special compensation pay scale or something like that I believe so um I have to I think can ask Lisa or Laura if they can uh could I think the the uh the differences in in in the special pay is five percent is I believe and the compensation in the deputy city manager tier is just wider so it has more tiers to it so I think there's there's a greater range I don't know the exact number um so I know Lisa or Laura you can correct me if I'm wrong on that but what it does is that our department heads uh pay scales we have tiers what I call tiers and so for example certain department heads are at one tier and another department had department heads of larger departments are at a higher tier what this is going to do is put the deputy city manager at the second tier so it kind of makes it equitable and equal to the other department heads that's the other reason why this is sort of with the structure so that you know a department has a wide range of responsibilities that would make them equal to that so that was the other rationale for changing the classification and the and the and the compensation scale the way it works as opposed to just a a five percent fall I believe it's about a an additional two to three percent I'm sorry that they do not have been I didn't conduct the analysis of what you currently that position currently sits at versus moving to different tiers but obviously it's equivalent to an additional uh I believe it's 75 years I think it's the a year which is the same amount as what the change would would mean are any other questions otherwise I would look to finalize the vote I wanted to point out really quick that Eleanor who was a member of the public who had called in earlier is back with her hand raised I don't know if you want to try her again sure I'd be fine it's the council's uh okay with that I think I yeah please Eleanor if you can please you should be able to talk now you're unmuted okay can you hear me yes okay so sorry about that I was getting as you unmuted me last time a notification from my computer that um my microphone is not working it's obviously couldn't communicate that I just wanted to ask um something clarifying which is it was said at some point that like in terms of you know the the proposed changes that there are like structural financial issues that are causing like this projected deficit and you know talking about looking for like new revenue sources for the city of Santa Cruz is this like deficit a result of like loss from COVID and and from shelter in place order is it something else um that I'm not understanding we typically don't do question answer during public comment but but I will just as mayor say yes the the majority of well all of what we are projecting in terms of these deficits are related to loss regarding the COVID-19 situation and in two particular areas are transient occupancy tax and then also our admissions tax have both been hit very hard because obviously people are not traveling here to Santa Cruz I hope that helps yeah thank you sorry about that no worries at all thanks very much for calling in okay we have a motion on the floor with a second and I will go ahead and call for a roll call vote is everyone clear does anybody need to see the language I think we all saw it and okay Bonnie can you do a roll call vote yeah can I just clarify maybe with Lupita or Kim that the change of number three of removing the city manager position is going to affect the dollar amounts in number okay I'll now reach out to you then to get those yeah okay that that's what I heard anyway from Council member Brown so that's my understanding of what you're voting on is reducing the dollar amount okay I'm I'm sorry interrupts but I'm trying to clarify this the the point my goal was not reduce the dollar amount for the current the current the department head who is currently uh doing this job so no sorry I meant what I meant was the change of for one of them let me clarify uh council member Brown if it was if this is not going to affect the the pay that he's getting it it doesn't it does affect the number here this is just a budgetary number um that was needed in order to create the the function as structured but the ability to do the special pay that is something that is not part of this and we can continue to do that so I think we're getting that it's not going to affect that that we get a roll call the Calentary Johnson all right Brown passes unanimously we will then uh we will now move on to item number 20 which is a public hearing today for 418 Pennsylvania Avenue and for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen this item will be conducted as follows there will be a staff presentation then the appellate Travis Kinsey will have 15 minutes to speak and present evidence in support of the appeal the applicant Dan Stark from workbench will have 15 minutes to speak and present evidence there will then be questions from the council we will then take public comment and then the appellate will have five minutes to rebut anything stated from the applicant and or the public they may not use this time to bring up new points we will then return to council for deliberation and action after the staff presentation and the presentations from the appellate and the opponents and the questions council is when I will open the the item up for public comment and I'll give you further instructions then so the item before us now is item number 20 for a 418 Pennsylvania Avenue this is an appeal of the planning commission's approval of a residential demolition authorization permit and design permit to demolish an existing second dwelling unit and construct three apartments on a site with an existing single family residence on a parcel located in the RL multiple residents low density zone district and I'll turn it over to Brianna Sherman for the staff's presentation thank you mayor I am going to share my screen can everybody see the my screen we can see it yes thank you okay great um so Brianna Sherman associate planner and today we are here to consider an appeal of the planning commission's approval of a project at 418 Pennsylvania Avenue the applicant submitted this application in September 2019 for a design permit and residential demolition authorization permit to demolish an existing second dwelling unit and to construct three residential apartments on a site with an existing single family residence um staff approved this project in October 2020 sorry to interrupt I'm not sure if your slides are supposed to be advancing but you're still on your first page I'm going to stay on this first page for a moment to provide some background and then I'll jump into the presentation thank you thank you um so the applicants submitted and um or all that backstop approved the project in October 2020 um fully conformed to all the applicable objective development standards and the zoning ordinance and the general plan and an appeal of staff decision was filed by the neighbor adjacent to the north at 426 Pennsylvania Avenue um that appeal cited concerns of area compatibility building mass and design and impacts on the privacy and solar access and health property so to provide some brief background the planning commission considers the project and appeal out of public hearing on December 3rd 2020 and the planning commission's discussion focused primarily on site configuration and design height density as it pertains to planet bill 330 area compatibility and neighborhood impacts um the planning commission voted four to three to approve the project with two added conditions of approval um the first one was to reduce the floor to floor height to nine feet on all levels and to relocate the second story about the needs proposed on the north elevation to stop elevation um those conditions were added to create additional privacy for the adjacent neighbor to the north and to reduce the overall mapping um while maintaining the density of the upper end of the allowable range so on December 14th 2020 an appeal of the planning commission's decision was filed by the appellant and two other members of the public and this appeal cites concerns list um reduced back out space in the driveway building massing and area compatibility and solar impacts um and then the planning department's interpretation of lower density as it's referenced in state law um so i've received 35 letters of public comment prior to the planning commission hearing nine letters were in support of the project and 26 were in opposition of the project and i received 21 letters of public comment on this appeal to the city council um two letters are in support of the project and 19 are in support of the appeal so generally the letters in support of the project are supportive of info development and increased rental housing um and the letters in support of the appeal believe that the project design is incompatible with the surrounding area will create increased traffic and should provide affordable housing um and as well as be the decent size the site is located on an 8,729 square foot lot on the east side of Pennsylvania avenue which runs perpendicular between so-called avenues of advice and the property has a low to medium density residential general plan land use designation um this designation accommodates a variety of residential building types um that fit within a single family neighborhood so that includes low-rise apartments condos and townhomes um and the all-in designation allows for development with a density of 10.1 to 20 dwelling minutes per acre so because the subject property is 8,729 square feet or 0.2 acres the general plan density range allows for two to four dwelling minutes and the development makes this density requirement um there are also numerous general plan policies included in the planning commission staff report um that this project needs the higher end of the density range is supported by general plan goal le one which seeks residential land use intensities to ensure optimum utilization of infill parcels policy le 3.7 encourages higher intensity residential uses and maximum densities in accordance with the land use designation and then policy 3.7.1 encourages development that meets the high end of the general plan designation density unless constraints associated with site characteristics and zoning development standards require low density um so this project site's not located within an overlay district or a specific area plan that encourages a specific design or architectural style and the parcel is also not located within the coastal zone um the property is zoned rl multiple residents and the purpose of the district is to promote the development of multifamily townhomes condors and apartments and to stabilize and protect the residential characteristics of the district to encourage a suitable environment for families and single persons um as mentioned in the zoning movement so this rl zone district allows multiple dwellings as a principally primary use with approval of the design permit and therefore public hearing and public noticing was not required prior to staff approval of the project um I will say staff did hear from many of the neighbors early on in the review process and we kept a list of those who wanted to be notified of the project status um we maintained communication on the status and provided information on when the project was included and how to appeal um I'll also add that a community meeting was not required prior to staff's approval of the project um because under the community outreach policy community meeting requirements are based on project size and this project results in a site with forward dwelling so it doesn't qualify as a small development project which adds five to ten housing units um the rl zone district density is based on a minimum lot area per dwelling unit square finish standard and the minimum lot area for one bedroom or studio unit to 1600 square feet um and the minimum lot area for two or more bedroom units is 2200 square feet um so smaller units than what are proposed can actually result in a higher density on the personal um the planning department received a number of public comment letters including one from the appellants attorney questioning whether the project meets the rl zone district density requirements um this table was included in the staff report and demonstrates that the project meets the objective site development standards for the rl zone district and falls within the general plan density range um i'll also note that assembly bill 3194 provisions say that when there is inconsistency between objective density standards allowed on the site under the zoning ordinance and those allowed under the general plan land use designation the city is required to utilize the general plan's objective density standards um so in other words if the zoning ordinance standards for a project site are inconsistent with the general plan standards a proposed housing development cannot be considered inconsistent with the zoning um and they can't be required to seek a rezoning as long as the project complies with the objective general plan standards um the only permissible basis for which the city can reject or reduce the size of a project that complies with objective development standards is when the city can make the finding that the project results in a significant adverse impact um to the public health and safety so as you'll see in the following slides the three new apartments are consistent with objective development standards and it cannot be found that the project design resulted in a significant adverse impact to the public health and safety i also want to quickly note that um while the staff report details this provision um design permit finding number one has been modified in the resolution to include a statement that explains that pursuant to this section the city is required to apply the objective standards and criteria of the zoning code to facilitate um and accommodate the development at the density allowed by the general plan and proposed by the housing project the subject property is currently developed with a single family residence a second building unit and a few accessory buildings and it's surrounded by developed single and multi-family residential properties on all sides i'll quickly note that the staff report and findings reference um the second building unit as an accessory building unit um and it was determined prior to the planning commission hearing that the structure was never formally approved as an accessory building unit so with that i'm just going to refer to that as the second dwelling unit to be demolished moving forward the project proposes to retain existing single family residents along Pennsylvania Avenue and to demolish the second dwelling unit and accessory building and to construct three attached three-story three-bedroom rental apartments that are each about 2365 square feet inside um these new three apartments meet all the objective site development standards for the RL zone district and the project complies with off-street parking requirements and guest parking is not required for development this size um i'll also note here that there are no inclusionary housing requirements for rental residential developments with two to four dwelling units um i want to briefly note that the planning department received a letter from the appellant attorney stating that the project failed to comply with the 15th but minimum front yard setback requirements for the RL zone district um the existing structure that will remain is currently located um eight feet eight inches from the front property line um so it's therefore considered to be legal non-conforming because it doesn't meet the current zoning ordinance setback requirements for RL zone properties but that said the proposed apartments don't increase the existing non-conforming structure because they're detached and they're located behind the existing structure about 66 feet from the front property line um so all the existing residents to remain is a non-conforming structure the use is conforming um and the new apartments are conforming use that may all be applicable development standards so because um the use and proposed apartments are conforming the expansion is permitted i'm just going to briefly run through the project floor plans before jumping into the appeal concerns um the first floor consists of a two car garage for each unit um the second floor plan will have a kitchen living room and balcony on the north elevation um but i'll note that the planning commission added a condition of approval that requires the relocation of these second story balconies to the staff elevation and then the third floor consists of three bedrooms and a few bathrooms um and a balcony on the staff elevation i'll now jump into the appeal concerns this appeal was filed against the planning commission's approval of the project um and it was based on four claims two of the claims were also called out in their first appeal letter um the first concern brought up by the appellants was with respect to the approved backup space in the driveway so at the time the application was submitted and reviewed um the 24 but backup based requirement was only codified in a diagram for a commercial parking lot um there was no standard for residential parking however the planning department has applied this commercial standard to residential lots um and developments in the past um historically we've worked with um the public works department and there's a lot of productions and backup spaces and engineers can demonstrate with a turning diagram that adequate on-site percolation is provided for a standard size vehicle um so long not in effect when this application was being complete the standard practice was recently codified in um the zoning ordinance and that kind of memorializes it as an acceptable option for the study to consider when reviewing projects in the future um so this backup diagram that you see is submitted by the applicant um it demonstrates an adequate turning radius based on the american association of state highway and transportation official standard um the planning department and public works department review this diagram um and determine that backing out a sport utility vehicle um which is larger than the standard size vehicle is possible um and the proposed dimension is 20 feet and six inches the appellants letter um commented that it was 17 feet and six inches um but i do want to point out that it's actually 20 feet six inches and the proposed driveway located off of pinfolding avenue will also be providing adequate fire access um and amuse that objective lift requirement um the second concern raised by the appellants pertains to the building massing an area compatibility um so the appellants assert that the project does not maintain the architectural character and scale of the neighborhood um and claim that it will be highly visible from the street um this concern was also called out in the first appeal against staff's approval of the project and was addressed up to planning commission hearing um but i'll say that these three new apartments will be located behind the existing single-family home um the existing landscaping and residents will provide a buffer between the public view and the new apartment and the overall view of the site will remain relatively consistent with the existing character of the neighborhood um the existing residents will not block the new development as you can see here um from the public view um as the new apartments are 30 feet tall um but the rl zone district allows for 30 foot buildings and the site is also consistent with many of the other two-story and three-story single multi-family buildings in the surrounding area um the site is configured so that the new apartments are 66 feet from the front property line and only the south elevation in the second and third store will be visible from the straight view um this type of design isn't unusual for an infill development project in the city um so as i mentioned the project sites located within a developed single multi-family neighborhood um the street includes a mix of one and two-story homes the area has a variety of architectural styles including traditional historic um simple mid-century residences and as i previously mentioned there's not an overlying area plan in this neighborhood that establishes design guidelines or limit new development to a specific architectural style um so these photos show reducing homes in the surrounding area on pimplevania avenue coyota street and limber street and as you can see many of them have a similar boxy design a lot relatively flat rooms um simple front articulation and many also provide multi-family housing um the house in the middle with the peak roof is located across the street from the project site and it appears to be close to 30 feet in height um so also that we received a number of letters from the public with concerns pertaining to the project design um this project came in at a time when staff was just learning about state law limitations and objectives received subjective development standards um the zoning ordinance currently has fairly subjective design guidelines so in the past we've had a little more flexibility in what we could ask for with respect to the design changes um but we're more limited now due to the housing crisis so as i previously mentioned the housing accountability act limits the ability of local jurisdictions to restrict the development of a new of new housing um sd330 which is the housing crisis act expands upon the housing accountability act by limiting local jurisdiction from requiring a development to reduce density to meet subjective design standards um so this law includes linglars and that's the term lower density includes any conditions that have the same effect or impact on the ability of the project to provide housing um the appeal letter claims that sd330 does not eliminate all local oversight of compatibility and design and compatibility and appearance with the surrounding area um however that seems incorrect in that unless there were any design modifications required to meet objective development standards um or absent an applicant's willingness to concede on the subjective design component um in response to the public concern the city does not have any legal authority to impose design requirements um if they would result in the reduction in bedrooms or square footage um or if it would add costs that make the project infeasible so the third concern raised by the appellants is with respect to solar access um this issue was also raised in first appeal against staff's approval of the project um the appellants indicate that the project does not comply with design permit finding number five because the project doesn't maintain a compatible relationship to and preserve solar access of adjacent properties um staff address these concerns at the planning commission hearing by explaining that those zoning ordinance and the general plans don't include any objective design guidelines specifically related to solar access um the proposed apartment to meet the 30 foot height limitation for flat roof structures um in the oral district and they meet and exceed the required setbacks um both of which are objective development standards that are intended to provide adequate privacy and solar access between properties um in these urban environments so staff did request the trading study as an additional resource to assist engaging the maximum amount of shadow that would be cast from the project um the applicant prepared the study based on the height of the development and the study evaluates the solar impact during the morning and afternoon of the winter solstice which is when the signers out lowest daily maximum elevation um and when the shadows would be the longest so you can see on the bottom study um which shows the existing impact so there's currently a considerable amount of shading due to the existence of heritage trees on the site um so lots of other shading impacts are expected to occur within an urban infill project the proposal limits you to the greatest extent possible by locating the development um kind of in the center of the property and by providing shorter replacement trees for the heritage trees that are proposed to remove them and then finally the fourth concern raised by the appellants is with respect to staff's interpretation of the term low identity um as it's used in state law so I previously mentioned both SB 330 and 83194 um both strengthened the housing accountability and they limit the ability of a local jurisdiction to restrict the development of new housing so that's either by denying a project or by requiring a development to reduce density or intensity in order to meet subjective design standards um so the housing accountability act is the state law designed to promote infill development and it applies to these housing applications that may be great um may be three criteria um so if an application needs to be criteria the city must approve the project if the city denies an application that meets the objective standards were required to make that finding that the project creates a significant adverse impact to the public health and safety um so the law eliminates the city's ability to propose modifications to a project that would reduce the number of units that can be developed um 2017 amendment to this act specifically define lower density to mean any conditions that have the same effect or impact on the ability of the project to provide housing um based on that definition of lower density state law does not allow for conditions that result in the reduction of bedrooms or units or the overall square footage um as compared to what's allowed by the general plan of the zoning um because that would impact the ability of the project to provide housing um so as you've seen the three new apartments um are consistent with the objective zoning standards and development standards of reduction in the size or the height of the building would lower the density of the project by reducing the number of bedrooms um within each unit so it can't be found with the project results in a specific adverse impact um to the public health and safety um i want to add that the appellants ask for the planning commission and applicants for reduction to the proposed height and to the number of stories in an effort to reduce overall massing um of the project and in order to achieve additional compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood um a minority of the planning commissioners concurred with that request um and disagreed with the city's interpretation of lower density that resulted in a failed motion to continue the hearing for redesign um and after additional discussion um on these requirements in the limitations of state law the planning commission approved the project with those two added conditions of approval um in an effort to create additional privacy for the adjacent neighbor to the north and to reduce the overall massing um while still maintaining that density at the upper right upper end of the um allowable density range so that's a lot of information to summarize there is um no question that the housing accountability act applies to this project um the city has very little ability to require reduction in density or intensity and we don't have the ability to deny the project um so before I conclude my presentation I also want to note that staff has modified condition of approval number 27 um to include this language um our local ordinance does not require replacement housing for demolition of three or more units um replacement housing provisions of SB 330 apply to any unit to be demolished though so um the second going to be demolished has been vacant for over a year um we haven't received confirmation from the applicant that the unit was vacant for more than five years or that the previous tenant was not a low or very low income household um so we've added this condition to include the replacement housing requirement of SB 330 um but I want to note that if it's determined that this replacement housing unit is not required um the applicant has voluntarily agreed to enter into an affordable housing agreement with the city and they are going to provide a deep restricted unit at 80 percent AMI so to conclude my presentation um this project needs all the objective zoning standards it's consistent with um general planning policies and it maximizes infill density on a parcel that's known for multi-family residential uses um the parcel also unconstrained by environmental resources and so with that said staff recommends that the city council acknowledge the environmental determination that the project um is categorically exempt from environmental review under SUCLA section 1532 which allows for infill development and that the city council deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission's approval of the residential demolition authorization permit and design permit based on um the findings and the regulation and conditions of approval so I'm available if you have any questions to stop at this time thank you Brianna appreciate the thorough um presentation by the staff um you look here I'm going to now invite up Travis Kinsey who will have 15 minutes to speak and present evidence in support of the appeal Travis I see you on the screen welcome go ahead and start hey thank you um my name is Travis Kinsey and I'm part of a group of Seabright neighbors who are appealing this development at Forteam Pennsylvania thank you city council members for providing an avenue for this appeal process I'm confident in saying that I speak for a large portion of this Seabright neighborhood where residents find themselves especially susceptible to the type of development that is being considered at Forteam Pennsylvania um as a starting point I would like to mention that as Brianna did that a letter from the Whitwood Park and law firm has been sent to the city attorney and members of the city council and I hope everyone has had a chance to review that letter um I believe it's buried in the agenda packet on page 289 our position is that this project does not meet the objective zoning standards and therefore this project cannot be approved um as everyone on the zoom is aware this topic is fraught with contention and there are wide-ranging views on what should be built where it should be built and who it should be built for um fortunately we already have some guidelines in place that offer a path forward the published documents detailing those guidelines are in the form of our city's general plan and public zoning ordinance uh as Brianna pointed out the focal point of this appeal and quite frankly all of her defense points um and the primary factor here is the state law which is the housing accountability act the act strips away our planning department's ability to shape a housing project if the project meets the objective standards in our city um during that December 3rd planning commission meeting when the approval for this project was considered it was thoroughly discussed and ultimately approved um myself and many other members of the neighborhood outlined all the reasons why we believe that this project was not neighborly and not representative of the city's solar affordability and sustainability goals leading up to that planning commission appeal members of the planning department suggested a redesign to the applicant and ultimately the planning commissioners decided to approve the project by a narrow four to three vote concluding that the housing accountability act limits the city's ability to consider and require changes to the 418 development proposal once again we were awarded by the state law um after further review of this project though after that commission planning meeting uh and the involvement of the Whitworth Park and law firm we now know that the planning commissioners rely on information from the planning commission staff report which improperly concluded that the 418 project satisfies objective general plan and zoning standards which we now know it does not so I will detail those um there are three plain language requirements detailed in the general plan uh and zoning standards that this project does not satisfy the first is that the lot size is insufficient to accommodate four dwelling units with two or more bedrooms as detailed in the minimum lot area requirements for the rl district the staff report appears to improperly conflate the maximum density here under the general plan lm designation with the minimum lot area required for the rl district or two bedroom or greater units so the key point here is the number of bedrooms um while this parcel may have a maximum density of four dwelling units under the general plan there is insufficient lot area for four dwelling units with two and three bedrooms based on the minimum lot size requirements of 2200 square feet per dwelling unit within rl zoning district it's super super convoluted um this still like it doesn't meet the objective standards it's just a two-slide which the second is that the proposal does not satisfy the front yard setbacks and brown i kind of touched on this the front yard setback is not the 15 feet required by our ordinance it's only eight foot eight inches this is further proof that this lot does not have the space required for these four units so i will show some images here if i can share my screen and screen shooting so can you guys see that yeah so front yard proposed eight foot eight inches this is my screen not being shared anymore no we can't no we see just the chart eight four eight inches per this drawing well let's just keep going the third is that the city code does not allow new constructions to avail itself of an existing non-conforming front yard setback the city code is clear in saying that any legal non-conforming building or structure shall be not made more non-conforming and that city code section 24 dot 18 dot 030 so if this were allowed to be built according to the current plan it certainly would become more non-conforming so briana just said that because the three new units are not attached to the single-family home they cannot be considered non-conforming that doesn't make any sense and please cite the city code that mentions that but further to that point the front house is not being remodeled i'm sorry is being remodeled it's definitely on remodeled therefore it's very much part of the project and the project does not meet the 15 foot standard so i don't understand that as previously mentioned you know a full aberration of these non-conforming points can be found in the letter from Whitworth Park and law firm um reiterate this point for clarity's sake much of the staff report in your packet is based on the assumption that this project meets the objective standard threshold some of it does but to these specific points it does not and because it does not the project at 14 pennsylvania um cannot be approved uh the commission cannot point to the 2019 housing accountability act as a means for streamlining the approval or any approval of the project under its current design for that matter um and it's just especially unfortunate that we have had to allocate time and financial resources taking this appeal to the city council when the planning commission staff had the opportunity to determine any objective standards that this project does not satisfy beforehand and thereby saving all of us from this phase but in their defense this topic is convoluted uh and i think we can all agree that more needs to be done to update our area plan and objective standards we are already seeing a framework of laws at the state level that limit local jurisdictions ability to chart their own course for development and to this point i'm very happy to see that the planning commission recognizes this need and has arranged for the following community meetings to discuss the topic of objective standards um especially in our sea bright neighborhood this is our opportunity to forge our own path and positively influence our environment and our built environment um so members of this city council thank you for listening to our appeal especially given the unfortunate but necessary circumstances that require us to hear by zoom uh this project does not satisfy objective standards and cannot be approved in the current format you know we do look forward as a neighborhood to working with the planning commission and active members of my community of our community to find solutions that do work um so members of this council can both make that happen thank you thank you applicant dan stark uh who will have a 15 minutes to speak and present evidence the screen here we have some slides to go through uh yeah we're gonna turn off the video always show the screen internet's a little choppy sometimes you want to make sure we don't lose everybody so we'll be on audio if you're in this okay thank you thank you very much okay so start off um hello city council members my name is tim gordon i'm one of the founders of workbench company located here in downtown santa cruise first off i want to say huge thanks to you the city council and planning department for taking the time to meet with us today we really appreciate all you do for our community and we definitely understand the topics that you deal with on a daily basis are extremely challenging so we can't thank you not we'll jump right in happy to answer any questions uh by any council members at any time located at 418 temple vineyard new housing complex consisting of much needed three bedroom rental units with two car garages and on-site parking well known topic in our area as well as california in general the need for housing and especially rental housing like many places in california santa cruise has historically not built enough housing to accommodate our existing and growing population for the general plan and zoning code most of the teabright areas designated for multi family residential housing and has been for many years the primary intention of this project is to provide housing for families in santa cruise and all parties involved the owner the design team future construction team are all really strongly connected to santa cruise and desperately want to be part of our housing solution there are many reasons why this project should be as proved as is but i'm just going to cover a few here first of all and the major point to remember this project meets all of the objective standard set for us in the general plan and zoning ordinances as has been shown by the planning department and the planning commission approval our team and as a brief note our team is not the planning department and many times on this project we've gone through roughly 30 different site plans and options with every imaginable imaginable option in an effort to create the best project as you know to get to this point did all the standard-based parking requirements density open space and all the other to be reviewed the restricted affordable unit three re-bedroom rental units on the market in the seabright area on top of that there's only 23 in the greater santa cruise area in whole hopefully that statistic alone is enough to help approve this project i've been in seabright for five years my kids go to galt i'm very connected and familiar with the area i've had two separate galt teachers reach out to me in the last month who are looking for homes for their families and want to stay in seabright near where they work unfortunately our units aren't built yet and there's not many options for them to stay in the seabright area there's a realistic effect of not building housing our teachers can't even live in the neighborhood we ask them to teach our children's hands let's give them through it here pretty briefly uh sp3 30 applies to um projects that meet the objective standards and general plan and zoning code which we've done as shown by the planning department and approved by both the planning department and planning commission i'm going to interrupt you for one second i don't know if you're wanting your slides to advance but they're not moving um we're still seeing the first slide oh oh i apologize and appreciate that we don't worry for any presentation um three okay our objectives cannot be considered do any of the following bedroom house square footage intensity of use height style financial feasibility project for the owner etc project will have a negative effect on health and safety of the public advocacy plug here we at workbench have a very deep personal connection to this town we want to see it proper you know we're helping creating housing p3 30 i'd encourage the council to think about why do we need it our project meets all the applicable codes provide 25 percent meter restricted affordable units and create creating three more rentals that we desperately need so we feel the need to be backed by a safe housing ordinance to produce this house um i understand and i know that you all know that i'm challenging topic i would encourage the city council to think about that question going forward and and i um keep it in mind i'll be as a lead designer here at workbench and it's been believed on this project thank you again and go ahead man thank you for your time and consideration today and thank you briana for your sage support and guidance throughout the entire process we really appreciate you my name is dan stark i'm the architectural project manager manager on the project and i am a representative of the applicant next i'd like to go briefly over the planning commission findings i have to move quickly here so please take my screen was on december 3rd last year the project was approved with the following concessions which we are still willing to meet currently located on the north side of the unit facing the affluent's property may be screened or relocated to the south side of the unit facing our driveway and our neighbors to the north it can be reduced by dropping the plate heights which are currently nine and a half or 10 feet to nine feet once at outreach and working with the affluent and the neighbors no neighborhood outreach was required by the municipal code for this by right project we do see and understand the value of earlier communication with the neighborhood but after offering concessions at the planning commission hearing and attempted attempted outreach to the affluent following the hearing i understand that we would not have had a different outcome after the planning commission meeting we requested conditions to satisfy the affluent and their two requests were to relocate the balconies as already offered during the planning commission meeting and to make the building two stories would render the project in feasible with affluent with this information they asked me to meet privately off the record which i told them that i was not comfortable doing and at that point the communication with the affluent ended i never heard that the next portion of the presentation will be a direct review of the appeal of the driveway specifically the driveway with the affluent suggesting the appeal that our driveway should be 24 by for the municipal code facility such as ours with eight parking spaces may have a 12 foot wide driveway as proposed element mentioned in the appeal is a reference to the backup distance as put forth in the municipal code the 24 foot backup is indeed required by the current municipal code as brian mentioned this section of the municipal code was added after completion of our project to planning no clear backup distance was provided in previous code versions importantly the current municipal code offers an alternative path to compliance via approval from the planning and public works department this allows for reduction of the 24 foot standard backup distance which is very important when we're looking at a site like this not a small site but it's only 50 feet wide you can imagine what a 24 foot driveway would to do to this height due to this site it would cut it in half immediately i for one am glad that our municipal code does not give that much weight to the automobile 24 foot backup has been reviewed and approved by the public works department and the planning department so we remain compliant with the current code as applied to our project and to the the code that was applied to our project from the previous previously applicable applicable code in reviewing the backup with planning and public works we reviewed we used astro standard turn radius for a passenger car design vehicle which is a large generous car as seen on the right of this slide the image on the left of this slide shows two large suv's easily making the backup including a hummer h1 which is the largest passenger vehicle available to the american public today which proves that this backup works well it was not difficult at all i hope this study can put this concerns around scale items neighborhood context in massing the images on this slide show screening of the new units behind the existing single family residents we think it's an attractive project but we think the screening also minimalizes individual impact on the street and presents a choice for decisions about architectural style to future future development in the future but we think that the project stands in the neighborhood now now i'd like to mention that neighborhood is very clearly and objectively defined in the municipal code as an area within one half mile of the site also worth mentioning is that the building as proposed is 30 feet tall allowable per the current municipal code the building could be taller by right with a slope group because of the municipal code's definition of building height as being to the middle of a gable end roof a grade level ground floor and approximately 10 foot plate heights which were were offered to be reduced to nine foot during the planning commission hearing neighboring buildings are not much shorter for example the neighboring one-story residents with a 12 to 12 gable end roof and a four-foot tall crawl space is going to be approximately 25 feet tall at the ridge the project in the neighborhood please recall that the neighborhood is defined objectively of any site within one half mile of our project at 117 galt street this is a great story multi-family residential development groups are slow hip routes but they have such a low slope that they appear to be a flat roof multiple buildings occupy the front of the lot as well as the back this project is 0.4 miles from the site which means all objective standards for being in the same neighborhood this project is one zero four one high industry this is a three-story multi-family residential development with flat routes and this address is six parcels removed from our project 2008 soak out out is another two-plus story multi-family residential development with flat routes this project has balconies on the property line it's five parcels removed from our project no one just shows that 1005 kaiu history is a two-story multi-family residential development with flat routes no separation of balconies and adjacent buildings and this project directly abuts our project at 40th temple being the project's solar impact on the appelline's property picture on the left of this slide shows the existing 60-foot tall liquid amber trees done for the project we're done as a worst-case scenario in December 21st at 9am this shows the highest possible impact on solar access to the adjacent property the existing trees mentioned are to be removed thereby mitigating solar impact from the trees and slides show that some solar pull of the solar impact on the property will be less than the current shade from the trees to be demolished not impeded for most of the year and only before 12 o'clock on any day generally in the winter three existing trees to be demolished will be replaced by 13 new trees located on the site in order to maximize privacy and minimize solar impact no solar impact is made on the property outside of the winter morning can i request one no you all because it's an appeal you're held to that 15 15 minute standard thank you thank you okay next we will move on to questions from the council and i believe bonnie please clarify these can questions be asked of either the appellant or the applicant or are these just for staff all of the above all of the above okay great carefully prepared to address the issues raised by the letter from the attorney with respect to the import of sp3 30 and specifically the provision that says that um require the project to comply with objective standards and criteria of zoning which are consistent with the general plan however the standards shall be applied to facilitate and accommodate development at the density allowed on the site by the general plan and proposed by the housing development project and so this project is consistent with the density allowed by the general plan and so made the point and that's based on our analysis with the staff that under sp3 30 this density provision is is um it's required to be adhered to and if the zoning criteria are inconsistent with that then you have to apply the general plan consistency during determination there is possibility of litigation arising out of whatever decision the council makes with respect to this project just so that you understand it's not it's not just a one-way thing thank you 20 um next new projects generally typically for low to moderate income housing would still be applicable not all the provisions of sp3 30 would be applicable members at this time a question that is has just come up for me because the appellant mentioned the objective standards development process and i know that we are in a situation where we are we have very few objective standards that and we certainly don't have any that have been developed in light of the new state housing laws that have been adopted recently and so i'm just wondering uh where you know i it's been a while and we have were you know given uh if i'm just wondering where things are at with the development of those objective standards it they wouldn't apply in this case but you know it should be nice to have those so we have something to look to when projects like this come our way thank you council member brownlee about their director of planning and community development and the grant has us um completing those by the end of the year um and having them to you before the end of the year um the first we we have been to the planning commission and the planning commission has reviewed the outreach plan we've also been to the planning commission to discuss general plan amendments stemming from the first set that were done and we expect to present that information the planning commission voted unanimously to not pursue general plan amendments at this time as a recommendation of the council and we'll be presenting that information to the council at their first meeting in march um so you'll get a uh overview of where we're at in the process there and next month we will have our first um outreach meeting as it relates to the um objective standards and so the the plan has been approved for outreach and we'll be rolling that out within the next three to four weeks thank you thank you council member brown uh council member walkins and then council member call it and harry johnson also i appreciate the question and the response i think it would be very helpful to have these in place right and so knowing that we're on a path um to get there is is good to good to hear um i guess if i could just get one maybe a clarifying connect uh um response from our city attorney um tony in regards to saying you're we're liable to get um sued one way or another or the appellate's argument their position is that the city is um misinterpreting the zoning criteria in two ways one uh by allowing a structure that encroaches into the 15 foot uh front yard setback there is a legal building there now and under the zoning code uh you can maintain a non-conforming structure as long as you don't make it non-conform more non-conforming and the staff interpretation of more non-conforming would be if additional features of the structure were constructed within the front yard setback that would make it more non-conforming but building on portions of the property that are not within the setback doesn't make an existing non-conforming building more non-conforming um so so we just disagree with that argument um the second argument is that uh because the zoning code specifies 2,200 square feet per uh dwelling unit that's in it that's in excess of uh two bedrooms that uh you would need a minimum of 8,800 square feet to build uh this project with three three bedroom apartments uh whereas the parcel size is like 8,750 square feet I mean it's very close to that um there are two problems with that first under AB 330 if the city receives an application um and you can use this you can use this as an example of how this applies if the city receives an application for a project and determines that it's inconsistent with the zoning for the for the site um it's required to notify the applicant within 30 days of the applications being deemed complete and in this case the application was being complete at some time in September I assume because it went before the zoning administrator for hearing in October um the the second part of the statute says that if the local agency fails to provide the required documentation the housing development project shall be deemed consistent compliant and in conformity with the applicable plan program policy ordinance standard requirement or other similar provision um and so uh really you have a very short window of time to determine compliance staff did that and determined that the project does comply because of a different provision of SB 330 that says that you need to accommodate housing on the property uh that's within the density limits of the general plan and this project does that into the and the staff's interpretation of SB 330 is to the extent that um the zoning doesn't conform to that density requirement then you have to interpret the zoning code in a way that allows the project to be developed um and the and the specific wording of the statute is at the density allowed on the site by the general plan and proposed by the proposed housing development project and so those are the arguments as to why the staff position is correct so there could be a claim made by the applicant should the city deny the project in the same fashion that there could be a claim made by the appellant should you approve the project as proposed next I have council member bruner you had your hand up ugly hands are down all of a sudden Helen Terry Johnson was next I'm sorry I had my hand up but my question was um addressed thank you oh it was okay okay any other questions from council for either our staff or the appellant or the applicant look like anyone has any other questions we will go ahead now and open this for public comment and on 418 Pennsylvania Avenue if you are interested in commenting on this item please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set to two minutes and I know there's a number of folks and we've had multiple hearings on this project so I will be stopping you at the two minute mark just to continue to be able to have a timely discussion on it first up is Mr Kelly please deny the appeal and allow these three new homes to be created so we can welcome new neighbors the only drawback I see here is that this should be much taller and have many more homes given given the immense need that we have in this city I think I want to make a statement about some of the uh city council uh kind of deliberation on this if people want to see objective standards be completed more quickly um then planning staff should be free from having to deliberate on on such a small project like this where we're literally spending more than an hour to talk about three new homes three new homes that families can move into that children and grandchildren of the appellants themselves could even move into um I think people are missing the force for the trees in knowing that like we we need room for for people um so people can live here so please deny the appeal allow these three new homes to be created thank you thank you the next call in 2694 go ahead please yeah hi this is uh Patrick Drake I live immediately next door at 414 Pennsylvania Avenue and I just like to say that this is squeezing you know three new units into a very tight space there's already three apartment buildings here uh that are abutting this um um proposed development and I think it's going to be too dense and I think also we're here all day working from home and there's going to be a heavy construction on this site for potentially years jack hammering concrete back hose and I just think it's a three-story building on a block that only has one story and two stories and it doesn't really fit the neighborhood and at the very least could be permit be postponed or the building permit or the approval be postponed until the pandemic has passed and we're not all uh stuck in our literally stuck in our homes all day every day thank you thank you the next speaker is mr yes we can thank you um first of all thank you for um allowing us to talk about this it's uh very important not just for this single project but for the um ongoing integrity of our neighborhood um I live on winter street two blocks away from the development um I'm a 26-year resident of the Seabright neighborhood um I love the diversity I came in here as a renter and I'm now fortunate enough to be a homeowner I love being able to live next to people renters and I'm happy about that part of our neighborhood however the development at 418 is some total of it is that it overwhelms the area it puts a lot of stress on a small part of the neighborhood that is already compromised um I think Travis raised the issues very um intelligently um I'd like to mention a hearing a zoning administrator hearing that we went to for a development that they wanted put directly across from our house at 415 uh Windsor one of the things we're able to point out to the zoning administrator is that um parking at a place like this and and the the fact that the parking is so difficult and 418 exacerbates this is that people are going to park on the street and that's going to create tremendous problems in the area where there's already a lot of difficulty parking um one of the things that the zoner zoning administrator did for us is that he required in the homeowners agreement that the homeowners association agreement that the part of their garages in these houses remain vacant and that they will be able to be inspected for that because um despite the fact that you can pull your uh Hummer in there you're not going to pull your Hummer in there because it's so difficult to do so they will just park it out on the street so um making provisions for the impact of the thank you Mr. Bowers next up yes we can thank you thanks for taking our great residents as well and I'm going to start off by saying first of all we have a two-story apartment building in our backyard and um it's very oppressive we we use the backyard as a garden only because of that um I can't imagine having a three-story building in my backyard or in my side yard um and and that being said the they keep referencing the 30 foot height the difference between a 30 foot ridge line on the victorian is not the same in any stretch in my mind as as the 30 foot height on a three-story apartment you can't equate an attic space to to a living space I mean let's get real about it. Mr. Bowers mentioned some some really good points and I want to elaborate briefly um you know this this neighborhood has character and you know we have a single family home we like it we have apartment there's duplexes next door across the street so it's eclectic as it does already but if we look long term I mean down Seabright they built you know those those you know a shoved bunch of homes and those blocks that were vacant for years and it's just I mean it's already but you know pre-covid traffic in Santa Cruz is insane and people are forgetting that already if we start slamming all these homes in here um we're going to park every day we jockey for parking in the street and in our driveway because of it and lastly I'll say that we have family up in Seattle and this is happening in really beautiful neighborhoods with old homes old victorians just really wonderful neighborhoods and they're tearing down these homes and building exactly what these gentlemen are proposing and I've got to tell you it's um it's repellent it changes everything. Last name Kelsey. Very curious why if objective standards are being developed why they cannot be applied in this situation it seems absurd to say well those standards aren't enforced now therefore you know we can build whatever but when it comes later then we'll have standards it it just feels to me like that is an absurdity of that goes around in circles the that you're wanting community input outreach which was not done in this case I just can't see how that you can justify it using the legalistic um 333 standards further I think that the letter from the lawyers that lay out what the objections are need to have been read by each council member and considered before a vote is taken thank you thank you next up is uh last name Collins please hello can everyone hear me yes we can hi my name is uh Frank Collins I moved to Santa Cruz approximately last year it's been very difficult for me to find a place that's affordable and you know big enough for my family and I to live in because of frankly the cost of rentals in Santa Cruz is way too high for us um this project not only provides housing for me but it's also an affordable unit which is to be completely honest that's really needed um it's unfortunate that young families young professionals like myself and in particular those like myself in the service industry are priced out of the beautiful sea bright neighborhood and out of Santa Cruz in total um I ask everyone in the on the council board to approve this project because it is the right thing to do for Santa Cruz residents and for people wanting to move in I currently live in a very tiny studio in the sea bright neighborhood with my wife and daughter um I don't know I just I want to live in a bigger house to provide for my family and so far I'm not able to find anything in my price range on the listing apps um thank you everyone for your time and thank you for hearing me out thank you next up is Mr. Simon Lee Simon uh from New Way Homes um I haven't previously commented or written uh in on this particular project uh but I was inspired to do so by a presentation the reimagined Santa Cruz uh group had uh last week from strong towns which was really compelling argument that um we have a lot of this housing crisis because we haven't allowed small developments um to happen and more gentle increases of density which happened for you know 100 years gradually here and happens much less so now and so we have you know very large projects and single family homes and we've stopped for all fortunately and to have a healthy community and a variety of housing types and just have it be a little bit less expensive to build a housing that these kinds of projects need to happen and I certainly understand when folks are um don't like uh what the zoning rules are uh for example but I think if we keep re-adjudicating those on every three-unit pro uh project you know this is why housing just can't get built so we need to set the rules live by them if we don't like them change the rules um so I hope that somehow we can find ways to continue to reduce this um inability to create housing and not only prove this project but make other projects um learn from it make other projects the next project if it needs to be a little different you know change the rules so it's a little different um but then uh have more of this up happening so I hope we get more projects like this and Santa Cruz and we find a way to make them more efficient thanks thank you the next speaker is 7527 see bright residents and I moved here with my family and I just wanted to say we need as much of this as we can possibly get I also want to say that um well oftentimes at these meetings the representation is that of neighbors not wanting projects there are many more of us that want things built want people to move in we want affordable housing and the fact that this project provides even one affordable unit is a miracle it's 25 percent affordability that's not um what anyone else gets to the development um I think the things that are brought up in opposition are brought up universally by people that don't want things built in their neighborhood character parking shadows density procedure design nostalgia and character these have been things that have kept um housing and uh specifically affordable housing and marginalized individuals out of neighborhoods for decades it's it needs to stop and um I hope this project goes forward and I hope many more like it do as well thank you thank you very much next up is uh phone number ending in 4207 you're unmuted you should be able to talk now be able to talk ending in 4207 you're unmuted yeah you're unmuted you should be able to talk now why don't we have them try to come back can you hear me okay yeah we can hear you now thank you we'll start the clock sorry about that um my name is Matthew I'm um Santa Cruz resident for the last 29 years born here in at uh Dominican hospital and uh young professional um I've continuously seen both friends and family um move out of this area um due to the the housing shortage and their inability to find homes for both um for both young professionals uh who are um single and or seeking roommates um to better afford housing and then also um yes families who are just simply unable to afford single family homes um I think that uh to be able to increase density increase affordable housing I think it's going to be extremely important and um projects like this need to continue so I just wanted to um advocate my support for um approval of this project thank you thank you next speaker is uh ending in uh phone number uh 9078 Bonnie did you unmute them they have to unmute themselves star nine to unmute yourself 9078 if you press star there you go you're unmuted thank you thank you I watched the December 3rd planning commission meeting for this project and the witness commissioner Christian Nielsen's many futile attempts to get needed answers from the project architect the line of his questioning was important and as an architect himself he knew an answer was necessary so that commissioners could understand the reasoning used in the decision to not remove the front house Nielsen said that the front house created other related issues with the project this couldn't even occur because the project representative stone-holerated representatives would be advised that evading ants if you watch the tape you'll understand what I'm talking about no one's exactly sure what can be changed or not the project really convincing presentation from the appellant and while a b 3194 really ties a local community's hands every way to help protect our neighborhoods uh from developments that uh speakers have said overwhelm the air as opposed to be trying to introduce growth in a careful manner this is not careful workbench has committed in my mind the ultimate sin of presenting a visually distorted image at the beginning of their presentation and staff use the same image I've been asking for years for architects developers to present something in scale um you can look at it again but the single story little house in the front is made dominant you can barely see this three story development in the back there's a lot of other misleading information the idea that a local teacher could afford one of these three bedroom units is well it's ridiculous we have in our city provided more than most communities we've exceeded our provision of market rate housing this does not add anything except the possibility of displacing our low income workers an affordable unit by definition is a percentage of the area medium income every time each of these developments gets approved with 85 90 percent non-affordable market rate you raise the area medium income making it less affordable you've got to look at those issues before you approve a development like this thank you very much unmute yourself go ahead good afternoon good afternoon mayor Myers and council members my name is Henry Hooker i'm a resident of the neighborhood i've been a resident for 25 years it's a neighborhood of single and family single family and multi-family residences many of them eight ten units we all agree that there's insufficient housing in Santa Cruz to house our workforce and we all especially agree that there's a shortage of affordable housing which this project does provide in in the form of in in the form of one deed restricted unit it does fit with the neighborhood it provides needed residences it's past the exhaustive reviews of the planning department and the planning commission and other city agencies this type of infill housing is exactly what the residential neighborhoods of Santa Cruz need not just my neighborhood but all the neighborhoods to house our population to house to deal with the fact that we have so many people working in our city who cannot live here i appreciate the efforts of the planning department to protect the city from being taken to court for violation of state law and i urge the city council to bless this project and allow it to move forward with construction thank you thank you next speaker is six nine five eight last four digits of your phone number please press star six to unmute yourself yourself we can't hear you yet six nine five eight and we'll move to the next phone number we can't hear you oh i think you may be four six nine five eight if you could press star six we could hear you then but we can't hear you now okay you're ready thank you yes we can hear you okay hi my name is sienna um i'm calling just in support of this project and housing for our community as many of the other folks that are residents that have called in support um and also just to say that i'm also amazed i guess is the word at the number of people knowing all the statistics and the issues of housing in our community are still opposed to a project of this size and scale and it just sort of always goes back to the the i've heard you know the leaves are not against housing just we don't want the housing here and the idea that something that looks different than what's in the neighborhood doesn't belong and um those sorts of comments just bring us back to the um i guess major societal issues of not liking things that are not like us and not seeing the benefits of diversity and difference and it's it's frustrating and appalling to hear and i hope the council can see beyond um these comments and approve the project and see the benefits of providing these housing units within the seabright neighborhood thank you the next caller has phone number ending in three two nine five to the direct north of the project and i just want to say the last caller works for the architect so i'm not sure how many of the callers work for the architect but anyway i um i'm the original appellant on this appeal and i want to stress that i'm not anti development and i'm not anti growth um i i've lived next door to this neglected property for 30 years and i welcome any improvements and more housing i'm really sorry it has come all the way to the city council um this project is simply incongruent for the lot size it's maximizing the space for profit and with no consideration for the neighborhood the existing neighbors the parking there's so many issues with this project it's massive on this small smaller house lot and i just need to add that my home is a three bedroom one bath and a thousand square feet these are three bedroom two baths in 2,200 square feet each and i'm not sure who can afford these but not teachers and certainly not my kids or my grand kids that live on teacher type salaries um i don't want the project squashed um and i just want to see a redesign as a good deal the neighborhood does the planning department sent these plans back at least twice to my knowledge suggesting all kinds of ideas that would make this project more palatable to the neighbors more inclusive of this neighborhood more neighborly and they were all ignored one of the planners on the the initial planner on the project told me that this was the worst project she had ever worked on i myself have written the developer and the architect requesting more consideration and a redesign i was initially met with the resounding no and then sent unfavorable emails that were not at all neighborly this project has been pushed by the developer and architect to the limits of the parcel size with disregards the immediate neighbors no care for neighborhood compatibility and they have not demonstrated any willingness to revise their plans to better this development despite planning department recommendations respectful requests from neighbors a considerable voice from the neighborhood and the initial planning commission appeal i implore the council to let this project be a positive example of what development could look like while maintaining the character of this town and respecting our neighborhoods thank you in phone number 2952 please press star six and you will be unmuted you should press star six to unmute yourself the phone number ending in 2952 area code 415 hi can you guys hear me yes we can okay hi my name is amily cannon i am an owner of workbench i'm also a sea bright renter and i've been thinking a lot recently and as i imagine many of us have about how we can create a more equitable society and work locally to dismantle the systems that allow inequality to thrive here i've been struck by dr martin luther king's focus and efforts to elevate people of all races out of poverty and to elevate all people to a decent standard of living as an architect i've been thinking about what i can do and what my role is and what the role of architecture is in making positive change in my community collectively how do we structurally change the way we operate if we are going to create a more equitable santa cruise for all to enjoy i hear these concerns and eat those echoed in my community and then i watch time and time again as neighbors say no to housing and actively engage in continuing practices that promote social inequality and continue to widen the divide between the haves and the have not practices that push out the people who sustain our community the teachers the artists the young families the recent graduates the local business owners the list goes on and on and on please support this project and help santa cruise take one more step towards being a more inclusive community thank you thank you the next call 0753 this elliott former co-chair for the community advisory committee on homelessness and member of the county workforce development board and i've been working in santa cruise for 10 years and i've actually only been able to live in santa cruise for three of those years because of how expensive it is to live in this town i feel so lucky to be able to live here right now and it's like a combination of lots of building relationship and also luck that i feel like has bound to me my current home i was really excited for this project to come to council as i've been excited about all of the housing projects that have been coming forward i just want to thank you for moving all of these projects through and creating more housing for our community and i wanted to echo a few of the comments of previous callers so that we build a variety of housing types to meet the needs of our workforce that we have a focus on equity and inclusion in our decision making about housing development and that we have an efficient approval process for these types of projects those of it they don't get bogged down and become too expensive for developers to build and so i just urge you to approve this project and thank you for your time thank you very much our next caller is ending in phone number eight six seven seven whether hands up this will be our last caller for tonight go ahead please i just wanted to call in and um project we recently moved to california and we had to come up with very unconventional ways in order to afford to live here and the idea that more affordable housing um kind of gets put on the backburn because of design choices um you know like for for families that are just trying to make it work and want to live in this community um you know those things don't really make sense to to us that are struggling to find a place here so i just want to you know echo what other people have said really just want this project to go through so that families like mine moving here from all across the country you know still have a place to to move and to be able to afford and raise our children and the you know paradise that we can call home now um so i'd like to invite the appellant up to you have five minutes to rebut anything stated from the applicant and or the public would like to speak hi travis hey thank you um park uh alan spedale would like to give the rebuttal is that permissible here these are the one of the appellants that's fine thank you okay we'll turn it over to alan thanks alan are you are you there i'll move yourself here i am am i on you are alan can you get the picture up travis go ahead get the other one too the uh front the south view of this thing yeah we don't have that photo but we've got the uh um hope got this i guess so there have been so many uh unfortunate statements here that i'm not quite sure where to begin i think the first one has to be we absolutely reject the idea that we are nimbis in the opposed to housing um we're in favor of a reasonable compatible project on this lot it's big enough for four more units what people may not understand is that this would be the first three-story residential building in the neighborhood as a matter of fact it'd be the first three-story residential building in any Santa Cruz neighborhood and this is where all the objections come from it's because this 100-year-old neighborhood um this building is simply not compatible with it now you've heard a lot of references to the state law and the reason for that is because if you get the state law out of the way this project never would have been approved the planning department tried to modify it and change it the planning commission tried to change it but in every case the state law forwarded and our position is simple and the attorney was speaking to this our position is that the state law was misapplied because it doesn't apply to this project not every housing uh project gets the protections of the state law and the first requirement is the state the project has to meet the objective standards and you've heard that word over and over again now the front yard setback is eight feet eight inches and the front house is part of the project because it's going to be remodeled to allow the driveway on the south side of the project so the project doesn't meet the the objective standard of the setback it's that simple and that's going to be uh an issue in the courts but you know we don't want to go into courts we have no desire to go into courts the planning department admits that they rounded up the square footage to achieve the uh required square footage for four three bedroom units it's in the uh report when you're rounding up a number that means you haven't met that standard either and these are the issues and I grant you the state law is so poorly written that there's going to be conflicts over it but my point now is if you got the state law out of the way this project would have been modified through the planning process the state law disabled the planning department from being able to do their jobs they were denied the chance to work with the community and the developer to create reasonable housing on this product on this piece of property the city council has the chance to shut down this permit and send it back and in its place we can allow another project to develop better housing probably more affordable housing on this project to uh fill this large but narrow lot um this is the opportunity for them to back up the planning department and back up the planning commission both in whom wanted to modify this design they were basically on the same side of the argument as the neighbors were um take this opportunity support your planning department and your commission and support the neighborhood and if you have an issue if you're confused about the legal situation at the very least continue this project or continue this hearing until some future dates so that you can get further advice from the attorneys and uh let's try to find a better solution to this particular project the final thing I should say is we're not nimby's here okay and it irritates me and hurts me when the young people here who are never going to be able to afford these apartments anyway are diluted by an aggressive developer in the thinking that this is going to help them more than they should be able to thank you just by now I really do appreciate it you guys work awfully hard thanks for giving us the opportunity to see you thank you very much I'm first to bring this back to the council for deliberation and action and I have council member boulder and then council member coming I believe in that order but you can correct me I was looking at a lot of phone numbers trying to track those so I don't know who beat who beat who Justin were you first or okay council member coming thank you this is the public for um reaching out and providing the comments on this project um we're in a pretty I know we're probably going to be in a little difficult situation given that there's um you know potential for litigation on each side and and there are strong opinions on each side of this issue I did want to ask a question I was going to ask before public comment I wanted to wait till after um in that sense of time and so I have a question for the planning department it's come up a number of times and we've heard um I think it came to the planning commission that there was a recommendation for a redesign and I just want to know if you can comment on because I wonder if that might be a direction we can go in that would avoid us getting into any legal disputes you know we can figure out a way for both sides to kind of find consensus that maybe we can move this project forward without needing to go to court for either group so I'm wondering if there's anybody from the planning department who can talk about those recommendations around the redesign well the specific recommendations I will leave up to the the team here who was working on those I will say that you know there were conversations about doing things like um using a slope roof for this development and you know the the slope roof um is um something that would be in character with the house that's on the front you know the architects made the presentation and said here are um homes in the surrounding area um and multifamily development in close proximity that has a flat roof um and so you know we for example explored well could you make a slope roof to um more consistent with the house that's on the front of that property um what that does is that reduces the square footage it also reduces the number of bedrooms if I recall correctly the applicants actually prepared that plan and or a floor plan some some version of that plan and presented it to our team and it did actually have a reduction in bedroom capacity and square footage and as we articulated in the agenda report the housing accountability act which does apply to both affordable development projects and market rate development projects but as our city attorney said there are some different protections they're actually not that large in terms of the difference but there are some differences in any case the housing accountability act precludes the city from reducing housing capacity density or intensity is called out in the haa and so you know a uh architectural redesign and architectural redesign occurs if that architectural redesign would result in a reduction in square footage for a number of bedrooms um you know there are some gray areas there um in terms of architectural style you know so if you wanted to say like all right you know this shouldn't be stucco this should be wood siding um on this portion you know those kinds of things probably aren't going to make the the project financially infeasible or they're probably not going to reduce square footage or um uh number of bedrooms but when you start talking about redesigning from an architectural perspective the the design could result in uh a uh reduction in square footage which is why i brought up that slope group issue and in that scenario we would not be in a position where um or we would be in a position where we would be um running i'll leave it there and and if anyone on the team wants to to chime in about some of the other specifics because i think that there were um a number of sort of roof uh design was kind of an easy one to point out thank you lee chime in on that anybody for coming did you have additional questions i did have one more question um related to the replacement housing ordinance i know that in the city i think ours is three to one um and then under sb 330 the film of a density bonus like it's one to one and i was wondering what opportunities are there for us to bring these are our replacing housing orders into compliance so that it's one to one and and um and it's consistent with the density bonus orders because i think that that came up i think we were talking about the housing project the other housing projects you right earlier this year or late last year so i wanted to speak for that sir so um state lawsuit proceeds so right now the uh the condition that you had before you previously um before the one that um briana updated today um reference the um sb 330 provisions and they're actually multiple provisions so the density bonus uh is referenced as part of sb 330 so you know it it doesn't have to be a density bonus project to utilize to um trigger the replacement housing requirements it can just be a project that's utilizing sb 330 um that would also trigger the replacement housing requirements um and so um projects now are required to conform with the the state law certainly uh you know we could look at updating our codes to match what the state law requires there is not an urgency to that we have not um gone uh we have not put forth efforts to do that because those rules are in place right now if i recall correctly those rules are set to expire in four years now in um 2025 and so at some point during the next four years if the state does not extend those then if the city is interested in um matching what the state had then that would um be a critical time to do that but at this point in time um with the um with the state law superceding what we have in our codes um those rules apply there's an 80 you want this property it's going to be demolished as well is that correct would that be considered an affordable unit um well first question sort of and uh the second question i'll address in a second um discovered that it wasn't actually permitted as an ad you and i don't know the the legal status of it um offhand the team may but regardless where it's being treated as a second unit on the site that second unit um is being um required as replacement housing if under the state law it was occupied by a person with um incomes within the last five years so the last the last individual the last tenant would be tracked down and um if they again uh area median income then um those uh that unit uh one of the units would have to match that if the if the uh previous tenants income cannot be verified be required to provide one unit at the very low income 50 percent AMI level people who are in the front unit within like other current people that are now or have been the last of these people also are if you had two people and two separate units on a property that were low or very low income then if you have to make that replacement housing then my understanding will be if it's one to one then you'd have to replace two units as affordable um yes so so it's only the rear unit that is in question in terms of the occupancy there even I'm not sure about this but maybe Breonna can let me know um that the front tenant submitted a letter there's reading those quickly what's that yep there is a person living in the front unit and she does submit a letter in support of approval um of the project and she's currently renting it I didn't check with the applicant but I don't know if they verified um I know the income of that tenant but from from the housing accountability act perspective it's the rear the income of the rear unit tenant that would be applicable since that's the unit that's actually being demolished thank you I have more like comments and questions I just wanted to say I appreciate everybody that called in and it's really been you know a lot to think about and I understand the position that we're in where we could be kind of like damned if we do damned if we don't we could be sued either way and it's really complicated navigating this new landscape with this state law and I would also like the callers and the public to know that we do read all the letters we did get the letter from the lawyer we did read it many of us you know drove by and and peaked in the yard and stalked around the block and looked at the property and we do that regularly with the projects that come before us and so to that end like I agree with what Jillian said in that like I do think the drawings are kind of misleading where it looks like the one story and the three story are kind of the same height and they're not and I've spent many years living in Seabright I lived across the street from one of the callers um for many years and um I agree that um with a three bedroom unit I don't know part two parking spaces is going to be quite enough um and um you know on my block of Alta we've got four three four four three story houses that have gone up in the last 20 years and so I do know that three story houses um they're here they're coming and I also think like as far as like objective design standards there's plenty of houses as I walk around the neighborhood no offense everybody that are freaking hideous my own house is hideous I hate the way it looks and so like um we're all going to have differences opinion about the way architectural design looks I think um as presented though it's just a complicated issue in that um you know I feel like it's kind of squeezing quite a bit of housing into it a lot that's relatively large for the city of Santa Cruz but that's a lot of housing and I was just doing calculations where if these are 2,300 square foot units and if they had the you know new cost of construction between three and four hundred dollars a square foot so the developers potentially putting in two to three million dollars that's going to cost them 9,500 to 14,000 dollars a month just in the mortgage not including the taxes insurance and you know overhead for managing the property you know I don't anticipate that the three other units are going to be particularly low income or affordable and I appreciate the developer's intent to keep the rent unit affordable and keep the family that's there now um and you know I'm sympathetic to the neighbors that are going to have a large building next door we had a like I said the three story one next door to us was moving in our backyard so I understand but I think as um as far as this what's before us today I feel compelled that we have to approve the project and and um and that's because of the state law and and my interpretation of what has been provided to us today and so I just wanted to say all that in advance thank you council member calentary johnson were you first or was sandy first sandy was first that's what I thought okay sandy I'm excuse me council member brown thanks so I just have a couple of comments and uh you know this is a this is a really difficult place we find ourselves in we find ourselves in this place all too often these days um and you know I just want to respond to a couple of comments that were made um I'd love to respond to all of the public comment and I appreciate everybody's um being here and weighing in and the thoughtful letters um so you know I I agree you know um mr kelly said that um if we want objective standards we uh you know we ought to not be spending so much time um in in this space uh you know debating over uh the particulars of relatively small projects and I agree um but I will say this is um you know this is a process that is available to uh community members is not and the city council did not raise this uh and so we it comes before us and we are required to address it uh I also wanted to respond to mr simon's point about um you know really um being inspired by you know I was too with that on that panel and uh you know the so the idea about infill that and and the need for that is really important and people do want a set of rules and and consistency and I completely agree with that I hope that through our objective standards development will get you know closer to that at some point if not all the way there but uh unfortunately we're not dealing with or working with rules of our own making we are dealing with a state law um that has as has been suggested by uh the appellants and our own city attorney um is uh not a model of clarity and um you know and so where the law is vague or silent um where you know we're left to kind of figure out how to work within that those bounds of you know with that lack of clarity um to you know determine the legal parameters and and not so much our personal preference for style or any of those issues as much as I would like to uh be able to weigh in um and I know many would but really about the legal parameters and I'm gonna say that you know I believe that here uh unfortunately uh this one instrument of state law um has left enough of a gray area that we are unlikely to find uh a non-legit just uh way forward if uh there if the the developer and the neighbors cannot come to some um you know some reconciliation around the um the design and so my preference here I'm not going to make the motion I wouldn't see what others have to say but my preference would be to accept the minority planning commissioners position to send this back for redesign and just try to get folks to um come to some some agreement about how to move forward it could be a lot quicker resolution to do it that way um but I'll uh wait to hear what others have to say before we move forward thank you councilmember brown councilmember callantary johnson great yes I also appreciate all um of the community members who written letters and who were on the council meeting and called called in today um and yes to councilmember golders but we do read everything that comes through and really appreciate the time that you take to submit those letters this is a really complex and complicated issue um and I think you know there was a point made earlier that that we find ourselves here um being dictated by state law because we have really sort of failed locally to um meet the growing needs of our community and of our state um so now we find ourselves here and having to be kind of um appeased what not appeased but really have to abide by what um has been set by the state so absolutely moving forward as we have been with the planning department and really clarifying what our objective standards are um and in the meantime um having to rely on state law I think that um I agree that we will have to move forward with staff recommendations at this point I'm not sure that going back to the design phase will um get us anywhere um as Lee Butler mentioned um if it's certain design standards that would go against SB 330 then we would find ourselves in um litigation with potentially um with the state and with the developer so um I hear the concerns of the community and the neighbors I also hear what some of the callers said around our growing community our changing community and our needs for inclusion and diversity um and the needs for infill um housing so that I hear both sides and it seems at this point um I also won't make a motion just to just to hear what others have to say but I think at this point we have to move forward with staff recommendation and council member Watkins or Brunner I'm not sure who it was first I'm sorry I've been focused on the attendees and some other things so still learning to track everything that's happening before me do you two know which which one the tie there council member Watkins I'm happy to just I just have one brief question if that's okay with my colleague I don't know I don't either know I can't win up either so I'm sure and I'm unsure of the order that's what I thought thank you Bonnie for the colleagues really captured the complexity of the situation of the issue definitely the concerns of the neighbors and the impacts as well as the state law and how it supersedes our local authority essentially to be able to weigh in absent having some objective design standards in place I just want to make sure I'm really clear about the redesign and that what I heard from Lee is that anything that would be on the table for redesign would have to be really superficial essentially and that's sorry for lacking a better planning term and that nothing could really limit the density or the proposal of the housing you know the size of it right and so that that said I feel hesitant to go in that direction given that just to make sure that I really or somebody from planning to make sure I really understand what is kind of on the table here in terms of option sure you you are correct and our our agenda report laid out our analysis of SB 330 and SB 330 has a clause in it that says that I find it for you so it is the policy of the state that this section should be interpreted and implemented in a manner to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of and the approval and the provision of housing and so you know when there are you know these gray areas I think the the laws provided guidance to the courts to say here's how we want this interpreted you know we want it interpreted in a manner to promote housing and there are things in there that we that we set forth in our agenda report to that speak to both the density and the intensity of uses and and how we have a limited ability to affect either of those and so you know given that that's that's outlining the the sort of reasoning behind the position that we have on SB 330 and the limiting factors that are associated with it thank you thank you Leigh Bruner and then council member Cummings and then I'm going to put myself in the queue thank you this has been quite an interesting reading and research and listening and presentations thank you so much there's a lot of information to digest and consider and you know one thing that is clear to me is that we don't have any provisions in our code that dictate that you know a specific architectural style in our neighborhoods and that seems to be a really important point in this opposition to this project is keeping in character character with the the neighborhood and existing homes around but you know on a legal sense we don't have that capacity it's more on a good neighborly sense and I'm you know this is definitely an example of why it would be important this using this example to get design standards in place and objective standards in place as a community for the future going forward I don't know that that's something that would happen to affect it with this development and they're just really I'm trying to understand how we can get to a more efficient approval process options on this particular development um going forward what what we can do to compliment both both wants and ask if at all because they're all very valid we need the housing we need neighbors to appreciate their neighbors and the housing you know we can't design is subjective at this point with this particular project I just don't see what our options are other than the staff recommendation in regards to the housing the state housing affordability act and the lack of code in our own design standards councilmember Cummings I just wanted to before we because it seems like we're getting close to the end of this item and I just wanted to get some clarification one last time from the city attorney because it sounded like earlier in the meeting when we were talking about SB 330 what I heard is that council may require projects to be consistent with general plan and zoning standards and so I just want to see if I heard that correctly I was finding that it's complicated yes the council may require projects to comply with objective general plan standards and zoning code standards that are not inconsistent with the general plan as to density you know what we can do around this and you know personally I feel like we should be trying to you know we have standards on our books that we should be trying to our best you know to the extent that we can to meet those standards because once we start saying that we have these standards on the books but then you know state law comes into play they give us an option whether we should we should uphold these standards or we should you know wave them it becomes this issue where then you know our standards really don't mean anything if we continue to this not require the project to meet those standards and so you know I know it's complicated and that's part of the difficulty of moving these projects forward at this current point in time I'd be you know more supportive of you know trying to see if there's some way to reconcile the concerns of the residents with the developers and whether that could lead to some kind of redesign I think that that would be you know my personal preference I feel like that's where I'm at on this because you know we have general plan and zoning standards on our books if we have this option of requiring projects to meet those standards then I think that we should and if we want to change those standards I think that's another question and something that we should consider in the future everybody and my colleagues for all their comments it's it's a difficult topic we're probably gonna you know regardless of what decision we make tonight there's a bunch of different ways that this can go we can get sued either way so you know I just hope that we can come to a decision and you know continue to move on and see how we can work to improve our ability to get housing projects approved in the future Lee did you have something to add I saw you pop on I didn't know if you wanted to respond to council member coming to question or not thank you Mayor Myers I think the only thing that I would add is that really to me the only thing in question here is the lock size which you're alluding to council member Cummings and the you know for the benefit of folks that may be viewing from home and may not have read the agenda report the provision that we're calling out here speaks to the standards the objective standards essentially needing to facilitate the density allowed on the site by the general plan and so that's really the question and that's the that's really the in my opinion that's the only issue at hand and the way that we have looked at this we believe that the objective standard which is not 2200 square feet is not met at 2200 square feet of a lot area per unit on this site you know they've got I'll say uh you know uh well slightly less than that you know it's a not a 8800 square foot lot is 8,729 square feet or something so they do not have that so the only objective standard is in question is is that one and then this is the provision at hand that speaks to the proposed housing development is not being inconsistent with the applicable zoning standards it shall not require a rezoning if the zoning for the project site is inconsistent with the general plan it goes on to say local agency has complied and require the proposed housing development to comply with the objective standards and criteria of the zoning which is consistent with the general plan however the standards and criteria shall be applied to facilitate and accommodate development at the density allowed on the site by the general plan and proposed by the proposed housing development project so that last sentence is really what you know we are looking at here in making this recommendation and making this interpretation of SB 330 and actually I believe this part was out of AB 3194 is that the standards and criteria shall be applied to facilitate and accommodate the development at the density allowed on the site by the general plan and the proposed project meets the general plan density and so I just you know uh council member Cummings was asking and you know debating you know well does it does it meet that and you know are we throwing our standards out the window and on that on that particular issue I think that there uh there's it's it's challenging for us to apply the standards that we have and in that that issue could come up in multiple ways you know it could come up with height if we had a zoning district that had the height that wouldn't allow this you know there would be an argument that against that which is one of the reasons why early on we recommended that we get that SB2 grant for objective standards and move forward with that so that we can address these issues more comprehensively and we don't get into these gray areas of like does our does our zoning standards allow for that density do they allow for that density or not so I I just wanted to comment on that because I could see you struggling with it and I wanted to make sure you understood our perspective and and position on it thank you um in the interest of time um have been brought up by my colleagues um and I think that was the difficulty of um seeing change that I think many in the community doesn't feel fit in with their neighborhood um I am one of those folks too that wish that uh you know there could be some remedy of having people sit sit together and try to figure this out um I appreciate the the next door neighbor's comments she made earlier um neighborhoods in Santa Cruz with the state taking away much of our uh really decision making authority um we all don't know what to expect any longer um in these places that you know we have um if fortunate enough you know to have to you know be able to own or rent long term what kinds of things are going to be um what we'll be looking at you know as development proceeds in the in the city um I do believe that the um state law unfortunately is sort of holding our you know we've got our hands held by by this um or we're being held uh uh to a standard that doesn't necessarily um make for neighborly relations and for a process that's predictable on the other side for the person who's um taking the risk in purchasing property and trying to figure out their way through the development process either uh I think it's important to um understand that there's you know always kind of two sides to the story and um and when you when we're trying to remedy something that really is really coming down to neighborhood quality and neighborhood character um and how people feel about their neighbors uh it's it's very very difficult so I really appreciate um all the comments we've received all the folks who showed up tonight um and I know that folks have been really working through our system our our planning commission and all the various pieces that we put in place to try to make things work for our community and um I'm incredibly frustrated because I think this is a conversation we're going to keep having unfortunately until we can remedy our objective standards and do some other work to catch up with what the state law is basically forcing us to do um so I just want to thank everyone for all your comments all the work the applicant and the appellant thank you for very very uh clear and concise presentations this evening um as you can see uh I think this council wants to serve you all in the best way that we can and I'm not sure that the state's letting us do that just do this for you tonight so I will look to my colleagues I see um council member voluntary Johnson has her hand raised and um maybe look for uh potentially a motion from from one of my colleagues this evening council member voluntary Johnson thank you mayor Myers um and thank you to all of my colleagues and staff and everyone who's called in um I absolutely agree with your comments just now mayor Myers this is a difficult situation and um we are going through growing pains as we move into this next phase of our local planning and zoning and objective standards um and with that I am ready to make a motion to um um accept staff's recommendation that we acknowledge I'm reading it from the agenda report that we acknowledge environmental determination deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission's approval of the residential demolition authorization permit and design for it based on the findings and the attached resolutions and the conditions of approval they accept that a and I would look for a second to that motion remember Watkins please I'll give him the constraints I I feel comfortable seconding the motion at this point thank you any further comments or deliberation by the council seeing none um I'll call for a roll call those please Bonnie Mayor it looks like a firebird or had our hand I'm sorry I looked and then I looked away and go ahead vice mayor Bruna I just wanted to ask a quick question uh there was something brought up by one of the callers regarding a requirement for to be used for parking at what point is that a decision for council to make and require if you want to if you want to try then or looks like our whole team wants to have my colleagues have something to add um the the project does provide um it's required to provide eight spaces that does provide those eight spaces and I don't think there's much ability of the council to require that the garages be used as garages oh unfortunately um I think some of us using this storage or whatever so it's um it's my colleagues have something to add to be certain you can do on Windsor street um is a townhouse project and and both myself as zoning administrator as well as the planning commission have from time to time um impose a condition of approval that requires the ccnr's to um because the conditions covenants and restrictions to include language as the garages be open and available to parking um it's much easier to impose that condition on those types of projects because then it puts the homeowners association in enforcement uh capacity rather than staff um so it's something we've done on on ownership projects but but not necessarily on on rental projects such as this condition of approval yes that mission started imposing a while back but again it's it's really on on ownership uh projects it's it's real difficult for staff um given the number of cases open code enforcement cases that we have to uh enforce those provisions to make time to enforce those provisions the only thing I would add um counselor excuse me vice mayor bruner is that um I that condition those conditions have come from planning commission and staff in the past you know the council could add a condition to that effect um you know it it can create that um that enforcement challenge in the future um though the one other thing that I would say related to that is that um the state law does allow for um a certain number of garages on multi-family properties to be converted to ad use that that doesn't preclude you from um making such a condition um it's it's just the enforcement um over the long term um is something that you know isn't necessarily the the top priority and um it can be challenging from uh uh staff perspective does that help council member bruner I'm excuse me vice mayor bruner yes it does thank you okay uh council member coming did you have another question or comment did I have one more follow-up question that it just kind of struck me as we were having this conversation um so earlier when we were talking about um you know so these are going to go as rental units in my understanding so and I don't know if this is a question for the developer or maybe actually for our planning department but are there any conditions that um states that these have to remain as rental units in perpetuity I know that the 80% a amount of affordable unit will remain affordable but I'm just trying to understand at some point for example can can any of these units be sold as sold for housing so you know it's now you know owned by the occupant we have a condominium conversion requirement um and there are uh state laws related to that as well when you you go and you're converting a rental complex to condominiums and um I've processed a couple of them in my career but they are they are a very extensive amount of requirements just from the state in terms of the mapping I'd also note that we have a pretty strict requirement here in the city that speaks to a uh vacancy rate that um I don't think the city has seen in quite some time so it speaks to a rental vacancy rate um that needs to be taken into consideration I will say that we did approve one of these in my tenure here that went from I I can't remember if it went to a tenant in common or if it went to a straight condominium but all of the tenants at that facility this was um over not on Grant Street but a street or two over from Grant Street all of the tenants were actually the ones that were purchasing the uh the unit ability for us to do an exception there but I'll say that we've got some pretty strict rules around condominium conversions and um turning them over into uh ownership units um would present some significant challenges thank you council member Cummings if there's no other um further questions by the council members then I will request the ask the court to please do a roll call vote no that motion passes with and to against by do I need to I don't do I need to read off the council members votes um I want to yeah I will read off yeah five votes in favor that's council by council members Brunner Collin Tari Johnson Mayor Myers council member Golder and council member Watkins vice mayor Brunner I did uh note you two against that's council member Cummings and council member Brown the motion does pass thank you everyone for joining us tonight um and uh we appreciate all your input this evening we'll now move on to our final item this evening this is oral communications for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you want to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in instructions are on your screen oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda if you're interested in adjusting the council press star nine on your phone to to raise your hand you will have two minutes to speak when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted we request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comment so that we can accurately capture in the meeting minutes however this is not required please remember this is a time for council to hear from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public but we when we are able we will address the questions raised after oral communications has been completed so again this is for items not on the agenda this evening and i see one hand raised one zero awarded to people who can't prove damages is actually a feature that law also declares causing embarrassment or humiliation is an illegal act it does not defend the truth is a defense it's a very strict couldn't offer an opinion about how those three claimed racist local 911 calls would fair with such an extraordinarily vague ordinance and their opinion on what the evidence would need to be to connect personally a specific intent law but is actually a law disallowing speech that incites commission of illegal acts since speech and police accomplice doer is really required i know police perfection isn't possible but what we do ask of police's excellence be sworn to protect with knowledge of and to uphold the law the supreme court has held the constitutional guarantees of free speech do not permit a state to forbid or prescribe speech advocacy of the use of force or to violate laws except where such advocacy eminently and will likely will incite or produce such unlawful actions can truthful speech make eminent and likely an incitement of the police to commit illegal acts no would not police also be guilty accomplices unless the 911 caller lied yes says the police alone are the only ones capable of committing most specific illegal harms listed in classic specific intent law a burglar breaks into a gallery with intent to steal a million dollar painting but finds none and leaves empty-handed but is still guilty of a specific intent to commit burglary for clarity can serve replacing that specific intent instead a person contacts the police and says i want the police to break into that art gallery and steal that million dollar painting because the owner is a fat white male racist sexist homophobic greedy capitalist pig the police really go to the art gallery location no harm is done but the owner is still entitled to a thousand dollars in fabricated damages but not if the caller had left out fat white male i only said the owner was a racist sexist homophobic greedy capitalist pig because those characteristics are not a violation basis the act proving intent is now just vaguely described politically thank you participants in tonight's meeting from the public wishing to speak during oral communication i am not seeing any hands so we are adjourned for this evening thank you everyone and have a good evening thank you thank everybody thank you