 One, three, four, six, two, four, eight, seven, seven, nine, nine, one, three, zero, one, seven, one, five, eight, five, nine, two, one, three, one, two, six, two, six, six, seven, nine, nine, one, four, six, five, eight, eight, six, five, six, four, one, two, five, three, two, one, five, eight, seven, eight, two. After calling, you'll enter the meeting ID number, which is nine, four, zero, six, six, five, nine, eight, two, eight, one. And when prompted for participation ID, please press pound. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there's a delay in streaming, so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. Call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on. 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'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you've commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Byers? She's not unmuted. Oh. Councilmember Byers? Here. Matthews? Here. Brown? Boulder? Here. Here. Did we hear Brown? Okay. Can you not hear me? Watkins? Can't hear you. Vice Mayor Meyers? Who is that? Sandy? And it's Mayor Meyers. We can't hear you. Vice Mayor Meyers? I can't hear her. Mayor Cummings? To speak on this item, we'll move over to the public comment. Looks like there are two members of the public. And so we'll start with public comment. The members of the public, three, nine, seven, nine, we're trying to camp here. Maybe. No. I'm not muted. Pardon me, Mayor. May I take advantage of the low to announce that the potential litigation item relates to a threat of law litigation under the California Voting Rights Act by the appointment of Gabriella Joseph. That will be the second closed session. Is it possible that you can now hear me? We can hear you. Please mark me as present. Thank you. I can't hear the person calling in from three, nine, seven, nine. That's me. That's me. That's Donna. Okay. Seeing no other members of the public wishing to speak at this time, we'll move into closed session. The session of the April 28, 2020 meeting of the city council. A few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. And we'll like also like to apologize for being a little bit late today. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming from the city's website, city of Santa Cruz dot com. All council members including myself are participating in this meeting remotely. And I want to thank the public for staying at home to view today city council meetings. You wish to comment on agenda items 1420 with the exception of item 15 instructions are on your screen as follows. Call one of the following numbers. The first number you dial is busy. Continue to the next number until you get through. You can call in at 1-669-900-9128-1346-248-7799-1301-715-8592. 1-312-621-646-656-41253-215-8782. Into the meeting ID number 940-6659-8281. And when prompted for a participant ID and press down. You may be able to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there's a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. Call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on. When it is time for public comment, press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak to our public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. To speak to another item, two things may occur. If the number of calls... I apologize, I'll wait and exceed the capacity. You will be disconnected and you will need to call back closer to when the item you wish to comment on will be heard. Or you will be placed back in the queue and should you press star 9 to raise your hand when you wish to comment on the new item. You may also send an email to cityclerk at cityofsantacuse.com. Your comment will be shared with the council members as they are received and you will be entered into public record. Now it would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Council member is Byers. Here. Matthews. Is that me? Yes. I didn't understand you. Yes, here. Brown. Here. Boulder. Present. Watkins. Here. Vice Mayor Myers. Here. And Mayor Cummings. The land upon which we gather is the unseeded territory of the Waswas speaking UP tribe. The Alamutin tribal band comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taking to Mission Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast is today working hard to restore the traditional stewardship practices on these lands and from historic trauma. And if the clerk could please lead us from the Pledge of Allegiance. To the United States of America. And to the Republic. My nation. Under God. Individible. Individible. And Justice. And Justice. Brown. To begin with our first presentation. I'd like to also acknowledge the celebration of Ramadan, observed by Muslims worldwide. As a month of fasting, prayer, reflection and community. Ramadan goes from April 23rd to May 23rd, 2020. And I encourage members of our community to join our Muslim community as we reflect on our community during these typical times and observing the Ramadan presentations. Quarterly update on the resilient coast plan. I'll turn that over to Tiffany Wise West sustainability and climate action manager. I'm Tiffany Wise West, the sustainability and climate action manager for the city of Santa Cruz. I'm here today to update you on something different than when I was before you two weeks ago talking about a mission reduction. Instead today, I'm going to update you on our prime adaptation projects entitled resilient coast Santa Cruz. I do want to mention that it is the first annual global adaptation month and as part of the city's commitment to adaptation, we've committed to completing these two projects that I will share with you our progress on today as well as secure funding for a next step resilience project called out in our adaptation plan. This quarterly update is required by our grant making agencies and I would like to remind you that the resilient coast initiative broadly is our opportunity to develop the community's vision for a climate resilient future coastline. So how are we going to manage our coastline in the future in the face of climate change? Why are we doing these projects? We know that there are potential issues to coastal access on our coastline with erosion and so forth. We know that our coastline is relied upon for tourism and recreation and those are highly valued in our community. We also have West Cliff Drive and our bimodal bike path that are part of the transportation assets along our coastline that will likely need to be adapted. We also have sensitive ecosystems notably monarch butterflies as well as other terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across our coastline that need to be considered in any planning. Of course we have all kinds of coastal infrastructure from armoring to pipelines to structures and we have some existing policy that likely will be updated as a result of these projects that pertain to management of the coast. Of course here in Santa Cruz we also have to be mindful of our strong sense of place and cultural identity which is also incorporated into these projects and I want to emphasize that we have been striving to really center equity in these projects and I'll share with you a little about that in a moment. So in addressing these various topics we are trying to create an inclusive conversation to develop this community vision that has an eye out towards the end of the century 2100 is our time horizon and again to achieve a resilient and equitable coastline. Again resilient coast is comprised of two projects the West Cliff Drive adaptation and management plan as well as a beaches focused project to develop local coastal program policies related to sea level rise that support beach and public access protection. These projects are aligned in their timeline and they have a very similar but not exact scope of work so it really made sense for us to couple these together. These projects began really in earnest about a year ago. We are advised on these projects through a technical advisory committee made up of 17 members of our community including the mayor and both and the vice mayor are on that tack and we as you will see later on there are a number of other groups that we are consulting with on this project. We also have an internal kind of core team working together from various departments on this project. So the unique approach that we are utilizing that we feel is a very smart approach is using what is called adaptation pathways. So because of the uncertainty of when sea level rise related and climate change related coastal impacts will really accelerate instead we make choices or initiate projects between short and long term strategies through the use of triggers. So getting away from saying in your 2050 we are going to put up a specific seawall instead we say okay perhaps there is a physical trigger that allows us to know the right time to begin planning and installing that seawall and you can see here a number of different triggers that we are considering among others and we really want to have measurable triggers so that we do have that signal as to when to initiate a next step project. And what that looks like over time are this is an example visualization of an adaptation pathway for sea bright beach. So this is just one example. We are developing many different pathways for each of the four beaches sea bright main cowl and natural bridges as well as the west cliff pocket bridges as well as four distinct segments along west cliff drive. So we will be developing different adaptation pathways that prioritize different coastal management goals before we get into the process of actually identifying our preferred pathways. So starting on the upper left hand corner you see that our existing strategy we have a wide beach we have a little bit of revetment or armoring and some sand retention that comes from the west harbour jetty. We can continue in that mode until we hit some kind of specific trigger such as a specific beach width or height and from there we might transition into say a living shoreline kind of application or treatment. For example we could enhance the existing natural dune I'm sorry constructed dune that is already there with native planning to provide a little bit more buffering on coastal storm activity and forces. And then another beach width trigger could cause us perhaps to reconfigure our jetty to capture more sand transport and build our beach up and there could be some trigger at some point in time whether it's beach width or repetitive loss or something else that may cause us to look at okay where might we need to relocate say the first lane of roadway or the lateral sidewalk above the seabright beach and that would be a retreat concept so this kind of shows you how we are beginning to present these adaptation pathways. So in order to inform these pathways of course our two consultants we have a great local consultant team that are working on both projects with different lead consultants. They are of course providing their professional expertise but we are also trying to educate and conduct outreach with our community to understand their preferences and I will kind of connect this all together for you in a future slide. The first two rows of this extensive outreach has been completed already and you can see it's pretty extensive ranging from focus groups to intersect surveys on West Cliff Drive that will feed into the cost benefit analysis interviews in our frontline communities of the beach flats and lower ocean area where we are gaining some really interesting insights that actually transcend beyond adaptation and sea level rise. We also successfully completed an open house on March 5th right before the COVID shutdown started. We had 105 people in attendance that was a very well attended meeting for us. Of course the virtual reality application phase one of that has concluded in the library and we are working on phase two which will roll out in a mobile phone application and we are also looking forward to how can we adapt in person meetings into say virtual open house environments. We also have been meeting one on one with historically underrepresented groups in the community. Everything from people of color to LGBTQ to people experiencing homelessness and so forth and really have gained some very unique insights that are being integrated into the deliverables for these projects. On that note I think we will go ahead and talk about equity in this initiative. These are really some reflections on how this iterative and experimental kind of practice is going in centering equity. I really could do an entire talk on all that we are doing on equity but you know from the get go we really have tried to intentionally spend time with frontline community leaders and historically underrepresented groups trying to build trust and I feel like we have made some progress in that regard and really worked with particularly our beach flats leaders in designing our meetings and outreach techniques. We also have leveraged academic partnerships to bring more capacity to this project to really focus long-term frontline communities. We are collaborating with Dr. Stanza Rampini at San Jose State University on the one-on-one interviews and we will be continuing that work and we are also partnering with the UCSC Coastal Science and Policy Grad Program and have several projects related to equity going on right now. As I mentioned we have been meeting with historically underrepresented groups and we will be following up with them and I just want to mention internal to the city related to health and all policies some of these implementation actions are also really helping us to bring equity front and center not only in the Resilient Coast Initiative but to be widen and you'll see that there are a few items that I mentioned below. So how does all of this fit together and I'm not going to read through this but I do want to give a sense of how the data that we are collecting flows into the outputs and the deliverables on the project from the very beginning starting to collect information about the uses, the way people use the coastline and value the coastline that allowed us to really go into setting some goals for coastal management that we drafted with the Coastal Commission and prioritized with some of our teams in order to understand what goals are priorities as we are thinking about tradeoffs between some of these strategies. From there we have determined set of strategies to analyze both in the short, medium and long term and start to begin to discuss what do those triggers look like that allow transition between the strategies and that's kind of where we are at this point. We are now moving into the adaptation pathway recommendations that will be developed that will be informed by more in-depth feasibility analyses across benefit analysis and more feedback and then that really gets us to if you look to the right this vision that I started off the presentation with and really that vision will be articulated in the West Cliff Drive Adaptation and Management Plan and the local coastal program amendment that will be coming to council by the end of the year for adoption and then submitted to the coastal commission after that to make it through their process. I should say that in addition to the other groups that I've mentioned we're working very closely with the coastal commission state parks and the boardwalk as really key stakeholders in these projects to make sure we are all aligned so that when we get to the end of these projects we're all on the same page. So in addition to the existing conditions and future vulnerability assessment that was submitted last year, the end of last year you can see behind these two colored blocks one of the outputs from that which shows high hazard areas and so forth and all of that information is summarized in the documents that are at thesanacruze.com forward slash resilience coast and there's a document box there. We did just receive our second set of deliverables from our consultants yesterday so you will see that that website has been updated with our adaptation strategy and pathway evaluation as well as a social vulnerability actually a socially vulnerable population impact assessment which really I think is very unique in connecting the insights we've gained from our historically underserved and underrepresented folks into a planning document like this there's a lot of interest from the state on this particular piece and projects as a whole I should say. The next set of deliverables then that are due at the end of June will be three sets of adaptation pathways for each of these stretches of our coastline, the four beaches I mentioned and the four zones along Westcliff and then of course the virtual reality phase two will also be out by June 30th of this year and with that I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you. Thanks Tiffany. Are there any council members who have questions for Tiffany Wise? Council Member Brown? Yeah I don't have any questions I just wanted to say thank you Tiffany for all of your work and to your team for working you know doing all of this outreach and really being very deliberate about how we take input from the community and in particular low income folks and potentially affected areas of the town and you know just and thank you for presenting it to us in this really really clear understandable way. I definitely appreciate that there's so much work that's gone into kind of behind the scenes to get us to something that we can kind of understand and know how we're moving forward. So just thank you again for and keep up the good work. Thank you Council Member Brown. Oh we have a couple of buyers and then Vice Mayor Morales. What's that? What's that? I'm trying to. Okay Tiffany, you know all this going on that I think is with our coast and of course I think West Cliff drive with the the same place and all the tours coming over and all the work I mean somehow is there something new that you're thinking whoa we haven't looked at that angle that may cause you to just take a deep breath and look at something else anyway the impact right but I'm just curious if all that's going on has juggled you at all or brought up something. Thank you for that question Council Member Byers. So one interesting aspect of West Cliff Drive is that we're required by the grant making agency to look at going potentially to one lane on West Cliff Drive and to evaluate where might that make sense, does that make sense I think you know our small planning team has really thought about with the COVID you know that could potentially be you know a test for one lane in the future if we would decide you know at some point to do that to enable more space along West Cliff as people are utilizing that space that's one way we thought about the COVID kind of taking it as an opportunity as a test I'm not sure with timing you know whether that's going to happen or not but that's really the extent to which we've kind of reshifted our thinking otherwise I just do think that the project is very timely with respect to how the space is allocated how we utilize space and how we ensure that our community's priorities are maintained going forward Thank you You're welcome Officer Mayor Myers yeah I just wanted to just just quick remark I'm lucky enough to serve on the technical advisory committee of this effort and I just wanted to compliment Tiffany and all the staff working on this it's really been a really interesting process and I think that we're doing something that I don't know that any really other city in the state is doing right now with regards to the scope and the breadth of how we're taking this analysis on and looking at both the social benefits but also some of the environmental benefits and conditions and really forecasting putting ourselves out 50 years and so it's been a really interesting process I want to just compliment Tiffany both of the consultant teams are working with have been excellent and a lot of other city staff and people from the community are involved in the technical advisory committee it's been a very good experience and so I just want to compliment compliment the process and the ground-breaking effort this will be when it's all done Thank you Vice Mayor Myers I just wanted to compliment the process and Tiffany as well and just really also highlight how important it is to build trust and to have an inclusive process that's really looking at equity and we know that with climate change all hotels and inequities can be announced and to be prepared and engaged and wanting to move in a direction that's more equitable I think it's also really noteworthy so thank you for your exceptional work and I'll take up much more time but great job Thank you Council Member I now do have a question I was going to bring this up on a later item around the shelter in place extension but since Council Member Myers brought it up I thought I'd ask Tiffany do you in terms of this question about the because I actually think I've been thinking about this too the opportunity of kind of testing partial closure on Westcliffe and I know some other cities have done this to try to create more space for people to be active we've seen the challenges with people kind of bunched up together on Westcliffe and so I guess the question that I have then if you also see this as a possible opportunity do you have any recommendations about how we could move that forward operationally your thoughts but then what the Council might do to try to encourage that or move us forward Thank you for that question Council Member Brown I would like to defer to Claire Globley this question I know that the possibility of one lane being used for pedestrian and and or bike traffic has been discussed previously but Claire would know best where that's going and what the best way to integrate into that conversation might be so I'll let Claire speak Good afternoon Council Claire Globley I'm a transportation planner and I've been working with Tiffany on this project and then in addition to that since COVID started having a lot of conversations with our transportation partners and our public health partners related to this question which keeps coming up should be closed one lane on Westcliffe in response to so many people being there and we've seen other communities doing it but one of the key tenants that other communities have done when they have closed streets is that they have done them on miles and miles of streets throughout entire communities rather than just in one location which then serves to encourage more people coming to that similar spot so at this time closing one lane on Westcliffe our thoughts are that that would bring more people there as a destination location rather than supporting the public health directives which are to exercise in your neighborhood please do continue getting outside walking and biking close to home and so continuing to have the parking spaces closed at this time and continuing to really encourage people to stay close to home rather than traveling for recreation or exercise is what we're planning to continue at this point we're anticipating having more guidance come out from public health in the coming days as we approach May and looking what we saw this weekend with so many people coming to town I would be really happy to see that ascent to encouraging larger and larger groups of people to come to a location that we would endorse for more active activities I'd really rather encourage people to stay in their neighborhoods and exercise close to home although I'm looking forward to this project examining long-term in a planned non-pandemic environment how we would look at Westcliffe. Thanks Claire. Thank you. I'd just like to say thank you for all the hard work that you've been doing and I think that given that this month we've had the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and that we're moving ahead so we're at the forefront of making sure that we are ready as we continue to face these impacts of climate change I'm glad that we're making progress that we're planning ahead in the long run we're going to be better off for everything that we're doing now so thanks you for all the work that you're doing. Yes, absolutely thank you Mayor and if I might say on that note just to end a study from last year indicated from the Institute of Building Sciences that for every $1 spent on hazard mitigation planning that saves $6 in future disaster costs so I think that's very purple with your final comments there Mayor thank you. Moving on, a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityoffantries.com If you wish to comment on agenda item today instructions are provided on the screen we'll provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda we'll be open for public comment. Calls from comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. Items that will be open for public comment today are the numbers items 4 and 20 on our agenda with the exception of item 15 since council is not taking action on that item today. I'd like to ask the council members are there any statements of disqualification today if you have a statement of disqualification just like to ask that you please press the blue button to raise your hand saying none. I'd like to ask the clerk to announce any additions or deletions. We have done. This is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that are not currently on the agenda. Oral communications will occur immediately following agenda item number 20. If you wish to make a comment during oral communications please call in towards the end of item 20. I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on closed session. Mayor Cummings members of the city council this afternoon the city council convened remotely at 11.30 a.m. for a closed session to discuss the following items. Item A was a council for the conference with legal counsel on liability claims the claim of Sentinel insurance company limited for WUN property management LLC. Item B was a conference with labor negotiators involving the following bargaining groups in which the council received a report from its chief negotiator Lisa Murphy. These were the groups that were discussed. Police officers association firefighter IAFF local 1716. Fire management association police management association OE3 mid manager and supervisor employees IAF FIU local 521 and unrepresented employee Berkeley the council received a report from the city attorney's office with regard to the matter of pending litigation entitled California et al. versus the state of Texas et al. This is a lawsuit in which the state of Texas and other states are challenging the constitutionality of the affordable care act taken by Congress in 2017 to eliminate the visual mandate associated with that council by unanimous vote directed the city attorney's office to join in an amicus brief being prepared by county of Santa Clara and the city of Chicago and to be filed in the United States Supreme Court in the early part of May and lastly there was one item of significant exposure to litigation which the council received a report from the city attorney's office on a notice of intention to file suit under the California voting rights act that was brought on behalf of a registered voter in the city of Santa Cruz to claim alleges that an analysis of the city's at-large system of city council elections shows a pattern of racially polarized voting that results in the abridgment of Latino voting rights in the city. Good afternoon. The council voted unanimously to direct the city attorney to enter into settlement negotiations with the claimant's attorney and to return out a future meeting with the resolution of intention to transition to district-based elections for the November 2022 general election and that is all I have to report for you today. Thank you very much. City managers to report and provide updates on city events and business items. Thank you Mayor. I will provide a report and cover three areas today related to the COVID-19 pandemic response. First, beaches and the expected revised and extended shelter in place order. Then police enforcement and public safety considerations and that chief mills will present on that. And then third, homelessness the homelessness response will have Susie O'Hara and Brooke Newman who will present. And then I'll introduce Brooke before the presentation as well who's our new employee. So I'll start with the beaches and the expected shelter in order that will be revised and extended. So as you all know, despite efforts to increase public awareness and additional staffing to ensure compliance with the shelter in place order and the social and physical distancing regulations, we did have a large number of visitors to our beaches, particularly visitors from out of the area and a lot of concern expressed around that. And as a result we are expecting revised and extended shelter in place order from health officer Gail Newell that will include significant more restrictions for beach access as well as potentially our restrictions to focus use on active recreation including for example the prohibition of beach chairs coolers umbrellas that sort of thing. We don't know what they will be yet but expect that the new order will be issued by the end of this week. We are the different agencies are providing input into the process but ultimately the health officer will make a decision and that order will be issued as I noted likely by the end of this week. We are communicating like I said communicating and coordinating closely with the county the city of capitol and state parks so that we can implement the new order in a way that is consistent to the extent possible across the county and so that we don't also impact each other negatively. Another area of concern that was raised this weekend in particular was the hotel and vacation rentals where visitors appear to have used these facilities inconsistent or in violation of the shelter in place order so in response we will be increasing we will be sending out notices to all of our hotels motels and vacation rentals informing the regulations and enforcing as appropriate as well and just wanted to point out that as a reminder members of the public if you'd like to receive the latest information on city services as well as the COVID-19 response to please visit the city's website at www.cityofscanacruz.com backslash coronavirus so we update the website on a regular basis with any of the changes that occur and that's a good place to get information on all these changes so with that I'll now turn it over to Chief Mills who will present on the public safety considerations. Good afternoon mayor and council members thank you for this opportunity to give you some information about what's currently going on I think Laura is going to bring up some slides that we can go through just to give you some update and you can go ahead and forward please one of the concerns what would calls for service look like but at this point since the COVID crisis started we are running essentially the same amount of calls for service as before there was a slight decline initially but overall you can see that it has now gone back up and we are running exactly what we were in the past okay go ahead and forward please we've had 374 calls regarding ordinance violations this was as a 422 and 26 of those calls required officers to wear universal protection which means to going to all suited up with goggles and masks and gloves and so forth our personnel we've issued 213 citations for violation of the stay in place orders 21 of those individuals lived elsewhere 98 in addition to that probably lived elsewhere but that information was not available we've also done a great deal of education as you can see thousands of warnings by our police officers, CSOs and rangers and our volunteers who have done an amazing job and then we've also had social media and then regular media that has reached into the millions I cannot say that it has had an educational piece on those from other places at this point but we can evaluate that next one please Mr. Mayor about sexual violence and domestic violence and mental health calls during this time as you can see our sexual assaults are actually down quite a bit next slide our domestic violent calls have been fluctuating you can see the timelines between last year and this year they're up a little bit this year however it has flattened out toward the end of the month and has gone back down although we are seeing some cases that are very troubling and concerning we're paying attention to that in our investigative section our burglaries initially started off then going up towards the right part of the slide you can see variations over time however they have gone back down where commercial burglaries however are still taking place and our officers have now reached almost 10 people in custody for these burglaries thank you next slide investigations are at a normal level and then suicide calls are actually fewer than we have had in the past we're not really sure why that is but we'll continue to watch it although we do understand that calls to suicide hotlines are actually up other places so we'll see if we can get more data on that and I think that's the last one so certainly if you have any questions I would take them we are continuing to put staff out on west cliff as well as the beaches to make sure that people are complying with the rules as best we can there are a lot of people out there thank you are there any questions for the police chiefs at this point in time chief I have one question I was wondering if we can speak to how the city has been making efforts to increase not only the police but other forms of patrols we adjusted our staffing model from a 410 plan to a 312 plan which means that we can put additional officers on the field out in the field around the clock and that gives us extra bodies to go out there and police in addition to that we have paid some overtime to rangers and CSOs especially in the high traffic areas such as west cliff and the beach to make sure that people are being educated warned and cited when appropriate and so we feel like we have a pretty good handle on that portion of it I also might add that this last weekend for instance the park and rec department all had employees out there in green vests educating people talking to people and doing everything we can to make sure that people understand what's expected by the public health officer to see executive director for the city manager great and then this question for the city manager do we also have lifeguards currently working on the beaches or is that something that might be happening in the future yes we had them this weekend I believe we had also on the the jet skis out enforcing actually Jason might be able to I think he's on the line I'm there Jason I do so yes we do have lifeguards in service but we're not following the traditional model of putting lifeguards in towers one I don't want to send a message that we're open for business to have more people come and also I don't want to expose them to everyone walking up to their towers but we do have a reactive rescue force on the beach and vehicles and we do have PWCs in the water we use them for making contact prior to the closure over Easter weekend with surfers that were in the water and we're making educational contacts and we are available for medical calls and for water rescue calls but it's not the traditional deployment that we've done in the past great thank you I think it's just really important for members of the public to know that the city is taking this extremely seriously and we've increased everything from rangers, CSOs parts employees in a lifeguard trying to engage and educate with members of our community so I very much appreciate that I will turn it over to Vice Mayor Myers followed by Council Member Brown and then Council Member Boulder Thank you Chief Mills for this report I just want to pass on some comments I've received from the community they're continuous I think to be some confusion on enforcement and approaches in individual situations so to the extent that we can utilize our public media, social media those kinds of things for people to really understand if they're contacted what's expected of them why they would be contacted and when remedies are going to be inspected so whether that's a citation or just asking them to move off the beach and stop the activity I think there's, I've gotten reports of uneven approaches from people either experiencing it or viewing how we're approaching it I compliment all of our staff on this monumental situation that you're faced with to try to really manage this but to the extent that we can potentially just keep using the social media and other aspects to really communicate with our public and other public communities and other organizations for either visitors if they are here but also for local people I think it would be very helpful and hopefully we can get into a rhythm with behaviors and expectations moving ahead and I think that will obviously help our community get large so thank you for your efforts I really appreciate the breakdown of information that you provided and want to thank you for and everybody on the in the SCPD for responding nimbly and you know effectively I think to the current environment and so I wanted to ask you though because call for service being ready doesn't necessarily tell us or get out the energy and the time that's extended for the you know calls I mean the nature of those calls might be different or you know so I'm just wondering that's the first question is there anything else that you could say to help us understand what's going on for you all this is kind of a question about labor practices so like the burden on you know beat officers versus others and then I also was wondering if you have any thoughts on the mental health being down by that amount that was interesting to me to see and so those are my questions thanks the burn is exactly the same on our beat officers and Rangers those who are out there handling stuff they are still dealing with many of the same problems as before but I don't see that as a whole lot different I think the the same type of crimes are taking place we're still doing de-escalation we're still dealing with people who have severe mental health problems but on the other portion of your question of you know mental health holds I think there are a couple reasons for that one is aren't quite as many people out and about to observe people acting out and having significant mental health issues but when we see our calls for people in crisis who are threatening suicide or down that also is an interesting thing to me maybe families are more available and I'm just speculating I have no idea for sure but we were taking a look at and trying to figure out why that would be down that far that is certainly something we need to take a look at Council Member Golder thank you for the information and I realize that nobody in this meeting has control ultimately over what decision about the beaches is county public health but that being said I encourage members of the public to reach out to her with their issues I know my inbox has been flooded with concerns one way or another about this and from the perspective of that schools are closed kids are home cooped up and I think for the physical and mental health of the community it's important to keep people active and being able to recreate in whatever way at the beaches and so just keeping that in mind that for our community it's really important and so one thought was has there been any press release directly I know there's been social media stuff but like an exact press release just for like Bay Area and like Santa Clara County news outlets stating stay in your county this kind of information because I think that could have an impact and you know things on the fines and fees and all sorts of things too you're asking me a question I think I got the gist of it has there been press releases and yes there have been press releases I I was thinking specifically though targeting like other cities not our city like Bay Area cities maybe Ralph yes Tony Elliot has been working with Park and Rec directors from other cities from state parks and other counties as well and we did issue a press release related towards residents outside of our county residents who have been visiting our beaches and stuff and we also did a few interviews with TV stations in those cities as well letting them know of the closures that are parking lots and just informing them that now is not really the time to visit our community especially with the shelter in place orders and that we did have officers out there citing individuals for not following shelter in place orders and all that stuff so yes communication has gone out to areas outside of our area for them that we didn't want visitors at this time on Saturday did an interview with K-R-O-M in San Francisco letting them know the same message an article has been published in Orange County about making plans to come to Santa Cruz and Supervisor Coonerty and myself we wrote a letter to that publication asking them that for right now let me please pull that down to not encourage folks to start making some of the plans while we still have the shelter in place order in effect and earlier in the month there was around the time when we had the Easter closures there was a public service announcement from myself Supervisor Leopold and the Mayor of Capitola to not come here during that time and it sounds like that might be getting reworked so we can release that and have that ongoing really encouraging people to not come to our community and to continue sheltering in place and Chief Middlesbrough to introduce Brooke and then turn it over to Suzy and Brooke who will do an update on the homelessness response so as you know we recently hired Brooke Newman as City's first homelessness response manager Brooke started on April 6 and has really gotten into the COVID-19 response very quickly playing a critical role at both the city and county level in planning and I'm sorry putting into implementing the county's Incident Command System planned for the homelessness response which is evolving and changing so she's very involved in that role and with Brooke's experience managing the downtown streets team sitting on City's community advisory committee on homelessness, the cash committee and also just serving on many local committees on the area of homelessness our expectation is that Brooke and her work with city staff and our partners at the county and with service providers and other stakeholders in the community will make an immediate impact for the city and the region now as we deal with the pandemic we will have to confront and work on for some time to come so with that we're very happy to have Brooke on board and to have that additional resource and focus and effort and I'll turn it over to Susie now and Brooke, thank you Thank you so much Martin and it's my pleasure to also introduce and congratulate Brooke on this assignment it's obviously quite a relief to me to have additional team members in the city manager's office that are focused on homelessness so good afternoon Mayor Cummings and council members, I'm going to share my screen and Brooke and I are going to walk through some slides around COVID related response to homelessness some of this information is going to be reshared from the last time I made a presentation at council and then we do also have new information to share with you all so let me share my screen hopefully everybody can see that okay so as I mentioned some of these slides are a bit of a review from the last time that I presented but I did want to talk about really the overarching policy guidance that the county is using through their incident command system which is technically called the shelter and care doc and has been called through the media and through press releases and out in the community through engagement the regional homelessness task force on COVID so as we have considered what elements to put together in response to COVID-19 and considering transition potential of the virus within the homeless population we really have looked at overarching policy guidance that's been provided at a national level in addition to the CDC guidance that has been updated several times over the last few weeks the national alliance to end homelessness created a report that they disseminated on March 23rd which obviously talks about what best practices should local municipalities consider as they try to minimize spread of the virus protect health and the health system infrastructure from a potential outbreak within the homeless community minimize economic impacts across the community and then also obviously care for the entire community both housed and unhoused alike that plan was built in concert with the other organizations that you see the logos here the national health care for homeless council national association for community health centers and the united health care community in states as a review I wanted to quickly go over again the structure for homelessness response within the COVID-19 pandemic the lead agency being the county of Santa Cruz through the homelessness task force which is managed through the human services department at the county each jurisdiction city jurisdiction within the county supports that work with both the city of Watsonville and the city of Santa Cruz having members of their city managers office sit on the policy committee for that task force across the spectrum of supportive services that the county is providing are include showing up are and supporting our existing shelters especially congregate shelters that have had high density sleeping arrangements those have all been those congregate settings have all been minimized and we have moved folks from the Salvation Army for instance shelters in both north and south county and the poly loft into new shelter capacity to ensure that social distancing can be achieved in addition to that providing distributed safety net services such as food and creating new pop opportunities from sheltered individuals to engage with the system of care and shelters thank you council members it's been an honor to serve the city and to start at this time has been quite the education so as many of you probably know the county of Santa Cruz is taking the lead on acquiring the different types of shelters that we need for people experiencing homelessness with the referrals that Susie mentioned in terms of decongesting and decompressing the shelters that were in place and the county has been taking folks experiencing homelessness that have been potentially diagnosed or exposed to COVID-19 highly medically vulnerable or over the age of 65 or have other underlying conditions is defined by the CDC into the isolation and quarantine shelters which are in a variety of hotels throughout the city and also the county service providers have been making those referrals they have also we have also worked on expanding congregate shelter so making sure that there is space for the people who are already served there but we have additional capacity now in places such as the veterans hall and a barracks tent up at the armory so we are able to serve more folks and then we are also doing work to ensure that folks who are unsheltered in encampments can safely socially distance while they are out there and provide them with the resources they need to stay safe outside discussing some of these that we have been working on in conjunction with the county and service providers throughout this time period Susie would you like to start? So per the national alliance to homelessness guidelines set forth in their document there are the six particular areas that they are recommending for local jurisdictions both city and counties to focus on as concrete action steps those include reorganizing and redeploying existing shelter which we have locally moved forward with and additional sites will be identified by the county moving forward lifting any ordinance and require 24-7 shelters so every shelter within our regional system has moved that was not 24-7 has now moved to 24-7 operations we are currently providing day services for folks at the Laurel street shelter at the armory rather than having those folks go out into the community during the day for instance and I think of the 16 shelter providers within the county all 16 have gone to 24-7 operations to ensure those that are receiving services can safely shelter in place at those locations we have created additional capacity to safely house people at risk while supporting the local hotel and motel service industries as Brooke mentioned this the county has contracted with now two hotels within the city of Santa Cruz they are looking towards finalizing a lease agreement on a third hotel those hotels will be exclusively used for it's called IQV isolated, quarantined and vulnerable populations those include obviously folks that are either COVID positive or under investigation for potential exposure symptomatic as well as those that are 65 and older and or medically vulnerable one hotel with a bed capacity of 27 is currently in operation with another hotel opening up tomorrow somewhat of a soft launch and we are moving folks around to ensure that we have enough capacity should there be a surge of COVID positive individuals in the unhoused population that we have the ability to move folks into additional rooms as we bring them online on that note there have been no reported and verified cases of COVID-19 within our homeless population we have a few folks that have been tested that have come back negative there are a few folks in the IQV shelter that's currently open now are awaiting test results but nobody within our current homeless population has tested positive yet with regard to the COVID-19 spread in addition to that obviously I mentioned this already following protocols for quarantining individuals that is happening through the hotel rooms expand medical respite care again these hotel rooms are really a medical response and so anybody who does not require hospitalization is provided medical attention at these hotels and then working with housing providers to plan on transition for individuals into supportive housing obviously that is a big part of demobilization and recovery and those supportive services will be part of the COVID related shelter system that we are putting in place with the county right now and as we work through funding and other considerations those supportive services will come online as staffing and other resource requirements are further realized Brooke I'm realizing I went through all of those and we were talking to the tag team I'm sorry anything else you want to add with that? No I'm happy to dive into the next slide Okay I'll advance Okay so just to give you all an outline of some of the additional work we've been doing with the county and a variety of service providers we have been doing outreach and engagement with the unsheltered community members you may have heard of this we call them Hauses that's the homeless outreach service site we have two locations currently in the city of Santa Cruz there are one or two potentially down in Watsonville and we're hoping to bring three more online here in Santa Cruz the purpose of these outreach sites is to make sure we are providing resources to those who don't necessarily feel comfortable going into shelter we want to ensure they have the ability to safely socially distance that they have water that they have food that they have supplies we have medical staff going out to see people and teams that just go out into the neighborhood these sites are located to perform outreach it's also meant to ensure that folks aren't traveling throughout the community and risking their own health and potentially the health of others we've additionally deployed new hygiene resources porta-potties and hand washing stations throughout the community locations for these can be found on the city of Santa Cruz website on the COVID-19 page there is a legend at the bottom of the map that allows people to see the times that these resources are open which ones are 24-7 and available to all we keep iterating constantly it says it's created but we're just as we move forward day by day changes working with the unhoused service providers county physicians we're just trying to engage with as many folks as possible one of the most exciting things that's happened is we have a streamlined shelter referral process now so this is a way for people to get referred into the expanded shelter programs so there's a phone number people can call it's rather small here but it's 831 291 5098 person will be assessed for their needs their vulnerability and triage there's also an email address which is quite lengthy COVID-19 homeless response at sanacruzcounty.us we've also worked with the county to help create a new temporary workforce so the city staff initially was helping to recruit and interview disaster service workers for the county we reached out to a variety of service providers including the homeless garden project housing matters, families at Rebley, Polly Loft, Paige Smith etc and we're able to recruit many folks with lived experience to become employed as hosts and shift supervisors at the variety of shelters that have been operationalized all together we've created new service provider guidance and I think we're calling it PPM instead of PPE because of the grade equipment but there's training and all sorts of guidance available for all the new staffing and those who are managing the new sites and additionally a new transitional age shelter program has been operationalized as well other considerations that I wanted to briefly touch on with the council are food not bombs, budget and funding and encampment management so as I know that there have been a number of emails that have come through to the city council email box with regard to the executive orders that the council will be considering later what I did want to comment on this with regard to food not bombs operation is that the city by virtue of trying to ensure that social distancing is maintained per the county health officers orders around food distribution has been working in earnest to ensure that food not bombs operation is safe and healthy for those that are receiving this important and critical service during our crisis during this incident. We provided food not bombs with an opportunity to have a permit at the bench lands where we know that there is potential for expansion and additional social distancing measures provided hygiene resources sanitation resources as well as platforms for the operation to be off the grass. In addition to that because the permit was issued we allowed for food not bombs to also operate in the event of rain in the river street garage unfortunately even with our best efforts Keith McHenry and food not bombs has decided to not comply with the location requirements of the permit and now we're operating from the Laurel front street parking lots and we are really working with the county environmental health and others to determine the best path forward to ensure that food resources are out in the community for those that are unsheltered but within the city's jurisdiction we are not allowing for large social gatherings that do not comply with the shelter in place order and the social distancing guidelines that are required during this time it has been challenging to say the least food not bombs is somewhat in compliance and somewhat not so what we really are trying to do is bolster alternative food options within the community and are working in partnership with the Santa Cruz City Schools on providing food for folks that are unsheltered in addition to that Brooke is working with the EOC and ICS structure to ensure that a food program within the unsheltered community that is not currently sheltered does have access to these important resources and I know has been in contact with a few organizations that may or coming has been working with for the last several weeks so I wanted to provide that update on food not bombs in addition to that budget and funding are obviously going to be a huge consideration for each and going forward and especially as the city and other local jurisdictions and quite frankly the entire state and world are going to be hit so hard with the budget implications and revenue implications associated with this pandemic the good news is is that Governor Newsom has worked very diligently on creating stimulus and other reimbursement opportunities for municipalities and local continuum of cares to engage with and under his new legislation and executive order there is potential for significant FEMA reimbursement but it does require cash flow and it requires a local funding source on the ground now in order for us to make some of these big budgetary considerations and really put the fiscal resources towards the program that we need right now I think we have upwards of 600 people sheltered which is obviously quite a bit more than what we had pre-COVID and the budget projections moving into the next several months that the county is really focused on are on the order of $67 million but with much of that hopefully potentially being reimbursed for FEMA and with other federal and state stimulus funding so as we know and get more information on that in the coming weeks we will be providing additional information and obviously Martina and Cheryl will be sharing that with the council moving forward and lastly but not least encampment management as I just wanted to share with the council members our continued need to manage encampments within the COVID response with CDC's guidelines around not disrupting encampments the challenge with that particular recommendation was there was little consideration of management encampments within the context of ensuring that one social distancing is taking place two hygiene resources are available and three if encampments are a significant health risk due to density and proximity to other areas of high utilization for the community we have to make sure that those risks are minimized to the extent possible so at areas like Coral streets at the bench lands with RVs on the far west side we are working with the county very closely to create opportunities to restructure those locations to create additional order and management to ensure social distancing providing additional hygiene resources and engaging through outreach to ensure that those folks that are sheltering in place outside in the community especially in our urban interface are doing so in a way that does not increase the risk of disease transmission within the encampment itself and within the community as we have more information on that we will be sharing that through the city manager as well and that concludes Brooks and my presentation and happy to have any questions if the mayor would like to proceed in that way Sure, are there any well thank you for that very well that end up presentation and I just like to say for the members of the community the vice mayor and myself have been working on the two by two very closely with county supervisors and the staff between the county and the city to ensure that we are able to bring on resources as quickly as possible there are challenges when it comes to trying to bring these resources online but we've been doing and the staff has been doing a really fantastic job of trying to get these resources online as quickly as possible so thank you, Brooks and Susie for all the hard work you're doing and Brooks welcome to the city as well. We're over to council members if anyone has any questions and I see council member Brown has their hand up I'll turn it over to you I thank you for the update and all of your good work and welcome, Brooke I'm glad to have you on board so that was a lot and it sounds like you've been you've been working overtime I imagine as many people have in this challenge challenging time I just have a couple of questions in relation to your presentation just to clarify a few things so in a couple of them I'm just going to get over so we can move along so in terms of the for hygiene facilities so hand washing and port-a-potty is it possible for us to get an updated list I know it's come up and we've had list distributed in various forms but I imagine it's changed so I'm just wondering if we could get a list it would be helpful for me to share with people when they bring it up to me and constituents yeah happy to do that council member brown the most updated map is on the city's website but we will share a link with you on that oh that's okay if it's there it's already there I'll go grab it thank you and the other question I had is related to food not bomb so you know I have heard a lot about this issue and you know I'm trying to find a way a beneficial way they do feed a lot of people I understand that one of the issues with the compliance that you raised Susie was not complying with the sites that are attached to permits have been some issues around the social distancing the six foot requirement which seem to I mean I'm not there every day I don't know if all the rules and shelter in place but I have seen some images and passed by and it looks like they are in compliance there so what are the are there any other issues that are of concern related to the compliance you mentioned environmental health so if you could just talk about that a little bit yeah and I wish I had the permit in front of me but sadly I do not but we worked with Marilyn Underwood who's the director of county health and her team to establish what quite frankly would be the expectations for any food distribution within the community with the overarching philosophy that we are really intending and this is the city and county and public health officer alike to not be permitting and or inviting any type of congregate social whether it's food distribution or not situation so with regard to the conditions that food not bombed is not in compliance with I think it really gets down to the nitty gritty that's within the permit in addition to the social distancing requirements food handling requirements who does that level of sanitation I mean it really does get down to are there is there sneeze protection thing you know is the area covered who is handling food how you know what is the congregation look around look like around where food is being handed out does the does the operation include additional congregate activities which food not bombs is doing in addition is passing out clothes and obviously other very needed things but it does lead to a high level congregation in a very small area and so what we've asked food not bombs to do is to transition to a take away model we offered him or I offered Keith a few weeks ago resources to do that and have ordered those or those are at the city city office right now so take away materials so you know it really does get to the specific conditions that were laid out by county environmental health that we included in the permit and deciding is obviously quite critical we've also had a lot of concerns from folks staff and and members alike of the bank that's directly adjacent to food not bombs current operation really having a challenge with kind of navigating through congregation of individuals as they are seeking business support in particular during this time at the bank so with that all being said obviously very complicated nuanced answer and it's not just as simple as the six foot rule thank you I appreciate that it's very complex and shifting all the time but I did want to raise it I just wanted to raise it because we've had a lot of messaging about it and I like to know kind of as much as I can thank you you're welcome for your presentation and Brooke that you're here working with us now the city bringing a lot of your experience and knowledge to this issue I just had just more of a very basic comment I appreciated in your first slide sort of the guiding policy and the guiding technical guidance that you guys are utilizing to develop our response and I think it's really important for our community to understand on that first slide the set of expertise that you're seeking through various national agencies and organizations and I think if there's one thing I've sort of learned over the last six weeks in communicating with our fellow elected leaders over at the county as well as the county staff is the professional approach and the the true intent to acknowledge the difficulty of people experiencing homeless and keeping them safe during not only this emergency but in general and I think we in a sense learned a lot by being forced into the situation and I think utilizing those technical guidance documents is a really refreshing thing to see from our service providers in terms of really looking at what are other what is going on nationally what are the coming out of both medical as well as emergency personnel as well as experts on homelessness nationally so I just I know it's sort of a little bit out of need at because of the situation we're in because of the COVID-19 situation but I just want to compliment both our internal team at the city as well as our county partners on the level of just the level of professionalism that everyone is approaching this with and I've been very impressed and I appreciate folks taking the time to really seek out all that national guidance so that we can make hopefully not just immediate impact but hopefully actually resetting and essentially upping our game here in Santa Cruz and really understanding how to approach this serious problem that we have here so I just want to say appreciate that and I feel very happy with the way that our city and county staff are working on this as well as I certainly think we will be seeing some true benefits to the folks who are in time of need right now so thank you everybody. Thank you Vice Mayor. Welcome to the comments that have been made welcome Brooke and thank you for the presentation I just wanted to share with you that a woman who I work with had volunteered for a shift actually at the transition age youth shelter and was sharing how one of the participants had felt safe and finally felt safe and cared for and I think I just really want to highlight how important it is to really look at these sub-populations these vulnerable populations and all the wonderful things that are really changing in a positive way for their lives especially our transition age youth who are either transitioning out of foster care or just don't have those safety nets that some of us are so privileged to have one of the questions that I have and I apologize I had to step away for a second but do we have or how is the county looking at the like to employ those folks to help be the folks that are going to oversee some of those shifts so that they can get some money in their pockets how is that looking? So it's looking very very positive and there is a call out for anybody who is interested in looking into employment at the county during this time in the shelters both the motel hotel IQV shelters as well as the congregate shelters that we're opening up I think we have interviewed and Brooke we had a slide on this just yesterday and I should have included it because the numbers are really unbelievable I think we've engaged with over 150 people and I think they've hired about 70 people thus far for both shifts supervisors and shelter hosts those positions as Brooke mentioned we started the recruitment here at the city because we had been hiring temp workers to help at the armory for a number of weeks and then did just recently a couple weeks ago transition that all the way to the county so they're doing all the recruitment as well as hiring and all of the onboarding and training those extra help disaster service workers are obviously temp workers for the county the wage is in concert with their clerical one and two classification and I think what we've seen is just a tremendous amount of interest in this time a lot of folks are obviously searching for additional employment to do that and we expect that there's going to be a surge of need potentially in the hundreds of employees so any information that people would like we can add that job recruitment announcement to the city's website and share that moving forward if that's of interest to the council I know a lot of folks are looking for opportunities during this time and so with any way we can get that length sent to council members it would be really helpful for people to know if we're looking for employment or we want to help ways that they can get involved so very much appreciate that I'm going to try to make it quick and synthesize it into one but I was just wondering if you could speak to some of the challenges with getting shelters online we're pulling on we're getting hotels up and running and some folks have said we're not doing enough so I think it might be helpful for folks in the community to have the process for getting hotels online and staffing and what it really takes to get something going sure absolutely and Brooke please do chime in on this as well so as soon as the shelter in place order was set by the public health officer it was really clear that there was a recommendation for local governing bodies both at the city and the county level to work within the context of our current shelter environment to assess and resource and shelter as many folks that meet a certain vulnerability index as quickly as we can though that process from a public health perspective is focused on a few different outcomes one is to reduce the risk of transmission within the homeless population but of particular interest is to ensure those that have medical vulnerabilities or that are exposed or diagnosed with COVID have the potential to shelter in place in a safe location that has provided medical care at some level the overarching philosophy being that in any population in the community if there is an outbreak particularly amongst our most vulnerable that could very much overwhelm our local hospital and medical care system so as the state and federal government were figuring out how to best serve those with these medical vulnerabilities we move forward with the project room key initiative those hotels are reserved for those with either positive COVID under investigation or medically vulnerable over 65 and that is what project room key is focused on so knowing that the county move forward with immediately engaging with hotels on ensuring that we had bed capacity especially if we had a surge of COVID positive within the homeless community in addition to that there has been direction from our local public health officer to ensure that we have enough beds to support folks that have other pre-existing conditions so co-morbidities with respiratory illness diabetes etc and those beds are being operationalized as we speak but to your point mayor the potential of having a bed and obtaining bed space especially at a hotel is just one piece of the puzzle ensuring that those that are served through the system of care have medical attention have opportunities for detox quite frankly in an isolated environment medically supported detox for instance have all the resources to shelter in place especially in isolation and quarantine so when you think about what are of us that are at liberty to go to take care of our essential services that is incredibly difficult when you are unhoused and so putting all of the resources together to ensure that people have access to laundry, staff food, water smokes, weed you name it we've considered it the ability to bring their pets it's a monumental effort and it needs to be safe and it needs to be fully all of those things need to be considered completely as you know many cities jumped into a high congregate setting shelter environment quite frankly without all of that important staffing planning and resource planning to the detriment of the health of the individuals in the congregate settings and to staff we saw that in San Francisco and other locations across the U.S. that is not something that this community wants to see and so we are taking really careful steps to make sure that folks that are engaged with the system are doing that we are making sure that their needs are met and that the safety of everybody is at the most level of consideration and just to add to that additionally in staffing I've been quite impressed by the candidates that we've received but we also want to make sure that these are people who are interested in the actual position of providing care and service to this population not simply folks who are just looking for a job so that is an additional consideration that does take time and we want to ensure that we have service to these clients given that we don't have these cases of COVID popping up in our homeless population that we've been really diligent to try to ensure that those people are safe and also as we're moving forward making sure that the shelters we're providing are also safe and secure so thank you all for all your work and keep up the good work thank you mayor and council thank you so I'll turn it back over to any further updates or reports no that was it thank you very much thank you to call on the clerk to provide any updates to the calendar no updates our agenda is council membership in city groups and outside agencies this is the time for council members to report out on any actions external boards committees and joint power authority meetings additionally if there's any work that council members have been doing related to COVID-19 this is also an opportunity for you to report out for future meetings please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occur last council meeting so that the council and public can be informed so I'll just go down the list and I know that for two of our council members we're actually appointing them to committees today so there's no expectation on any report outs but I'll ask as well if those council members have anything to report out as it relates to COVID-19 so maybe I'll start with council members do you have anything to report out at this time I don't have anything to report out thank you council member Watkins I am unfortunately was not able to make the farmers market board meeting the most recent one but I know there's been some changes and I think some were noted in the newspaper this morning so I advise folks to sort of track how they can access quality local vegetables and fruits right now as well as other products safely and then just sort of briefly want to share that the county office of education has a dedicated COVID-19 website available for families and parents sort of trying to navigate how to how to just adjust to homeschooling as well as other types of tips available for those who are seeking some resources in the community I know 2-1-1 is really trying to be out there and beef up all their resources so if you're a non-profit provider I think if you can go ensure that 2-1-1 has the most current information about your service so that they're able to make proper referrals and just also want to share that those as we're starting to see more of our workforce come online we know that a lot of folks are going to be meeting child care and the county office the child development resource center is a free resource in the state that our county has that you pick up the phone you can call and you can tell them where you live and what you're looking for and you'll have somebody who will call you back and help you find a licensed quality child care provider so I advise folks who are looking for child care to use that free resource as I know you'll be needing it in order to come back to work and so I think that's about it for now to share I'd say Council Member Matthews A few things Donna Myers and I sit on the metro board and we had a board meeting recently it's all about COVID directly and indirectly we did because of the impact of COVID-19 we did adopt a declaration of fiscal emergency which will put us in a position for future aid the budget is being severely impacted I think most of you know that ridership is plummeted and which is an immediate cut in revenue but also tax revenue will be down fares are down so we did adopt tentative budgets operating and capital budgets understanding they will go through major changes as this unfolds into the future most of this past month for the metro system was just dealing with operational changes because of the budget implications and other operational considerations to protect both the riders and the drivers the routes were cut back distancing and course on and limits the passengers on buses it's really pervasive there were almost daily changes to the protocols and the regulations dropped a lot so that's dealing with COVID goes operationally and physically that's what the metro had to do and it's certainly not over in terms of the revenue committee as you all know we were back in the day looking at say possible increases in the KOT and that is clearly on hold that will be coming to you at the next meeting but I did work with and so part of this is what was done committee and partly related to committee work worked with economic development and to get out a notice to just letting them know we anticipate that that discussion will be officially put on hold and to be reiterating our desire to work with them and of course are suffering all over the country and I will say that our economic development department is working with the Santa Cruz county and communicating with the California their national trends and we have to deal with them at the local level and they have understood also I would say the restrictions the public health restrictions they put forth have been helpful on that downtown mansion corporation has been involved in the project that was initiated using the improvement consultants to combine the assessment districts and move forward with a property based improvement district there is hope that that can move forward it's in a state of I would say work capacity and fiscal considerations that are pretty significant but I have been working with downtown with the DMC with economic development and DPA representatives on that issue the library financing authority because it also depends on sales tax revenue has had some drops in revenue in recent quarter but visions further significant drops in the future and that will affect library operations so those are the main ones that I sit on Councilmember Brown do you have any committees to report on or COVID related items to report on yeah just really quickly I'll just say in case anybody was wondering I doubt you were but at the regional transportation commission we were moving ahead on budget adoption for this coming fiscal year and it probably comes as no surprise that we have very little to go on in terms of what might happen with our budget for this year obviously transportation project which range from work on the highway to local roads to the planning process for alternatives for the use of the rail line and kind of everything transit related transportation related is the budget is quite up in the air we rely on gas tax and sales tax major portion of that budget so we I'll just say we decided to move forward with what we had and on the budget and think about reevaluating that in the months to come it was a really daunting conversation part of the reason I want to mention it it was just really really daunting to think about all of the ways that these impacts are going to be seen kind of longer term and the work that we're going to have to do to move forward under these new conditions so that was one of my the cannabis committee Matt we actually reviewed and will be coming to the council some program changes that will kind of respond to the industry's concerns the cannabis industry concerns but also maintain the goals that we put forward when we initially adopted the guidelines and licensing requirements so that will be coming I think the second meeting in May oh I just wanted to give one other update on age friendly communities because I've been talking about this and saying coming soon for quite a while now I wanted to report that at our last meeting last week we had a discussion about the role of local governments the county and so that is kind of not on hold but we're working through some issues and I'll send a more detailed written update about that and how I think we should proceed in the future and I think that's all for now thank you do you have any, obviously you're not on any committees yet but I'm going to put you on those today but do you have anything to report out that might be COVID related you've been talking with community members about you're meeting by the way no other than I'm really doing a lot of work with housing matters I've been on that board for years and it is as we all know a most difficult time but the whole idea is to support the staff because they are on the front line and anyway we had a board meeting and that was really what we're trying to do as a board member and that still runs the day-to-day operation no, that's all thank you do you have anything to report out on? I think Council Member Matthews covered my two main committees, the downtown management corporation that I sit on the board and Metro the cows working group has not convened I believe we're going to be convening sometime next month so we'll be looking to report out some of the some of the successes on water quality with regards to our beach which we hope someday people can come back to in a healthy way and also just kind of external or other activities I have been participating with the mayor and Supervisor Coonerty and Archie Bernal in regular calls with our state and federally elected leaders including Congressman Panetta and Assembly Member Stone specifically we continue also to do outreach with our business sector through various conference calls collecting folks together to find out a little more about specific impacts we've been in touch with our community Stan and Cruz County Community Foundation Executive Director assessing impacts to nonprofits so just a lot of work with trying to understand the impacts of the community and try to get people connected and looking forward to developing more strategies for recovery as we move forward through this so that's my report. Thank you Thanks I'll just add guys myself have been working really closely with our other elected officials and we've been really working closely with many folks in our community the different sectors to ensure that people have the resources that they need and we hear their concerns and that we're able to communicate those concerns with our state and local representatives or state and federal representatives as far as committees and commissions to the majority the committees that I stand on a lot of those meetings have canceled and so just given the staff time and or the fact that at the beginning of the month everything kind of came to a grinding halt so some of those meetings like the Association of Monterey Community Governments and LACCO it sounds like those meetings are going to start ramping up again in the near future I will however report out that the Monterey Bay Community Power met on April 13 and the policy board adopted a resolution to defer Monterey Bay Community Power charges by 50% in May and June for all customers to assist with the financial burden that COVID-19 has inflicted on Central Coast communities, residents and businesses so those charges are going to be cut in half for the months of May and June to help customers and that was the unanimous vote in addition to that just to reflect on some other meetings I was able to meet with the Mexican Consulate and share information with them about how we're supporting our immigrant communities and throughout the COVID-19 process Vice Mayor and myself also met with representatives from the California Department Association the California Santa Cruz County Realtors Main Street Realtors was happening with the housing market and the rental communities a lot to pay their rent in April most of these associations reported out that about 90% of residential tenants were able to pay their rents but folks were concerned about what would be happening as we move into May and we start to see that people haven't been working the stimulus checks were something that came through in April but we're not expecting in May and so many folks are concerned with moving forward how the rental tenants would be able to pay their rents where there was a lot of concern was with commercial tenants everyone reported out that pretty much only a very small percentage of commercial businesses were able to pay their rents during the month of April and so moving forward that is a growing concern the California Department Association we as we continue to discuss what options could be done for tenants and I'll also mention that I did meet with some tenant advocates before this meeting to kind of get a sense of what tenants wanted to share during this meeting and the California Department Association expressed that the supporting of bills that would provide up to 80% of monthly rent that a tenant would owe for up to 3 months provided that landlords and participants in the program would agree to not increase rent on the unit for the specified period they would not charge late fees for part for past due rent paid for by the program and that they would not pursue any remaining rents for the month that were covered by the program and so that was a meeting that was held as I mentioned before Vice Mayor Myers and myself and we reached out to Councilmember Brown who is part of the Board of Housing Committee and we're going to be reviewing the language of that as it's developed so that we can see how it would affect our community while other components of that bill are there and understand whether or not we would be writing a letter of support and so that may be something that we will bring to council after we have an opportunity to review that bill. In addition to that I've been on weekly calls with the League of California Cities and we've been having weekly meetings with the county health officer, the health service agency director, the county administrative officer, the sheriff and the mayors from the Board of Cities so that we're able to kind of express how our communities are being impacted individually and understand what decisions are being made for COVID-19 is impacting the county and so I've been sending updates to the Councilmembers but I'm going to be sending weekly updates either in the form of a PDF or a webinar to share this information with the community and I'd just like to let folks know that we're preparing a flyer but we are anticipating this Friday that I'll be leading a webinar at 4pm just to provide the community with some updates on how we're progressing over time and give the community an additional opportunity to ask questions on how we're responding to COVID-19 and that's all I wanted to report on. Are you going to share about how people can access your webinar for Friday? As we speak and we're hoping to have that link up and as we're out actually do you want to speak to that? Right now it is scheduled for Friday at 4pm we are transitioning the licenses for webinars from one staff member to another and we didn't want to do that before the Council meeting and mess the settings up for this meeting so immediately after this meeting we'll have the directions available for the community and we'll be sharing it out there. We are limited to 500 so hopefully we do reach that max but if we do reach that maximum it will be recorded and will be available to the public after the meeting. Now is the time to call in comment on items number 4 to 14 instructions should be on your screen and please remember to mute your streaming device to raise your hand and listen for the cue saying that you have been unmuted. We'll be active on in one motion unless an item is pulled by Council member for further discussion. Are there any Council members who would like to pull any items onto this agenda? Hearing none. I just wanted to speak to item number 6. Sure. I think this will be a time to speak to that. I just really wanted to highlight it in that for those who weren't on the Council or following this this is for the interest of those who are working hang on just a second I'm trying to transition my to the online version. So this is the resolution urging the California state legislator and the governor to immediately overturn SB 872 which took place in the city of Santa Cruz. The city of Santa Cruz actually made the decision to place this item to place this measure on our ballot and within that timeframe that the state took action which then led us as a Council to have to rescind that decision unfortunately. I think this will be a time to speak to item number 6. I think this will be a time to rescind that decision unfortunately. I just really wanted to highlight that other communities that have passed these types of measures have used the funds to support those who are experiencing food inequities and food hunger at this time and also an additional element that thank you Councilor Matthews for pointing out and sugar sweeten beverages contribute to a lot of the underlying health impacts that we're seeing having a more responsible response to the COVID crisis. So, just sort of wanting to highlight that and thank the Council hopefully in advance for wanting to move forward with this resolution. And I'd just like to say as well thank you Councilmember Watkins for bringing this forward. I think it's really important that local jurisdictions have control over sugar sweeten beverages and whether or not we want to tax those items because we should be in control of the health of our community. So, I want to thank you for bringing that forward as well. We have Councilmember Myers and then Councilmember Brown. I hear that no one had pulled any other irons. I was just going to offer a motion to pass that to approve the consent agenda. Prior to approving we're going to open up to public comment but I'll come back to you after public comment. Thank you. I just wanted to follow Member Watkins statements and Mayor Cummings about this item. Thank you for bringing it forward. Just to say we were not only are we unique in that we had voted to place us on the ballot but with each other we cast that vote while the average industry had succeeded in getting the legislature to adopt this. So they put a tremendous amount of pressure on the state legislature and I think that I'm really glad to see that we're doing this to kind of push back and I think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out of the state but I'm hopeful that we'll get there. I will turn it over to the members of the public. This is the time for those that are on our consent agenda so I'm going to raise your hand. We will then acknowledge you so you can comment on the items on our consent agenda. See if people want to. All right. Seeing none I'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation. I'll turn it back over to Vice Mayor Myers seconded by Council Member Watkins and I'd like to ask the clerk to please call a roll call. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Byers. Here. Yes. Okay. Matthews. Boulder. Vice Mayor Myers and Mayor Cummings. This is the HUD 2020-2021 action plan and the 2020-2025 consolidation plan implementation on this item. We close the phone until May 12. So we will revisit that item on our May 12 agenda. This is general business. We begin this afternoon with agenda item number 16. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item that 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 council for deliberation and action. If you're interested in commenting on item number 16 which is for publication and ordinance amending section 3.08 .030 and 3.08 .00 of an adding section 3.08 .091 to the Santa Cruz minutes to establish regulations for the use, award and evaluation of best value project delivery methods for construction projects. Please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hands after the questions have been made from council. And when it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been un-muted. And so I'll turn this over to Kevin Crosley, senior professional engineer and Melissa Capping, management analyst. Good afternoon, Mayor Cummings, council members. This is Rose Mary-Minard. I'm going to just do a really quick introduction and then Kevin is going to give you a brief presentation. The council took action in October last year to put a charter amendment item on the agenda to allow for what's called best value procurement of contractual and design services for capital projects. And that item was on the March 3rd election ballot and it passed with an 81% vote. So one of the things that the measure directed us to do was in the event that it was passed to bring back the implementing language and ordinance to the council for your action. So this is a presentation to bring that information forward and now I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Crosley for his, for the presentation. I suspect what's going on is we're working on trying to figure out how to get the presentation to advance there in moments. Let's go into speaker mode Kevin or presentation mode. Bonnie, can you help to give direction about how to get the presentation to advance? Bonnie, why don't we take a quick break while we try to figure out these technical difficulties? I couldn't get to my unmute button because she's here on the screen. Can you go to the slide show and then from beginning? We can't hear him. Kevin, are you unmuted? Here we go. Kevin, are you unmuted? Yes. This is Laura. Go into the PowerPoint and go to slide show. Up at this part, Kevin. Right here. Slide show. And then click on setup slide show. Kevin, can you hear Laura? His volume is a different issue. He's called in as an attendee, not as a panelist. He is a panelist. Do you want Melissa? Do you want me to try to do that? Yes, please. Okay. Can someone make me the presenter? That's Melissa, right? Yes, this is Melissa. I got an error saying that Kevin has to stop the screen share if he wants me to start doing it. One of those things we didn't practice, right? Yeah. Hey, Rose, Mary, are you going to be giving the presentation? Like speaking? Melissa can give it. Okay, because if somebody wants to put it in the M drive, I can share it from chambers. Can you see my screen now? It should be on screen share now. Can you see the presentation? Yes. Can you see the project delivery methods now? Well, thank you for your patience while we work this out. I appreciate it. So when we talk about best value project delivery methods, this is kind of a good visual that shows you how the contracts work. The traditional contract, the owner would be the city and we contract separately with the designer and a contractor. You can kind of see that gap is not a contractual relationship between the designer and contractor. So when we're talking about best value project delivery methods, we're talking about contracts where people are contracted together in ways where they work together. So some examples of those are the construction manager at risk design build contracts and samples of those. So let's move on. So some of the benefits of best value. These are the benefits that we've experienced or agencies have experienced throughout California. You're talking about reduced project costs, expedited schedules and then you have the innovative solutions and also improved quality and owner satisfaction with the projects overall. So that's why they're called best value. So just to kind of explain why we're doing this now instead of years ago. Right now we have several large technically complex projects on the near horizon. We're looking at innovative solutions that accomplish these projects. We're looking to get some real-time information to make better decisions and these collaborative contract relationships will help us to better coordinate efforts on these really complex projects. So I want to put in the horizon and the near horizon in June 2020 we're actually going to be coming back to you to talk about our first progressive design build contract that we would like to seek your approval on. So we're going to talk about this for a couple major investment plans for a lot of treatment plans. So that's exciting for us. So I wanted to talk a little bit why we did measure W which Rosemary referred to at the beginning of the introduction of this and that is because California public contract code does allow cities to do best value contracting that allows projects that are only over a million dollars for building or buildings. And so it specifically excludes street projects and water infrastructure projects. So measure W was written to give us the flexibility to use these best value procurement methods for any project size and scope. Let's see. So this is what measure W looked like. You can see the new language and here specifically says that we will be establishing by ordinance the regulations for the award use and evaluation of these contracts. So that is why we're here. We created that ordinance for review and here are some of the highlights. Basically a council approval prior to using best value. So we will be coming to you prior to the current with the award of the contract to seek your approval on using this type of contracting. Now we are going to be using a competitive proposal process to evaluate and award these contracts. So we'll still be using competitive process out there and we're using the competitive the competitive process that's already outlined in the Unicode. So we're not creating anything crazy and new. We're going to be using the competitive process. One thing we did in this year is we defined eligibility a little bit better with design build teams. Sometimes those team members can have worked on previous projects for the city. So we wanted to clarify how and when people that have been working on projects before how they can work with us on future design build projects. That's kind of like some of the highlights of the ordinance. And then some of the existing things that we care about as a city all those things will be included in these new best-selling contracts. We'll still be including the language in there about the apprentice and local hire requirements. We will still be using prevailing wage requirements. These type of contracting are accepted by all the state and federal grant funding entities. So we're not doing anything that is new and crazy. They all accept this type of contracting and you can do this type of contracting with project labor agreements. So let's open it up for questions. Thank you for that presentation. I'll bring it back to council. Is there any council member who has any questions on this item at this time? Seeing none the list of numbers phone numbers you can call in on your screen. Now is the time to call in and if you'd like to raise your hand please press star 9 on your phone. When it's your time to speak you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. That's a few minutes. Members of the public who are calling in on this item I'll bring it back to council member Matthews. Thank you Will. Yes I'm live. Thank you Rosemarie for bringing this to us. Back in the fall and the timing is obviously so important. Look what we approved on our consent agenda. A couple of major public works projects and I think five big water projects. So obviously this promises to hold really great benefits for us going into the future. So thank you. It's one of those things that looks spectacularly un-sexy going into the election. We want this value. Obviously it means a lot. It has broad support out in the community. Casting with 81% is amazing. People tell us 20% of people will vote no on anything. So that's about as close as you get to unanimous. Anyway thank you for all the technical work that went into it. It'll pay off. So with that I'll just go ahead and move the first meeting. I'll just go back to the second. We have a second item. Council Member Mathews seconded by Council member Watkins and then Vice Mayor Myers I saw you had to hand it up. No I was going to second it but I'll bring it back down. Good row Shambu. At this time I'll turn it over to the clerk to do a little call on item. Council Member Buyers. Thank you for your support. Appreciate it. And I just like to add to Mary, but really it was so many people in your department. I know you have really good work on this. So that's good. All of you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for bringing this emergency declaration and connection with COVID-19 pandemic by 60 days and ratifying. Mayor Cummings, sorry. Is there a way we could take a quick break? Yeah, well, we took a five minute break, and then we'll come back at what would take. Thank you. She's not back on. I'm wondering if she might be having some trouble. Justin, you're muted again. Justin, you're muted. I was going to see if we could check people's audio real quick. Donna, can you just check your audio? Can you hear me? Worse than before. Maybe try using your phone, because it comes in and out. Okay. Captain, can we check your audio? Yeah, can you hear me? Martín? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, the other martini. Oh, okay, I'm on again. Justin, this is Laura. I called in via my daughter's cell phone as a participant, and it worked. So I think it's working on the participant's side. Okay, great. I think what we'll do when we get to oral communications is that we can allow people to speak maybe on consent, and then any item on consent, and then the items. Yeah, so an item number 16, and then if no one wants to speak on that, we can then move into oral communications, and that way people can have an opportunity to weigh in on those if they want to. Mayor, it would be helpful if they would specify if they're speaking on a specific item, as opposed to oral communication. Maybe what we could do is start with, if they want to speak to any item on oral communication and identify that item, then we move on to item 16, and then we move on to oral communications. That sounds like it would work. I'm here. So now I think Sandy, are you there? I'm here. Can you hear me now? Your video is off too, for some reason, but. Oh yeah, yeah, thank you. I think you keep going. Just let me know if I'm in. I think we're good. So we let the public know we had some technical difficulties. Apparently, the calling numbers have requested a password, and folks weren't able to comment on earlier items. And so what we'll do is before, after we get through all of our general business prior to our communications, we will allow members of the public who wanted to comment on anything on consent to identify the item on the consent agenda, should they wish to comment on it. They'll have two minutes to comment on that item. Additionally, there's members of the public who wanted to comment on item number 16 will provide time for members of the public to comment on that item. And then we will continue to move on with oral communications. So we apologize for the technical difficulties, but we hope that if you still would like to weigh in on items that have been heard earlier in the day that you would have the time to express yourself prior to oral communications. So on to our next item, general item of business, item number 17. 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 who then take public comment and then return to council for action and deliberation. Item number 17, some members of the public are aware is a resolution extending the emergency declaration in connection with COVID-19 pandemic by 60 days and ratifying and confirming the director of emergency services, executive orders and OS 2020-1 through 2020-6. And I'll turn it over to our city attorney, Tony Kandadi for the presentation. Thank you, Mayor Cummings. Good afternoon and good afternoon members of the city council and the deaf and public schools. This afternoon, I am for you is a resolution extending the declaration of emergency in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. And ratifying a series of executive orders issued by the city manager acting in his capacity as director of emergency services in connection with the same topic. As you will recall, the council did adopt its initial declaration of a local health emergency on March 10th. This is a follow-up to a statewide declaration of emergency issued by Governor Newsom on March 4th and a declaration of a county-wide health emergency by County Health Officer Gail Newell on March 6th. Under the California law, when the council adopts an emergency declaration of this sort, it's only temporary in nature. And so what the law requires is that as soon as the emergency situation has been resolved, that the council rescind the emergency declaration. And in any event, if it does not do so, then it's required to take up the item again within 60 days of the initial declaration or the emergency declaration will expire. Now, what the emergency declaration, other than just to make the public aware of a crisis situation, what it does is a number of things. First, it's a requirement for public agencies in the area to cooperate and provide mutual aid and assistance in dealing with the emergency. You might have seen information about city staff being deployed at county health homeless facilities and whatnot, and that is pursuant to the declaration of emergency. Different agencies that require assistance are able to reach out and either provide or receive assistance from their other local agencies. The declaration also gives the city the opportunity to seek and obtain reimbursement for the cost of responding to the emergency declaration. Either through the state of California when there's a statewide emergency or through the federal emergency management agency for a national emergency. And so this declaration is one of the things that we need to do in order to potentially qualify for reimbursement of some of the expenditures that the city is incurring, responding to this crisis. The emergency declaration does is it empowers the city manager acting as your designated emergency services director to summarily abate any emergency or nuisance conditions that exist that are impacted by the emergency. And it issue rules and regulations on matters that are reasonably related to the protection of life and property as affected by the emergency. And so one of the things that we've all seen and spend time reading and trying to understand and digest are the theories of public health officer borders that have been issued by the county public health officer. And under our system, the county public health officer also serves as the public health officer for the city. Unlike the unincorporated areas of the county where the sheriff's department in cooperation with the health officer and enforcing those declarations and those orders. The city is called upon to enforce the health officers, shelter in place orders and other emergency orders that are issued in connection with the crisis. And so working with the police department and the director of emergency services, several actions have been undertaken to implement the emergency. And the first was in shortly after the declaration of emergency was an order number 2020-01 that ordered summary nuisance abatement of a large unsanctioned encampment adjacent to the post office with author of temporary alternative shelter to the occupants. And this was done in observation of a number of factors that were directly affected by the shelter in place were including proximity, public gatherings, requirements and that sort of thing. The second summary nuisance abatement of a food distribution service and sort of a rally or social gathering at the city's town clock at North Pacific Avenue on Water Street and the city manager issued this directive to provide an alternative means of providing food services of that sort that respect the shelter in place and social distancing requirements. You heard about that from Midohera earlier this afternoon. The third was an order was ordering a temporary suspension of personnel rules while the emergency regulations remain in effect. And this wasn't really just a wholesale suspension of personnel rules that are really more related to the ability to make some emergency personnel decisions to bring on board staff on a shortened basis to respond to the emergency situation. The fourth was establishing basic safety rules and permit requirements for individuals and organizations engaging in outdoor food service operations. And the intent was to set up parameters to ensure that these food service operations which are which are very important to the homeless population in Santa Cruz but are also done in a way that is safe and sanitary. The fifth is ordering all persons in the city of Santa Cruz to adhere to all lawful orders from the county and the state of California relating to COVID-19. And this is really intended to give the city staff the enforcement tools necessary to ensure that these very important safety rules are implemented throughout the community in a way that protects public health and safety and reduces the risk of spread of COVID-19 virus. And the last was number 2020-06 establishing a temporary limit of 15% on commissions charged by third party food delivery companies to support Santa Cruz restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. And I've heard questions about what commissions by food delivery services has to do with responding to a public health emergency. But if you compare some of the actions that have been taken by the federal government and the state government with respect to court deadlines, with respect to providing financial relief to businesses, to various actions that have been taken, they're not all specifically related to the spread of COVID-19. They're also intended to address some of the economic fallout of this crisis and of the response to pollution, which is before you would merely ratify the actions that have been taken. It's not the council not taking the specific action. It's merely just ratifying these actions that have already been taken by the director of emergency services and extending the declaration of emergency for 60 days or until the council decides to declare an end to the emergency. My guess, just given everything that we know, is that we'll be back in front of you with a modified resolution to further extend the declaration of emergency in 60 days, but hopefully on less stringent terms in terms of the sheltering in place orders and whatnot. And I'm happy to respond to any questions or comments from council members. Thank you for that presentation. Are there any questions from council members at this time on the item that's before us? Seeing none, if members of the public are interested in commenting on item number 16, which is, sorry, my apologies, item number 17, which is a resolution extending the emergency declaration in conjunction with COVID-19. There should be numbers on your screen that you can call in on. After you've called in, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you will hear the announcement that you have been unmuted and your timer will be set to two minutes. We have a number of cars on the line and so we're going to begin unmuting folks now. Yeah, I just have a quick question if I could before you do that. Thank you, Tony, for the clear overview of the recommendation that's being made today. I do have, so I have two questions. One, I'm just wondering, because we've received a lot of obviously common, all different from all different perspectives about how to proceed here. So I just want to ask you if you could just by in terms of what we're being asked to do today. This is not, is this, is there anything that's changing in terms of the authority of the emergency services manager emergency declaration versus the one that we've had in effect? Is there anything that's changing because I think there's been some confusion in the community about us extending our, you know, extending our authority or the city manager's office authority in some way. So just wanted to ask you to comment on that. No, the authority of the city manager as emergency services director is the municipal code. The declaration of the emergency does give the city manager tools that would not be available in the absence of such an emergency. But they have to be narrowly focused on addressing some of the conditions in of the emergency that's not even a fully unrelated topic. And so, and so what this is really doing is just following the requirements of the code to bring these emergency declarations to the attention of the council for comments and for for and the code specifically says for confirmation. But it's really just to acknowledge that the actions have been taken. And I suppose it would be possible for the council to direct the emergency services director to modify or to send more and more of these. But it's really just to make sure that there's a public process of reviewing and. So I just just want just to clarify to make sure it's clear. The, so that because there's two parts, there's the, you know, kind of post facto operation of the actions that have been taken but the extension of the order is not, is it providing additional tools or additional. Yeah, okay, that's what I thought I wanted to make sure that was here. The real critical, the real critical thing here, frankly, is that the agency that the city is extending considerable resources responding to this crisis and we're really documenting those carefully and keeping track of them. The fire chief is participating in this meeting and having that emergency declaration place is in place is one of the necessary aspects that we need in order to ensure the maximum extent possible that we have the opportunity to seek reimbursement of these costs. That's the primary. But again, as the code indicates, if the emergency service director issues. Emergency rules or regulations and the code requires that they be presented to the. Council for the consummation as the earliest practical opportunity. Thank you. The city manager. Okay, I was just going to add that it merely extends the time frame. It doesn't really change any of the authorities or anything around us. It's just the time frame. Also, just for clarification for the public, the items that have been the, the executive orders, those have already taken, I just wanted to be clear to the public, maybe you can confirm this, but those are already into place and so we're not taking new actions at this time. These are all actions that previously taking place and all we're doing currently is ratifying and confirming the actions that have been taken place in the past. That is exactly right. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from members of the council? Seeing none. I'll turn it over to the public for public comment. With the exception of Robert Norris from pop members of the public, what two minutes to speak on this item. And as I mentioned before, the numbers on your screen, please dial one of those. If a number is busy, please try to try the next numbers that you can call in and star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. And as I mentioned before, the exception of Robert Norris from pop, you will have two minutes to speak on this item. 3173 you are online. Thank you. It's just Peter goblum calling in. And I urge you to not ratify or confirm orders one, two and four. And please take your duty seriously. You're not here to rubber stamp the city manager's orders. You're here as our elected representatives to make sure that he's doing what he's doing is proper and legal and authorized. And those orders are not authorized for a simple reason. They rely entirely on his statements that he has the authority to conduct a summary nuisance abatement under municipal code 2.2, 0.2, 0.8, 0. That's his authority for one, two and four. 2.2, 0.8, 0 does not allow him to do this refers only to abatement of buildings that are damaged just came out of the earthquake. The section read whenever in the judgment of the director, it appears that a public nuisance exists in on or near any building. He may summarily order that the building be vacated, barricaded, repaired or demolished. That's it. That's the only kind of summary misses abatement he can order. And it's very important because this summary means he doesn't have to get a court to order it, which is normally the process. But please look at that carefully. You can pull it up on your screens. Look at the statute that he relies on for his authority. The authority is not there. And even if you think he has some other authority, but he relied on that one, if you rely on something else, if you rely on something else, I still urge you not to confirm or ratify those three orders as a message to the city attorney and the city manager to be more open and transparent and not to suggest that he has the powers under the statute, which he does not have. It's crucial because he's given so much wide power authority under the statutes. It really has to be reined in by you or elected representative. Thank you. Hi, this is Garrett Phillip. Hey, I congratulate the city manager for fine work and I generally endorse this agenda item. These orders and extended emergency seems very reasonable. But missing on the agenda are specific actions to restart even one iota of the economy and admission that it's time to change policy course based on new information on risk fatality that comes out every day. I don't think we should just be a puppet for the county health authority. There might be things that, you know, are special to Santa Cruz and I hope we can allow for that. And I'm so worried about the item number five there. But anyway, this current government emergency economic annihilation is based on this review. In great opinions that first said no big deal, then millions are going to die based on nothing. It's a pure fear of the unknown. Later they said 2040,000 are going to die. Covid's 10 times more deadly than the flu. And increasingly all we find is that's falsehood. The plan is no one ever should get infected at any cost. Isolation quarantine until the vaccine is available, turn the economy on and off based on health care capacity. This is madness going forward and may become the biggest policy mistake in my lifetime, including Vietnam and Iraq. This is a health emergency, but only for the minority of the vulnerable. 97% of the Covid hospital admissions are for 50 year olds and older and critical cases generally have underlying core mobility conditions. We are not New York City or Italy. Our median age is 29, not 36 like over the hill. We are healthier and the 18 patients, the mere 18 patients and two deaths in the county prove it. It's not that we shelter better. We cannot afford the economic on off switch. The government cannot admit its blanket policy needs a local adjustment and there are not essential workers and not essential. There are also at risk workers unhealthy over 50 and not at risk, healthy under 50 who statistically won't find this under any conditions, any words to the flu at 2017. Alright, next speaker. Hi, this is Robert Norris of Huff. I think you if you are going to pass this and I tend to agree with Peter Gelblum earlier, you know, can you hear me? I pause you for one sec. I just want to make sure that given that it's Robert Norris from Huff that we make sure that he has the four minutes that he required. I got it. Authority, if you're going to be passing this resolution narrow it to 30 days. I mean, you one of the last speakers just expressed his concern that things are not as serious as some think they are, whether that's true or not, it's serious for folks outside. And the authority that is expanded and it is expanded contrary to what the city attorney and the city manager said, because of item 18, which you haven't come up to yet, which massively deputizes scores and scores of city employees to act as police officers, sort of many cops. Now, the California Emergency Services Act expiring May 9th authorizes the city to do a number of things to more effectively respond to COVID-19. So what was the first order that the acting all powerful city manager did? Did he place port-a-potties next to existing encampments to provide safer, more sanitary conditions for that vulnerable population? No, he's repeatedly refused to do this and forwarded private attempts to do so and the Pam has now been placed and I thank you for that. I thank the city for doing that. However, for a long time last year that remained undone and maybe set the stage for people are spreading this or not. COVID positive folks in the homeless population as is claimed. Now the COVID-19 crisis also manager has violated. He'd encouraged the shelter in place by disrupting, ejecting and forcing the movement. That was Bernal's action through the police of a relatively safe encampment on the sidewalk next to the post office relocating him to a fenced off area without food, water or safe distancing. That was Bernal's first order, 2021. His second order was to block survival food and services distribution center set up at the town clock by Food Not Bombs, the homeless union and off to provide the 24-hour services that Bernal chose not to open. Some homeless people slept nearby but all these areas have been fenced off at the town clock the post office scope park and elsewhere again by the order, which essentially removed an accessible site. His fourth order was again directed at Food Not Bombs, which he has apparently a particular passion for getting rid of to force it away from its more accessible location at the town clock driven to essentially the soggy, unsound ground health of its clients. Food Not Bombs moved without a permit without permission to its location at Laurel and front streets. What now serves scores of people from one to six p.m. daily using safe distancing and sanitary equipment protections. Food Not Bombs is effective. Assistance of those outside is embarrassed the city unwilling to provide the necessary motel rooms in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County and at least 14 other counties. According to Governor Newsom, it's opened up for the vulnerable. Instead, Bernal and this council continue to fund and facilitate congregate shelters that heighten the risk of COVID-19 transmission while insisting that house folks shut themselves indoors on penalty of a $1,000 fine. We need a directive to the city manager, the police chief and his newly designated mini cops that they follow the CDC guidelines for a ending the sweeps against the community activity by homeless advocates. And of course, we should add that to any passage of this. Thank you. All right, next speaker. My name is James Ewing Whitman. You know, I wanted to comment on what the woman talked about in the 510 30 years and where Santa Cruz is going, but I couldn't. I wanted to comment about what Andy Mills said, but I couldn't. But the only thing I can say right now is that this whole thing is madness and different mass extinctions with the earth's biosphere. And that's never talked about with the city of Santa Cruz like it's like it's its own biosphere. So I just feel really kind of frustrated that it when I when I witness is madness. But on a different note before I leave, this might be madness. Well, but somebody gave me a very nice compliment today. They said you channel God's voice. So my name is James Ewing Whitman and I write a lot of stuff on Facebook. No, it's positive. But obviously that might have been so thank you very much for your time. And I'm looking forward to when the council can actually meet. And I think that this that, you know, at least the businesses can be the county and the state through the federal government because this isn't what our constitution was was designed for at all. So thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public would like to speak to us on this item? If so, please call one of the numbers that is on your screen and press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And with your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement and the time will be set to two minutes. Seeing no further members of the public who'd like to speak to this item and I'll bring it back to council for actions. And I see a hand up by council vice mayor Myers. Yeah, I'm ready to move the item, but I'm happy to continue to have discussion with the remaining remaining council members. But I'm happy to make a motion when when the time is ready. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I was just seeing is maybe Mr. Kandadi wanted to speak to some of the legal questions that were brought up in regards to the search of the. I guess I would like to respond to the comment about the authority to primarily base a building. I think if you look at the whole team of chapter 220, it doesn't just speak to the abatement of dangerous buildings. It also gives the emergency services director the authority to make an issue rules and regulations on matters reasonably related to the protection of life and property. And I think it's very effective by such emergency to change vital to fly the equipment. Another prop and other properties are lacking in the protection of life and property of people require emergency services with any city officer employees. There is no necessary personnel and material in any of any city department or agency and execute on his or her ordinary powers of the city officer and special powers conferred by by the municipal code and by any statute of agreement or other lawful authority. And so, not only was the city manager as a director of emergency services implementing the authority under chapter 220, but he was also implementing the county health officers shelter in place order and state distancing regulations in a manner that, you know, looking at it as a cooperative asset between the police department, city manager's office and city attorney's office, what was might appear to some as a blunt instrument, but it was really intended to narrowly address specific hazardous conditions that were observed in connection with these activities. So it was not just the council member Brown and then a couple of them. Yeah, hi, thank you, Tony for reviewing that for us. Because I do think there's, you know, there is some confusion there is a bit of a gray area and I do continue to have concerns that some of these actions that have been taken under the emergency order are seem to be targeting who not bomb and I understand that it's a challenging situation and we do need to be first and foremost thinking about public health and safety. And at the same time I do have some questions about the methods that were used the process by which those those actions were taken. As Tony and he said one instrument and it does seem like quite a one instrument and, you know, I just hope that we can remember that, you know, food and bombs is providing food survival gear and food to people who would not otherwise get it. And so I really just want to, again, put out my plea to try to find a way to ensure that they can continue to provide those critical services and do it in a way that's safe. And, you know, I just, you know, I'm just frustrated and I don't know exactly how to articulate it but I just feel like there's there's more of a conversation to be had, rather than just, you know, taking the enforcement track and kind of shutting off public spaces. And so I'll leave it there. I thank you for the clarification on legal authority. I guess I would just, I guess I would just follow up with that and I thank you, Council Member Brown, I appreciate your comments. I think this is also an iterative process. I think that as Ms. O'Hara outlined, the city staff has been attempting to work with Mr. McHenry to ensure that the service can continue to be provided so long as it's done in a safe and orderly way. And so I think that's everybody's goal here. And I also think that looking back on these past few weeks with hindsight, we will reflect on the actions that have been taken in and maybe we'll conclude that we could have done things differently or better, but we're also operating under very intense pressure right now to be as responsive as we can. And to keep the public safe and to also do so in a way that respects civil liberties and people's legitimate interests. I thank you for your comment. I'll follow up on that because I just want to make sure that folks are aware that I think with the Thursday before we were going to kind of move after we've been issuing notices to the people who were at the post office that they would need to move. I personally went with Matt Nathanson to go speak to Food Not Bombs about the food distribution and there's a video online where I was trying to see whether there were ways and how we can work together in terms of collaborations between the city and Food Not Bombs. Throughout that conversation, one of the things that happened was that when we had suggested Food Not Bombs moving up towards the Benchlands where we had one of our shell site and additionally there was more space for public distancing. At that meeting, one of the things that Food Not Bombs asked for was whether we would be able to allow them to stay at the clock tower for that weekend as they were able to establish a new food distribution site up at the Benchlands so that they can communicate to people and let them know that they would be moving. By the next day of Food Not Bombs when we tried to follow up on a conversation, they had another series of demands and that they weren't willing to move up there at that point in time. The conversation went on for some time and was pretty unproductive and at which point the communication between myself and Food Not Bombs seemed like it wasn't making any traction in terms of the collaboration between the city and Food Not Bombs. That being said, we still allowed Food Not Bombs to continue to operate over the entire weekend as we agreed to at the clock tower and then when the fences were put in place, Food Not Bombs moved up to the Benchlands as we had discussed and continued conversations were happening with the city. So I just want to make sure that it's clear to the public that we are trying to work with Food Not Bombs. That was back in March, Food Not Bombs is still operating and we're still trying to find ways to ensure food distribution to people who are most vulnerable in our community. So I don't want to seem as if we're picking on Food Not Bombs and we're trying to do is ensure that we're providing a space for them that we're providing clear sound regulations on how they can distribute food in a way that leads to the guidelines of the county health officer and public health. So that not only are we providing people with food but it's done in a way that's sanitary, that it's done in a way that's going to ensure that we're maximizing social distancing because as many people will remember as well, there was also the instance when Food Not Bombs kind of a rally after the shelter and place orders came out around Motel vouchers and that was clearly a violation of the county health orders where there was, you know, possibly close to 100 people within that space, that clock tower really putting people in that community at risk. And that is the one thing that we are trying to do with all the orders that we're putting forward is to increase health, to maximize health, to ensure that we're following the health officers guidelines to make sure that especially people in our homeless population are being cared for and we don't see COVID-19 breaking out in that population. So I just wanted to follow up on that Council Member Brown since I've been direct. Thank you. Can I just say one quick thing because I know there are a lot of people who want to make comments that just in response to that I do want to say I really appreciate all of your efforts to try to find an amenable set up for Food Not Bombs. But just in one other comment that I hope I can just impress upon everybody that, you know, I read the MOU, I think it was all totally reasonable. And I think that we could be a little bit more proactive about identifying sites where they can operate. I think that, you know, the Ventilands was a good idea and then it flooded right when they got the opportunity to go there. So, you know, I don't want to go into all the details, but I think citing is really critical and that's the conversation I would hope that you all could have. And this is also the key that you're out there listening. Thanks. Council Member Byers. Maybe, Martin, you could address that. At least a lot of my friends or phone calls I got assumed now that you have stayed in place for 60 days. First place, a lot of people saw it and they jumped to conclusion. So I'm assuming you just picked that, but you didn't have to come back to us, but would you just go over to the public that I hope is watching? Yes, yes. So the, we don't know what the current shelter in place order is in place until May 3rd, but we expect that that's going to be extended. We don't know what that time frame is. The state shelter in order doesn't have a deadline until further notice. So the intent here is there's just the 50 day parameter that's in the in the audience that says, you know, it's an effect for 60 days and then it has to be renewed. No, more than 60 days. So then, but however, if the emergency is concluded before the 60 days, then this would not be an effect anymore. So, and also the council would bring it up at any time to to essentially rescind the declaration if there's a need to do that. But we wouldn't normally operate if the emergency didn't exist if you want. Thank you. Pretty would last for 60 days, three week by week, as they have been and as they will as regarding the ratification of orders. I do favor that and I just want to go on the record. Let's be benign that the let's be realistic that the city, I believe, has gone out of its way to work with food, not bombs. Food, not bombs has been difficult, quite frankly, in some ways that the mayor has mentioned and others that I think are well known. And we got many, many, many, many complaints from the public at the time that there was a large gathering in the chat box and so forth, expressing the concern that that was violating public health orders and putting people at risk. That wasn't necessarily reflected in the latest slurry of emails, but that was certainly part of the executive orders when they were put into place. They were responding to what was perceived as a significant public health risk. And so, just saying that, I want to fully support the ratification of these and realizing also that we were responding in real time to a completely unfamiliar crisis. And I do believe people were making their best effort to put forward action to public health. I support what Sandy mentioned. Yes, to the extent we can work with food, not bombs to enable them to deliver food services in a way that is safe by all means. Let's proceed. That takes two parts. Malcolm Brown, did you have a raise your hand? I think second form vote. No, that was just I raised my hand, but then I jumped in. So thank you for lowering my hand. I would just like to say that, you know, we I know that people are really frustrated with the situation that we're in and want to move forward very quickly. I think that we're fortunate that we have so much access to technology that's really going to help us move more quickly on trying to, you know, contain COVID-19 move forward. But, you know, there's been a really slow response at our federal level and we're doing really well, but we can't just open up our community, even though we're doing well to business as usual, given that we will see a huge influx of people from other areas and we can put our community at even higher risk. The last time we saw a pandemic of this magnitude, it lasted for 36 months. And while I don't anticipate what I would hope, actually, I should say that we're able to contain this a lot much more quickly. It's going to take a joint global effort in order for us to, you know, really be in a position where we can get back to business as usual. And so in the meantime, I think we all need to continue to do our best to shelter in place. We need to continue to be patient and we're going to be following the lead of the state on this one. And so when the state, you know, thinks it's okay that we remove our emergency orders, I would anticipate that that's when we will, we as a community will also lift our orders. And we will be continuing to follow the lead of the state, which has done extremely well given its population to allow this pandemic. And so I'm happy to support this item. And again, to the extent we can work with food distributors in our community, there's a multitude of people who are willing to step up. I think that we should continue to work with those individuals. And so with that, I'll pass it back over to Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, I'd like to go ahead and make a motion to approve the resolution extending the emergency declaration in connection with COVID-19 pandemic. By 60 days and ratifying confirming director of emergency services order numbers 2020-01 through 2020-06. I'll second that. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Myers, seconded by the mayor. I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll call vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member is Byers. Yeah. Brown. Yeah. Matthews. Yeah, I, but I want to register a no vote on exact ratifying executive actions. The first and second ones. But I think that they could have been done differently. Thank you. Matthews. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. Aye. Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. Motion passes with numbers three, four and five unanimously and with council member Brown voting no on the ratification and certification of 2020-01 and 2020-02. I think the way that works is that the minutes money should just reflect that council member Brown expressed her opposition to items numbers one and two. I don't think it affects the actual register of the vote. Right. Okay. So we are moving on to item number 18, which is an ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code section 4.02.021, which identifies various city positions authorized to issue certification. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, 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. Follow by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and return to the council for action and deliberation. With that, I will turn this over to city attorney Tony condati for the presentation. Thank you. You're coming to members of the city council. So I guess I have, I have heard that a number of members of the public have raised some significant alarm. So about this ordinance and. And I just heard it described as a massive unleash of city personnel towards. New enforcement activities. And so I just, I'd like to start by just clarifying that that's not what this is about. This is what I would characterize as a. Barely. Denyne housekeeping measures. It's really nearly just updating our municipal code to make it consistent with the current organizational structure of the city. So under the existing municipal core code enforcement of various codes and regulations typically done. By the department that's charged with implementation of the particular ordinance or the particular chapter section of the municipal code. For instance, the water department is responsible for enforcement of provisions relating to water service. Regulations that prohibit customers from manipulating their own water meter. The public works is authorized to enforce provisions related to source control for the sewer system or for storm drain. Finance department is authorized to enforce provisions of the municipal code relating to business licenses and transient occupancy taxes. The building department for building codes, etc. Finding department for land use and zoning issues. So that is why in the existing municipal code, the different departments have designated officers or employees who have the authority to issue citations for municipal code violation. I might recall that a year or so ago, the organizational structure of the city was realigned with between the parks and rec department and the fire department and police department with the most part rangers being moved in the structure or in the organization. Organizational chart from under the umbrella of the parks and recreation department to the police department and lifeguards were transferred from the parks and recreation department to the fire department. And so what this, the emphasis for this ordinance was to simply realign that authority in the municipal code to make it consistent with the current organizational structure of the vicinity at the same time to circulate a draft to the different departments to make sure that the specific titles of the positions that have enforcement authority within the individual department. That they are consistent with the actual organizational structure and I'm going to attempt to share a screen and share with me a second. Hopefully, I'll be able to get this up. 4.02.021 authority to issue notices to appear. Is that visible on the screen? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So I'm going to just go down this and sort of without going over every minute detail. Some of this is just cleanup language. I'm just going to sort of go over real briefly what this is all about. You'll see here under fire department, language refers to fire deputy chief, fire marshal, deputy fire marshal, fire inspector, fire battalion chief, fire captain. Tony, can I stop you for one second? Yeah. I don't know if this is on everyone's screen but I just see it zoomed in 0.02.021. Something must have happened to your screen. We're not seeing what you're seeing. Yeah. All right. I apologize. I'm going to try this. I think if you just zoom out, we'll be able to see it. Oh, my zoom is not responding. So I think what I will do is not sharing my screen. Try. Yeah. Try to stop it and then reload it, Tony. You're buying? That's getting it. Fine. Maybe we can take a quick break while we try to. What? A quick break while we try to figure this out. Okay. I think he's, it looks like he got it. You got it. Well, this is a different item. No, that's not the right one. Tony, do you want to email it to me and we'll get it up at this point? Sure. Code. Various fire officials that have enforcement authority, rather than have these individually listed, the code would be amended to say all sworn personnel in the fire department have the authority to issue citation. And then the Marine safety officer and beach life guards are moved from parks and recreation to the fire department as part of this ordinance. And then there's some clean up language to, for instance, adding recreation superintendent urban foresters and city arborists, recreation supervisors and aquatic war supervisor, golf court superintendent and park supervisors as part of this ordinance. The planning director in the planning department is just modifying this to make the authority consistent with the current titles of the different positions in the planning department police department. In addition to clarifying the specific title of community services officer, the ranger one to senior ranger and temporary classifications are moved to the police department or under the umbrella of the police department. And that is essentially what this is all about. It's purely just realigning the enforcement authority under the code with the current organizational structure of the city. And it doesn't increase the amount of enforcement that the city will be able to do. It also doesn't decrease it. It doesn't change it at all. So I'm happy to answer any questions or response to comments. And again, I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. It also doesn't decrease it. It doesn't change it at all. So I'm happy to answer any questions or response to comments. And again, I would like to apologize for the technical difficulties. Thank you. I'll bring it back to council for questions. Councilmember Brown. Thank you, Tony. Once again, I actually don't have a question because I got my questions answered in advance, but it made me think about just a quick comment. I really appreciate the clarification about what this is really a cleanup of our current ordinance and it's not, you know, an expansion of police powers. In this kind of instance, it would be really helpful to see that red line version in our agenda packet because I think, you know, for, for mostly for the public, I mean, council members, we can fall in or, you know, talk to department heads and others to get clarification on these things, but it leaves the public wondering and then communicating with us about it. So whereas if it had been more clear in this case that it was just a cleanup, it might not have been such a topic of conversation. So, but thank you for clarifying now. I had a normal practice and that was an oversight on my part. And I, and I just, you know, apologize to the members of the public that I have been misled or confused by what we were actually doing. Councilmember Myers. Do we have any sense of the number of citations or where they come from? Does anyone keep track? I'm just thinking the Loch Lomond being up there one time and a couple people got citations, right? They, so they, I was clear what they were doing wrong, but. Does anyone track? We maintain records of all of the citations that are issued in. There are requests for that type of data. And so it's on occasion last year in response to requests from the council to provide some statistical data on citations for various. Yes, that information is available. Thank you, John. I have a couple of other questions from council members. Right. Seeing none. Right now we are hearing item number 18 ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code section 4.0 2.0 2 1, which identifies various city positions, authorized to issue certain citations. If you're a member of the public, there should be some phone numbers on the screen. If you're watching from home. Please call in. After you've called in, please press nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. Time will then be set to two minutes. And you will be able to speak. It looks like Robert Norris from Huff has called, has contacted the city council early and will be given four minutes. And so Robert Norris. Please let us know when you're on the line so that we can give you the time that you've requested. It's accurate and inclusive in what he's saying, which, you know, I can't vouch for it either way. I'm concerned, of course, that the eighth order by Bernal included 11 categories, many with multiple members. But I mean, if it's only for enforcement of the actual business of that particular agency, and I would hope that that would be the case. And I would actually, I now I would assume it's the case in spite of what initially alarmed me about this, turned about it than I was. I would echo also, for other reasons, council member Byers, a question about the kinds of citations that have been issued in the last month and a half to people, not just for the coronavirus spacing violations, but also homeless violations generally, because this includes the safety of people in their encampments. So I would request the council, this be, in fact, be made public for those of us who want to see it and up to date so we can be reassured that homeless people are being given the kind of treatment that Susie O'Hara earlier assured us they were. I mean, it's a little unclear to me why there is a concern about doing this in a situation where the public can't even enter the council chambers. Many people probably don't know how to get into the public to make comments. I'm not saying on this particular item necessarily, but this item is one of many, some of which are real concerned to members of the public and they don't have access to them. And of course, lots of technical problems with actually getting this out, which I realize you're trying to solve, but they still exist. So, I mean, it may kind of lay the groundwork for Brown Act violations if people, the public is not have real access to this stuff. And I think it's, I don't know, I think it's important to leave the technicalities, the details and the housekeeping stuff insofar as you can and not imperial funding and so forth and public health safety to a later time when the public can actually be present. Thanks for the time. This is Scott Graham. I'm concerned with is this time thing for these extra people that are being deputized during this pandemic so that the city can collect more $1,000 checks from people that are violating this? Is this a way of like filling the coffers because they're not getting, you know, hotel tax, they're not getting, let's go out and we'll get all the city employees to go out and give people $1,000 tickets. And I just like to say that I tried to get in on the last conversation. You know, I got in, I pressed star nine and I never got a chance to speak. So, this system you're using right now really stinks. I hope you help with something better in the future. We're going to continue to have these remote meetings. Thank you very much. Witness to this democracy. My name is James Julian Whitman. And in the interim, I, from the last time that I took notes on what Tony talked about as far as $1,000 fine, $500 fine, slap on the wrist, $250 fine. I've taken 30 pages of notes. I wanted to show anybody in the city council my notes. But here are my comments. You know, I wish that if I was saying something negative, I was saying it just to one person, but I'm not. This is herdership chain of command with every person in the city of Santa Cruz. And now even more employees have the, in the city, have an opportunity to bully any citizen they want. I will repeat. There are some major things going on with Earth's biosphere. And here we are focusing on stuff like this and people hiding. There's some stuff that needs to change. And the shelter in place is not helping 20 friends of mine with businesses in Santa Cruz and my business. And I'm sure, I don't know what's going to happen in 60 days. So anyway, I appreciate this democracy. I wish it were a little bit better, but it is what it is. Thank you very much. I'm done. Hello. My name is Elise. Can you all hear me? Okay. There's technical problems with actually viewing this city council meeting. I've never had it happen before with this computer. On this item, I'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation. And our council member wants. Yeah. I'm just prepared to move the ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code section 4.0 to 0.021, which identifies various city positions authorized to issue certain citations and made by council member Watkins. Second about council member Matthews. Any further discussion on this item? Seeing none. We'll pass it over to approval. Thank you. Mayor, council member fires. Matthews. Boulder. Watkins. Vice mayor Myers. Sorry. Hi. And mayor Cummings. That passes unanimously. Thank you, Tony, for bringing that to us at this time. Thank you, council. That we will move on to item number 19 on our agenda, which is the go Santa Cruz downtown employee transportation demand management six month program update and mid-year recommendations. I'm going to share my screen. This is flawless. Okay. So as I mentioned, this is on the go Santa Cruz transportation management program. An overview of what that is. And we have some council members who are new and weren't here at the time that we implemented. But the overall goal for the program is to make sure that we have a fair amount of information. We have a fair amount of information. We have a fair amount of information. And we have a fair amount of information. I thought we were good at the beginning. We have a fair amount of information. But the overall goal for the program are to reduce the drive-alone rate within downtown for employees to below 50%. And offer transportation options for employees that meet them where they are, recognizing that there's not a one size fits all solution. And finally to maximize the availability of our parking resources, recognizing that we're really in a parking crunch. 18 with the downtown commission on doing to downtown employee commute surveys, asking people what their preferences were and how they would actually like to shift modes as well as doing a lot of work to develop the overall downtown parking rate strategy. Then on September 11th, 2018 city council adopted our parking rate strategy, which sunsetted the business deficiency fee downtown increased permit pricing and set an overall downtown PDM budget at $300,000 per year. Following that up on February 11th, 2019, we came to council with our program recommendations for a Go Santa Cruz program and council ended up adopting scenario four with a $585,000 budget. We'll come back to that towards the end of this presentation. After that time, we spent the next couple of months working on executing all of the contracts and agreements and MOUs that were required to get this program rolling and then intentionally didn't launch our program until October 1st, 2019, just about six months ago now in order to make sure that we were through the summer season when we have a lot of transient employees in the downtown, as well as to allow for UCSC and Cabrillo to come back and be in session. And very importantly for those students who already have the transit passes that they get through their educational institution. An overview of what the program includes, and I'll be brief in this, knowing that you guys have had a very long day. We give transit passes to any downtown employee that wants them through a partnership with Metro. This is an annual pass, which is good on all local service. So everything except for the highway 17 express times. And then each month we pay Metro a flat rate and we get a analysis of the monthly ridership like locker cards. These are cards that are preloaded with $20. We have about 100 bike lockers located throughout the downtown and they offer secure bike storage. This directly addresses what we heard in our downtown employee commute surveys that many people had concerns about bike theft. They would be willing to ride their bikes, but it made them nervous to leave them locked outside. So offering a safe and secure alternative there. Benefits, something we're really proud of. The first of its kind commute trip production program in partnership with jump, we give downtown employees $2 off per trip for 60 trips in a 90 day period. This is based off the estimate that there is about 20 workdays per month. So it gets you your workday commute to and from work each quarter. At the end of the quarter, if you request another benefit, we'll give you another code and keep you writing. And then we give rewards. This is another part we're really proud of. If you log 10 carpool trips in our online commute management platform, we'll give you $10 in downtown dollars. If you log 25 alternative trips of any kind, we'll give you $10 in downtown dollars and we can also run special challenges like we did a fallen level of carpool challenge in the month of February. An important thing here is that this entire program is funded by the parking district that I had mentioned in our meters, our laws, our structures and our permits. And knowing that that's a sensitive thing for downtown businesses. It was really important for us to keep that revenue as benefiting to downtown employees and to invest in downtown dollars so that downtown employees have been frequenting downtown businesses. To get started, you can go to the link on your screen or citysandacruze.com slash go Santa Cruz. You sign up by putting in your name, your email address and your home and work address, you scroll down to the my rewards section and you select the benefits you want. And then someone, me or my colleague, Joanna, physically comes and delivers you your transportation benefits, your bus pass or your bike locker card and we explain and answer any questions you have. So many people ask questions about, you know, how do I take the bus or how do I know where the bus goes or how do I use a bike locker card? So physically delivering them, although it's very high touch as part of the program offers another opportunity to do further outreach and another benefit is that oftentimes when we go to a business to drop these off, the person that we're dropping them off for oftentimes isn't there, but one of their colleagues is. So it's another opportunity to do outreach. Overall program metrics to date note these stop at the end of February. We didn't want to give you a kind of skewed idea with post COVID analysis there. So between October and February, we had 999 downtown employees sign up for the program to put that in context. We estimate that we have just over 4,000 employees downtown. So it's about 25% saturation, which in the world of transportation is astronomical and huge. Of this, we've had 629 transit passes distributed, 242 jump benefits, 143 bike link cards and 390 rewards claimed. I'll go into these in a little bit more detail, but also there's there's some pretty extensive detail in your staff report. Whether key staff since October, Joanna, my colleague has been tracking her mileage as she walks around downtown handing out these benefits and she's gone over 110 miles at this point to distribute benefits. So she's pounding the pavement every day. Downtown employees have logged almost 14,000 alternative commute trips for almost 50,000 miles, which is two times around the world. Pretty huge. And we reduced 14.8 tons of carbon dioxide. The program where it's one of the cool things of having a commute management platform is that when people do put in their home and their work address, we can see their origins and destinations. And this is a really zoomed out version, but it's just meant to give you a general overview. We see most people coming from within city limits, Live Oak and Capitola, although we do see people that are coming from as far as Coralitas and into the Bay Area who are using our commute management platform. This gives us a lot of information about how we can inform future participants of our program and make recommendations. As part of our two downtown employee commute surveys, what we heard loud and clear was that biking was the option that most people were most likely to choose if they were to switch modes and knowing that so many people that we have participating are from within about a three mile commute shed, it means that biking is a really available option to many of those folks. We also are really proud that we've reached over 168 unique businesses in the downtown. It's been a really great way to do outreach directly in businesses, walk up, knock on the door, leave information behind, and then pretty immediately come back to deliver benefits as people are signing up. So we're excited that they're spread throughout the downtown, they're in all sectors from retail and restaurant to government, to office, to tech, to nonprofit. We have large businesses and sole proprietorship and we're really proud of the program reach. I'm going to go through each of the different elements of the program and give you just a high level overview of the data highlight. And at the end of this, I'm going to focus on Metro because that specifically relates to my program recommendations today. So in education and encouragement, we know that if we're getting more people that are changing their modes, we want to make sure that they know how to do that safely. So partner with Ecology Action, they posted five downtown urban riding workshops. They reached over 150 downtown employees and through these, they've also been distributing safety equipment. So we do light sets and 145 helmets. It's something I hear all the time in my outreach that lights and helmets are so huge and it's what the data plays out as well. And what we heard, because as we're doing these outreach workshops, they're live in person and we're asking people for feedback, both in a pre and a post survey. And the majority of people who are attending are beginner and intermediate cyclists who are really interested in learning more about how to ride safely. 59% of them are not regular bike commuters. People from riding is that they're fearful of riding next to traffic. And so we make sure that we talk about basic skills, where do you ride in the road, hand signals. And it's a really good program. I think we've gotten a lot of really good feedback there. As part of this program also, we do do outreach on all other modes that are included in the Go Santa Cruz program. So when you call ejections during the urban riding workshop, they're also talking about carpool and transit and jump and signing up for the community management platform. So it's a good way to do a lot of outreach. The biking, the bike walkers. We had a ton of interest at the very beginning. We distributed 143 cards. Of those, only 30 were activated and only 15 were used. Of those that were used, they were parked for about 975 hours. And one of the things here, we were looking forward to doing the next phases of our bike locker update to downtown. We recently put that on hold as we're analyzing what we do in response to coronavirus. But hopefully in the future retrofitting those lockers, we can do some more marketing behind the bike locker program and get more of those cards in use. For the jump program, we distributed 242 incentives. 140 of those were redeemed and 71 were used, so a higher percentage there. And an interesting fact there, we get a lot of information from jump. The average trip distance that was taken through this program was about one mile. It's about half the distance of our usual jump ridership. And it gives us a good, good grasp of who are the people that are riding, where are they riding. Likely many of these trips are errands, that otherwise would have been taken by car, going and grabbing lunch by bike, rather than taking your car. Or you live pretty close, and maybe you were driving before, but jump is an easier option for you. So we're excited about the benefits we've gotten back from that. Then getting into transit. I'm going to spend the most time here, as you've seen in my program recommendation. We are asking for a council direction to renegotiate our contract with Metro. Since October 1st, we've taken just shy of 13,000 trips, 12,978 to be exact, 629 cards, and roughly half of those are in use. An important thing here is that the year-to-date cost has been $129,632, and the average cost per trip of $9.99. When we initially brought this contract forward, it was a proposal by Metro that then we had council direction to enter into, we pay a flat monthly rate to Metro, regardless of actual use. So we would pay the same amount per month if we had one person ride the bus, or if we had 5,000 people ride the bus. It wouldn't matter, the flat rate. And what we've seen with the data is that we are not having program utilization that warrants the way that we've set it up. Going into further detail, our current contract, the flat rate is just shy of $26,000 per month. A year-to-date would pay just shy of $130,000. What I would propose doing is working with Metro towards an actual cost model. So if Joel on the street were to walk up to the bus and get on, that ride would cost him $2 per trip. If we had paid that $2 per trip since the start of the program, those 12,978 trips would have cost us roughly the same program to date as one single month of what we've paid. So my recommendation would be to work towards that. The caveats in this recommendation are that transit is an absolutely vital component of any program that we put forward and there's no scenario that I envision that we don't work with Metro on a partnership to deliver transit options for downtown employees. As part of this, the same thought into this program, we've done our due diligence in trying to get these passes out. I mentioned Joanna individually has walked over 110 miles throughout downtown. And despite pounding pavement, doing lunch and learns and outreach events and going directly to employers and being out at all sorts of other events and doing marketing, we just have not had enough people interested in this program to want a transit pass. As I said, we distributed just over 600 of them. About half of those have been used. Metro also didn't take on, as no part of it, they didn't add new service or expand hours or take on any significant cost in order to roll this program out. So changing our method of delivery wouldn't be something that they weren't getting a return on investment that they had made and I'm sensitive to that. And our contract does allow for renegotiation with 30 days notice. We did speak to Metro. I sent their CEO a notification on the 13th that we were going to be bringing this to council. And we've had them back and forth with him. I believe you've all received a letter from him as well. And as I understand, it's a tough time for Metro and it's a tough time for us. In the context of the parking district, which provides all of the funding for this program, we are losing over $600,000 per month in anticipated revenue. So we're looking at all options for how we save on costs. And this is one of the low hanging fruit options that we would still be able to deliver a transportation benefit at a more affordable rate to the city where Metro would still be able to get a revenue stream and downtown employees would still have access to transit. With that, my recommendation is to consider the impact of the first six months of the expanded Go Santa Cruz Transportation Demand Management Program for downtown employees and to direct staff to renegotiate the contract with Santa Cruz Metro. And I'm available for any questions that you have. Let me know if you'd like me to stop sharing my screen or to leave it up as well. For that presentation, I've been using, I just want to say that I've been using, I was using the jump lights and sign up for this program and really got me to change some of my behaviors and so I have a really great program to have and look forward to continuing these two questions from Council. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item that you want to comment on, we can change our screens to show the phone numbers. Now's a good time to call in using the instructions that will be provided on the screen. If you're interested in commenting on this, when we go to public comment, you'll need to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. Before we go to public comment on this item. Sorry, can Claire un-chair her screen so that our screen can go up with the phone numbers? Thank you. Yeah. So at this time, are there any questions from Council member Brown? Thank you for the presentation and all of your efforts to work towards a multimodal alternative transportation for downtown and others, downtown workers and others. And I also do appreciate your effort to advertise and do outreach on the bus passes and kind of go with the notion that we wanted to make them available to anyone who is interested. I think the data is clear that we need to look at how we do this in a different way. And so I absolutely support doing that. But I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about I mean, you've detailed your outreach efforts. It was there and I know everything's up in the air because of the pandemic. But did you have in mind any particular goal for the number of bus passes that would be distributed or other efforts to move towards a particular goal? So that's one question. And then another question I have is about is there any amount available on the impact of parking pricing and transportation demand management to date? I know it's early on parking availability. Is there any data on that? Is there more parking in what areas? And then the last question I have is have you talked to anybody in the county about how they address the bus traffic situation because I think I have heard that they have been able to work something out with the Metro where they do pay as you go through like booklets of passes and things like that. So if you haven't, I think that that might be something that we could talk with the Metro about as well. Starting from the top, what our goal was at the beginning of this when we set out last in 2017, 2018, our goal, which was a stretch goal, was that at the end of this program we would hope to have increased transit ridership to 10 percent. We're starting at around 6 percent. The way that we're recommending changing that, changing how we pay for this program, would not change that goal in any way. My goal for this would still be to be able to deliver transit passes to all downtown employees, to still market the program, to still encourage people, to still help people change their mode. It would simply be changing the way that we pay for the program. And we could do that in the analysis we did for about a third of the cost of what we're paying now. The second part has been any analysis of our parking demand as it relates. I have not seen any drop in our parking demand, even with this. We still have a very long wait list at the parking window. That's something I didn't mention. Another way that we do outreach is that everyone that comes in to pick up their monthly parking permit, about 3,000 people gets information about our program and everyone on the parking wait list got information about our program as well. So we haven't seen a big impact there in terms of a drop in parking. Obviously, right now, we have a big impact because no one's coming downtown because they're staying home as they're supposed to. But prior to that, we weren't seeing much of an impact. Third, in talking to the county, I've not talked to the county, I've talked to UCSC. And UCSC has done a variety of different contracts with Metro, both flat rate and pay-as-you-go. There's pros and cons to each and generally you aim to make it that you provide transit in a cost-effective way to the group of people and you aim for the general cost per trip to be around the cost of actually taking transit. And we're seeing right now about a 5x above that. So to do a cost per trip that has a slight escalation on it so that Metro is able to recruit some costs for their staff time related to sending us invoices and sending us the ridership information, there are some ways there. But I can reach out to the county as well. But UCSC was pretty informative in talking about past contract negotiations. I have a couple questions and I just realized that I tried sending an email out but for whatever reason, I don't think it went out to you. But two questions. One, I know this came pretty early after I was on council last year. I thought I remember that when this came before us, it didn't seem like there was an ability to kind of pay for a trip at that time. Has that changed? It seemed like it was going to be a flat rate regardless and we expanded to all workers versus just a proportion of the downtown workforce. And so I was wondering if you could speak to that. Yeah, so when we came to council on February 11th of last year, staff had recommended scenario three, which included $100,000 for transit, roughly $100,000. And we would have bought essentially pay-as-you-go card so you can get 15 ride passes or monthly passes or single ride passes and given those out. With the way that we've worked it out, we now have, and some of you may have received your Go Santa Cruz transit pass. I don't have one handy right here. But those cards, Metro is able to track the actual usage of them. So each time one is tapped on the fare box, they're tracking that a Go Santa Cruz rider has got on. So at the conclusion of every month by the 15th of next month, they send me a ridership report. And being able to pay per ride would be as simple as saying, last month we had 6,000 riders, so we're going to charge you $2 times that 6,000 and we would pay that bill. So we do have the ability to do that. Okay. Thanks for the clarification on that. The next question I had is related to the jump bikes. I was wondering if you could kind of speak to how that contract was set up and just for clarification for members of the public that are we paying, did that contract put us in a position where we're continuing to pay them over time? Or is it kind of like monthly use? Can you speak to that a little bit? Specific to our Go Santa Cruz portion of the contract, correct? Yes. So for that we pay for each, we pay $60 for each of the jump codes that is actually redeemed. So if people request a benefit but then they don't use it, we don't pay anything for that. Only those that are actually redeemed we pay for. We have a not to exceed contract of $40,000 with jump. We're well below our contract authorization on that now. So we only pay for what's actually consumed. Great. So now, so the COVID-19 we're not paying into that at all. Yes, nothing happening. And as you know also as a side note, jump has pulled in all of their bikes at our direction to do that, to support the shelter in place efforts and to make sure that their employees and the public can remain safe as well. Thank you. Appreciate it. Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, I just wanted to head a little bit of a follow up question on the so the eco, so the the passes that we have from the bus, from the Metro, can we keep those if we go to the page? Because I think there's value in having the data that comes from those passes versus a booklet that may, for example, you know, disappear in someone's backpack or get dropped on the ground. So then we can't something. Yeah, we've purchased something, but we really don't know whether or not it's going to be used. So, you know, does that trip also get tracked? I'm assuming because you gave us the mileage and the carbon offset. That that card is also getting tracked in real time for the travel distances and other things as well, right? I mean, it's not just the fare. Is it getting, are we, is that how you're calculating that? I'm just curious how much information we're getting from somebody having cards and the value of that. So two separate things to that. So we have our commute management platform and we have that actually in partnership with the RTC. We went in together on purchasing a software system that people can sign up through. We were the guinea pig and the beta tester. So we rolled it out very early and did all the testing there. And that's where people are going on and logging their trips. And so the distance is coming from people that go in and then self report that they took transit or biked or did that. And we have a carrot behind that where when people do report their trips, they then accumulate enough points to get prizes, downtown dollars most of the time or other raffle prizes from downtown businesses. So on the flip, on that side, people report transit that they've taken, but they generally underreport of all the trips that they've taken. On the other hand, Metro gives us actual ridership data from the fare box every month. So we know how many trips were taken, on what route they were taken, what time of day were they taken, how frequently was each card used, how many unique cards were used. We have really depth of data there. So to the original point, I agree being able to keep these cards in circulation would be a huge win for being able to monitor and manage the program. We also have the ability to turn these cards off and on. If people lose a card, we can turn that card off and issue them a new card. So ideally, I would love to be able to keep these cards in circulation. And simply change the method of payment that we're using under this contract. Yeah, and it would seem that there's also just real benefit, just like a UCSC student, you know, I remember getting my cards, you know, and so you get used to having this thing that gives you all this freedom and you're able to, you know, you're not worrying about whether you've got the money or you're buying this, you know, it just seems like the card piece is part of building a successful program rather than kind of using a different, maybe a different type of purchase. My final question was, are there funds needed in terms of the other modes that are part of the program? So for example, will some of these cost savings that we're going to do, will that help with additional advertising? Will it help with, you know, getting, logging additional more, you know, being able to provide more for jump bikes once we're open for business again in terms of things like that? So are the other, I guess my question is, are the other mode types, are those funds used up, you know, in terms of the program, especially if we're getting such a big hit on our parking, on our parking? Yeah. So that's a really good question. Last week, I identified about $100,000 in cuts from the overall program budget. Those primarily came from anticipated cost savings as the result of this item. Significantly, actually entirely cutting our carpooling budget, recognizing that on A, it's not allowed right now under the shelter-in-place order. You should not be carpooling with someone that does not live in your household. And B, thinking about transit and carpooling in general, even as we come out of a mandatory shelter-in-place order, psychologically, people that have any other option are not going to choose to ride with strangers for a long time until they feel like it's safe for their health. And so as we emerge from this and we begin to reopen downtown, the modes that we're going to be promoting most are going to be walking, biking, supporting telework, and promoting the mental and physical health benefits of that. We will likely see a rebound in the number of people that are driving alone to work, just simply because people are really struggling financially, people are struggling with employment, and they're really scared. So the parts of our program budget that we have tried to maintain as much as possible are those that support walking, biking, marketing, and education, which are the areas that we think will continue to see success as we come out of coronavirus and areas that we'd anticipate people needing extra support. Any other council questions at this time? Seeing none, I'll go to the public comment, and if we could get the numbers on the screen. If you'd like to call in, please call one of the numbers that will be appearing on your screen. When you have joined the meeting, you'll need to press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. First calling on the line. Yes, hello, can you hear me? My call was dropped earlier. We can hear you. Okay, excellent. This is James Ewing Whitman. I want to thank Claire for the depth of the information. I believe somewhere early in your commentary, you said people were concerned about bike safety. So I'll comment on that at the end. I come from a family of bike riders, my mother, 37. Over 41 years, she rode her bike 85% of the time to work, and sometimes that was 27 miles each way. I've never been a professional bicyclist, but I've been told by dozens of professional bicyclists that I made them look bad. Anyway, when I was teaching my son to ride bikes in the mountains, I said, if you hear a car coming, you get off your bike and you look at the driver. That's because my fellow neighbors in the mountains bad now bicyclists and that's a terrible way to die. You're not going to win if you get hit by a car. So my suggestion would be to really pay attention, be polite, and make sure that the motorists see you. So thank you very much, Claire, for a wonderful opportunity. I would love to ride my bike to work. Thank you very much. I'm done. Hey, next speaker. Hi, this is Matt Barrell. I currently serve as chair of the downtown commission. I'm not speaking for the commission just for myself today, but I encourage you to support staff's recommendation to authorize them to renegotiate the contract with Metro Transit. Thank you. Here. Good evening, council members. My name is Pierre Ken from College Action, and just like Matt said, I just also want to echo his sentiment to support staff recommendation to make this cost savings for this program. And then I also wanted to add that, you know, in terms of the TDM program and getting people to use fewer drive-alone trips to get downtown, this program has been a very successful, you know, Claire and her team did the necessary outreach. They use great incentives. They followed it up with an online program that's easy to use that people contract their, you know, more transportation trips with and then, you know, being from College Action, you know, we had a role in terms of doing the bike safety education as one other caller said is so important to have. And I would ask the council, you know, to kind of build on this. Obviously, we're in this pandemic and everybody's looking for less restrictions. And as Claire said to, you know, what are the modes of transportation, sustainable transportation that people are going to be, you know, more favorably towards with shelter in place and social distancing. And so I would say, you know, if you can, you know, I know funds are, you know, revenue is being reduced for the parking fee. But look for funds that can support increased biking because it's a form of sustainable transportation that people are using right now to get fresh air to be able to de-stress from a very stressful situation that we're all in. So you can see in neighborhoods throughout Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz families out riding their bikes. Otherwise wouldn't be, I've seen people walking their bikes up Bay Street. So that tells me that's a new cyclist. So I would say, you know, if we can capture these new cyclists, and when, you know, things get back to somewhat normal, that, you know, we can make those cyclists into regular transportation bike riders. And, you know, ways to do that is activate jump, bike as soon as possible. Maybe we'll get doing an electric bike rebate program because that's the way to get people riding bikes more and think of ways to increase biking. Thank you very much. Hey, this is Kyle Kelly. I just wanted to note for biking, I would love to see more of the roads closed to cars, generally throughout the city, like I would say before, for people to be able to bike and walk more without having to be on narrow sidewalks or even areas where there's basically a lack of sidewalks. Seeing no more members of the public who'd like to come on this item, I'll bring it back for action collaboration. And I'd just like to say that behavioral change is pretty difficult in terms of getting people to change their modes of transportation. But, you know, one thing that's really great to see coming out of this program is at least, you know, there's an interest with people who signed up to receive the resources and that, you know, although some of our numbers are low, we've, you know, there's a lot of carbon emissions that we've been saving and a lot of people are getting on board with this. And, you know, we actually all wish that we could have had more time to develop what kind of been installed by COVID-19. But I think that as we move forward the way that, you know, this is going to be something that will really help us continue to reduce our carbon emissions and get more people out of their cars and into other modes of transportation. I guess the other thing I'd like to say is just that, you know, I think it's important. I mean, I understand the Metro's perspective on, you know, they're losing funds, but we're all kind of losing revenue right now. And to the extent that we can, you know, renegotiate a contract and get to this, you know, single payer system, it's really, as Claire pointed out earlier, it's going to be advantageous for our community because we're likely going to see a lot of people who don't want to be crammed on the buses just out of concern given, you know, the impact of COVID-19 and how it's transmitted. So to the extent possible, we can continue Metro and encouraging, given our current situation and given the use pattern, I agree with staff that we should, you know, renegotiate a contract and so have to support this. I'm sorry, Council Member Watkins, Council Member Brown and Council Member Matthews. And thank you, Claire, for your presentation. I think one thing we can definitely take away is there's a lot of really great successes to celebrate and also knowing that we need to make modifications moving forward. I think, honestly, the mayor really just highlighted a lot of my thoughts about where we're at in this particular moment and the direction to go in. So I, for the rest of the time, won't repeat that, but I share that same sentiment and I'm prepared to move the recommendation as presented. Can you guys hear me okay? It's my internet, it's on my internet. Okay, perfect. And that is, I know you can have the recommendation up. I think it's the same that I have in my agenda report. I'm happy to read that. So the recommendation that I have is to consider the impact of the first six months of the expanded Go Santa Cruz Transportation Demand Management Program for downtown employees and to direct staff to renegotiate the contract with Santa Cruz Metro. And I think it was implied that it will go in terms of a reimbursement for ridership. I'll second that. So we have a motion by Council Member Watkins to accept that recommendation, seconded by Council Member Brown and then Council Member Brown and Council Member Matthews and Buzz. Well, I've already made some comments and would echo some of the additional comments from my colleagues. And also just to say that, you know, this is an iterative process. We, you know, it's going to take time to really see the real long-term benefits over the long term. And we are in a time when things are kind of seem to be grinding to a halt, but I am confident that all of the work that has been done already and, you know, your efforts will continue, will begin to see those efforts will pay off and our alternatives will be robust. Compliment to driving and reducing our CO2 emissions obviously is like a huge, huge goal for us. And this is, you know, one way that we can support that. So thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to support this as well. To support, to my mind, it's been amazingly successful and had an incredible impact in the first six months. The beauty is, in my mind, it was well thought out all the research you did two years ago on employee desires and practices. It didn't just fall the hook to the sky. The work that was done with adjusting the parking rate and engaging partners between psychology action. There have been so many components that have helped put this in place. So I think it's been well thought out, well promoted, well documented, and really enthusiastically embraced. And what I specifically, the partners you've worked with is looking how to make it better all the time. We understand we have a finite amount of resources. It does take a while to change habits, but I appreciate that your interest is in the program. So congratulations. I went to one of the bike workshops. I'm not a bike rider, but I was so impressed. The turnout, the question, the impact on the people who were there. So I think, and I also know that you and your team have gone out and individually met with business owners, with employees promoted it actively through the downtown employee business duration level. It's been so impressive. So good work. Keep going. Thank you. That's very nice. Yeah, Claire, and thanks for spending time with me on Monday to bring me up to date. So this is an easy vote for me to make. I thank the council and the whatever council, the last council for taking this on, because it's been something talked about for years about helping the employees downtown not drive their car. So I'm excited and glad to be part of it now. It's Mayor Myers. I just have a question, maybe, or consideration for the maker of the motion. I think I've heard a little bit more of a deeper potential direction, possibly that the staff would like to explore, which is and I see some real benefit to this now that I've learned more about the cards and sort of how they function within the system. I'm wondering if the maker would be willing to potentially add to the motion and direction that the actual cost model as presented by staff be pursued in the negotiations with Metro. Is that appropriate staff at this point in time? Yeah, that would be ideally I would like to go with the actual cost model as a way that Metro be reimbursed for all the trips that they provide and I'd be willing to pay the full cost rather than discount it right there. And downtown employees still have the same level of access and we have a much more controlled level of costs on our end. And I'm saying this with full disclosure that I'm the Metro board member as well. So I am fully aware of the ramifications on Metro's budget especially in this year. And I would like to see if we can also add some type of cost allocation for Metro's needing to bill us, needing to run the data, things like that. So I think you had a figure of around $2 but I'd like to see I don't think it needs to go to $4 a trip but some kind of cost recovery and I also just my intent in this is really to as anything with council member Brown mentioned you know this was a pilot we're learning as we're doing this. So I mean I don't look at this revision of the contract as a necessarily a stake or a pullback I think it's just a reflection of not only the trends that we were seeing and the trends that were predicted by your original analysis but also reflecting obviously the obvious issue right now which is the COVID-19 restrictions and probably very likely changes in behavior ahead. But in general I think this is a program to council member buyers comments. This is a program we want to keep building and we want to see success from. So I would just see if the maker of the motion would entertain those changes. Mike Myers will you please repeat the language you'd like to add I'm sorry my internet cut out for just a moment. That's all right. So I believe you I believe you follow the staff recommendation. So I would make the motion the original language is consider the impact of the first six months of expanded go Santa Cruz transportation demand management program for downtown employees and direct staff to renegotiate the contract with Santa Cruz Metro with by amending the payment clause of the contract to reflect an actual cost model with the allowances for Metro for Metro cost. Yeah that sounds good. I accept you certainly. Thank you. Yeah and if I could just say yeah I would accept that so I thought that was kind of implicit in that because it's laid out in the staff report but I absolutely support going that route. So it's a friendly amendment made by Vice Mayor Myers which was adopted by Andy Brown or Council Member Brown seconded the motion and Council Member Watkins removed the item. Are there any further questions or comments? Hearing none I'll turn it over to the clerk to call the roll call vote. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Byers. Matthews. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. unanimously. Thank you. And we'll look forward to seeing the 1000 negotiation process. Thank you. Includes item number 19 on our agenda and brings us to our last item on our agenda item number 20 which is the fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2021 budget update related to financial impact of coronavirus shelter in place and the shelter in place mandate. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting this is an item you want to comment on now is the time 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 who will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. And I'll just mention to the public that we're going to put the phone numbers on the screen again after questions from council members so that you all can have an additional opportunity to see those numbers and call and pursue the share of life acting finance director to provide the budget update. Mayor I was going to do a brief introduction and then turn it over to Cheryl. All right. Thank you very much. I was just going to do a very brief introduction and kind of a picture overview and then Cheryl will do a presentation where she'll review the specific impacts to the city and then the recommendations before you. But just to kick it off very briefly as you all know really what's driving our budget these days is like many other things it's the COVID-19 pandemic. And it's something that is affecting every single agency in the country right now and probably in the world. And I just want to point out that it's important to recognize some sort of big items around the impacts. First that the physical impacts that we're getting from the COVID-19 is different in many ways from past economic downturns. For example the immediate the impacts are more immediate the economic and social impacts are more at the shelter at home the essential businesses only that are operating and the unemployment is growing much faster than it would during a recession. On the other hand the state is in much healthier physical position than it has been in the past when we've had a recession. And also we were in a point where we were projecting you know stronger local revenues when and this started and so we were in a relatively positive physical position starting off. Also overall cities are now more or less dependent on state funds than they used to be and so that helps. And then also on the flip side the human capital infrastructure that we have in place because we were in a relatively good place both locally and at the state level provides that mentioning the support to respond to the pandemic. Nonetheless cities and there was a recent survey that was done by the California cities that quantified all of this but cities are bracing for really a nearly seven billion dollar general fund shortfall over the next two fiscal years and you'll hear about ours. And this shortfall will grow by billions of dollars known as a dollar for us if the stay away or I'm sorry the state in place home orders are extended into the summer months and beyond. So these numbers can change. And then all cities as I mentioned regardless of size and geography are being impacted so we're not alone. And certainly there's also the fact that the cities that are more severely impacted are those that have a high dependency on the sales tax and the hotel tax. And from the survey over 90 cities in California report that they're considering cutting and furloughing city staff or decreasing public services as a way to address this or to take both actions. And so really every city is having to respond and we're not in the exception there. So before you are well you'll hear will be recommendations on how we can begin to respond to the fiscal challenge that we're facing now as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. So with that I'll turn it over to Cheryl for the presentation. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good. Thank you, Martine. Good evening, Mayor Cummings, Vice Mayor, Mayors and Council members. I'm about to give you the update, our budget update as we see it at this moment. So could I have next slide? We're here today to request that Council authorize and ratify the fiscal year 2020 budget saving measures direct staff to develop a fiscal year 2021 budget with $6 million in spending reductions. Also direct staff to closely monitor the events and impacts associated with the COVID-19 shelter in place mandates, measure those impacts and report back to City Council in May. And also establish a budget committee comprised of the Mayor, Vice Mayor, one Council member to assist with the review budget scenarios and proposals that may have to be considered in between the fiscal year 2021 budget release and adoption and during fiscal year 2021. Next slide. Okay, our agenda comprises of a forecast, projections, shelter in place, zip revenue impacts, budget saving measures, and then our next steps. Next slide. Thanks. In regards to our forecast, the COVID-19 recession as Martine had said is different from the great recession of 2008. And that's primarily due to an unknown key component, which is the length of the shelter in place mandate. In addition, necessary and vital data for forecasting is not yet available. Next slide. We prepared a forecast for you that incorporates the following and we anticipate the easing and end of shelter in place mandates in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. In addition, we're projecting major general fund revenue declines about to 25% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, continuing through the first two quarters of fiscal year 2021 and then followed by a rebound in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2021. Next slide. Here's our unknowns. Although we're predicting the easing or easing of a zip in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, this may be extended. At this time, we don't know if the city will receive state or federal aid and we can't project the time needed for the economy to recover because the amount of time is dependent on the length of the shelter in place. And lastly, we're impacted by an unknown future shelter in place mandate. This slide here represents our five-year financial forecast. And I'd like to start by letting you know that all forecasts are always created with a reasonable degree of uncertainty. But cities and counties agree that we've never been faced with an uncertainty to this degree. That being said, this five-year financial projection is based on current information. And we're pretty confident at this time with the current information. Again, that information might change. It's changing at a faster degree than we've ever experienced before. So if you look at, we ended fiscal year 2019 with almost a million dollars in surplus. But now with the shortfalls that we expect in the fiscal year 2020 in our major revenues and other revenues, we're projecting a $10.4 million deficit at the end of fiscal year 2020. Again, and at the end of fiscal year 2021, we expect a $6 million deficit. And then in fiscal year 2022, a $3 million deficit. And as the projection goes, we expect that we'll start being, we'll start having surpluses beginning in fiscal year 2023. But they're modest, as you can see. Next slide. This is a six-year fund balance projection. And again, the previous five, the deficits projected, have the following impacts to the city's general fund balance available, I'm sorry, the city's general fund balance. Again, the city ended fiscal year 2019 with a positive $2.7 million fund balance. Unfortunately, due to a projected loss of $10.4 million at this fiscal year end, we're projecting a deficit fund balance of $7.7 million. And also, cumulative losses are projected to continue through the end of fiscal year 2022, where you'll see our projection of a negative $16.7 million in our fund balance, in our general fund balance. And that's unless we enact budget saving measures or receive aid from either the state or federal government. Next slide. Okay, this is an impact to our major revenues, our major general fund revenues. And the major general fund revenues that are in this slide are property tax, sales tax, utility tax, and transit occupancy tax, or TOT. It gives you a visual impact of the projected shortfalls of three of the city's four major general revenues. And that would be sales tax, utility tax, and TOT. We're not expecting any COVID-19 impacts to the city's general fund from its top source of property tax through the next two fiscal years. But the total impacts to the aforementioned sales tax, utility tax, and TOT are expected to fall short of original projections in the amount of $10.1 million in fiscal year 2020 and $4 million in fiscal year 2021. And you'll see that V-shaped dip. Okay, next slide. Okay, in summary, the city is not projecting any negative impacts to property tax revenues for the next two fiscal years. A 25% decline in sales tax for fiscal year 2020 and a 20% decline in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2021. And we're bounding in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2021. And even though we're projecting a rebound in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2021, sales tax revenues for 2021 actually project a 17% reduction from sales tax revenues that we budgeted for 2020, fiscal year 2020. And in TOT, the shortfall represents a 13 in 2021. The shortfall represents a 13% reduction in TOT. These are the budget-saving measures that we're hoping to enact in fiscal year 2020. And they include, first, the hiring freeze is actually already in place. And we also plan to draw down from reserve. And finally, the city departments have been instructed to first spending. These are the fiscal 2021 possible budget-saving measures. And since we're facing a year in deficit in fiscal year 2021 of $6 million, the city is prepared to implement the following budget-saving measures. Hiring freeze will continue. And we will reduce personnel costs and expenditures. We also may defer transfers from the general fund and we're actively pursuing reimbursements and loans. Next slide. As Martine had mentioned, most of the cities are enacting the same budget-saving measures and they're in the same financial position. But cities also need to need from the following, from the state. They need to, the state needs to establish a city revenue stabilization fund. The state needs to provide stimulus funding. Set aside CARES Act funding for cities with populations under $500,000 and create a financing vehicle for cities. These are our next steps in the fiscal year 2021 budget process. We plan to release a proposed budget on May 1, 2020. Fiscal year 2021 budget hearings will be held on May 12 and May 13, if needed. And we expect to adopt the fiscal year 2021 budget on June 23, 2020. We also anticipate checkpoints to return to council in September, December and mid-year, but in the mid-year budget in February. In addition to assist with the review of budget scenarios and proposals that may have to be considered in between the budget release and budget adoption and as we head into the new fiscal year, it is recommended that the city council appoint a budget committee comprised of the mayor, vice mayor and one council member. Next slide. Oh, there they are. Next slide. Staff recommendations authorize and ratify the fiscal year 2020 budget-saving measures. Direct staff to develop a fiscal year 2021 budget with $6 million in spending reductions. Direct staff to closely monitor the events and impacts associated with COVID-19 shelter in place mandates. Measure those impacts and report back to city council in May. And then establish a and again establish a budget committee comprised of the mayor, vice mayor and council member to assist with their view of budget scenarios and proposals. I think that concludes my, oh, I'm sorry. Next slide. What questions do you have? Presentation. And I guess as we all know, as we continue moving forward that the open place is really kind of impacting our community financially, but what we're ultimately, you know, charged with is to also save lives under the oath that we also as representatives from the city. And so, well, it's unfortunate that we see these cuts. I think that it's important that we know that as we see these reductions in funding and losses that we know that we're doing it, all of this is happening because we're trying to save lives in our community. So with that, I'll open it up to council members with any questions that they might have. Council member Browner. I thank you. Thank you for the updates. And yeah, it's pretty daunting to look at the numbers and try to wrap one's mind around how these cuts are going to happen. So I just wanted to ask because the staff report provides kind of a high level of generality of what's going to need to happen and that's understandable considering the unknowns and just the timing. But I'm wondering if, so I'm so one thing I'm wondering is when will we be identified when the may the budget is is released? Will there be some there? I imagine there'll be some messaging, but it'd be nice to get some of that detail about where where the cuts are actually happening for I think for the public to understand that as well. I'm hoping that the budget committee will work on some of those outreach efforts and pieces to help the public understand what we're up against. My question is we don't have any real sense of what the state or federal government might provide in terms of assistance. I understand that, but I'm just wondering if there's been any kind of tracking of, you know, projecting what that might look like in terms of, you know, female reimbursement and or other stimulus efforts that have been kind of under discussion at the state and federal level. We actually have a we're projecting if if we if we receive aid from the federal government it's estimated to be either six to eight million dollars and but that is there's a lot of controversy over that. So that's still being discussed. One of the issues is that the federal government doesn't want to provide the cities with a bailout that they feel will be spent on pension costs. However, the city has taken measures to make sure that we're we've we've projected our pension costs and have good structural cuts to be able to handle those in the future. I'm just going to add to that. So with respect to female reimbursement, you know, we do expect that we, you know, we're documented like we do for every emergency. We're documenting our expenses and hope to get reimbursement. However, there's usually a long lag time and so it could be a year or more before you receive reimbursements. So it's not something that we can rely necessarily for immediate assistance. I have to say though that at the federal level there is some movement there. We've more recently heard that McConnell is actually now open to including funding or assistance to states and localities in the next stimulus package that's coming from the federal government. So that's looking a little bit more hopeful. Again, don't know exactly what that'll be, but that's certainly better than it was just a few days ago. Of course, if that happens, then we'll come back and look at what that might be and what the impact will be. So yes, you know, essentially there's going to be three parallel processes that we'll be moving forward with. One is to develop a budget that anticipates these potential reductions. We'll bring it back to you in May during budget hearings to kind of we'll try to include it in the release budget, but certainly in May we'll have an opportunity to discuss those and present those to you. Secondly, you also are provided direction today during closed session regarding employee discussions with our employee groups and so that process will continue. And then thirdly, we'll be working with the budget committee on reviewing options and scenarios and then bringing those also back to council. So there'll be multiple processes going on at the same time here really quickly to bring back the changes that we might have to make in options as things develop. The other thing I should just note too is that obviously we don't know when the shelter in place order will be completely lifted. There is some indications from the governor that they'll start to be eased, but it'll be phased and so things will come back relatively slowly it looks like. So we'll have to try to evaluate that and determine what the impact of that will be for us. It varies by jurisdictions. Jurisdictions have different characteristics with respect to their sales tax base, for example, versus their other revenue sources. And so we just need to really analyze it on a pretty specific basis as far as what our sales tax mix and what those restrictions that are eased or changed and how those would impact our particular situation. The direction that we're being asked to give does anticipate cutback even within the next two months, the direction to department to see for or illuminate projects. So I think they said we need to get right away. And then going forward, we'd really should hear which I disagree with you. That's just the broad brush is the really tough choices that are going to come in the budget process for a year. So frustrating. I mean to have thought six months ago we were looking surplus and seeing how capital improves. Unfortunately, one of the issues I know that we've gotten correspondence on in the last few days has been the future of the city, the downtown, the merger of the two constitutions of that. That I'm assuming will be one of the things we discussed in the upcoming budget discussions. Is that correct? Making that in this fiscal year or next or both? How do you see that shaking out? I had an opportunity to follow up and talk to Economic Development Director Lipscomb about this yesterday. And the effort needs to happen and start off pretty quickly. If we want to get it done this year and have it be effective within the current year assessments. So waiting till May, this would be too long, I believe. So it's just a matter of dedicating the resources to do that. So in my discussions with Bonnie, she mentioned that we could do it. We could assist with that. It'd be some trade offs relative to our staff having to change priorities. So I asked her to put those down and communicate those to council. And then we'll have a conversation about those trade offs and whether to move forward or not. I know there's an interest on the part of the DTA to move forward with those. I think we're certainly very responsive to wanting to do that. It makes a lot of sense. However, it also does have fiscal implications for the city and that our assistance go up. So there's the staffing resources to move forward with putting the bid in place, but also there's also the cost implications. But we can, at a minimum, get started with the process and then those decisions will come forward to you. There's a number of times it has to come forward to council for approvals and directions as well. Well, I have Bonnie's on the line. Maybe she can add actually to it. I just realized she's on the line. She's probably better equipped to answer the question. And just because I understand your staff capacity, there's a sound background to speak to. Yeah. I want to go ahead, Bonnie. Great. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, members of the council. Bonnie Lipscomb, director of economic development. Yes, I think given the tight timeline, I think even before you've made the decision as a council as it regards to the budget and the deficit, we're going to need to move pretty quickly in order to meet all of the requirements for the actual assessment district, which includes three hearings, you know, petitions to property owners. So we can commit that time for the next few weeks and assuming that we'll move forward on that. And then when you make the decision, that will really be the stopping point as far as the budget and deficit when we get to the budget hearings in May. So we can commit that time for the next few weeks with the assumption that, you know, we would all like to move forward if we can financially support it as a city. From a capacity standpoint, it is a big lift at the city. So we'll be redirecting some of our business response. One of our part time staff members, I'll move her on to and we're all on COVID response. So I'll move one staff member back to that effort so that we can move forward and we can do that for the next few weeks. And if you then approve the budget commitment, which would be a minimum of 160,000, it could be as large as 180,000, depending on the public benefit element. And we can go through that more during the budget hearings. But from a capacity standpoint, we can make that work. And we're committed to continuing on this path at this at this time. I just want to add, thank you, Bonnie, because you guys all worked so hard extra effort on this. Thank you. They're working hard. I'll move her on. This is a reminder of one last question from Cheryl's comment. Just thinking about the possibilities for getting some kind of relief from state and federal government. Do you know if there's been any discussion about getting some relief from paying into our PERS obligations, the pension obligations, because I know we have worked on an accelerated timeline to meet those obligations. And the change in the system that PERS kind of hoisted on local governments was that was a big hit. And it continues to be it. I'm just wondering if there's any discussion about the PERS board or some authority at the state providing some temporary relief there. There is a concern at the people of our rates going up because of their investments are they're falling short. However, we won't see any of that for another two or three years. So what we've projected so far as our obligation for PERS is it remains intact. So at this time we don't know what those impacts are. What I've heard through the league is there have been some discussions around at least trying to contain any immediate potential increases that might occur. So there have been some discussions around asking PERS to at least maintain the current discount rate or PERS rates so that we don't see significant additional increases about what we already are facing. So those are the discussions that I'm aware of, but there may be more along the lines of what you're suggesting. And the state would and the state would have to step in with CalPERS to do any to help them with that. Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, I just have a quick question and then I'm prepared to make a motion unless if that's appropriate. Did we take public comment yet? No. I don't think we have correct. Okay. Sorry. Tracking things. My question I guess is regarding sort of the well I guess just inevitable, but I think it's important for the public to understand for the community to understand the severity of need for our capital improvements that we keep we keep pushing back. And you know, these are facilities that our community uses every day. And so, you know, these are these are our community centers. This is our swimming pool. These are the things that really as a resident you you see that decline in in those in the both in the facilities as well as some of the just the conditions and things that that need repair and maintenance. I guess my one request would be that, you know, as we work our way through this that we, you know, we don't talk ourselves out of, you know, trying to get back on track with some of some of that future funding in terms of whether it's a revenue source or potentially we just don't know what the feds or the state may do. I mean, there could be bonds that we take advantage of who knows how we put everybody back to work. But I just want to just make a statement that, you know, we don't want to lose track of that of those capital improvements because some of them are are are greatly needed as we all know. So and I'll be prepared to make a motion after after you receive public comment. Thank you. I had a quick question and maybe this is for the city attorney that he's on the one one of the recommendations or sorry, not recommendation, but far what the staff expressed in the presentation was a need to like a need from the state. And I was wondering would it be appropriate within the motions made that we could direct the mayor to write a letter to our state representatives kind of asking, you know, what those specific asks that the representative presentation. The big matter of what's being discussed tonight, I don't see any problems with that at all. Thanks. Presentation and just show those asks those items that we may need to put from the state. Lawrence got Thanks. Yes, Laura. Slide 13, sort of state representatives, kind of outlining the use of these, with their where, and again, begin to think about it after the back-up session. Absolutely, that makes sense. And were these recommendations that came from the League of California Cities? Yes. Okay. I think it seems to me almost natural that the common core recommendation to come out of the League of California Cities. city could almost be automatic for new to our state people. So fundamental on on the part of all cities that we hardly need permission for you to do that. I know you're doing with our federal people so meeting with them telling them what we need and and there with the program. So doing that and then just keeping us informed of the progress that you made. I had a follow-up question for also for the long routine and I'll get you know kind of like a baseline of where the cuts can come from that we could share with our federal representatives because it's out of one of the comments is that of our federal government think that you know they shouldn't fund cities because we're going to spend it on you know the spend the funding on pensions but then it's where those you know cuts would go would come from and how the funds from the federal government would be used appropriately and not for the funds of pensions so that we actually have raw numbers to show where we need to support. Absolutely we could definitely do that. Yes. And because I'm just thinking you know a lot of the wildlife as we as we continue conversations with our federal representatives that we can understand the timeline and whether we can get something to them I think it would be helpful and making me stronger. Yes absolutely. Yeah it's it's uh we've we've uh adopted a budget a balanced budget for the last fiscal three fiscal years so we've shown ourselves to be fiscally responsible we've taken measures to uh to reduce our CalPERS expenditures and and we've we've made a lot of we've made great strides in improving ourselves to be financially responsible and we can prove that we continue our conversations with our federal representatives we can no excuse for other members of that was mistake sorry for the comments uh from CalPERS members at this time um we're gonna have uh for members of the public who are streaming uh there's if there's an item if you would like to comment on item nine now it's time to call in using the instructions on your screen if you were wanting to comment on the fiscal year 2020 and 2021 budget updates related to financial impacts of coronavirus shelter in place mandates after you call in you'll need to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is time to speak don't hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes so oh wow fourth time I've done this before my name is James Ewing Whitman I have a Facebook account where I post a lot of stuff what's going on with our economy is called a black swan event Adam Bercotta did a really interesting video that I posted on March 31st at 5 30 a.m so I made a list of about 70 other documentaries but it seems like if anybody were to look at my Facebook I'm James Ewing Whitman in particular a black swan event it describes what's going on this is a cyclic activity that happens every 90 years the last time it happened was the stock market crash of 1929 and the United States didn't get out of that until world war two this issue is substantially worse we are in a major crash so thank you for your time I'm done thank you any next person now on the line hi this is Scott Graham I think if you're going to ask any of the city staff to take a 10 percent cut and pay or something like that that it should start at the top the city manager and all of the department heads should be willing to double that and have to then take a 20 percent cut in their pay in order to ask the people below them to take a 10 percent cut and pay the other thing I wonder is um you know the last time the stock market went down I don't think any any city or county went after CalPERS for sitting there and watching the money disappear and uh is there any thought of doing that this time to actually sue CalPERS and say you guys are mismanaging all these funds which is costing us dearly we can get through this we'll step up and offer cities and counties a little bit of you know some crumbs here and there to help us get by but this is really you know a serious issue here is to where the funding is going to come from if all our tax money drives up thank you thank you mayor Cummings and council members my name is Abra Allen and I am the interim executive director for the downtown association and I'm calling in reference to the um PBID or the property based improvement district that was mentioned earlier um in the context of the budget I just wanted to start by thanking Bonnie Lipscomb and Economic Development for their willingness to help move this effort forward by now most of you have probably received many letters of support from our business and property owner community and if they didn't believe and if we didn't believe that this PBID um could truly be pivotal in the rebuilding of downtown after this crisis we certainly would not be pushing to move it through at this moment um so I really appreciate all of you and your consideration um as we move forward with this process thank you um members of the public who like to speak on this item I'll bring it back for action and deliberation and I think I believe Vice Mayor Myers who said that you're prepared to make a motion on this item yes I am I'll go ahead and move the item um the staff recommendation um and a motion to authorize and ratify the fiscal year 2020 budget savings measures uh direct staff to develop a fiscal year 2021 budget with 6 million and spending reductions direct staff to closely monitor the events and impacts associated with COVID-19 shelter in place mandates measure those impacts and report back to the city council in May and establish a budget committee confessions and Mayor Vice Mayor and one council member to assist with the review of budget scenarios and proposals that may have to be considered in between the fiscal year 2021 budget release and adoption and during fiscal year 2021 I'll add just an additional item to that motion to um both the budget committee and city staff to track state and federal legislative efforts and advocate on behalf of the city as appropriate for uh state and federal um release and uh recovery fund that's about to put on a amenable to the mayor and is that a spice incident? Vice Mayor Myers seconded by council member Goldner um and I think that yeah that also is appropriate that we continue advocating and like writing the letters in the part of that is writing letters to our legislators in the part of it as well so the discussion on this item in on will ask the uh clerk to call the roll call I was just acknowledging that Vice Mayor Myers incorporated in her motion right I was just clarifying that that your part about the state representative in that one slide is included in the motion right I believe so because Vice Mayor Myers you were saying to advocate on behalf of the city for the federal efforts state and federal yeah I was trying to capture kind of the extent whether state or federal in keeping um and advocating I think in in addition to writing letters um you know we may we may do other things such as um communicate the Congress directly um the webinars you know there's it's the pathways unclear so I think just sort of capturing it as advocates advocating um and and doing that uh advocating for along those lines of state federal funding is that helpful? Just one other quick question before you you take the other the other item action item was uh I'm not sure whether you uh the appointment of the third member to the committee by the mayor or does that take council action? It's up to the city council you can uh defer you can uh delegate that to the mayor or you can make the appointment whichever you prefer. I'll just say I'm comfortable with the mayor and the vice mayor determining who the third? Yes well I was also going to hand I think it should be a mayor's appointment and of course working with the vice mayor makes sense. If I could just chime in I agree that's the way it's been done in the past uh with this committee and and many others but um with the budget committee certainly for the past two years that's how it's been done so I think that makes played by the mayor in consultation with the vice mayor. I understand how that will work. Councilmember Byers. Hi. Matthews. Hi. Brown. Hi. Boulder. Hi. Watkins. Hi. Vice mayor Myers and mayor Cummings. At this moment in time we are going to move into our world communications period however prior to that we had some technical difficulties early in the day and the public was not able to make comments on our consent agenda items or item number 16. So at this time if there's any member of the community who would like to speak on items from our princess agenda which is items numbers four to the 14 this is an opportunity for you to call in and make comments on those items. After comments on our agenda items we'll move on to comments on item number 16 that was on our agenda today and after comments on item number 16 we will then begin our communications. So um you are streaming and watching this meeting uh this is the time to call in using the instructions on the screen. Once you call then please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set for two minutes and so as I mentioned before currently we'll start with the items that were on our consent agenda items numbers four through 14. In comments so I should hang up and call back. I'll just keep your hand down for now. Seeing no members of the public who would like to comment on our consent agenda items if you would like to comment on item number 16 which was the introduction for publication and ordinance amending sections 3.08.030 and 3.08.100 of an adding section 3.08.091 to the Santa Cruz Municipal Code to establish regulations for the use, award, and evaluation of best value project delivery methods for construction projects from the water department. If you'd like to comment on that item please call it now and press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. Seeing no members of the public who want to comment on item number 16 we will now move on to oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. 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. An instruction should be on your screen as follows. Call one of the following numbers if the first number you dial is busy continue to the next number until you get through. You can call in at 1-669-900-9128-1346-248-7799 1-301-715-8592 1-312-626-6799 1-646-558-8656 or 1-253-215-8782. You'll need to enter the meeting ID number 940-6659-8281 and when prompted for a participant ID please press pound. Please make sure to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note that 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. If you are interested in addressing the council please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand and when it's your time to speak prepare the announcement that you have been unmuted. We request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comment so we can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes. However it is not required. You have two minutes to speak and um Robert Norris is on the line or when he called and he has requested four minutes on behalf of HUB and so uh when Robert Norris is on the line please make sure to announce yourself so we know who you are. Yeah I think that Robert Norris is on the line can you hear me? Yes we can. Okay City Council essentially unanimously support the City Manager's uh decree attack on Food Not Bombs masquerading as a health problem or a spacing problem and so forth. Suzy O'Hara has darkly raised questions about congregate eating places but has no worries apparently about the 500 to 600 she says aren't properly dispersed to motels outside now compared to what Food Not Bombs provides. O'Hara has pretty words but omits specifics unanswered questions I asked this council two weeks ago how many of those crammed into unhealthy shelters have been offered the option of a motel room how many have been tested for COVID-19 we heard that there were negative tests for those who were tested but we weren't told how many were tested was everyone who requested a test given one how much of the FEMA and house key money has been spent and what are the medical vulnerability criteria is it not obvious for example that those outside who die on average 20 years earlier are heavily more vulnerable if not protected they become transmission vectors do they not what about those outside the COVID-19 Petri dish shelters the people outside not just those in the shelters crammed in how many of them have been offered testing resources bathroom access fresh drinking water these are not rhetorical questions these are specific requests for information from the city and county that have been ignored out of the hundreds of thousands available how much of this money is being squandered on salaries and administration the big questions are really well the specific one is how much money is being spent on a daily basis to provide food survival gear trash pickup porta potty or bathroom servicing laundry and shower access and electrical recharging capacity basic survival needs for the overwhelming majority who are currently without shelter please specify the services being made available and their costs in each of these categories Susie are you listening please if you are take action and respond to these questions also indicate how much of the money available is going for salaries offices another administrative overhead 600 people sheltered that sounds good but almost all are in congregate shelters this is not specifically not recommended by the CDC we know about the san francisco outbreaks or that prompting the supervisors there to demand the mayor use FEMA the room key and other funding to open up motel rooms for 4,000 or more people o'hara smilingly assures us we have housed 27 people out of a population of 1,000 to 2,000 homeless folks here continue to be ignored why isn't the city commandeering motel rooms to deal with a public health crisis and reduce transmission risk now not hopefully as Susie o'Hara is endlessly full of hope and I continue mentioning Susie not because she's a bad person but she is the person who mouths these excuses and figuring out how to help these those with vulnerabilities she claims only 27 people who are over 65 are outside and multiple medically vulnerable this defies my common experience medically supported detox quarantine facilities etc are fine but in the meantime you their voices in ways that can actually be heard even in the safe distant comfortable homes of you policymakers the idea that congregate shelters are okay if you have an adequate staffing is an interesting claim but how much money is left how much of it has been spent on the staffing bathrooms I think that's my is that my cue just up thank you and answer the questions please next speaker you're on the line yes hello my name is James Ewing Whitman I have two minutes someone I'm going to quote somebody that said the pathway is very clear um we're the earth biosphere is having some serious issues and there's a lot of scientists that are writing stuff I wrote down while I was waiting 47 names of people that put on productions some of them put out put out hundreds of productions I'm going to mention three Dane Wiggington number 223 I published uh well he published on November 16 2019 I wrote it on my wall April 24th 2025 37 a.m. Dane Wiggington also published something very important on April 25th that I published at 3 50 p.m. I'm almost done Dr. Tom Cowan aligning with life energy I published April 24th 2020 8 p.m. that can be found on my facebook under James Ewing Whitman I've also been quite critical of Mr. Bill Gates I published something on his blockchain theory April 27th at 8 p.m. he took you know what he took Joe DiBarto's 1960s work he did something very scary with it I'm concerned for Santa Cruz and the rest of the planet that's it thank you very much for your time and I appreciate all of you I'm done thank you all right next speaker hey uh I just wanted to say thank you for doing this on zoom I'm realizing this is this is probably more accessible to a lot of the families that you usually can't get on or come to city council meetings I'm probably gonna let people know because maybe it'll be a little bit less intimidating even if they hear the usual suspects at least now people people could dial in tune in and uh make a comment thank you all thanks all for being here thank you I would say the the first major political problem the United States has is that the actions of the corrupt and moral rich and powerful including co-conspirator and neighbors in government are mostly unaccountable to the people the second major problem is that the dissatisfied the resentful the ungrateful the oppressed have fallen prey to the allure of a utopian fantasy of a revolution abandoning principles of individualism liberty and other major principles our most successful nation of all time was built on these are the socialist communists and leftists their idea that some totalitarian central authority can have a contract with the people that if the people only gave up their liberty free will and obey the supposed all-wise beneficent government everything will be taken care of and end all suffering historically this practice of eliminating dissent different opinions and centralizing economic control has been a one-way ticket to bad economics death and even more suffering the socialist the communists and leftists have it wrong and what is needed instead is to restore accountability of our government what is needed instead of this division of politics where one side tries to get 50 plus one vote to dictate politics to the minority instead we need to all acknowledge that laws should only be changed when there is pervasive widespread agreement so mistakes can be avoided and only incremental positive change takes place this takes both equal liberal and conservative voices in rational dialogue i am so proud of the people of Santa Cruz that they have held two council members accountable for their actions which did not represent the pervasive opinion of the people i hope that they will hold accountable or reward other members as appropriate in future elections and council members should take note the public is waking up to their responsibilities to make the council accountable so far i don't really see council recognition of that at all but november is not that far away if one sided leftism was so great or okay thank you you're hi thanks finger call this is eric rodberg on the uh marie vacay community power payment deferral for two months um what the mayor didn't mention is that it's being paid for by raising the rates for um the next six months and um they're coaching it in different terms for an effect that's what they're doing they're raising the rates of all the entities that are deferring payments be it um creditors landlords pgne any other i haven't heard of a single other utility that has the gall to actually raise the rates in exchange for a deferment i would like city council to push back on that i i think it's wrong especially since this is a public agency that leads me to my next point which i wanted to circle back to the natural gas prohibition that you guys passed last week i understand the need for urgent action to prevent further climate change i actually have a photovoltaic array a solar thermal system and i drive a battery electric vehicle that's what be means um vice mayor myers not that technical definition that mr hurley gave but um my point i think there was a lot of misdirection on staff's park i think we need to do this in a smart way and and what my major point is that we don't have a renewable grid not even close and that by increasing the load the electric load what you're going to end up doing most likely in the short and medium term is increasing greenhouse gas emissions because we are heavily reliant on natural gas for electricity and so while i support the the other point which i think was sort of glossed over is i think this is a very very consequential change and even if i'm wrong i don't think that most of the citizens of Santa Cruz know that this has gone down it wasn't covered in the press at all and it's really not an urgent thing and i would really urge you guys to take another look at this and bring it back it's disgusting once the lockdown's done thank you okay again i would like to let members of the public know that this is all communications and it looks like we have one last one final speaker with us at this time so if you'd like to call in now it's time to do so uh the phone numbers should be on the screen in front of you and after you call in please press star nine to raise your hand and we will acknowledge you and give you two minutes for public time for communication next speaker good evening this is scott graham um the thing i was wondering about is when is the city going to have some sort of uh document ready to say this our strategy on working with the homeless people out there to make sure that they don't get COVID-19 there was an effort made of a few council meetings back to actually agendize such a thing and that didn't happen and it seems like the city is dodging this entire issue of like what is there what is the strategy and i'd like to see something come forward um other than that the other thing i wanted to say was about this meeting um because every council member is using a different computer or whatever they're coming through differently um council members of matthew's you you break up a lot um some of the people are very their voices are very distant you can hardly hear them the other thing is lighting uh most of you have really poor lighting you have the walls are backlit so your face is in the shadows um there's a lot to be done with lighting justin seems to be the only one that has good lighting and that may be because he's a photographer um so maybe you guys need to like work on this a little bit and possibly the city could issue you a common computer so you're all using the same system so you're all coming through in a more clear and concise manner thank you goodbye but there are no additional speakers and so we will conclude all communications and before we go tonight i just want to remind folks to visit both the city of santa cruz's website and the county's website for more information on COVID-19 including an information on a homeless response and so with that i will adjourn the meeting and thank you all all the council members and staff for your time today and thank you members of the community for joining us we'll all get through this together um thank you very much