 Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome to the 1pm public portion of the closed litigation session of the November 13, 2018 meeting of the City Council. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony. Thereafter, the council members will move to the council member room for the closed session. I'd now like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council member is Cron. Here. Matthews. Here. Chase. Here. Brown. Here. Naroyan is absent. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Trazos. Here. Before we open public comment, I have a brief announcement. The city attorney will provide a report on items listed on the closed session agenda beginning at the 1.30, I believe we're going to be starting at 1.30. 1.30pm session. Are there any members of the public who would now like to speak to any items listed on our closed session agenda? Ma'am, this would be your time. You can just step up to the podium and you'll have two minutes. Having me here today, my name is Monique Raquel Hammond and this is my first time here, so I'm a little bit nervous, but it was very vital that I come out. So, Iron Man came to town and I live on Shaffer Road in Santa Cruz, California, here on the west side. And I got in at 1am prior to the Iron Man event. And I was with some relatives. I had just came back from, my grandmother had suffered three strokes in the Central Valley and so we arrived early back that morning. And so one of my relatives dropped me off because I had some items I had to take up to my unit. And so it was easy for me just to drop those off first. And so I never noticed a sign posted on the right hand side of the street there. It would have been southbound. And I also never received anything in the mail and so yeah, I parked there. After dropping my items off, I went to go get my car that I had parked at a relatives house and parked my car there. And so there was no sign posted. And I'm usually very, very alert. That street is very, very busy with homeless people and things to that nature. And so safety first in everything that I do. So, only to awaken early that morning, I thought my car had been stolen, but it had actually been towed. And so it cost me $400. And I have a list of maintenance medications that I have to purchase monthly out of my income, which is not very much. And so it felt as though I had been robbed without a gun. And so I'm asking, continue, you can wrap it up. Okay, I'm asking if I can be reimbursed for that money. I talked to a couple of the officers early that morning and they told me to contact the local police department, which I did. And so this is why I'm here because I've followed all the steps in which they told me to follow. So I've been without those medications and I do need my medication. $400 is a lot of money for me. And I do realize that it's not a lot to some, but for me, it's an extreme amount. Thank you for hearing my case. Thank you, Ms. Hammond. Thank you. And again, we're going to adjourn to our closed session and the city attorney will report out later in the meeting. And if you speak with the risk management department, they'll be able to provide you with a contact. Okay, do I return back at $130? It's not necessary. You can check with them. You're welcome though to attend the meeting at any point. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Council Member Cron. I had a question for the city attorney. So if you advise against us like saying so move to reimburse Ms. Hammond and you would recommend against that right at this moment because I'd prefer that we have a conversation in closed session, but it's outlined in your report. Okay. Thanks. Are there any other questions at this time? At this point, we'll adjourn to the closed session. Thank you. At this point of our agenda, it's an honor to have our new employees introduced to the public and the City Council. First up is our Director of Information Technology, Laura Schmidt. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members. Laura Schmidt, Department of Information Technology. I would like to introduce to you Michelle Foley. She started on October 29th as our new IT project manager and training coordinator. Michelle has worked for 20 years as a project manager in areas such as marketing, communications and web applications. And for you banana slugs up there, she has worked for quite a few years at UCSF. So don't hold that against her. She has a passion for supporting causes, fundraising, writing and making ugly pottery. And she did specify ugly. I did not put that in there. She's a recent transplant to Santa Cruz from San Francisco and she spent the last year doing freelance work in consulting and project management. So she's been able to travel a lot. If you're a traveler as well, feel free to ask her about various locations that she's been to. She's very engaged and loves to travel and explore new areas. She seems to also have a mind for holding many facts. Describe an infomercial to her. She will very quickly be able to tell you the product. I did this with her. I was very surprised. Mine like a trap. Needless to say, we are very happy to welcome her to Information Technology and please welcome her to the entire City of Santa Cruz. Welcome. Laura. Name again. It's Michelle Foley. Michelle Foley. Okay, thanks. Welcome Michelle. Okay, the next up is our Director of Public Works, Mark Dettel. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. It's my pleasure to introduce Ryan Haley. He's a new assistant engineer too. Ryan is going to be working with design and management maintenance of the replacement of our steward and stone grade infrastructure. It's an existing position and he was born in Utica, New York, raised in the lakes region of New Hampshire. He currently lives in Live Oak with his daughter, his nine month old daughter, his wife and a black rescued lab that they have. Most of Ryan's experience has been in the private sector. He's had three years of highway design, one years of soils, concrete testing in New Hampshire and then seven years of civil design work here in Santa Cruz with some of the local engineering firms. Robert DeWitt and Hogan Land Associates, Land Services and RI Engineering. Ryan has a bachelor's of civil engineering from the University of New Hampshire and when he's not working and spending time with his nine month old, keeping them very busy right now, he's likes to road bike, rock climb, surfing, play guitar and piano. A couple of fun facts. Ryan's, he is a professional engineer and when he's, he also plays in a band that frequently plays at Moe's Alley in the Crow's Nest. He's an avid New England Patriots fan and he enjoys traveling. He's traveled through New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, Central America, the Caribbean and Europe. So please join me in welcoming Ryan to the city of Santa Cruz. I welcome. Also his wife works for the water department. Great. And I'll buy it. What's the name of the band that plays at the, at the cruise? Yeah, we're called Cruza. Okay. Let's see, R-U-Z-A-H. All right, great. I'll look for it. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Welcome, everybody. I now like to welcome up assembly member Mark Stone, who'll be visiting us from Sacramento for a state of what's happening there. Thank you. Fortunately, we're out of session right now, so I don't have to come here from Sacramento, but just from local office, which is always lovely. I just wanted to give you a brief update about where things stand statewide and some of the things that we were able to do this last year and this last two-year session. And then I'm happy to take some questions on things where you are particularly interested. So I think the broadest perspective news is about the budget in California. And California does have a very healthy budget based on the rainy day fund that was put into the Constitution. So we're now forced to do reserves. This has been an ethic, I think, of the legislature of the last number of years, and certainly Governor Brown wanting to make sure that we found a way to take some of the excess monies, the surplus, hold them back so that as we go into economic downturn, and the state doesn't have the revenues, that we then are able to fund some of the programs that we have been putting into place. We've been spending some one-time money, been very cautious about long-term obligations in the programs that get done. And I think that was done fairly strategically, because we're still able to invest in Californians, and I'll talk a little bit about that. But the budget has, is the way it is, and we currently have more reserves right now in the state of California than I think its 38 states have general fund. So we're fairly healthy. I know that a number of cities and some counties are still struggling with the way that we have kind of structured tax receipts and ability to spend in the state of California. There have been some long-standing policies that hamper local jurisdictions to raise money, which means that they're dependent more and more on the state and what we do or don't do. That's more clearly seen in education. And even though we've been putting more money into the K-14 system than we had in a long time, California is still lags on per pupil spending, and that will continue to happen until we can change the revenue side of that equation. But with the increased revenues at the state level, we have been able to invest more and more into the K-14 system, but also the higher education system. I think it was three or four years ago was the first time the state was spending more on higher ed than we were on prisons. And that was a milestone that was true for the first time in 30, 35 years. So we're really pushing to try and rethink where our investments go. Housing has been a big issue for especially the assembly of the last number of years. And that's what led to Prop 1 as well as well as to Prop 2. Prop 1 is the housing bond, a $4 billion housing bond that the legislature put in front of the voters. Voters saw fit to pass that. And hopefully I was sad to see Measure H in this county not do so well. Because like transportation, I think when local jurisdictions have money to put on the table, then they're able to draw down more state and federal dollars. And that's probably how the Prop 1 money is going to be designed to really assist local jurisdictions, but probably those who also have the ability to put some money on the table. So with the loss of Prop H, I'm not sure what that's going to mean, but that's to me not a good thing for Santa Cruz County. There have been a number of bills that have gone through the legislature over the last number of years, some of which good, some of which of course seeking to take away local discretion in how you're designing and developing. And I think that tension will continue over the next year of what our proper role is and what cities are. And so cities that are addressing some of their local issues for housing needs and homelessness, to me, should be able to continue to do that without much state interference. Unfortunately, there are a lot of jurisdictions that are not taking responsibility for the housing crisis that they're in, nor dealing with homelessness. Prop 2, of course, was the enact that was passed in the legislature that took some of the mental health services act money, Prop 63 money, and applied it to housing for the homeless and for the mentally ill homeless. That was challenged in court, so we ended up putting it on the ballot because Prop 63 had been a ballot measure and we're changing how Prop 63 money is being spent. Unfortunately, counties and the state are sitting on a tremendous amount of Prop 63 money, which is a legitimate complaint about Prop 2 was it's not being spent, that money should already have been spent and hadn't been. Those are some challenges, I think, at the state level creating too many hurdles for local jurisdictions or even the state to be able to spend that money appropriately. So I was a supporter of Prop 2 because it is going to get that money out where we need it the most and we know that housing and mentally ill, housing and the homeless is a critical issue, so that money will be better put into place. But of course, we also need to work on the mental health system and with the new administration coming in, I'm hoping that they'll be more amenable to getting mental health dollars spent where and when they need in our local communities to our benefit. So that's been a big step. Transportation was also a big move. We passed Senate Bill 1, which was the infamous gas tax. Fortunately, Prop 6 failed. That would have turned away a tremendous amount of infrastructure investment. And infrastructure investment really done in the right way. Though the gas tax is regressive and that is not the ideal mechanism putting a regressive tax out there, it's one of the few mechanisms we have. But the notion of it being user pay and pay as you go, it's not bonding, it's not increasing debt, that money will be spent as it's collected and distributed out to the jurisdictions sort of around the California Transportation Commission, which is the right answer, go direct on the formulas to local jurisdictions instead of being held up in the state level bureaucracy. That was a big win in how we designed Senate Bill 1, the transportation package. So that will continue now and we will still be able to see the benefit of that money coming out. One of the most significant investments in infrastructure statewide that has been done and it really in a long time. And its ongoing is sustainable kinds of funding. On the environmental front, probably most of the gains have been more administrative necessarily than legislative. We did extend a couple years ago the cap and trade system, although that was a little bit of a mixed bag and we're seeing that in the implementation of the spending profiles for the greenhouse gas reduction funds. A lot of that is still going to benefit those who were essentially generating the funds, which were the polluters in the first place rather than being directly applied to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And important to me and I think and I know to you really building that resilience through adaptation programs. But because it was passed, kept passed by two thirds of the legislature, that expands the expenditure profile and we should be able to invest some of that money into that resilience and that adaptation that is so sorely needed. Other things we haven't done as well on, but as a member of the Ocean Protection Council, we're clearly focusing on effects of sea level rise and how that is being translated locally. There's some new sea level rise guidance that's out there as well as ocean acidification and other challenges we're seeing because of the way the ocean absorbs carbon. And the recent Climate Action Summit that Governor Brown was a real leader in putting together for California, put California in the forefront of the climate conversation really on an international stage with the federal government backing off and pretending that climate change doesn't exist, then that allows subnational jurisdictions like ours to step forward. And this was the first climate action conference that really put oceans as a part of the climate conversation. Now I think most of us would say, really? Why hadn't been done before, but it hadn't? So we put oceans in the forefront and that was a lot of the work of the Ocean Protection Council to make sure that we're working with jurisdictions around the world trying to address some of the issues that we have. But some of the other things, plastic ocean pollution, bottle caps, a number of things that had been tried have not been successful. And like the plastic bags, one of the best paths to moving policy at this point, I think, with given some of the challenges at the state level, is at the local level. For example, I know you're considering dealing with some of the flavored tobacco. That's been an issue that we have not been that successful with at the state. And we were able to make sure that e-cigarettes and vaping is now the same as tobacco, which is appropriate. So the more jurisdictions that are willing to address issues like the flavored tobaccos and other things that are gateways into other tobacco or nicotine addictions, then that helps put pressure on the state for us to be able to do the right thing, eventually, hopefully statewide. So I wish you luck with that decision. That's a bit of a snapshot of things that have been happening. As you know, I work quite a bit in the child welfare side of things, the foster care system. We are implementing that program. One of the pieces that has been frustrating to me is we designed it a couple of years ago to build mental health services up front. But because of some of the lack of ability to spend some of the mental health money and what that means for licensing, it has not gone as I had hoped at this point. And some of the counties are struggling with implementing. I am hopeful with the new administration coming in that we'll have some fresh ideas in the appropriate departments to be able to do some better things around mental health, including implementing the mental health parts of the continuum of care reform. So that's a bit of a snapshot. I'm happy to take some of your questions. Thank you. Are there any questions from the council? Council Member Matthews? Yeah. You know that what the loss of redevelopment has meant to us in terms of no local funding for affordable housing, I think we're all really disappointed that measure age did not pass. That was a serious blow. What, and I know there's been interest in some parties in Sacramento in doing some kind of tax increment possibility for redevelopment light for housing. Where do you see that going? And do you see willingness to tackle that going forward? In the legislature? Absolutely. There were a couple of bills last year that were a bit exploratory, but under the current administration we knew that that was not going to go anywhere. Since it was Governor Brown who led the effort to get rid of redevelopment agencies in the first place, we're hoping the new governor is going to better understand how we utilize tax increment financing as a tool for local jurisdictions to be able to raise significant dollars. Because even with the document transfer fee that we passed with the $4 billion housing bond, we're not coming anywhere near the amount of money the local jurisdictions were able to put on the table for to actually build affordable housing in their jurisdictions. So those kinds of solutions, the legislature is definitely the assembly especially. I can't speak for the senate, but I know some of the senators that I work with are very interested in that as well. But in the assembly, I would expect to see some bills to try and craft a program and give some authorities to local jurisdictions to be able to use tax increment financing as a tool. What can we do to help that actually happen? No, I'm really serious about this. Yeah, as am I. I was on the board supervisors here when that was taken away and kind of went through all that process of dissolution. For some of my colleagues they did not have the same experience others did. So those of us who had been in local government and saw what we lost and understood what we lost. And the irony of it is, is I think the governor thought that there was going to be a tremendous benefit on the state's general fund because of it. That turned out to be true. So we ended up creating, we the state level ended up creating a mess that really had no upside that had been intended. So there are a number of us including the chair of the housing committee, David Chu, who's very interested in this. And those are the right folks to be putting things forward. But it'll be a conversation with the administration and we'll see what Governor Newsom is willing to do and what they want to do. But the legislature, the state has taken away a lot of tools over the last few decades for local governments. This is one that I think we could give back. And I know that the pretty confident the legislature agrees. Well, let us know how we can help. I will. Absolutely. Depends. We'll see what the packages look like and what starts to happen. Yep. Councilmember Crowe. Thank you, Mayor. Welcome, Mark. Really appreciate you being here. Going back to Prop 2 and maybe that this information is known, I don't know. But how much money does Santa Cruz County and City stand to gain in that? That I don't know. That I don't know. So how does that, how do we find that out? The regulations around it will need to be written and we'll figure out how that money is going to then translate locally. But I'm hoping when the 11 big city mayors came to legislature with a proposal about a year ago to take a number of billions of dollars, their notion was to require that local agency cities had a stake as well, which I agree with. I mean, it would be nice to give out grants, but the problem in the homeless area is that a number of cities have not really partaken in the solutions. So I want to make sure I'm very interested in ensuring that we structure this money to give preference to go to jurisdictions that are actively working on solutions that have skin in the game that are putting some of their own money up. That is what I'm hoping the structure is going to be. So cities like Santa Cruz, County Santa Cruz should definitely benefit under those kinds of formulas because of your existing commitment to homelessness and and to housing and and to the mental health issues. And I know that's been a source of frustration locally for you and for the county being able to to bring some of these monies to bear. So I'm hoping that that will be a great source of relief. How exactly that's structured remains to be seen. Thank you. Just you know in June we passed an ordinance resolution anyway, the city of Santa Cruz to proposal enrollment growth to you know an opposition of enrollment growth at UC Santa Cruz. You know it passed by 77%. I was wondering if you just could give us any ideas on how we might pursue a conversation, a dialogue with the state legislature, with the university in limiting growth at UCSC because it's become a great, it's a great benefit for the city of Santa Cruz UCSC and it's become somewhat of a burden too because of the numbers. And if I could add, because I had that as my number two as well, we hear constantly the problems with just the UC funding mechanism in providing adequate housing for its students. So that's a parallel if you can fill that issue in. From the legislature standpoint of course the UC has its own constitutional authority. And what we negotiate feels like we throw money over the wall and then they do what they want with it and we have long been trying to hold them accountable through budget hearings or other types of hearings that sometimes goes well, sometimes not. So dealing with a specific campus, the legislature has been very clear and I agree with this direction that we want to see enrollment growth in general in the UC system but enrollment growth for Californians. We are trying to structure K-14 system to articulate kids into the CSUs and into the UCs. That's very, very important that we get more of our kids that kind of education, sort of depending on of course how they do in schools and opening up some of those pipelines. So that's been a key part of the legislature. So we have actually been pushing growth, pushing especially California students those positions in the UCs and that's been some of the give and take. It's why the UC has threatened us with increases in tuition and there's just sort of been this interesting back and forth. But that being said, I think the local jurisdictions have the ability to work with the UCs and under the current chancellor anyway, he's been very willing to have some of the conversations that I think historically hadn't been had between the city and the universities. And when they first did their long range development plan and it was kind of we're doing this, you have no say, that attitude seems to have changed a lot and I'm glad for that. Universities, we would be expecting I think for them to take more responsibility for housing, house kids on campus in a better way because that helps ameliorate the impact on the local housing market and I know that that's a big component of it. And so how we thread that needle to see overall enrollment growth across the state but are sensitive to individual impacts in campus by campus really remains to be seen. And the legislature's role is pushing the system in general and we've done this through trying to ensure that there are standards for out-of-state enrollments, that there are standards for graduation rates and what the paths are for kids. We've been pushing that they take more community college transfers because we have one of the best community college systems in the country and that's a very important path for getting kids into some of these positions. So we're really looking hard at the overall system both UC and CSU to accommodate all of this. But I do understand the impacts locally and that's a conversation between the university, what they're able to do, the carrying capacity of the community, water, traffic, housing and all of those impacts and I'm hoping that the UC campus by campus is going to be very sensitive to those issues. UC Santa Barbara again some similar issues, campuses like Davis and others that have much more actual physical room to grow are in a little bit of a different boat. There's UC and Merced and other places. I don't want to make to be creating the specter though that we're pushing kids out of opportunities here. We need to give kids as many opportunities here as we possibly can but the university needs to respect the community, the constraints on the community and figure out a way to make sure that they can have the university that they envisage and minimize the impacts on our local community. In fact I think the conversation if we could tell the university that they're pushing people into Santa Cruz and buses that we don't have, housing that we don't have, food pantries have become a big deal, students living in their cars so I mean if we can somehow send that message the last thing I wanted to ask you if you're going to bring the um and I think it's great and I think you get support up here too for banning cigarette filters are you going to bring that back because I think it's a great idea is there's some sort of bottleneck that you've done it twice now or three times? I think three times and third time wasn't the charm. It's definitely on the list of things that we are considering. I don't have a complete package put together yet but I'm talking with my staff about how we do that. That bill which would ban the sale of cigarettes in California with filters on them, filters being plastic and absolutely no benefit to the smoke or from a health standpoint at all but a significant detriment to the environment. That's the notion behind that bill. We received, even though it didn't fare very well last year, we received quite a bit of press and some notoriety around it so it's a matter of timing. The bottleneck still remains in getting an appropriate hearing in the legislature on that bill so we'll see about that and the issue of kids living in cars, the issue of hunger is something that is very, the legislature is looking very closely at. There's a select committee that is looking specifically at those and it's not just UC Santa Cruz. It's literally every single UC campus. I think every single CSU campus where homelessness and hunger are very significant issues. We passed some policy last year to ensure that kids had access to food stamps, the SNAP program here which they didn't before which seems like a significant oversight. Now they do because it hadn't been thought that there was as much hunger on campuses among students as there actually is so that's not particularly to Santa Cruz. That is a system-wide problem that we are actively trying to tackle. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Crohn. I had two quick questions. I mean it seems like daily we're picking up the paper and there's a fire happening in Northern California, Southern California. I know about this time last year we saw in Santa Rosa not speaking to the cause of these recent fires that have happened in different parts of the state but what is the state doing in regards to help those that are displaced by these fires in terms of housing? Are there things that we should be advocating for because obviously when people lose their home it creates movement. How do we help to one make sure that those communities that are the most impacted have the resources to house those that are displaced? Well from the state standpoint we have for any of these major fires sought emergency status with the federal government and the state certainly declared emergency which frees up local money and it seems like the feds are responding with money for short-term housing for shelter and with the some of the fires going on right now it's that short-term shelter that's most important. Then as people build back that temporary shelter in order to get those communities rebuilt but when you devastated community like Santa Rosa devastated community like Paradise that's at a scale that is essentially unprecedented and so the the mechanisms that'll be need to put in place to get some of that housing rebuilt the insurance industry is already added that's the first line because people who have fire insurance are are going to their insurance carrier that insurance carrier then will look to whoever caused the fire oftentimes the utilities are a major component to it and have been a deep pocket there are some limits on that deep pocket given the scope of some of these fires that some of the legislature has been really trying to figure out and work through is how much we can overall tax that system in order to rebuild communities and keep people in their homes and at the same time not have our utility rates go through the roof which is what the the utilities are telling us they're interested in although I say that with a little bit of skepticism so that that's an ongoing challenge but putting some of the money to bear and fortunately and there's there are resources long over time to be able to address that one of the challenges that we had though in last year's fires in the 2017 fires we were literally one fire away from not having enough resources meaning trucks equipment and manpower to be able to deal with that next fire we were that close to the edge and there are a lot of tools that could have been done we asked the fire chiefs across the state what would it take they had I think a very modest proposal of a hundred million dollars in the budget to do prepositioning of equipment the kinds of things that they know work the kinds of things that will happen around here with the way that our fire agencies cooperate but that was unfortunately not a successful part of the budget we were able to build some of that into SB 9-on-1 which was the conference bill that that ended up coming out of the disasters and looking at a legislative response to to ensure that we had resources so some of those concepts are now being funded through the greenhouse gas reduction funds and and other places which to me is very appropriate but we'll see long term what we're going to have to be doing but what's critical is getting people to be able to recover from the fire rebuild have those communities be able to rebuild and and continue and just lastly yeah I appreciate you referencing you know Prop 63 and the funds that that creates for to deal with mental health and support mental health services the state has a mental health services advisory body and oversight committee that oversees this what are some of the things that we should be doing as local policymakers to help support increased oversight of the funds and how they're used to me as I've gotten to know sort of the ins and outs of the administration in some of these departments the the most critical positions to get some of this shaken loose will be whoever is named in the new administration as the secretary of health and human services and then whoever heads up the department of health care services in the state of california that and the structure created there has been I think to me pretty clearly a bottleneck and so that the oversight the the culture the perspectives of getting that money out just really hasn't been there I'm hoping under the new administration that with it that will see a different attitude and culture that's developed to start to get some of that money spent and back counties one of the reasons that money is sitting at counties is counties are not able to spend that money and they're they're reluctant to spend and and put resources at risk for for not getting federal reimbursement has been one of the reasons why I think the state can be a much better partner to counties to free up some of that money and back counties in their ability to seek reimbursements from the federal government and set up a much better program so and for for example where we saw this in the continued care reform the mental health system is really built around creating a diagnosis and then being able to seek funding well that means you have to wait until somebody absolutely crashes before money can be brought to bear and what we need to do is build a better system of up for upfront help for the individuals and the families who need it that's a systemic change within the current culture in those departments and that is what I'm hoping we can get changed over time that would solve the problem of being able to get that prop 63 money both locally and at the state out to programs where it's necessary thank you well I want to thank you for visiting us today and kind of giving us some insight and I think there were some you know hopeful words that we you take back to Sacramento to help you know better support not only this city but local cities in regards to addressing the really complex challenges we're facing right now thank you and as legislation comes up that you're aware of or I'm aware of let's keep the conversations going and your support your perspectives are always very helpful as we try and sort out policy so thank you okay we have next a presentation from dr. Tiffany wise west the keep it cool campaign good afternoon mayor and council members I am Tiffany wise west the sustainability and climate action manager for the city of Santa Cruz and I am thrilled to be here today to share with you the keep it cool campaign it is an energy conservation campaign for businesses something like this was specifically called out in our climate action plan and this was completed through the essential partnership with the Santa Cruz climate action network environmental advocacy group here in Santa Cruz so we're going to jointly present this presentation today I'm going to set up the why and volunteers from the Santa Cruz climate action network are going to tell you more about how so what do we keep and cool that it here is the planet and as the California's fourth climate change assessments which just came out in august states that we're projecting up to nearly 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase depending on the emissions trajectory of global warming and as you know from my presentation last month on the climate adaptation plan update these temperature increases cause extreme climate and weather conditions that put our residents infrastructure and resources at risk as was just mentioned in your discussion with assembly member stone one example of this is california wildfires in 2018 we've had over 7 000 fires that have burned over 1.6 million acres and counting according to cal fire estimated at about three billion dollars in damages this is a photo from the bbc of the car fire which destroyed many structures as well as carbon sequestering forests john mesina cal fires chief says that climate change is causing california trees fires to burn faster longer and more unpredictably and with that i'm going to turn things over to susan cavalry one of the volunteers from santa cruz climate action network susan thank you very much and as tiffany has reported the earth is warming and there is an urgency to decrease greenhouse gas emissions so one of the ways that there can be a reduction in emissions is by having businesses close their doors when using heat or air conditioning and the idea arose in the spring of this year and it was discussed in the community climate action task force the city then approached the downtown association before continuing on to partner with a group called generation 180 generation 180 is from the east coast they are concerned with reducing energy demand and accelerating the transition to clean energy so um they already had in place a program to close doors across the country they are being primarily on the east coast wanted to partner with the west coast city and were anxious to join us they helped to um tailor the campaign materials to santa cruz and um so they um so they were very helpful in getting us going on this um so basically the idea is pretty simple businesses commit to close their doors when running air conditioning or heat so this not only helps businesses reduce their energy but also the cost and it also signals to customers that conservation is important um in addition the city had in place a climate action milestone to expand energy efficiency programs to 30 percent of homes and businesses by 2020 so in the summer volunteers from the santa cruz climate action network went out to businesses to discuss the idea of keeping their doors closed and they went out to six different business districts those businesses that chose to um join the program were given a decal called keep it cool and this was given to us by generation 180 and because they're on the east coast they're primarily concerned with air conditioning so um at this point in the winter we have a different issue uh but we're moving ahead on changing signs so um the cities that are the the businesses which did choose to join the program were promoted on facebook and also two half page ads in the good times so the outcome of this the city estimates um that greenhouse gas emissions and energy savings were significant and as shown in this slide 215 businesses joined in the keep it cool campaign and the city estimates that that it was a savings of 452 metric tons of co2 uh avoided per year so the little pictures below show the savings per business um which was 2.1 metric tons of co2 per business per year which was the which is the equivalent of driving a truck large truck between san francisco and san diego the reduction in in emissions increased energy the energy efficiency goal that the city had set in the climate action milestone by 2.1 percent which was the biggest year-to-year jump since 2008 so i will now turn it over to dana bagshaw who will continue to discuss the outcomes thank you susan um good afternoon um i just want to say that we had a lot of fun with this it was really interesting to go out to all the different businesses and meet them and talk to them and one of them was um camala she has a new store here on um her merchandise is um bamboo based products and um so she was very gung-ho and she gave us this great testimony she said our store is about sustainability conscious conscious living in what you buy and what you wear also on the decisions that we make about our store so we love fresh air coming in our store but if we have the air conditioner or heat on we keep the doors closed another person that i really enjoyed talking to was my friend alex handro in my neighborhood um and he looks like he's waving at you but he's pointing at the decal um and he said that i save energy by keeping the door closed the heat when that when the door is open the heat goes out and the grit comes in and i think we can add smoke and smog to that so we believe that the key to our success whereas all these elements coming together um by first um partnering with generation 180 it was really fun to feel like we were part of a national campaign um then our team uh went out and we've got other team members here Roland Roland and uh Pauline anybody else here okay so um typically we would go out like in the morning and uh then we would come back and we'd have to record everything um the businesses that we went to we get their phone numbers the emails and what their response was so um there was a lot of record keeping involved as well we had a dedicated intern who assisted us which was a great benefit and now we're pleased to say that the program that we started here has been integrated into the green business program so that it becomes one of the measures that they can um use to qualify to be a green business so obviously because we use the resources that at hand it was a low cost uh to the city we did however have to translate some of our materials we found uh that we wanted to reach out to the chinese community vietnamese and spanish so we got we got um collateral materials done in all of those languages so the problem and this is something else we had to bring to the party ourselves we realized that um as susan said back east it's mostly air conditioning they have a culture where they keep their doors closed in the winter there because it's so cold um but here people seem to leave their doors open and a lot of them have said to us well we'll you know if my next door neighbor keeps the door closed i'll keep mine closed so it's getting this going this new culture going um so we wanted to create these new signs though the blue one um is the one that we thought we could use for the winter uh which encourages people when they get to the door to open the door come in um and close the door to help keep us warm and the planet cool um then in in the summer we we can exchange it for the white colored ones there so our next steps are to go out with our new winter signs and back to the people that we talked to before um get them on board for the winter maybe pick up a few along the new ones along the way um we want to put another add into the good times um and um more letters as well to people we're very proud of our um program and so we want to apply for this um bay area environmental award and by broadcasting you know what we've done maybe we will inspire other communities to do the same um and then regroup again for next summer so i just would say if you go out and you see someone with this sign yeah on their door please open the door go in say thank you for joining the program and if you can give them your business thank you very much just one more word before we end here i just need to extend huge uh gratitude towards the volunteers from santa cruz climate action network they literally spent hundreds of hours going to hundreds of businesses across town we could not have done this program without them and i'm very much looking forward to working with them on potentially an anti idling campaign with schools that we're exploring right now so thank you very much thank you any questions from the council quick question for tiffany um any questions just wondering um if so we had a voluntary campaign 215 businesses participated how many businesses would are there and um the second question is how much would you recommend or not recommend the value of uh compelling businesses to participate in the program by um a fine if you didn't close your doors i don't think i'm supportive of a fine to to have businesses close their door i think as dana mentioned um the more uh businesses that take this up the more we'll continue to come on board by that kind of peer pressure um i think that would would be a better approach in terms of how many businesses i think they're close to 700 businesses in santa cruz we really focused on six different business districts across town and i think the uh volunteers probably went to somewhere between three and five hundred of them so um quite a bit of of time and as i said record keeping and so forth and i i just want to underscore that this is the biggest year to year jump for this particular milestone in terms of progress and it's not even including our other energy efficiency campaign so this was really an impactful project and i'm not knocking 215 is great and i think the group did great what was the best argument in compelling them to um close the door i'll let the ladies answer that what would you say yeah briefly if you of course save money saving money what was what was the question again what was the most compelling argument in getting them to think about closing the door i mean they this is something your mother's even told you way back you know keep the door closed it's just common sense and they all said well sure we can save money doing this and um yes they've recognized the environmental things i mean you know i we try not to preach because it's pretty obvious yeah so we just want to sort of join the bandwagon approach to it yeah sounds like a guilt factor there so yeah so well thank you that was an excellent presentation i thank you for the committee and all the work you've done so i appreciate it did you all right great so we're going to move on to the main portion of our meeting um i have a few announcements and then we'll move on to the regular meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television that's channel 25 and streaming on the city's website at cityofsantacruz.com Jennifer Cameron is our technician this afternoon and she's been here just about for every meeting and we thank her for all of her work to record our meetings throughout the day all city council members can be emailed at city council at cityofsantacruz.com if you would like to communicate with with us about an agenda item we'd like to receive your email by monday at five p.m before our council meeting this helps to provide us with an opportunity to review your email include it with the rest of our agenda packet please bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and the city council constitute public records and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public accordingly if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to be made public you should not include that information in your correspondence our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens and community members when you're whether you're inside or outside of the chambers at this point i'd like to now ask the council if there are any statements of disqualification anybody see none we'll move on to the clerk are there any additions or deletions that you'd like to report out on no thank you later this afternoon we'll have an opportunity for oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda oral communications will generally occur at the conclusion of our afternoon business at or around 5 30 p.m but may occur some time before or after that depending on our schedule now i'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report out on our closed session thank you mayor trazos members of the city council two items on closed session this afternoon which began at one o'clock in the courtyard conference room item a is conference with legal council involving liability claims the claims of monique rakel hamond michael mcgraw and mercury insurance company those claims are also listed as item six on your consent agenda this afternoon secondly was an item of pending litigation the case of art versus city of santa cruz at all pending in the united states district court council received a report from and gave direction to legal council there was no reportable action thank you city attorney kundadi now i'd like to ask the city manager for if they have a report if you have a report for today yes thank you mayor and council i have a brief update on the emergency shelter and if i can ask the clerk to yes thank you so wanted to just give an update on the river stream river street camp closure first of all just to kind of give you a status of where we're at by way of background the the camp has served 86 individuals throughout its existence 29 which have exited to improve living situations five have exited to substance treatment programs and three have exited through the homeward bound program so we've had quite a bit of success in moving on individuals so better situations the current population is about 40 individuals and we're working to move all of them on to a better situations the current status is that we are expecting about six to ten to exit to treatment or housing and since the closure announcement and another 10 to 15 will be moving on to the winter shelter program so the shelter program the winter shelter program will be offered to all of the individuals that reside there we expect the the camp to close by november 30th it's been done incrementally and that'll at the same time this week november 15th the vfw winter shelter will be open as well and in addition we're hoping to increase capacity and we're working to identify and to create an additional shelter and we've received proposals now that the HAP will be reviewing to particularly focus on the vulnerable population so those are ongoing and we'll bring that back to council with respect to the overall approach and some of the current opportunities as you know we have about 11 million dollars in state funds that are coming to the camp the county as early as january of 2019 so we're working and to figure out how to allocate these funds and to use them in the most effectively possible particularly again focusing on how can we increase shelter capacity as soon as possible and as effectively as possible and and that is happening now with the HAP and the nonprofit community to do that we do plan to return to council in december with a full update and with actions the HAP committee is uh executive committee is meeting at the end of this week and so we expect to have more information about that work plan for you to present and to get some direction from you as well and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have council member brown yeah thank you for the update i am glad to hear that uh your the plans for transition are that you're working on that i appreciate all of the staff's time that's been put into trying to address this challenge in terms of the transition for residents of the the river street camp to the winter shelter program i mean they're they're both shelter programs but they obviously operate in very different ways and so i'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what that means in terms of access you know times of access and you know it also involves less stability and people are moving around to various locations so it would be helpful to just hear a little bit about what that means for for the people who are experiencing that transition sure it is correct and i'll have susie come up and supplement she's much better informed than i am with respect to the specifics but in general obviously there is a difference between the river street camp in terms of it to operate it uh versus the winter shelter and we are hoping that that model and what we've learned will apply to the next uh phase that we're working to develop with a million 11 million dollars so our hope is that we'll be able to transition to a more robust kind of program that will move people you know on to better situations to the extent possible but dolly susie supplement that thank you council member brown susie ohara prince or no assistant to the city manager as of last week we are very fortunate because one of our assistant managers at the river street camp was hired to be the program director for winter shelter so as martin suggested we are really thinking about those barriers that typically had been part of the winter shelter process and trying to minimize those as much as possible we are facilitating transition for anybody who's interested in going just today i was um working with jeff um harris who's the new program director of the of the winter shelter and adam our program manager here at the river street camp to um facilitate getting rides for folks to um to the storage facility on falker and then picking people up so we're really working on making that transition as seamless as possible and then understanding how to minimize barriers for winter shelter and any other shelter program that we're considering moving forward big council member crown susie could you go over really quickly like what what is available now for the winter as we move into the winter the closure of uh uh 12 20 river street we're losing um i guess it was about 60 available campsites we're down to 40 now and that's going to be transitioned down to zero by november 30th then what will we have for for um those looking for shelter so the hop is currently working on what is the existing sheltering profile in the county wide and we have about 242 beds county wide um and we are working um currently on increasing our winter shelter capacity for north county to about 100 which would meet um the demand that we've seen in previous years um the loss of the river street camp we are really working on transitioning as many people into improve living conditions as possible um with the announcement of the closure it really did incentivize a lot of people to go into sud treatment to think about what options they had we've had maybe three or four people leave on homeward bound for instance having that imminently in front of them actually was um a bit of an incentive for folks who had enjoyed the benefits of the river street camp but had not necessarily thought about what their next steps would be um so moving into the winter sheltering season our hope is to regain those 40 or 50 spots that um are missing because of the closure of the laurel street site and we are also in talks about um warming center expansion and other expansion opportunities as well with the afc rotating shelter uh so that we're still i could use the salvation army on laurel street that remains to be seen i think there's there's many different options for enhancing sheltering capacity where we're really trying to focus on our existing um programs that are not really looking at a new site as we all know that that looking at a new site and having conversations with neighbors about compatibility um ended up being a challenge as we were thinking about phase two and so for now what we're really trying to talk about is what existing sites might work to expand um shelter beds as much as we possibly can on the fourth page of the report it says h e a p is that a misprint or is that what is heap heap is state funding that's coming in so that is about the nine point seven million dollars that we expect to come in as early as january it's different than the hap the hap and it is it is yeah it is different than the hap okay i just wanted to clarify thank you thanks i want to just uh go back on october 23rd when we had the last city manager's report you talked about a move to a regional hap led approach um and that when the hap executive committee decided to we close out the river street shelter um that was at a funding decision or what was the basis of the of that of that action it was a combination of factors um including the need to um you know to obviously transition to the winter shelter program the need to try to preserve the existing polyloft program that was a major issue as they were facing some fiscal circumstances there too and also the focus on the need to really focus on how to allocate and spend the 11 million dollars in a more sustainable sort of ongoing way and in addition you know just the the uh our own ability to to sustain and operate the program on an ongoing basis it was always needed to be a temporary program and uh you know we were running operating the city and that really is in our core function so we needed to sort of focus on the longer term solutions so there's a number of considerations uh that uh you know led us to uh formulate that recommendation can i add to that as well um one of the things that was of significant concern was entering into the winter season with people living outdoors and really trying to prioritize getting people into um shelter a actual shelter indoor environment when we were open the river street camp there never was an intention to go through an entire winter season with people living in their tents and while it is an improved living situation than being outdoors without a tent um health safety concerns for our folks that are already medically vulnerable was a major concern and one of the you know primary reasons we decided decided to move people into the winter shelter thanks then also just because we you know we did have that council direction to try and keep this open until april during the winter shelter program i know on october 23rd we looked at having options come back to the council as far as supplemental shelter services so that we're we're trying to maintain this in a in a responsible way and um you mentioned that the um half executive committee which are the um city managers and county administrative officer they're meeting the end of this week will they be looking at approving funding for those um alternate um shelter uh emergency shelter options at that time so that we'll be able to understand what what are the uh potential um shelter services that may be available to get us through this this winter season um i'll ask uh susie or tina to respond to that uh i don't we don't have like specific they're not at the point where they're specifics yet on on particular proposals it's really about the process for making a determination on the heap uh and meeting the state requirements it's kind of the focus now because rfps have to go out in january so it's really focused on the next step with respect to the state uh uh obtaining the state funds but so then will they be reviewing instead the the recommendations from the hap committee that would come to the council what we intend to do is in december to provide you an update on all the various aspects of it including the what's going on with the hap and the in the state process what's going on with respect to the discussions about the additional uh shelter capacity that we're working on and all the various associated pieces of the uh all the things that we're doing to address uh in homelessness but i want to add to hi good afternoon maritrasa's council members tina shoal assistant city manager and i'm a little closer to this than martin because um susie and i spending many hours per week in meetings on this issue so friday we are meeting with the hap executive committee again as martin said city managers county administrative officer about once a month now and we have a very full agenda for friday well not totally locked down we want to talk about what is a shelter in capacity what other options are viable out there we've had several planning meetings so far and uh susie alluded to some of that work as well to really solidify what do we think we can carry we may not be at a decision point by then or have uh live proposals but we are trying to work what what um what are out there what's achievable what do we think we can do technically feasibly and with our budget um we're also yeah looking at the heap process and it is heap it's a homeless emergency aid program i almost said it wrong as well and that is a nine point seven million dollars coming down from the state i'm currently working on an informational memo to the council i hope to have it out to you today or early tomorrow that explains that in depth i know i've been impatient to learn more about this program we've been referencing it in our updates to you now for a couple of months without the detail becoming concrete from the state that's coming to sharper focus just as a friday so i'm excited to produce that information we can share with you in the community about how those funds will come into santa cruz county and be used countywide again thinking about that countywide strategic lens that this council has directed us to advance in our conversations and then we'll also be talking about topics of strategic planning for homeless services on a countywide basis um homelessness governance which i know is a topic this council has talked about and certainly was part of the homelessness courting committee recommendations so i can say that the hap executive committee has moved from more of a funding mechanism to try to think about what can we do to move the needle strategically to make a difference in um in this challenge in our community and um as you heard from assembly member stone you know this the state's paying attention and we have funding resources we hope now and in the future so there's a lot going on we'll have more updates for you great i know we're having an item later today about cal beach and we're seeing a lot of impacts on the beach area that's all i think it's important that we kind of reference this not just from the standpoint of shelter but we have i think an urgent uh immediate need to kind of address some of the impacts and i'm hoping that you know one maybe we get an update sooner rather than later okay thank you okay are there any other questions then we'll move on to the consent agenda first up is um the consent agenda these are items three through 15 on our agenda all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to pull any items from our consent agenda this afternoon see none are there well i just have a question on the new old creek i'm trying to okay on 13 number 13 so you just have a question yeah i'm not sure someone from the water department is here are there any members of the public who would like to request an item be pulled or speak to any item on our consent agenda this morning are there any items uh that members of the public here today would like to have pulled from our consent agenda item or would like to speak to them okay seeing none i'll bring it back to the council and it was actually sorry it's the number 12 on newl Creek not 13 if you could ask your question regarding number 12 yeah so um this is a pretty expensive project um although obviously necessary and um i'm just wondering if we could get a little more information about like what what the project consists of um and you know i mean it seems a little strange to us but why so expensive because i kind of think i know the answer but um just a little bit more information okay great where we proceed uh so for the record rosemary minard from the water department this is a item number 12 is a resolution to it's part of an application package for state revolving loan funding for this very expensive project and the project is basically a replacement of a new intake and outlet for newl Creek dam it in uh currently has envisioned and it's under design at the moment it involves a drilling a brand new tunnel around the abutment the um if you're facing the dam it's on the left side abutment and brand new intakes in the reservoir um it is designed to then give us a complete capacity to do emergency evacuation of the rest of the reservoir in the event of some kind of a condition that would you know meaning you need to bring the reservoir down very quickly um so it these projects have gone around uh on the state and that it's under the jurisdiction of the division of safety of dams under the department of water resources and uh because it's so expensive well not just because but we're obviously looking for a low interest funding for this project so that we can help mitigate the impacts of the potential costs of this um lots of specialized you know directional drilling 10 foot diameter tunnel that kind of thing that gets constructed here so we're hoping to get a competitive environment from a contracting point of view but also to find the you know money that would be the least kind of impactful for long-term financing to your question yeah thank you great okay so we have it back to the council is there any further discussion or action on the consent agenda item these are items 3 through 15 on our agenda i'll go ahead and move the consent agenda um i want to make just a few comments i think there are a number of students in the second okay count second by council and just a few comments i think there are a number of students in the audience today and uh it's very often true that the items on consent which are considered non-controversial are some of our most dramatic long-lasting and important civic investments so we have on here i hope you had a chance to look at the agenda but major improvement of part of our expanding a pathway across our trestle is part of a long-range pedestrian bike trail program new garbage truck uh improving our recycling but also several very high ticket items improving our um a very complicated water supply program so we're going to vote on all that yes and we're going to be done but yeah it's really really really important so we do have a motion by council member matthew second by council member chase just to make a point that council member brown cannot vote on the minutes unless you i have rehabilitated i'm rehabilitated so everybody's good um all those in favor of the motion and the second on the four please say aye hi um any opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member noroyan absin okay so we'll next move up to the consent public hearings these items are items number 16 through 19 on our agenda all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to pull one of the items on our consent public hearing these are items 16 through 19 okay so um is there any member of the public that wishes to speak to any item on our consent public hearing this is item 16 through 19 any members of the public wish to speak to any item on the consent public hearing that's item 16 through 19 okay scene i would speak to 18 when you come when we bring it back yeah okay so see no public comment i'll bring it back and you have the floor council member crown oh i didn't want you to zoom by there because i wanted to vote for the purpose of voting no okay yeah i i'm i'll be also voting no on 18 and 19 is there any further discussion on um the consent public hearing item item 16 through 19 i was going to make a motion and that would give a chance for two people to register their dissent okay so i'll move the consent public hearings second it is a motion by council member matthew second by council member chase is there any further discussion i'll um i'll vote the consent agenda but no on 18 and 19 i heard council member crown you also are lodging a no vote on 18 and 19 yes 18 and 19 okay so all those in favor with approval of the consent public hearing item please say aye aye those opposed okay that motion passes with council member crown voting against 16 and 19 voting no yes on the others council member brown voting no on item number 18 and 19 i was 18 and 19 also 19 my policy is 18 and 19 for crown um all other council members present voting for with council member noroyan absence okay thank you next up is item number 20 the cowl beach work uh water quality working group and we'll wait just to get the slides gone thanks that was quick thanks um first of all i think this is something we've had about three presentations to council in regards to um cowl beach um and the work of the water quality group the slides will go through some of the history of the work that's taken place there but i wanted to introduce nick muka from the cowl working group who's here from save the waves and susie o'hara um we had in um the past this took place in 20 it was 2014 that we first formed the group um at council direction and it's met continuously but i want to just specifically call out um susie o'hara for her work over the last year especially the work of the um the santa cruz municipal wharf crew for all of their efforts to kind of install um not only infrastructure but also kind of improvements that have really made a dramatic improvement in the um level of um or lowered and reduced the amount of bacteria that that's located at cowl beach so we'll start by going into the the slides um by talking a little bit about our background the work that's been accomplished over the past year some of the data that's been collected and trends and long end with next steps and recommendation and i also wanted to call out audrey from our county office of right here raising her hand who's been a new addition but a real integral member of the team in terms of like providing a whole uh really kind of some great insight in terms of what data we're getting and also really has a collaborative effort with the county really providing us with really strong support on how we can work together to address this in a really meaningful way which office in the county for the uh this is county environmental you're an environmental environmental health and what yeah she works for john ricker okay so we'll start out with some background on what we've been looking at here we as some of you know that's been on the council for a long time you know back in 2010 um through 2013 we were getting some of the highest uh bacteria counts at area of cow beach we had um test results that exceeded state standards um the state of california has um policy that whenever those uh bacteria levels exceed a certain level we need to post and educate the public about um the levels that are being reported at cow beach that led us to really kind of look at well what can we do to kind of make sure that we are addressing this issue so for seven years the city at cow beach was um landing at the top we were at either one or two of the heel of the bay's beach bummer list that um heel of the bay is an environmental group that takes public data in regards to uh county water quality testing up and down the state and public publicizes that to show where different um communities are in regards to their water quality testing and so when they talk about it being dirty it means that there is high counts of ecoli enterococcus and total coliforms there and it had been a chronic issue despite years of city effort and investment that we really wanted to turn around so this is a copy of the heel of the bay report that's publicized so if you were to go to heel of the bay dot com and list all the reports over the past several years as well as rankings of each of the beaches throughout the state of california that are listed on the report as a result of these high um levels of bacteria that were tested um we saw that while the state law um requires that there be a posting that takes place it really didn't provide any sort of way where we could interact with the city to make sure that we're actively monitoring and providing direction on how we could kind of take action to to fix this issue that had been reoccurring for so long so as a result and this was something i i want to give some credit to uh denise holbert who actually suggested some more direct oversight of how we look at some of our environmental issues here and she suggested looking at having a a group of environmental organizations to help provide that more improved oversight over how we look at some of the test results were coming so as a result the city um partnered with um save the waves also we partnered with um surfrider and um other environmental groups provided some really good oversight and initial um investment of time to look at what the problem was i tell you that the biggest contributor and and um i think the one where we that really moved us uh moved this really far was save the waves and nick who's here represented is facilitated those meetings but we did have representatives of surfrider foundation as i mentioned the sierra club city staff and county staff that were really kind of engaging on this issue in a really meaningful way to kind of identify what sorts of actions we could do to to make improvements here in in the city so as a result of those meetings we had um established goals and objectives and frankly it was to seek to eliminate all human derived sources of bacteria um capable of causing human illness so things that we you know one were not naturally occurring sources of bacteria to the greatest extent possible so we looked at you know the infrastructure that that um let out onto cow beach we looked at you know what types of tests we were getting we looked at how we were collecting the tests and the three goals there were were um were ones where we wanted to make sure that in addition to reducing the bacteria accounts that were being reported out at cal through policy and stewardship we also wanted to better explain to the public what was going on there so nick and i went out to meet with different organizations that were were heavily involved in cow beach including the junior guards the groups that went to use the surf for contests some of our organizations like operation surf that went out for special events and also some of our surf school instructors to help let them know what we were doing as a city and in partnership with save the waves to get at this problem moreover improved really through this work our scientific understanding of cow beach and what was going on there so we could really provide some dedicated um work to continue to see improvements to get off this list yeah i'll jump in um and before getting underway i want to first thank uh santa cru city council for your years of vision and commitment to this vexing community issue and as you can see here on this slide uh this is not something that has recently um you know come to our attention this has taken years of of your commitment to it um and so thank you very much and to i'd also like to turn my acknowledgement to the committed and talented individuals that are on the cow beach working group it really is a collection of different organizations and municipalities working together to all contribute towards this solution for this so i think that you'll see in the in the subsequent slides that we have made progress and i really do want to underscore that is very much a group effort and everybody contributing their own um their own aspects of of expertise to that to that solution so it's a pleasure to be a part of it and yes we have been at this for quite a while we've highlighted in yellow the areas that the city has taken leadership on to address this issue over the years going back to 2013 uh you can see this this issue actually predates that but in 2012 a study was conducted by dr alley beam from stanford the city uh was immediately involved in taking some of her recommendations after that um council directed to have oversight of the reporting and staff analysis of this bacteria which i think kind of really planted the seed for the cow beach working group um in 2016 additional infrastructure repairs were put into place again i'd like to call out the municipal warf crew for really jumping into action and making a very effective solution come to life and you've seen again that there have been the completion of that project in 2017 the city of santa cruz helped contract with the national water research institute institute we brought together a technical advisory committee really to look over our shoulder and make sure that we were using the best available science as we assessed this issue and frankly we invited them to poke holes in our thinking and and really push the envelope as much as possible in february that final report from the technical advisory committee was delivered and starting in march of 2018 we began acting upon some of those recommendations and that's going to be you know our work plan moving forward so you know the cows working group goes back uh i think it's four years now what have we found this is uh sam blakesley with the surfighter foundation uh by working together with the city and the counter looking at each other's data side by side we actually made a couple two two key findings number one we found that you know the water quality issue at cows isn't year round you were really looking at the water quality being impaired primarily during what's considered the bathing season and i believe that goes from march to october which is paradoxical to most other communities in california their water is the worst in the winter months when there's lots of runoff and here in santa cruz it was happening during those summer months which was particularly problematic for us a because we were looking at this from a human health standpoint but also that's when the um heal the bay report kind of zooms in on those couple months to to determine you know what are the their dirtiest beaches so right when we were kind of having our our peaks is when we were really under the microscope but you can see here the seasonality of the issue uh that the peaks both in coliforms and inter intercoxus is happening in the summer months um this graph shows it as well you can see that the the peaks really happening between may and september principally also important to note here is not just when it's happening but you can see uh that the purple lines are from 2014 and obviously the red line is 2018 you can see the reductions that uh we're proud to report upon and here again shows um kind of the seasonality and the year to year trends over the year another important finding that we've established is that uh when we say that the water is impaired at cowl beach uh we've really been able to to hone in on what that means uh i think rewind four years ago the assumption was that all the water there west of the wharf uh out to where people were surfing was uh was really the the area of concern and what we determined was that the it's actually a very finite area directly west of the wharf and the more shallow the water uh and the more the closer you get to the wharf is really uh what we would consider the hot spot of of this issue um and so you can see in this graph that as you go towards main beach the water quality improves and as you go out towards cows uh towards the stairs out at cows again the water quality improves one important thing that we did initially was work with surf rider foundation to establish a new water quality monitoring site in the actual surfing lineup at cows to take samples from where a lot of our community members and visitors to Santa Cruz are spending time in the water and we were relieved to see that the water out there uh is markedly different than the water directly west of the wharf which is to say that the water was clean out there again this just demonstrates that um you know the the wharf is uh on the far left of this graph and as you go out towards deeper water along the wharf the water quality improves so it really did help us um focus in on on where we had to put our attention and our resources the trend over the past three years has been that of decreasing uh bacteria levels um I think that in the with the eagle eye we've been able to show that from year to year we've seen about a 50% reduction in those high bacteria those posting days as a result of of a lot of our work I think the the chief infrastructural improvement that we've had within the last year has been uh the recommendation to install this steel gauge bird screening underneath the wharf uh our assumption was after looking at that data and really defining where the the area of concern was uh the assumption was that perhaps it was uh the pigeons that were roosting underneath the the wharf and so with this intervention uh the again the municipal wharf crew got right on it even with high surf and challenging conditions out to uh the 10th bent I believe is what it is which is 250 linear feet of this screening and now it's virtually impossible for pigeons to be roosting underneath the wharf and pooping on the sand right there at cow beach um and I think that uh just to go back to it it was after this intervention that we saw that precipitous drop of to the tune of about 50% reduction in those high bacteria events as David as uh mayor terrasis pointed originally uh my apologies uh in addition to us helping kind of crack the code and what's happening here and and and introducing new interventions another important part for us is uh sharing that information with the community I think most of us that live in Santa Cruz know that the cow's issue is an issue that we all share but there are so many different myths and there's misinformation about what's really the source of this so as we're gathering information and kind of clarifying what's happening it's really important for us to make sure that information is disseminated in that uh we can start to to parse out the truth from from from the myth so uh we're in the process now of looking at ways to use signage on the beach to achieve that objective also as mayor terrasis alluded to the stakeholder meetings where we're able to really uh identify which groups are most relying upon the cow beach environment and then and then meeting with them specifically so that they have that information and are able to within their own communities disseminate it and we're also in the process of pulling together a video that can be shared easily online uh in terms of next steps here for improving our testing methodologies and source tracking again a lot of this comes from that technical advisory committee and acting upon those recommendations we're looking to have enhanced quality control to account for some of the limitations within our testing methods we're looking to also introduce new testing methods side by side with our current practices and seeing if we notice any difference in what the data is showing and third we're looking with the county support and leadership to actually freeze the samples that the county is collecting and the benefit of that is that if we see a subsequent to taking that sample that there is a very high bacteria in the in that water we have the ability to go back to that and do DNA testing for further information so um those are three really important next steps that we're excited to implement and and learn from in terms of infrastructure improvements again we're going to maintain that bird screening because that has even according to the technical advisory committee been a valuable intervention so I think that we want to keep that in place for the foreseeable future also looking to potentially address some of the over spray issues that are taking place at the showers right there at cows and then also turn our attention to some of the infrastructure that was alluded to earlier namely the beach fault which is right there by the beach at cows beach so um you know we're definitely uh taking the recommendations and our learnings over the past few years and and bringing that uh to bear for for the next year or two I just wanted to add um that nick is leaving save the waves for Patagonia he was a down inventor for yes not not for the region unfortunately um he was down inventor a county looking for housing as he's his family is moving and I was thinking a lot about you over the weekend down there with all the fires and hoping that everybody was safe and you were able to find um housing it's a huge loss for this this program and for the working group um as you have heard through his presentation um save the waves in particular but all of the cow working group partners have just been a huge asset to the city and continuing to advance our understanding and knowledge of the water quality issues that we have out there the progress that we've made including the technical advisory group Audrey is a wonderful addition to the group has really come in um with a great deal of technical knowledge and I think we have just a great opportunity moving forward into next year to only enhance the work and evolve the work that we're doing great yeah thank you echo in that and we'll sorry to miss you nick and hopefully we can stay in touch especially as you move down south absolutely um are there any questions on the report that you just heard council member crown preface by a comment thank you so much dave for pursuing this and and bringing this forward and and thank you nick also my questions maybe for each of you um I was just thinking about the word evaluating the outcomes uh rather than implementing the um the recommendation of the technical advisory commission is or committee is there a difference between evaluating and implementing yes yeah well I'd say um from my perspective you know as we alluded to we work we're a group from diverse backgrounds and so when we are evaluating recommendations we're all kind of looking at through our lenses and kind of force ranking which activities to take on next whereas an implementation would be just kind of like um you know without discussion or consideration as to timing and and prioritization just uh implementing it oh council member matthews you want to open it well I was gonna I was first gonna see if there's any questions first I want to ask you um you didn't talk about it but we've seen an exponential decrease in the number of beach postings and I aside from the water no wonder if you'd comment on that then the fact that we're the beaches isn't hitting those high bacteria levels even though um you know one of the test results we show the decreases what does that mean in regards to if you could talk a little bit about that yeah so um through these interventions we have I I'm sorry if that wasn't abundantly clear we have we've hit at least a 50 percent reduction in the number of days where the beaches posted like they are mandated to post a public notice when the beach the bacteria levels uh exceed a certain state limit and so since we have in uh since we've put this the bird screening up we've been seeing less than half of the amount of postings than before that um what that means for cows well first the heal the bay report is really um a reflection of of that type of improvement so we were always sitting in the number one or number two position in the in the beach bummer list you don't want to be number one or number two that sounds like a good thing but it's not uh and so we were working to really fall down that list and this last year we were able to for the first time get off the one or two position drop down to number eight so we are seeing uh quite a bit of improvement and that improvement is being recognized by groups like heal the bay and then other I you alluded to it but the over spray can you talk about the contribution from the from the showers that's causing some of the bacteria level increases that we that we saw at in the vault sure I mean I think for us uh going back to council member crone's question you know we're evaluating what that could mean for cows so as we know we eliminated the birds um but we're still not getting an a plus so we're still in this process of process of elimination what else could it be I alluded to the beach vault because we'd have seen some high bacteria um data coming from that and we're now in the process of evaluating and starting to to develop our conclusions as to what could possibly be the sources that are leading to that one of these might be the the the shower at cow beach it's a small amount of water that's making it down there but again we're in the process of discovery and trying to um really think through all of the the potential risks and sources as a follow-up question uh what kind of resources are you are you do you have and might you need in order to make that kind of evaluation related to the showers and any other of the process of elimination points so uh last year or maybe the year previous the council did do a budget adjustment for for the purposes of this project and we do still have budget that's available for um any infrastructure improvements and including um evaluation of of options and looking at source tracking and trying to do that process of elimination so for the purposes of moving into next year we we don't need any additional budget from for that particular um evaluation in terms of resources it really is about working with a with a collective group uh leaning on the county the city as well and the partners to help determine what would be how we you know how we prioritize those projects staffing resources are always um uh needed uh you know Audrey runs an amazing water quality lab but she's um you know also has staffing challenges and capacity challenges so thinking about how best to support those efforts especially when we get to the testing methodologies for next year I think will be important part of of our work plan I'll ask one question before we take it back to to the public if there's any comment and that is we're seeing an influx sometime in the beach area or we're seeing um campers are going back there I know when we first gave the council direction back in 2013 was really because we were getting a lot of these issues from human source bacteria that was there is there any concern about like some of the um issues right now that we're seeing and maybe further steps that we should be considering as a council to address um um the campments that are showing up down in this area now I think overall um you know the the mission and goal of the cow working group is to eliminate any human source of bacteria and so if we have folks that are camping down there that would obviously be a concern um that that has been an issue from the beginning in terms of you know minimizing and mitigating any camping issues and it is it has been part of our discussion with regard to the beach vault um what kind of access is is available for folks who are who are sleeping down there um I don't see this as necessarily a new issue I think it's an ongoing issue and as we continue to think about um or if as we continue to see potentially high bacterial counts at the beach vault and other localized areas it certainly you know will be part of that discussion in terms of source tracking moving forward all right thanks Vice Mayor Watkins I just I want to say thank you for the presentation and for all your work and coming in kind of on the tail end of your timeline I appreciate the history and I think it's a really great example of how nonprofits and community members and local government can come together and um track and and make progress and have a commitment over time I think my question is just more broader in that I think what you've described here is very scientific and robust and I'm wondering if you ever have shared sort of these methodologies with other jurisdictions that might see a need as well or how it could be potentially replicated or used as a model essentially especially since it's had such a long timeline well I know that Audrey is often on the circuit talking about the work that the county does and she might want to step up and talk a little bit about the information that she shared. Nick could also talk about the global wave conference I was I did not attend that but I know that there was quite a bit of interest in the work that we're doing so I'll yield to you too. Hi I'm Audrey Levine I'm from the county environmental health program and I wanted to make a comment just in general before I answer your specific question when we measure bacteria we don't know if they're from people or birds and so that's kind of and so we're just looking at total numbers and so when we want to go into more detail that's where it gets more involved and more expensive but we're but but we're at the point where where that information can be informative so the state has requirements that are just numbers of bacteria so they're meant to be protective of public health without worrying about where the bacteria are coming from but but but from what we've done here I think it's very important to be able to differentiate whether they're coming from birds or or human sources in terms of I think your suggestion about making this a model is really excellent I think it's for me it's been great to have a chance to collaborate with the city and the and the other participants and I think it really has been mutually beneficial for for all of us although maybe monthly meetings are a little too frequent but but but it but it gives me a chance we'll do it we'll go every other month yeah so the state of California has what's called a beach water quality working group and that brings together all of the different jurisdictions that are involved in in it's a state mandated program it's called AB 411 which was passed in 1998 which requires every beach that has more than 50,000 visitors per year to be monitored weekly from April through October so that group gets together and shares a lot of information and and certainly as we start to kind of sort of summarize what our main talking points are and we can certainly they would probably be very pleased to host us as well and then they have a website where they provide that information and I'll just also quickly add that we have had the opportunity to share the fruits of this effort with we had a global wave conference where we had people from I think 17 different countries here back last March at the dream in and we really showcase that as as you referred to a collaboration between city between county and nonprofits and everybody contributing towards a solution and even just two weeks ago there was a delegation from Chile that came up to learn about California coastal management issues and again this was held up and held it as kind of an example of how cities can take an innovative innovative approach with nonprofits to to address those types of issues it's kind of neat when the data are supportive of what you're trying to do too so that's kind of okay thank you okay so at this point thank you I'd like to ask if any member of the public would like to speak to this item this is item number 20 it's the cow working group the members of the public okay we'll bring it back to the council I'd like to before we do if you could put up on the on the screen this is um you know thinking about this I I feel every time I've picked up the paper more recently we've talked about you know the the fires that are taking place up in the hills and also now we're seeing kind of some impacts in our beach area we've worked really hard um to try and get at the bottom of this very issue about some of our high bacteria levels at Cal's and taking specific actions over the past five years to really kind of make a difference and make movement and I really feel feel strongly that and positively about the partnership we've had with the cow working group and and more recently with the county especially with Audrey's more recent work to kind of really get at the bottom of this and provide some really good insight so I would like to one ask and this is just for discussion in terms of number one that one looking at this issue about the redesign of the shower and storage space is located at the entrance to cow beach and to prevent runoff in the areas so that we're able to kind of provide some resources to provide the team and staff to look at this and then two I'm really interested in one I appreciate the informational reports that we've had from the city manager's office but we have not had anything scheduled really as a council to kind of look at this more recently about what we're doing relating to our ongoing homeless shelter crisis and as we start to see these impacts in the beach area in other parts of the city I think it's timely that we have something scheduled to kind of go after this and so there's there's a series of recommendations here that I'd like to ask that the council look at and I passed up these these items to them to look at here they include agendizing a special meeting to consider the following actions relating to the ongoing homeless crisis such as returning to council with action to enforce the cow beach curfew and expand the beach curfew to explain include main beach also looking at council with recommendations for proposed adjustment to continue funding emergency homeless shelter resources until the homeless action partnership executive committee can identify some regional supplemental shelter options and then see returning to council with an inventory of potential locations for year-round emergency shelter within or outside of the city limits privately or publicly entity owned properties so that we can actually have something in place that's outside of our beach area and some of our hillsides and then D returning to council with recommendations for implementing a voluntary intra-county homeward bound program for jail releases and those arrested from outside the city and released within 24 hours due to insufficient jail bed spaces this is where we've heard that people that are released due to lack of charges or after 24 hours having a way so that they're not necessarily located here in the city provide an opportunity for them to return to their point where they were arrested through a program similar to what we have for homeward bound and then last I'm asking the council that we consider an amendment to the camping ordinance with available options to restore the enforceability in light of the martin b voisey decision including but not limited to the designated managed camping areas restricting application of camping to specific areas and then rotating no enforcement zones or locations so that we can have options at the disposal of our public safety resources to really make a difference in where we're seeing some of these impacts within our city so I want to put that out there for discussion yeah thank you you may be about to say what I'm going to say as much of this has to do with a topic that isn't agendized I was my I was going to caution the council that while I recognize that that to the extent there is a correlation between human factors resulting in contamination of cow beach and the homeless population that tends to camp on main beach or in that vicinity and water quality issues this is beyond the scope of this discussion and so I think certainly agendizing a special meeting to consider these topics it would be an appropriate thing to do if that's what the council's inclined to do but your discussion on these topics today would have to be very constrained thank you that's one method I understand what all that moves you to bring these items forward but my concern has already been expressed by the city attorney I will go ahead and move the recommendation for the cow built a cow beach water quality working group and would like to make a few comments okay I first of all want to thank David for his sustained leadership on this how many years has it been five something like that yeah and in the same breath want to thank the community organizations and public entities that have been involved it has been a serious sustained endeavor in our own city staff as well and so often something like this comes up and people say oh my god that's a horrible problem and get agitated and then leave the room and people have really been slugging away at this and it it has not been an easy one martin asked about making a an example of this which is a good idea but in a way it's like a case study because all the conditions they're so different here the direction of the flow and the outlet and the birds and all that stuff and what I so admired in this effort going forward was let's assess let's do some research let's think of possible causes let's do some pilots let's analyze and kind of gets christier thing to analyze choose what are the most priorities go after those come back to tackle the next one which is why you look at all that long list of things it's really been science in action and it's been great and we are not done yet but to see the the really dramatic improvement came not by just throwing darts at possible ideas but really going after what are what are the causes what are what are the solutions and budgeting for it too so it's it's really been great and I think that is a great great legacy for you frankly let's get off the list get off the list and in that I'm just going to also add Rochelle and I sit on the Visit Santa Cruz board of directors that's the local tourism promotion you think the city's bummed on having us on the beach bummer list the visitor council is really bummed on having us on the beach bummer list and I know they were involved in this effort off and on but they've been very much front and center in expressing their concern and also supporting the city's actions I know they're going to be really happy to see us almost dropped off the list now and I'll be interested to see the new steps that you come up with the outreach the signage etc anyway it's it really has been challenging and I know our staff in all the different departments too doing the necessary work to make this all happen it's one of those things that makes you feel good about both the resolve of the city its commitment to environment the professionalism of the staff and the engagement of the community so I just say good work everybody on this one it's it's really been satisfying and and I know it will continue so I'm going to let my my motion stand as I flash this thing Cal Beach could be off the beach bummer list in 2019 yeah yeah yeah that's good yeah definitely this council will continue the work so there's a motion on the floor by council member Matthews seconded by council member Chase council member crown the motion does not include agendizing a special meeting that's a totally separate item I think we could give direction but I know my motion is strictly related to the cowl working group report well and we did just hear from the assistant city manager that many of these things are already included in the words ever meeting so it's I'm not sure that we need a special meeting unless we plan to cover something that wasn't already planned to be covered in the December meeting I'd like to hear from the mayor what what your thoughts are how to deal with this well my sense is we ran into a similar problem last year where there was a transition and we had this approach that was being addressed and dealing with homelessness and encampments that were at that point in our downtown and along the levy I feel very strongly from the standpoint of the work on the cowl working group and if you any council member who I don't think anybody was on the council at that time but in in April 2013 April 9th 2013 when we first looked at this there was a there was the issue that we were experiencing in our beach area where there were these growing encampments and we also had lots of human source bacteria that was affecting the the beach area I guess I want to make sure that we are being comprehensive in our approach that we're not going going back and making making a mistake and not looking at this more closely now because there'll be several months that will pass and I want to make sure that we address these issues at cowl beach and main beach in a responsible way because I think it's probably some of the most important resources we have in our city not only environmentally you know ecologically but also for tourism in our area and I don't think we're really kind of like being as direct as we could as we could be to address some of the issues we're experiencing I mean the council provides the direction on this and I understand that there's going to be a report out I just want to make sure that we're asking for what we anticipate we'll receive back at that time and for me a special meeting might be the way to have a more focused conversation about the matter would you like a motion for an amendment to the main motion to have that special meeting I'd like to hear from the council to see if they're willing to do that yeah I would support that if you include the 1220 river street campground in that as well meaning an evaluation to come back to the council and have a discussion at that time yes mayor Watkins I also agree with just the intention behind the idea and I'm just curious without kind of going too deep into the specifics were these you mentioned earlier that at our December 11th meeting you were planning to make this an agenda item that would become coming back to the council would this encompass some of this as well yes because in particular we wanted to brief give you an update relative to the the HAP process and sort of the next steps relative not not everything certainly but with respect to the expansion of shelter capacity in the HAP process that will have an update on that and again the overall approach to identifying additional shelter capacity and what the next steps are there will report on that but with respect to the some of these other items are not necessarily related to that like the beach curfew or the identifying city owned properties we on that one we have gone through an initial process of identifying and shelter locations and that became problematic and so that's something that we were trying to incorporate as part of the HAP process to focus on identifying the approach and then coming up with an approach that we can then move forward with specific projects because what we experienced last time around was just significant opposition anytime we even just talk about the sites before we even get into the specifics of the programs and how they're going to work it ends up causing a lot of disruption and a lot of angst out in the community where people don't necessarily know whether it's going to go in their community or not and how and this and so it just became really difficult to that was our experience last time around on that particular item but you know it's up to the city council how you want to approach that with respect to the Martin the Boise items as you know our police department is complying with those regulations and they are out there addressing complaints with respect to camping using other means as appropriate and we do have it is true that we do have increases in camping around the city in different locations but that happens just because we are doing enforcement in a variety of different places and so there is some natural movement that just happens it doesn't mean that we're not ignoring these locations and we are working we are having some meetings for example with the tourism community to discuss the beach area and all of that so relative to what we can do there I think we would probably need some additional legal analysis from the city attorney's office and that would require some of these will require some time so the other question is what's the timing of this and you know how quickly can we move with these things I'd be very difficult to do something in a relatively short turnaround because it requires some research and analysis the first item relative to the Cal Beach beach beach curfew that involves working with the coastal commission for example the the the current curfew had to be approved by the coastal commission so some of these just require quite a bit of time to bring back together so that's the other issue just depends on which particularly once you councilmember matthew yeah I'd be willing to add to my motion requesting an update on the enforcement of the Cal Beach curfew and the process for expanding it just just so we we get that information and do you support that second councilmember chase okay so that's added to the main motion and then regarding the first item that you asked allocating funds for the redesigning the shower I'm going to ask staff and nick as I understood it further exploration of that is on your agenda for the coming year is that right and it's yeah well we we have been looking that as the most probable contributor to that beach fault but yeah that's going to be part of our work plan is to try to gather more information about it but the way the group has been seeing is it's clearly contributing to the beach vault and there is a overspray that is occurring we're still trying to determine to what extent that's the the source yeah and so in that I think that's in next year's program to explore and prioritize so I don't I think item number one is a little bit jumping the gun is clearly considered a priority they're going to deal with it they're going to bring back recommendation in due course am I understanding that correctly although additional funding would be welcomed as we can you know I think I mean this is this is obviously a priority and yeah and we will make it happen so well I mean I would say councilmember go ahead go ahead I would say that I mean in the past we've had a kind of a disconnect between the resources that are available we've had I mean this is a a non-profit group that's managing something on behalf of the city and so there's recommendations made but oftentimes the resources aren't necessarily there to make sure that we implement them whether they're used or not I think it's important that we have resources available for use for this project if they don't use them they return back to the general fund and we these resources are available now I met this morning with the parks director and asked about those funds that we had set aside and I would say you know if they're not able if they're not used return them back to the general fund but at least have them available so that the group can actually kind of work on these solutions and implement them as needed and let me follow up on that um I understood from your report that there are still some study research funds available is that that could carry over is that correct yeah so they do carry over our intention is to focus those funds on the source tracking tested testing methodology working with the county on some of the stuff that nick talked about in a previous slide and then a lot of the educational outreach signage the video there are expenses that we foresee for next year that will be utilizing the existing project funds for so let me ask if you consider the shower overspray a likely primary cause do you need additional funding to verify that is that what you're talking about we could need additional funding to not necessarily verify it but to do any improvements to the the shower area to the whole hygiene area to eliminate that as a source if I may I did have a I did have a chance to talk to the parks director this morning as well with regarding this particular item and in talking to him he is supportive and I agree that it is something we have to do in any case the the number is not really huge relative to having an impact on the parks budget that is coming back to you you know with respect to their CAP budget and so the staff is supportive of moving forward with allocating some funding so we have to do this in any case so we can be supportive of that then I would again I'm I was under the impression that they had enough money anyway which is why I kind of balked at the addition so it would be just add to your motion I would just simplify it add just say allocate up to 25,000 I'm dropping out a lot of the other language there to initiate review of the shower overspray impact and implement improvements as needed to accept that as a okay thank you so that's added thank you for doing that council member brown well I think it was just covered it's why I asked the question early on about the resource the funding and so yeah I think we're covered council member crone could we hear the whole motion again sure it's this first recommendation as printed in the staff report um added to that is uh requesting an update on the enforcement of the cowl beach curfew and the process to expand beach curfew to main beach and just read that part of the second and expand the curfew yes currently the curfew only extends cowl beach west right and that is a limited time pilot that had to go through coastal commission approval so we can't just do it at the drop of a hat so um what I would appreciate not an extensive report but just an update information on the experience with enforcement at cowl beach curfew and what it would take to expand the curfew to the main beach yeah and we can really that's just strictly information we can certainly bring that back also just so you note the the current ordinance does have a expiration time at the end of the year so we do have to nonetheless work on this issue with respect to because it was approved on a sort of interim basis so we can definitely bring that back and my understanding too the the curfew area was not just the beach but was the beach area as well is that correct yes the parking area and all that that whole area that area remember the line up into the right so we can definitely do that yeah my concern mayor is that if we're not we're closing down uh san lorenzo park we're closing down grand street park we're closing we want to enforce a curfew at cowl but if we don't bounce that off with places that people can stay i mean that that's why i wanted to support what you said before yeah was come back to us with places where we can actually uh provide um housing for uh the vulnerable population homeless i appreciate it that's that was the that was the intent of this to kind of bifurcate this and so i i i get the the main motion that's on the floor by council member mathews and uh seconded by council member chase in regards to the other items that are there it was suggested that perhaps if there is a meeting scheduled for december 11th right now that um i'd like to hear from consensus that these items that that are listed here beneath could be addressed during that meeting as well to provide further direction in regards to especially the uh e um and how we can kind of approach this in a way that's more um i think impactful so the council has something before it that we can actually take action on we're not you asked for the full motion and i did two parts of it which is the printed recommendation the second statement about requesting information on enforcement of the cal beach curfew which i would say is not new that's existing and then thirdly to allocate funds up to 25 000 to um forget the exact language i use but it was basically to review the effect of the shower overspray and implement uh improvements to reduce that impact okay and then so that's the motion do we have consensus on putting that on the um december 11th meeting okay so that's there's two issues that's the cal beach i support that that's all the cal beach just keeping it separate i mean i i mean maybe um i would say that i would like to see these things on um for discussion on the december 11th meeting and you said by consensus i'm just wondering if other people folks consent to that um i would consent to that only if for the record i'm quite concerned about the hap committee that it's that it's going to oversee a nine million dollars and as far as i am aware it's not a brown-acted meeting and that means it's not open to the public and so there's these discussions going on that have no council members present um and and it's a closed meeting and we're talking about nine million dollars that they're going to be spending so i would put on that also that if we come back and talk about the hap committee as well and how to open that up more to the public the governance structure you mean yeah okay councilmember brown i would just add i mean it's kind of echoing councilmember crone's uh statements about the um you know i mean i'm i'm perfectly willing to have a conversation about all of the items that you've listed um in on the december 11th agenda and again i um i without talking about them i uh my position on any of them i do think it's um important that i mean that we have a conversation that involves you know really dealing with the number of shelter bed spaces available for this winter because i'm really concerned about how this transition is going i'm sure i know staff is working very hard and you all are too um and i you know i just don't want to um ignore that piece of it so i i know that in the conversation about the hap that'll come up but i just want to be really clear that that is uh major main main priority for me um i think the question about the governance structure of the hap um is a good one and i'd like to hear more about it given that you know it does seem very mysterious to us um and as council members who are uh here trying to make policy and and you know um be engaged in policy implementation um it would be helpful to um have more access to the process and i think the public would appreciate that as well if i may um with respect to these items certainly um we can do an update on just kind of going through them on a um that's part of the main motion right now we can be will be encompassed in what we're planning to to provide you in any case just the on the hap process and the heat process and and sort of next step so we'll provide an update on that uh and so that'll provide an opportunity to discuss about the governance and all of that so that's already uh scheduled um see i think would be difficult to by december to to have that so i i i think that would be very difficult to have that if i may martin but would you be able to sort of help us understand where you might see this going in terms of a timeline or i mean i i know you wouldn't necessarily have an answer but maybe understanding the process we can we can try very different but yeah but to have yeah sure okay sure sure we can do that uh and then d that one i'll be honest i'm not very clear on that one so we'd have to do some additional analysis on that one then e i think will be another one that would be difficult to do it by that time frame we'd have to i'm not saying do it by that time frame but again like we've already given i think some direction on fixing this particular process i mean we had passed council members and i understood that that was going to come back at a certain time and so i just want to make it clear that we're want to give some direction on you know what that looks like so that we can say this is something we want addressed um and you're referring to the council committee regarding the order amendment to the camping ordinance right and that's what i'm saying i don't think we'll have a we'll have an amendment for you to look at no but we're saying just so that there can be direction as far as that there is you know that we know what the timeline is or you come back and tell us how long it's going to take before you have it um i i'm generally sympathetic with all these issues i really would like to separate them out they are separated now so what i kind of like to do is vote on the the motion on the floor and then we can have a consensus motion that the items listed b cd and e will be included for discussion at the december 11th meeting not necessarily anticipating an action but we have a sense of what the trajectory is i think that's what you're getting in yeah okay the one we do this we'll take um we'll take the vote on the on the action item the motion on the floor and then we could just kind of get some consensus around the for the december 11th meeting to address these other items and i i would like this included in the record the the full listing um for the for the uh for the minutes so um there's a motion on the floor by council member matthew and a second by council member chase um all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member noroyan absent and now going back to the uh item two in regards to um uh agendizing or at least including on the december 11th meeting the following points below i'm looking for consensus around what that looks like in terms of the direction well i'm i'm happy to um make a motion which can serve as consensus that the items listed um b c d and e um presented by the mayor be included for discussion in the december 11th meeting i'll second that motion okay motion by um council member matthew second by vice mayor walkins is there any further discussion thank you um all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed please say no or no so i support the motion council member um the passes unanimously with council member noroyan absent so thank you for second on that i was seconded by vice mayor walkins okay thank you so we'll move on to the next item thanks for your patience um we're on to item number 21 which is the restrictions or ban on sale of flavored tobacco in the city and um i'd like to maybe uh have if you'd like to you want to do any i'll like to ask vice mayor walkins to provide any intro or background she wishes before it's turned over to casey humard the principal management analyst well i'll just i know that the staff is prepared to report on this i just will start by acknowledging and thanking the council for um pursuing this in april and asking our staff staff to research and work with our community members and our business owners to better understand what this um this item can encompass for our community and i really want to thank casey not humard for her work in uh preparing the uh agenda report as well as her work in outreach to our outreach to our business community and our health our health uh advocates and um i'll leave it at that in terms of uh comments that i'll save for later okay before we kind of get going on the presentation i just wanted this for those of you that aren't here at the meetings on a regular basis um you know that's the signs that everybody has are great they look really amazing but because people are behind you um you can't keep them above your shoulders so if you wanted to stand in the very back of the room and hold them that's fine but you just can't hold them up to block the views and other people okay so thanks for that little intro and now i'll turn it over to casey humard to uh begin the presentation thank you so much um i'm casey humard i'm a principal management analyst in the city manager's office back in april the council gave staff direction to study the issues related to banning or limiting the sale of flavored tobacco products in the city and returned to the city council with a draft ordinance since that time um we looked at the approaches that other jurisdictions in the state have taken and there's been a lot of action on that we also consulted with santa cruz county health services agency tobacco prevention education health educators and they have been an outstanding resource for us as we've been looking at at this and trying to get an understanding of what's going on um across the state and actually across the country wanting to make sure that we let impacted parties uh weigh in we mailed letters to 60 tobacco retailers in the city alerting them to your the council's direction and inviting them to share their input and in september we hosted a meeting around a dozen tobacco retailers and their representatives attended to share their input and um vice mayor wattkins was able to participate in that and hear from them as well having looked at the different approaches um we decided to bring three options to the council and here are three options uh that also that are also being implemented in other areas uh amending the first is amending the city's tobacco related ordinances uh to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco products in the city the second is amending the city's tobacco related ordinances um to ban the sale of flavor tobacco in the city within 600 feet of any school park or library so hitting uh youth populated areas and then the third is amending the city's tobacco related ordinances uh to ban the sale of flavor tobacco in the city while um exempting retail tobacco stores that meet certain requirements so retail tobacco stores that uh have 50 percent or more of their business in tobacco um and and so that would be included in that we also um with options one and two have incorporated a one-year period an amortization period for uh businesses that do 50 percent or more of their business so that they would have an opportunity to unload what they have um so we've incorporated that into those as I mentioned um we've been working with our county health partners and um one of the folks who's been indispensable has been Andrea Solano who's a Santa Cruz county health educator and she's going to come and share some additional information and here she is thank you Casey good afternoon mayor and council and members of the public my name is Andrea Silva Solano I'm a health educator I'm also the project director for the tobacco education prevention program at the health department so thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on briefly on flavored tobacco I also wanted to thank members in the audience for being here to be able to participate in this meeting today I know that many of you um made adjustments to your school and work schedule to be here so thank you um I have a brief presentation yeah I think it's up there um so flavored tobacco products by now you've probably seen them at your local corner stores local corner stores gas stations vape shops or throughout the community but um it's pretty difficult to to keep up with this rapidly growing market so um I'll get right to it yeah I don't see it up here um in 2009 the FDA banned flavored cigarettes um because they appeal to use but the ban did not apply to other tobacco products so since then we've seen an explosion in flavored products including some of these on the screen so little cigars cigarrillos smokeless tobacco chewing tobacco dips snuff snooze hookah and electronic cigarettes also known as vapes um these are the most popular by far are e-cigarettes they're also called vapes there are over 400 different brands of e-cigs on the market including blue blue excuse me soren crave piercigs my blue and one of the most popular is jewel so all these electronic cigarettes use something that's called e-liquid um there are are e-juice there are over um currently over 15,000 flavored e-juice varieties available in the us many people think that e-juice is just sugar and flavorings that create a harmless water vapor but in reality it's usually much more so this is a list of some of the chemicals that have been found in the vape aerosol many of these are known carcinogens causing serious illnesses such as heart disease emphysema and cancer if you look at the list it includes heavy metals such as nickel tin and lead um propylene glycol is on this list it's also found in antifreeze acetone which is commonly found in nail polish remover or and paint thinner also 75 percent of e-cig flavors include diacetal which is which is known to cause something that's called popcorn lung or um a form of lung cancer some of these on this list like glycerin are approved by the FDA but for oral consumption to be processed through the digestive tract not to be heated and inhaled through the respiratory tract it's true that vapes don't have the tar or some of the other chemicals that are found in regular cigarettes but much remains unknown about about these so it's really critical that we continue to monitor the potential health effects that they pose next slide please so flavors um why does it matter because research shows that flavors play a key role in the popularity of these products a government study found that 81 percent of young people who have ever used tobacco started with a flavored product youth also cite flavors as a major reason for their current use of these product stating that um they use the product because they come in the flavors that they like and also 75 percent of flavored product users would no no longer use the product if it was not flavored across all tobacco products that i mentioned the data is clear flavored tobacco products are overwhelmingly used by youth as a starter product and the preference for flavors declines with age um i also have a little bit some preliminary data from the national youth tobacco survey the number of high school age students reporting use of e-cigarettes rose by more than 75 percent in just one year so from 2017 to 2018 it went from approximately 11 percent to 20 percent this survey also revealed that teens who have tried e-cigarettes are more than eight times more likely to try traditional cigarettes so the the data that we're seeing and the results from this survey indicate that in fact more kids are trying these products and also moving on to try other products including traditional cigarettes briefly i wanted to share the results from a local data that was conducted in 2016 by the tobacco education coalition called the healthy stores for a healthy community that was also administered statewide it was initially administered in 2013 and then again in 2016 and there's a follow-up survey scheduled in the spring of 2019 anyway the the survey revealed that there was an increase in availability of e-cigarettes locally from 34 percent in 2013 to 57 percent in 2016 and also that 63 percent of the stores sold flavored products and 60 percent of the stores near schools sold flavored products so these results illustrate that that growing availability of these products throughout our community and it also reflects what's happening across the state and as i mentioned where the coalition is planning on conducting a follow-up survey in the spring of 2019 and looking at those same stores so we'll have data in the near future and then lastly i just wanted to share that to date there are approximately 40 california jurisdictions that are currently have or are working on similar flavors restrictions they're 18 currently have implemented in there in the process i'm sorry they've adopted bans and then the process of implementing so 18 jurisdictions listed here on the slide and approximately 22 that are in the process of adopting something including just last week in alameda and last month in Beverly Hills so that concludes some of the latest highlights and also what's happening across the state in response to this growing public health issue thank you before you sit down i just have a quick question i saw there's you have three counties that are there yellow county contra costa county and santa claire county is this something that's under consideration here in santa cruz county are you looking at the existing although those are the that have taken action on the flavor tobacco restrictions what's the question there are three counties that have taken action flavor tobacco is something is santa cruz county considering any sort of restrictions i mean absolutely we're working with um we just could only do one at a time but there is definitely interest and support from public health officials and at the county and other jurisdictions i mean the goal is to provide these types of protections equally across the county thank you just a quick follow-up just so just to clarify currently working on policies means they're in being written and santa cruz county just isn't quite there yet but we'll be on that currently working on less than soon yes okay any other questions that concludes our presentation okay thank you i'll turn it over do you want i don't know if you wanted to take a lead or well i mean i um i have i don't have any questions because i've had the honor of being able to work with many of the folks who've been um involved in this effort but um i'm definitely interested in hearing from the community members that are here to speak to this item today and happy to then revisit the item when we are at the point of taking action okay are there any uh initial questions before we turn it over to public none okay are there any members of the public that would like to speak to this item if you could would line up to your left ma'am you're i i know you were first your front row you can begin but um before you do um anybody else who would like to speak i asked that you line up to my left and yeah right over there right along consult line thanks um and you you'll have two minutes to speak so whenever you're ready just begin thank you mr. mayor member of the council my name is carol baker i am a 38 year volunteer for the american cancer society presently working with the american cancer society cancer action network and i'm here to encourage you and to thank you for considering these options but to encourage you to use the first option tobacco companies customers are dying and i'm not saying this as a shock tactic um if i wanted a shock tactic i would point out that um tobacco including e-cigarettes are the only products sold in the united states of america that if used as intended by the manufacturers can cause great devastating illnesses and even death even if you only consider the natural attrition as a result of old age all the users must be replaced by the tobacco companies so they have to attract kids and that's what they're doing with flavored e-cigarettes and um and it's obvious with bubblegum flavors and so forth like those ones that were just showed to you for 14 years i was a facilitator for smoking cessation groups 96 of those addicted started between the ages of 13 and 20 i'm most interested in regulating menthol flavor it has an anesthetic event effect that makes the body's natural differences go away your body is telling you something when you're choking and coughing and and everything after you take a drag on a cigarette and so if you use menthol cigarettes that dulls that effect on the cilia that's um and it makes it possible for you to inhale deeply and that's what i'm most considered in dealing with action on menthol cigarettes is long overdue a comprehensive fdi report on menthol cigarettes issued in 2013 concluded that menthol cigarettes lead to number one increased smoking initiation among youth and young adults number two greater addiction and three decreased success in quitting smoking thank you for this opportunity thank you appreciate your comments next speaker please a little nervous up here hi i'm shallock i love santa cruz and thank you for your service i want to point out that i don't believe the warren drug work i think we all know that the warren drugs don't work and they making things illegal does not make them non accessible meaning that the black market will open up and by eliminating a product that people are addicted to without providing sensation for them to get help and especially if they're youth and they don't have transportation for getting help help i think that really um uh sets them up for a failure um me myself i was interested um i'm a 46 year old flavor tobacco smoker started at 28 uh products don't look really youth friendly to me when i went into all the stores recently i could not access them myself i had an accident adult to hand me that product and i paid a huge amount of tax to help people teach me how stupid doing that is but as an adult i feel that you know having that access is great i then went around and sort of asked other people hey you you look pretty young how are you getting access to your jewel and stuff like that and there is a market out there of young people primarily have evolved and associated by color who is providing access to that so that um band will really help out their revenue services so um just pointing that i personally believe an all-in-out band doesn't work anywhere people who want will access it i know that when they made smoking clove cigarettes illegal i was very happy that they made clothes of ours because i did not stop um and i believe that as an adult i'm allowed to make that very stupid choice um and i appreciate you looking out for our youth and keeping our youth safe thank you hey sir are you speaking on behalf of yourself individually as a city resident yes nobody else i am only talking about me shallock as a adult in santa cruz thank you i love santa cruz thank you next speaker please hello i am natalex dot kennedy gmail dot com uh the big question here that i have are we just going after tobacco products like cigarellos and such for flavoring or are we aiming this head vaporizer juice uh what i have to say about vapes is that i i've been a good smoker for a long time and the one thing the one crutch that really keeps my sanity as i am attempting to quit just attempting often but when i'm when i get off cigarettes the one thing that keeps me grounded is being able to use vaporizer juices and i certainly hope that this does not affect the vape juices if it does it will put a big impact possibly putting out of business several local vaporizing shops um one of which i know was founded by a x smoker who used to smoke over two packs a day and has quit being able to use vaporizing juice instead so i don't want to put that kind of thing out and uh what i got to say to any adult smokers in the audience or otherwise uh that are watching this is that of vaporizers are actually a very good thing to help people get off of tobacco you know they there may be other harmful situations other harmful stuff in it but just from personal experience the difference between smoking a real cigarette versus smoking a vaporizer is night and day thank you thank you next speaker please good afternoon mayor and city council um i'm nolan abru i'm a manager at a local business downtown called green vapors um we were established in june of 2013 with the mission to help smokers quit and be a trusted source for e-cigarette products well we have acquired our tobacco license we don't sell any cigarettes or tobacco tobacco but we focus on providing reliable safer alternatives to smoking um as people have previously stated uh we have helped countless tobacco smokers i know personally kick cigarettes and seeing these people regain their lung capacity being able to exercise without shortness of breath uh it's one of the reasons i choose choose to work there um in almost all these cases customers used a flavor to help kick cigarettes um and restriction restriction of these flavors would be discounting all of these people of course we take a firm stance against the underage use of tobacco products um if you're under 21 and uh if you don't have an id um sorry our story is everything within our power to ensure that there are absolutely no sales or distribution of minors in any capacity the only way kids are able to get their hands on these products is from online sales or some sort of black market um this proposed ordinance would only further incentivize those sources so we would hope the Santa Cruz will allow the sale of flavored vapor products in adult only places of business thank you thank you next speaker please good afternoon i am my name is john mitchell i am a corporate store manager for 711 uh i've been corporate store manager for different stores in Santa Cruz for over five years um banning these products in stores is not going to prevent kids from getting them we follow a responsible retailer program that has been in place for years that prevents the sale of any tobacco related products to anyone under the age of 21 we follow police uh enforcement stings and all this is going to do is take products out of the store and they're still going to get them through online purchases any city wide ban county wide ban will not prevent online purchases so your retailers are the only ones who are going to be hurt by this it's not going to prevent kids from purchasing these items online thank you thank you next speaker please hello mayor council uh my name is uriah wilkins i'm a owner of a uh excuse my voice the smoke has been kind of affecting at the last few days no pun intended i'm not a smoker anymore but um at any rate i'm the owner of pipeline a very long time local business uh four decades old i just want to start whoever gave the presentation just about all the studies i think there's a lot of very salient points and there's a lot of reason to be concerned um my wife is an educator um the jewel memo went to her school and her staff last year i mean we're talking young kids so i'm very on board with uh you know addressing these measures to prevent the youth access and use of these products uh however um you know in terms of what i operate business wise um my shop has an adult only area and you have to be 21 enough to go back there on top of that our store has a very long history of compliance i've been there about 20 years i don't think we've had i know we haven't had any compliance issues under my watch if there were in the prior two decades before that i'm sorry i don't know i don't think so um um you know i think uh as far as the access goes you know i think we're kind of mitigating a lot of what the issue is and my next point being here e-commerce i think is where the failure is happening um i had a customer this morning tell me that their child got a debit card to kind of learn how to be money managers and with that debit card they went online and as long as they checked the box that said they were 21 they were good to go they could purchase their jewel products or their e-products online um so you know i think that's kind of where a large part of the issue is there might be bad actors i don't know if that's the case somebody told me there really hasn't been but one in a business that closed a few years ago so i don't think the issue is local um i just want to say uh the big thing is to respect my customers that are over 21 to be able to have the liberty to make those choices and last the FDA is about to strike a pretty big ruling that's going to be pretty in line with one of your action options thank you sir thanks next speaker please um you know what if not because we can't block anybody but but i did see it in the back is this okay um if you keep it just so you can't block people but um you can keep it right there sure go right ahead i'm Naomi i was born and raised here in Santa Cruz i went to Santa Cruz High and i'm now a junior at UC Berkeley at Santa Cruz High flavored e-cigs were everywhere my generation's always known the dangers of cigarettes but the fast emergence and tricky marketing of flavored e-cigs caught us off guard my friends told me things like it's not addictive because it has less nicotine and it's not bad for your lungs because it's just vapor peer pressure to use e-cigs far exceeded that of drinking or using drugs pressure to vape occurred all week any time of day and in virtually every social situation worse e-cigs were discrete and insidious students even vape in Santa Cruz High classrooms by graduation many of my peers were addicted to vaping and smoking cigarettes but i don't blame them i blame the industry for targeting us when we were vulnerable promoting mistruths sucking us in with candy-like flavors and misleading us to believe we were inhaling a harmless vapor when in fact we were breathing in aerosols which contain chemicals that are known to be toxic and highly addictive i also blame local adult only retailers for knowingly selling these products to high school kids those who advocate for an exemption to sell e-cig products for adult only establishments should know the facts by age 14 my peers could walk 10 minutes downtown from Santa Cruz High into a local adult only retailer and buy anything they wanted they never were even id business owners risk fines and license revocation because the revenue high schoolers provide grossly outweighs the penalty they've helped to hook hundreds of teenagers on nicotine who return to their store again and again year after year and who then tell their friends that that store is where to go witnessing all this i fear my generation will soon suffer the consequences of increasing tobacco use and i ask you to ban these products completely thank you thank you next speaker please hello good afternoon um my name's amanda i'm with the american lung association uh we're the leading health organization working to save lives through preventing the harmful effects of tobacco use um first i just want to comment on um we want to encourage you to update your tobacco retailer license uh and remove the youth possession lot um civil criminal penalties for youth purchase and possession have not um proven to be effective enforcement and attract detract from more effective tobacco control strategies um so we believe that if there's any penalty um that any penalty if the law is broken should be um levied by the retailer not youth and then second i do want to comment and say that we um the american lung association do encourage you to pass a city-wide restriction on the sale of flavored tobacco products um as it was stated before four out of five kids who use tobacco started with the flavored product um a recent cdc study shows that the flavors are what get youth addictive and e-cigarettes um do contain nicotine that is harmful for adolescent brain development and the fda has not found any electronic cigarette to be safe and effective with helping smokers quit um so we encourage you to pass this city-wide um ban on flavored tobacco products to help um reduce youth access because the tobacco company are marketing these products to youth um the tobacco companies have been marketing their products to vulnerable populations for decades which is why we see over 80 percent of african-american smokers they use menthol 71 percent of youth who use lgbt youth who use um tobacco use menthol and then nearly half of youth who smoke use menthol so flavors isn't something new it's not a new um a new way that they market their product um but it's alarming and it's an epidemic and we do want to encourage you to pass this city-wide ban thank you so much thank you next speaker please good afternoon my name is jenna shankman i'm here on behalf of community prevention partners and coalition uh community prevention partners as you know advocates um specifically for policies that decrease access to products that appeal to youth but compromise their health in order to shift the local environment to make the healthy choice the easy choice youth appeal and health harm perfectly describe flavor tobacco products flavor tobacco products come in thousands of flavors such as rocket popsicle unicorn milk bubblegum cotton candy and chocolate they appeal specifically to youth and mask the taste of nicotine the center for disease control reports a sharp increase in teen vaping between 2011 and 2017 the percentage of high schoolers vaping increased from 1.5 to 11.7 percent and um i wrote down andrea's figure that in 2018 it was up to 20 percent which is quite amazing um and then in the 2017 santa cruz county healthy kid survey we do locally 10 percent of 11th graders were reporting that they are currently vaping and 35 percent that um of santa cruz high 11th graders said that they had used electronic cigarettes or vapes at some point but the good news is that there is an opportunity to reverse this trend restrictions and um easy access to substances has been successful with reducing youth alcohol and cannabis rates in our community and we look forward to this strategy improving the health of local youth by reducing vaping and tobacco use we encourage the city of santa cruz a city that deeply values health and youth well-being to join the growing number communities in california that have restricted or banned flavored tobacco products in order improve long-term public health outcomes and promote youth prevention thank you so much thank you next speaker please good afternoon i'm diana hodge of the tobacco education and prevention program at the county of santa cruz where i'm responsible for youth education and engagement and outreach um due to the time of this meeting most of our local youth couldn't come because they're still in school so on behalf of the friday night life program i'd like to read the abbreviated version of their letter on behalf of the santa cruz county friday night live youth council we're writing to let you know that we're strongly in favor of restricting the sale and availability of flavored tobacco products that are geared toward youth friday night live is a program that has a long history of youth and adults working together to help youth to help youth make healthy decisions feel supported and prepared for leadership and help our community by preventing alcohol drug and tobacco use our members are from middle and high schools across the country and county state and county sorry we see issues related to tobacco in our schools in this county regularly even though in the past years there's been a huge drop in cigarette use by youth the issues we see now are with flavored tobacco products especially with these cigarettes and vaping devices like jewel because flavored products are easier to get and easier to use in our own schools we've seen students using in class vaping in class in the halls and in bathrooms often we hear people say that it's just flavor there's nothing bad in it or that it isn't smoking but we know that this isn't true flavored tobacco products are just as dangerous if not more dangerous because the flavors appeal to youth and cover up what's really being inhaled to help keep youths in our Santa Cruz city healthy and to prevent a huge spike in tobacco use and related diseases we encourage you to restrict the sale and availability of these products in Santa Cruz it's a step in the right direction that several communities across the state are already taking it's also a step that would help develop what we as youth want in our community well-being rather than a lifetime of addiction and issues for our friends classmates and families the council has shown its commitment to creating a community where young people can thrive we ask you to continue prioritizing and protecting youth in our community as you decide on this important health issue thank you thank you next speaker please good afternoon I'm Gonzalo Coronado from Monterey county collaborates and we are the counterpart to tobacco education coalition here in Santa Cruz we are individuals and organizations advocate for a safer and healthier Monterey county just a few statistics that this will be quick one is 90% of smokers start before the age of 18 and the other one that I came across recently from the World Health Organization that in this current century they estimate over one billion deaths attributed to tobacco that's across the world you just got to put that in perspective lately there's been a lot of in the news from a certain e-electronic cigarette manufacturer and it's even has its own verb but I wanted to also remind you about these other products and they were mentioned previously a snuff to snooze e-cigar um hookahs little cigars cigarrillos and and and if I didn't mention snuff so it's all encompassing tobacco control program we applaud you what you're doing we look forward to Santa Cruz being the leader in these ordinances thank you thank you next speaker please hi Pat Malo born and raised in Santa Cruz still a resident um I just want to share my experience some of you might know my day job is a cannabis trade association executive director and I want to share my experience working with community prevention partners and the public health perspective in general with cannabis and we found that there you know needs to be and is a middle ground between giving access to adults you know and there's a very real case for you know these devices and things being helping folks get off traditional cigarettes and the balance between marketing to the lowest common denominator which is often youth you know and so I don't know personally if there's a space for flavors in that marketing towards youth if that's always there but I know that you've been giving three options that look to address you know this issue and I just um you know encourage everyone in the community to always participate with the public health perspective and the groups around that so that we can come to these sort of you know solutions that work for everyone and thank you thank you next speaker please Mr. Coffes good afternoon thank you for your service as usual always a pleasure to come to the Santa Cruz City Council and see a majority of females in voting positions I also represent green trade the nonprofit cannabis coalition of local businesses and we are a proud partner of the community partner prevention program and particularly because we value health and and this is really what this issue is all about it's public health and and this it's uh unconscionable that any business would target youth but the tobacco industry has been doing it since day one and they don't seem to get the message and I think it's only through the efforts of local jurisdictions that the tobacco industry has been held to account ultimately and so I'd urge you to strongly consider severe restrictions thank you thank you next speaker good afternoon Mayor Tarazas and city council members my name is Corinne Highland and I'm a health services manager in our public county public health division and uh was as was mentioned by a previous speaker uh in the last few days the FDA has warned that they are planning to take steps against some tobacco flavored products the proposed band is limited electronic cigarettes so would not include dip snuck snuff hookah are extremely popular cigarillos such as swisher switch which can be bought for two for 99 cents the proposed band does not include menthol which is disproportionately used by young smokers and african-american smokers and it would only apply to retail stores convenient stores and gas stations so I just want to provide some clarification on that as was mentioned before 18 uh california jurisdictions have banned tobacco flavored products and I just want to thank you for your leadership and commitment to this very important public health issue for the city of Santa Cruz thank you next speaker please good afternoon Mayor Tarazas and Santa Cruz city council my name is Gina Cole I am the co-chair of the Santa Cruz county tobacco education coalition um nicotine is nasty um it is very very addictive it ranks right up there with cocaine it ranks right up there with methamphetamines as far as how it attaches in the brain and becomes something that people have a very very difficult time quitting numbers range but approximately 17 quit attempts before someone can quit in two days is the great american smoke out gas so great american smoke out and we have been encouraging folks to take that as a quit date and when working with youth we have encouraged them if they are vaping to consider maybe setting a quit date for the for the great american smoke out what we do know with youth is that they are using flavors where they get them is not exactly the point the point is that big tobacco is providing them and we encourage you to take this piece out of the of the equation for youth by banning it citywide it gives you the opportunity to be the the the forerunner of this happening across the county it gives you the opportunity to set a precedent for the other jurisdictions um and it gives you an opportunity to prevent a kid from starting using tobacco thank you thank you next speaker please good afternoon mayor terrasis city council members um many of you know me katharino day from save our shores um you might find it unusual for me to speak speaking here today oops but you know as we as we work to protect the health of the our environment we're also concerned about the health of human beings and it's perfectly clear I think to any rational person that cigarettes is not something that's healthy and when the industry which has been um I think has decades long ignored the well-being of human beings and have targeted underserved populations and and now our youth it's time for the city to do something about that there is absolutely no reason for the industry to create flavored cigarettes other than to target children um it's simply an outrageous thing for them to do and it's outrageous for them to be allowed to be sold in any community in our country Santa Cruz is a leader in all sorts of ways and it should be a leader on this issue as well while your three options are admirable that you have various options to consider would seem to me option one is the only one that really makes any sense and that um would be the way for you to go I think you have a moral and ethical obligation to take action on this and pass the option number one as an amendment to the city's tobacco related ordinances you need to protect our youth you need to protect the health of our environment you need to protect the health of our humans who live here and share the environmental community my final word would be that you know not only is this creating an addictive problem among the youth in our community as well as adults but we are also now starting to see in addition to cigarette butts everywhere we're starting to see uh the detritus of vapes and other kinds of um tobacco products thank you thank you and before you begin are there any other members of the public that wish to speak to this item other than the three that are standing to my left okay I ask you that you stand up just so you can be ready to go so though you'll be the last speaker um Tara what do you get up there so please go ahead hi I'm jayvin pitzel and I graduated pcs in 2016 I'm a resident here vaping has been a problem that's been reaching younger and younger kids in our community social media in drool in particular which owns over 60 percent of the market targets the youth and it does anger me that companies like drool has been gaining longer and longer term customers the younger they start people but just like ubers have usurped taxis e-cigarettes are usurping normal normal tobacco use we can't stop technological progress but we can restrict the use and make it harder for miners to receive these products a 600 foot ban isn't going to do anything as everyone has a car or the means to a car with friends but I don't think adults should be restricted for their own personal choices and I think there should be uh more restrictions and make sure people are 21 but and maybe a limit like a package will pods per customer or whatever for example but it starts with educating the youth and I just don't think responsible adults should be penalized thank you thank you next speaker please thank you for being here mayor city council so my name is Michael McClellan I'm a local business owner in town um I own one of the leading vape shops uh luckily it's right outside the city ordinance so if you pass this I hit the jackpot right and as much as my business partners don't want to be here um I can't in good conscience not say anything um I got off cigarettes five years ago vaping vaping flavors um I'm vaping grape apple right here um when I quit smoking I could start to taste stuff again um I got into the vape industry um I had a good career before I got into the vape industry because my mom died of lung cancer so I've made it like my lifelong commitment to get people off cigarettes and that's what we do for a living um I find it I'm not here to argue any of the misinformation or the lack of education that's been presented to you here today um you know I have businesses in two other countries and they take a much different stance than we have right here I agree kids shouldn't have any access to this you're gonna have to do something but to ban flavors means that like what do we do that's what we vape on you know they taste good um it's not marketing to children and like I'm not big tobacco and the millions of dollars that I give to other people for their product none of them are big tobacco um we're vapors and I'm not here to argue the fact of whether or not you know they made this they made this a tobacco product there's absolutely no tobacco in it whatsoever um it's a synthetic nicotine so I'm not here to argue that part of it but um it's Juan up there is just so ignorant and I see it having such a negative impact on communities who uh by creating a black market for that and like I don't want to see a black market for this commodity in Santa Cruz and um I just wish there was a way to do away with online sales like I did the first 90 days of my business because we don't know where that stuff goes please don't do the first one thank you next speaker please and again the last call any member of the public that's here that hasn't spoken this is your last call you can stand up to left please go ahead hey Rich good afternoon honorable city council members my name is Rachel Kippen and I'm the co-chair of the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition I commend you today for considering uh this restriction on sales of flavor tobacco products and I urge you to adopt the full ban I can attest to the positive effects of this type of work I grew up in the era of dare programs drug abuse resistance education where ads showed me my brain on drugs my lungs on tobacco and my jaw on chew I was more likely to see campaigns that replaced the cigarette company cool with the word fool and Jill Campbell became an enemy not a friend as a result I was not pressured to smoke and was spared a potential lifelong addiction because it was not socially acceptable we know better and we knew better thanks to the tireless work of community leaders like you so the fact that we are here today again I honestly find a little crazy we've already agreed countless times that big tobacco cannot market their deadly products to our youth during this meeting you have heard from individuals who claim that flavored e-cigarettes are safer than traditional cigarettes lack of regulation makes determining what's in the thousands of flavored products on the market very difficult also to me it seems absurd that the tobacco industry has to compare something to the deadliest product on the market today that's a really low bar comparing your product to one that according to the National Institute of Health kills over a half million people every year in the United States the question should not be are e-cigarettes aerosols safer than smoke but rather is e-cigarette aerosols safer than air because studies show that the majority of young people currently using these devices would not otherwise be smoking as an educator I personally have watched the use of flavored products specifically e-cigarettes spread to epidemic proportions I see it in the campuses of the schools that I visit I see it in after school areas where our youth congregate and recreate it is absolutely terrifying lastly I am a government employee for the city of Watsonville it is no secret in government circles that Santa Cruz leads and other jurisdictions follow so I encourage you to do so today thanks Rachel thank you next speaker and again Tara you'll be our last speaker for this item thank you Mayor Tarrasis and the council members I appreciate your time today so as David said I'm Tara Leonard I'm a health educator with the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education and Prevention Program I just wanted to clarify one thing because as we've been here today you have heard some arguments from people who are talking about e-cigs as a valuable quit device I think it's important that you know that in fact e-cigs have not been endorsed by the FDA as a quit device as numerous other products have been and so far the studies are inconclusive about their efficacy in helping people to stop using traditional cigarettes in the long run in fact one recent study found that 90% of those using e-cigs to quit were still smoking traditional cigarettes a year later which is something called dual use and something that's very very bad for you I'm sympathetic to them as Gina said nicotine is a really really nasty addictive drug and as I say to the kids that I work with every week the best way to stop smoking is to never start so please help me help them to never start thank you very much thank you okay thank you for all of your comments and the patients for those that have been here we're going to now bring it back to the council for further discussion and action council vice mayor Watkins thank you mayor and I want to thank all those that came and spoke today um I just have a few comments and then I'm prepared to actually make a motion if that's appropriate I um I just want to say that um the the three options were presented to really look at what is possible in a community and I think that when we were further examining some of these options we realized that there are unintended consequences that are associated with both two and three and one is truly the best way the option of a full band to really mitigate the impact of flavored tobacco in our communities um there's no question that the data is there I think we've heard that we've seen that it's in our it's in our gender report the tobacco industry the flavored tobacco producers they they are targeting our youth and they are targeting our minority populations to get them addicted to their products and local jurisdictions have the honor to be able to have a role in mitigating these negative impacts and I feel in a position of privilege to be able to make a decision and to to promote public health in this way and so for that reason I do want to move that the council pursue option one which is to include a amendment of the city's tobacco related ordinance that bans the sale of all flavored tobacco tobacco products excuse me in the city that would include menthol products um and then also look at how um we have the timeline associated with that we have a one-year timeline suggested in the agenda report that came from the conversation we have with a lot of the businesses is actually very very long in relative to the other communities that have actually created some of these um ordinances and bans and so my thought would be to have a six-month implementation um kind of timeline where the existing businesses are able to sell off their product and consider other strategies to help mitigate some of the challenges that are associated with not selling that product um but then a year line a year long timeline before um actual enforcement takes place so that they can be part of the conversation in this transition um and I'll just so that's that's my motion um I will ask our city attorney to make uh some comments about what was brought up in terms of the enforcement for youth but before I do that I just really want to um say something that was brought to my attention just recently before we go there there's second to the motion second okay second but Councilmember Matthews and I'll just I'll just briefly end with this because it came to me I um work in education and it was brought to my attention by one of our superintendents that there was a group of fourth graders using jewels in our bathrooms in our city schools this is and when they were when I mentioned that this was something that the city was considering doing they said thank you this is impacting our children this is not this is one way that we as a community as the city council can make a health a priority and the protection of our youth a priority sure there's online challenges absolutely there's other things that are going on uh we have more work to do but this is something we can do that's going to help make those changes and I'm I'm I'm grateful and hopeful that this council can support the full ban thank you so there's a motion on the floor for um the item one uh introduction for publication amendment to the city's tobacco related ordinance banning the cell of flavor tobacco in the city of Santa Cruz that was seconded by Councilmember Matthews you also made further direction that the the implementation be shortened to six months with enforcement after one year what's been after one year uh councilmember brown I just have a quick question about that so that would be for all businesses not just so some businesses I know are that's their primary business and so and I have no idea if how long it takes to unload inventory or any of that but but you're talking about for everybody not and not the year for smoke shops versus I think for everybody I mean my understanding just because we're not the first jurisdiction is that generally it's 90 days or I mean so I don't I don't I think the six months that is already a year is generous before enforcement six months should be I think doable and hopefully there'll be um an opportunity for transition and conversation as this happens okay um I just I have a question and it came up in terms of the public comment regarding the impact of online retailers and we already have a tobacco you know kind of program where we evaluate the retailers does our ordinance currently not apply to anyone who's selling in the city online like in terms of how you might enforce that it does not you know and is that something that also could be included in terms of like how would you have some sort of provision where they have to have a program to monitor you know sales to youth online my concern about that would simply be how do we go about implementing some sort of enforcement mechanism since city has no access to data about online retail transactions of that sort so we would basically be implementing a system of regulating that that doesn't exist as far as I know right now I guess I was asking because in our current ordinance we have a restriction against sales to minors right that's a general restriction that's right so if someone would say we're there was a youth that had some tobacco product would and they divulge that they purchased this online or some sort would that be something then they could be enforceable by leaving that kind of uh I'd be happy to research that and report back to you but my recommendation would be to move forward with with the um regulations that you have drafted right now with regard to retail businesses operating in the city of Santa Cruz and perhaps study that as a possible amendment okay thank you okay any other questions councilmember crown could you read back the uh is this the first one that's the first one we're doing I have a couple of questions too when when you're ready could you just read back the motion so the motion is to pursue option one which was the full uh ban for flavor tobacco including menthol products um to have a six month timeline for uh implementation with a year before any type of enforcement and that's that's essentially the motion on the floor but I did have a question for tony in regards to the um uh mentioned earlier with the youth enforcement and possession law and how our ordinance is written in so we received a correspondence from American Lung Association in which it's pointed out that um that in state law based on studies to show that imposing civil or criminal penalties on on youth smokers doesn't have any deterrent effect or any measurable effect um and it may be counterproductive um that they do not recommend having those types of prohibitions in the city ordinance either this draft ordinance does not propose any new restrictions on youth smoking or possession of of tobacco related products but it but it did in the initial draft leave intact the existing prohibition and the recommendation is to rescind that which would simply um entailed uh including in the motion the deletion of subsection c of section 6.0 6.0 30 and renumbering the subsequent uh provisions as which are currently d and e as c and d so that was the that was the request but that's not currently included in the motion as I understand it my understanding was that that it was not in the draft ordinance but it was part of council member Watkins motion it is part I would like to include that in my motion may I clarify one thing and I yeah when um the county um when we were rushing to get this out they they did point out that we did not include that and and raise that concern and um I we did not have an opportunity at that point to make sure that we had a conversation with our law enforcement colleagues at the city to make to to find out if their perspectives on it and so that that was the I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that I guess I would council member Matthews well if that's a problem we could proceed with the um introduce introduction for publication and take care of that at the second reading if if you think that's necessary I'm not getting a read from you if you think it is well um or if you're going to be included in this so so so my office worked with city manager's office in preparing the initial draft and and and and we presented that to council member Watkins as a draft for consideration with different alternatives including these three alternatives and in the in the initial preparation we did not include that recommendation merely because we thought there might be reasons separate and apart from the overall impact of these types of restrictions on the prevalence of youth smoking for having that type of an enforcement mechanism um but as as um Casey pointed out we have not had that discussion with the police department at to get their input yet I don't feel strongly one way or the other about adding it or removing it so I mean I'm happy to defer to the pleasure of the council on that if I may I'm not sure if Andrea is still here oh is she okay Andrea do you mind answering would you mind coming up step up and answer this question or any other folks who I think Amanda is that I think it'd just be helpful to get a better context of where this fits in terms of state law if that's maybe once one quick second I mean for me I mean I think that the action you're taking is pretty comprehensive and I think that I would like just to see further evaluation on regards to these fine-tuning issues that might take place at a later date if I could if we I think that that'd be fine and I would I would like to hear if you wouldn't mind speaking to us about why you brought this up and where we fit within that yeah so the reason we brought this up today is because um the American Lung Association we do not encourage cities to update their municipal code that has language around youth possession um in 2016 as I mentioned earlier you know we worked with the state to remove that from state law and you guys are discussing today updating your tobacco retailer license with a citywide restriction on flavored tobacco products in order for the American Lung Association to support this strong policy that a strong citywide policy um it cannot have any language about youth possession in it because we as well as the American Cancer Society Cancer Action um network and the American Heart Association have you know have found that this sort of youth possession law is not an effective way um and instead that you can focus on other local tobacco control work that you're doing so yeah it was part of the overall discussion of updating a tobacco retailer license and making it stronger and then removing that sort of language that talked about youth possession could you actually um pull up the language so we can look at what your suggestions be struck from our current ordinance do you have that up there no but I mean it's I just want to see the language you're saying is uh something that um your recommend and be struck I could I could quote it for you please do it simply says um in subsection c it shall be unlawful for minors to possess or smoke slash inhale ease cigarettes does youth mine the draft language would amend the term minors which by definition is a person um under 18 years of age to youth which is defined in the ordinance as anyone under 21 that's a proposed amendment to this ordinance district c essentially I guess I yes and then carol here has more to say about this too thank you I wanted to let you know that the American Cancer Society does not approve of punishing youth for following the manufacturers trails to smoking and then thank you so much and then one other thing too is by removing this sort of language it falls in line with the state law that was updated in 2016 which was which was my understanding also to keep it consistent with state law as well I guess my my my my opinion is I feel like this is a really big uh move you know on behalf of the city and you know the motion that's on the fourth ban and I think it's something that I I support I just would like to understand more what the impacts are if these other changes um and I think like the idea of uh youth purchasing online or other things does this language provide us with some opportunity to help punish maybe some of those retailers that might be selling you know directly to youth online and so I'm more comfortable I mean leaving that and having some further review later on so that we can fine-tune this and maybe other areas about our our retail program to address other issues that may come up well um we just had a site where conversation and the city manager suggested and I think it's a good one that if the council is inclined to hear more about this at the next meeting you could introduce alternative versions one with the the um language stricken and one with a left intact so that when you bring it back you can hear further information and make a decision as to which one the council wants to approve for final adoption that would be fine with me frankly and um my thought on this uh also would be we could approve it as written and just delete it in the second reading also couldn't we just no oh damn okay I mean I do I think it's kind of a courtesy to hear from others who might have an interest in this because that particular issue was just brought to us so um introducing parallel ordinances or or alternative ordinances is fine with me I think it's pretty clear what the intention is sure and I I have a question about the discussion of the effective date versus the enforcement date as well um in alternative one we have on subsection d of 030 on page 5 of 12 it says accept in accordance with subsection e below effective on blank it shall be a violation of this chapter and so my question is would the council or would the maker of the motion like to add language saying or to the effect that um at the effective date will be six months from the date of final adoption with uh with the initial six months of implementation including outreach and education uh and active enforcement to commence within one year of the effective date yes I would like it I forgot that already um and then it seems to me like if you want to treat retail tobacco vendors in the same fashion as your 711 or gas station convenience store we can just delete subsection e entirely so you um maybe you could provide some of that background for for the record so we have that also for the first reading do you something in writing okay so do you so I'll accept I'll accept the the concept to have a conversation take place between now and the time of our second sort of reading for adoption with law enforcement um just sort of anecdotally I'll say there's been a trend and trying to really talk about how do we support our youth in terms of for example school policy as to whether or not we suspend a youth for it's using is that really going to help them and actually changing their pattern and behavior and instead we have them go through a series of cessation efforts or interventions to help them understand they're used to change their behaviors so I think it's um it'll be interesting to have that conversation about what is effective in terms of mitigating youth and their continued use and I think the trend clearly at the state and within other jurisdictions who are moving these ordinances it doesn't necessarily work and further more I think it can also be implemented in a way that can be um seen as sometimes uh disproportionately targeting certain folks of color so I think we want to be mindful of that but if that is um necessary to move this along before and to have that conversation I'm happy to do that I'd be interested in hearing if if our law enforcement wants to weigh in on that um but I'm hopeful that nonetheless we'll move that along eventually so I'll just leave it at that I'm seconded by councilmember Matthews well um I'll just say if there's no further discussion I mean I think just recently um there's been front page articles in the in the New York Times about you know these flavored tobaccos looking like sodas and other things and I mean this is clear something where it's it's deceptive for youth and it creates a sense where people are trying to you know market directly and so I definitely support this and I know that it's a long ongoing process in terms of how something like this is implemented but I mean just hearing from people uh especially young people in school to learn about the prevalence of this has been really an eye-opener and so I feel like it is something that obviously on a on a on a regional basis you know we want to look at how we have consistency across different cities um as one of the retailer says we're going to have you know this band here and then you'll have um maybe a demand in other parts that might put pressure on kids in other parts of the county so I think this is something definitely it's going to benefit um city um city youth um and I want to make sure that we kind of have some consistency across the region so I support the motion on the floor comment yeah I want to really thank you for all of the work that you've done and think uh those in the community and uh the county and the city uh staff level who have put so much time and effort into this I mean it was uh really shocking to me to hear some of the statistics and read some some of those about the the number of youth who are engaging in vaping and other tobacco product related activities um and so you know and I appreciate the comments of who have said well you know adults should be able to have access but as we've also heard that can happen um you know it's unfortunate that we don't have the ability to enforce um any of our own regulations related to e-commerce or you know going over the city limits you know that that's uh that boundary where you don't even know you've crossed but in some ways we you know we do um but so you know I mean I absolutely support the the motion and want to thank you again for all the work you've put in and hope that this really does make a difference I also really appreciate the commitment to education and outreach and you know the continued efforts for um cessation programs through the schools and with our youth and so I'll be supporting the motion as well. Okay is there any further discussion? There's a motion on the floor by Vice Mayor Watkins seconded by Council Member Matthews all those in favor count city attorney. I hate to go over the point but I just want to make sure that we have the accurate language so um to be clear the motion is to introduce alternative versions of the ordinance one that has uh that that leaves subsection c of 030 intact and only substitutes the word minors with the word youth one that deletes subsection c and renumbers existing draft section d as subsection c but also deletes the language at the beginning of subsection d except in accordance with subsection e below so that the sentence would begin effective on and I will suggest June 11th 2019 it shall be a violation of this chapter for any tobacco retailer or any of the tobacco retailer's agents or employees to sell or offer for sale or to possess with intent to sell or offer for sale any flavored tobacco tobacco product comma provided however that the initial six months of implementation shall be primarily focused upon education and outreach and that active enforcement will commence January 1st 2020 Council Member Matthews that's the motion on the floor seconded by Council Member Matthews all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed that motion passes unanimously with Council Member Naroyen absent so thank you for your patience so next we're going to move on to item 22 which is another interesting one that Santa Clara Santa Cruz County's airport community roundtable membership and I'll turn it over to Assistant City Manager Tina Scholl. Thank you so much Mayor Tarasas and this afternoon we are looking at item 22 consideration of joining the Santa Clara Santa Cruz County's airport community roundtable and I have a PowerPoint presentation copies of that going around there are also copies being placed in the back window for members of the public who wish to follow along with my presentation and as many of you are aware this issue has come before the council several times and there are lots of ins and outs and complicating factors I won't go into all of those this afternoon I just want to highlight some some top points so you have awareness orientation around the issue and then get into the recommendations so the issue was really about changes to flight patterns and descent procedures for aircraft that are flying into San Francisco international airport from a southern direction so a south bay arrival over Santa Cruz Santa Clara counties and we've had a traditional flight path it's the call sign is BSR for Big Sur was in place for about 40 years and it flew at very high altitude or high altitude over the west side of Santa Cruz and some of the north coast areas and then in 2015 the Federal Aviation Association that's the FAA shifted its pattern to something called surfer which now shifted over to Capitola Soquel in the summit and in addition to the directional trajectory shift they also had different descent procedures where there are lower altitudes a more concentration of aircraft and also different descent braking changes and so that resulted in a lot of noise so you have going over a new area now it's much noisier as well so as you can imagine the community became very engaged and the reason for FAA shift was to implement part of a national change in air traffic control patterns for efficiency predictability and safety according to them so I mentioned the community concern it was copious you heard at this council other city councils the members of congress certainly heard at their offices the FAA so responding to this three congress members SU far at the time our congressman as well as Jackie Spear called on the creation of a congressional select committee this is formed in April of 2016 for the purposes to study the issue and make some recommendation so find a place for a larger community conversation then council member Lane was appointed to this committee council member Matthews was an alternate and there were many months of meetings and really lots of work and reading and discussion and then on November 17th 2016 this was the last meeting of the select committee and there was a vote of eight to four to recommend the flight path move back over Santa Cruz with nine criteria provided they're met I will note that the intent of this committee was to work on a consensus basis so this departure to this voting structure where their winners and losers was not how this committee intended to set out to do its work and this was one of the issues that council member Lane raised as you can see in that final bullet on this page council member Lane and county supervisor McPherson were among the no votes on this shift and if you're wondering about the nine criteria they're very technical but they pertain to details of noise exposure flight altitudes and flight path I can read those to you but they're very technical in nature about trajectory and changes and things so a final background slide on city council engagement I started with this this council has been very engaged in this issue in addition to council member Lane serving on that select committee he came back to this body and provided updates to the city council on October 9th and November 1st of 2016 and then on November 22nd he came back and there was a very thorough discussion about his sincere disappointment with how the select committee process worked out and some of you were here and were part of that discussion is he was distraught very very worried upset that there was supposed to be a consensus basis and it turned out to be one of a vote and that it was felt that the interest of the city of Santa Cruz was in the minority on that vote and so the recommendation was to change the flight path back to the big sir over Santa Cruz and so the city council took unanimous recommendation to object to that and also the failure to reach consensus so that was in November 2016 the results of that letters were sent and I have copies for the council I'll pass around as well from that and then this issue last came before you this year so in February 27th a council member Matthews brought it forward because we had heard that a new flight path had been published surfer three and this council weighed in and said we need some environmental review of that so then now where we are today the current issue before you today is the current issue with this issue with the current chapter in this issue is the city of Santa Cruz has been invited to join a roundtable that will study be a forum for community input on this issue that so back in 2017 there was a congressional request to the city's association of Santa Clara county to form a roundtable similar to the sfo roundtable which had been an operation for about 35 years and in June 2018 the official letter arrived here with the city of Santa Cruz to invite the city to join the Santa Clara Santa Cruz counties airport community roundtable and the purpose of that as you can see in the third bullet is to provide that forum that place for people to go for the fAA to be to talk about changes and what to expect so so far the city of capitol and the county of Santa Cruz have joined city of scott's valley is not is declining to join i'm saying with watsonville so straight to the recommendations so you know the city manager as well as vice mayor i'm sorry councilmember mathews have done some work on on this issue exploring it trying to figure out the ability we would have as a city to be able to shift outcomes and the sense was is that it made good sense it made good sense to join it to preserve our voice at the table to make sure that Santa Cruz in the room when they're having these discussions to make sure that the residents could be could be heard would have a place the seat be able to influence outcomes so the recommendation is to join the roundtable for a period of one year and this parallels what happened in capitol and santa Cruz county as well so the sense is is let's give it a year we will see about this impacts we'll be able to assess that and then the council can evaluate whether or not to move forward now joining does have a cost and you can see the estimate there of about $12,000 there's a formula that's based upon the membership that ultimately elects to join and that's the best estimate we have right now it's really going to be the final number determined when we know the final membership and then we'll be able to appropriate the budget if the council supports that the second proposed motion is to appoint a council member to serve as a city of Santa Cruz representative to the roundtable and we're suggesting the city manager does need as an alternate and I will say on that point the county of Santa Cruz in the county of Santa Clara are sending staff as a representative so even though the bylaws suggested elected officials are only allowed a couple of other entities are already saying we want to be able to have staff there as well to represent our interests now we recommended the city manager just for continuity but either would be fine there could be a council member alternative if that's the way the council wants to go and I will say too there's part of this motion is to provide direction for the city representatives to work to achieve holistic improvements to alleviate jet noise and other impacts without displacing impacts to other communities so that's been a recurring theme in these discussions is that the city wasn't really interested in just displacing problems elsewhere let's really come up with a durable solution that doesn't benefit some and others suffer from it and then the final recommendation is a motion to direct the mayor to write a letter to the FAA and the city's congressional delegation and I've added something here from what you saw in your report restating the city's position so that was implicit but I didn't state it so it could have been confusing so I apologize so restating the city's position on this issue and requesting that representatives from the FAA and the affected congressional districts attend all of the meetings so we say we need them at the table we need to have them in these discussions with us so those are the three recommendations I will now pass around let the letter dated December 1st 2016 which I think articulates clearly the position of the city after the select committee took its took its action and with that that concludes my presentation is there any discussion on this councilmember crowned Tina is our position the same as the county's position well I don't actually know the county's position in great detail I don't think so you mean in terms of joining the roundtable no no in general oh no no no the city's position represents the city's position I was under the understanding that the positions are similar I'll follow up on that have we ever approached the the county to have consensus here locally about what our position is so that if we go over and have our meetings that we're on the same page because I remember I mean I strongly appreciate to this day Don Don's participation and advocacy he definitely had a plan and it was I think at the 11th hour kind of altered and so I mean have we ever revisited that issue locally to make sure that as councilmember crone mentions that we are on the same page locally because it'd be a shame to go all the way over to Santa Clara county and participate in this only to have them point their finger at us to say that we're not even in agreement here in our county and thank you for that I can elaborate in two ways and I see would you like to speak councilmember Matthews yeah well we'll see okay um the first is that as part of the county's motion when they decided to join the roundtable they did so in September and they they made the policy statement similar to what's proposed here under their second motion basically not to just shift the problem elsewhere and the in the county they're concerned because they have district representation and they didn't want to advantage one district over another district and so it was very important for their sense of equity and protecting the entire constituency of the county to not do that so that is a policy statement they made I think it's similar to how the way this city has worked but this city does represent the city to the second point no I to my knowledge there's not been any sort of meeting of the minds about how to go about this there was I think divide among the board of supervisors I think it was a three to two vote to even join the roundtable when it was heard perhaps because some of the conditions that were attached to the motion I'm not sure but that certainly could happen I guess you did you want to say anything well just that there was and has been obvious tension among the board of supervisors no secret but I think where the action that was most recently approved by the board in terms of joining the roundtable is if we adopt this we will be consistent on that and their logic was that the select committee was a formal time time-limited committee with a particular charge and it was attended by congressional representatives etc the and it ended and it didn't come up with a consensus agreement as had been hoped but that the request to create a roundtable came from the congressional offices because they're still getting situant concern and there is as was mentioned a roundtable up in San Francisco which has been meeting for a long long long time the concern being it doesn't have a charge my understanding again you correct me if I'm misrepresenting but it's not attended by the congressional representative so kind of what's the purpose the recommendation here and so the some of the cities in Santa Clara Valley and in San Mateo did act on the invitation and request of the congressional offices to form a roundtable for this location and this purpose invited Santa Cruz to become invite involved in that and the question was well let's give it let's see how it works which is why you have the recommendation here and this is essentially what was approved by the supervisors let's give it a year's try we'll allocate some funding we expect to have the congressional office representatives involved don't want to just meet indefinitely for no no purpose so that so we'll see we'll see how productive it is if it continues to be productive we continue it councilmember Brown I just have a question I just want to clarify what I was what I was saying before I thought there is basic agreement amongst the county and the city that we want to alleviate the noise yes but we don't want to necessarily just move it to another part of the community that's correct so maybe our letter could that sounds like some you know agreement between city and county because we can reflect that when we approach our legislators or send a letter to SU and to the representative Panetta the letter in this yeah they could be copied the letter in this case goes to the conveners of the roundtable has there has there been a correspondence from the county which states their position I don't know I haven't seen it yeah possibly by now since they took their action in September I imagine so I can see that and see if we agree with that position then you know we could use that as our template I will say that well and we can just reassert ours between I think it was mentioned June and now when the invitation to join the Santa Clara roundtable was extended there have been a few meetings back and forth with the Santa Cruz County jurisdictions both electeds and staff to kind of talk through is it worth getting involved with the time money etc and the and obviously here in Santa Cruz County some jurisdictions declined but the recommendation coming here you know we're a big city we have a stake in so it is worth a limited commitment of time and and funds to give it a shot for a year I just want to ask because I remember how much time Don spent over traveling to Santa Clara County and frankly I know we had a discussion earlier today you know you're going to be doing a lot of work on homelessness and others I mean is this the priority I mean do we just limit this to not have a staff work on this right if it's just attending meetings there'll be no action for a year so it could come back but not have any sort of the county actually just assigned their their chief administrative officer and to me that makes sense because they represent the entire region right so they hopefully would have balance and you know when they approach it and participate on behalf of our county I'm a little concerned about having our city staff go over there I mean if we want to designate a council member and and alternate and they they're the ones that kind of do this and report back independently I just don't I frankly don't want to have staff going over there because I feel like it's not something there'll be any action for a year my understanding that's in the motion is that correct that the motion for the second portion of the motion is to have it so that the representative be the council member and then the city manager is that correct okay but I'm saying I don't I don't think that we should have the alternate be the city staff because I feel like it shouldn't be spending any time until there's any sort of action and our sense was that we were trying to alleviate burden on you yeah because we know how busy you are and another thing I'll say too is that we are trying to work to see if we could have meetings be televised here so they could be live so we could have a convening in Santa Cruz County open to the public with video so we everyone could attend to participate remotely we think that will increase participation from our public here as well so I think that's I know the county discussed this and are pursuing it and I believe we've heard that this is it is possible Baltimore Brown I have a couple of questions one is related to the resolution because the first paragraph in particular of the resolution that is part of the recommendation is to resolve here so but it's confusing to me because I I feel like we're talking about the the overall goal being you know not shifting flight path and I understand this was the catalyst for this conversation but you know it's confusing to me about it feels like I'm not sure what we want by reading it so I'm just wondering if it's necessary to have that whereas and you know it may be a little bit nitpicky but it just to me when I read it I wasn't sure where it was going although I had read the agenda report so I kind of did so I just don't if there was there a particular reason that it was written that way it was it was just the context setting like this is about the fact that all of this is in response to a change in 2015 of the FAA changing its flight path and I know there are a lot of nouns in this clause may be confusing but but what it doesn't have is any sort of intervening passage passages to lead you from 2015 to now and I did that just for economy of words on the page but it's it's not necessary it's whatever the council would like to reflect in your resolution if you would like to replace it with a statement of policy that could certainly happen because I think that if you start with the second whereas whereas congress members spear issue and former congress member far formed 12 member select committee to study the issue they make recommendations we'd have to flesh that out so you know it has some grounding what the context is sure but whatever you like well I'm you know again I don't want to be too particular about this but I mean you know I get the point about setting the context but I'm just wondering if I mean could it just be whereas congress member spear issue and it's without a C more nitpicking issue and former congress member far formed a 12 member select committee to study the impacts you know the the noise and community impacts from the federal aviation administration's you know shifting of the historic flight path just something to I don't know it just because it just seems like I don't know where we're going do we like it do we not until I continue on I'm you know not to I mean is that I don't know we haven't we don't have a motion on the floor yet so I'm just I'm just asking the question then I have another question about the third bullet in the motion related to and well actually I'll just echo mayor trousers comments on having a council member as the alternate I do think given that we are at large for now at least it makes sense and it does save staff time potentially although I've heard that council member lane mayor lane at the time I was you know attended all the meetings and everything so but I do think that makes sense just to you know because it is a cost to the city if staff does it and and then the question on the motion to direct the mayor to write a letter to the FA I appreciate that you included the part about restating the city's position because that's a that was a concern of mine because just saying we're going to participate in the roundtable you should too or we want you to come as well seems a little open-ended and so I but I wonder within that is the intention to include any statement about the city's previous you know council member lanes a previous experience and you know this this issue of you know kind of the misrepresentation by our congressional delegation about Santa Cruz you know the city that you know the select committee support for the the shift to the big sir or back to big sir and so I'm just hoping that that could be included in a letter to just be to remind them that we have not been on board um with this at all um and so to suggest that we you know the select committee and that that included the city of Santa Cruz um it just seemed a little disingenuous to me I haven't followed it very closely but that um I do know so if that might is that is that okay that was my intent and um I realized this was all in my head and not in the language but no it was is to present a holistic picture of let's catch you up in history position where the city is talk about our intent for the future with greater participation and guaranteed participation and also provide that history and I think that's best done as well by attaching copies of the letters you know because we had wonderful writers you know Don and Cynthia wrote these letters before that I so including all that so the answer is yes it'd be a holistic the other discussion I absolutely need public comment yeah yeah 30 member of the public that wishes to speak to this item this is um item number 22 regarding the Santa Clara Santa Cruz County's airport community roundtable membership any other members of the public other than the two that are standing okay please go ahead Ron I'm there you have two minutes thank you um there were a couple other people coming but I think they got stuck in the highway 1 9 tragedy so um we only have I guess a couple speakers uh good afternoon uh wholeheartedly I I'm Ron Pomerance uh wholeheartedly concur with staff's report in resolution I propose a few simple modifications to support the resolution and the two following motions request you support uh council member matthews as a city representative because of her previous experience as an alternate on the select committee uh but due to roundtable bylaws that require representatives to be elected officials the alternate I believe should be a council member and not from the city manager's office a staff member could clearly attend with a council member if need be council direction in the form in the form of a motion for a roundtable representative should be clear please reiterate council leadership from your November 22nd 2016 vote to object to the flight pattern shift no changes should be made unless all nine conditions are met as laid out by the select committee additionally the roundtable will work to alleviate the immediate impacts of jet noise and other community impacts for those currently experiencing the effects without displacing the impacts to other communities a mayor or a letter to the FAA and our congressional reps should be sent in support of the council direction requesting that representatives from the FAA and um congressional districts attend all roundtable meetings and should also inform that there's a convergent official position of the city and the county and I do have the the resolution from the county that that does my interpretation no no offense to Tina here but it seems clearly that we have convergent official positions among the city and the county so I'll skip the rest part and just say approved by the council this package gives us a voice at the roundtable table with clear direction how to improve all county residents quality of life and jet impacts thank you for your time and consideration thank you next speaker please my name is Dan Hirsch I also support what you're trying to do and I would like to propose a couple of clarifications if I may the county in its resolution and this question was raised took the following position that its representative should be directed to work to relieve the immediate impacts of jet noise for those currently experiencing the impact without moving the noise over another part of the county so that's the county's direction to its representative your proposal is almost identical I think is exceedingly important that you communicate to the congressional members and the FAA the similar position of the county and the city that we work to reduce the noise where it is but we do not move it first point that should be in the letters very clearly second point is the select committee voted that there should the move to this area should only occur if all nine of those criteria which were conditions are met the FAA has declared about a third of those it will not meet so the congressional's and the FAA need to be reminded that even if they're going to follow the select committee's recommendations they cannot move it because they're not going to make all those nine changes final point what's most critical is that the congressional representatives and the FAA hear from you in a very strong letter that this is the position and it's the similar position with the county because they have so far been pushing to move all of the noise back not just back here but over here so I strongly urge you if you can consider removing the first paragraph of your resolution adding two words saying study the issue of jet noise to the second line so you've explained what the select committee was for and then have a very strong letter that indicates similar position of the county in the city asking the congressional's to carry it out reminding them that the select committee said unless those nine conditions are met you can't move thank you just real quick before you walk away you mentioned that they're trying to move it over did you mean the FAA or some other group well what's most troubling is there was a letter sent the same day that they sent the letter to you asking you to eschew and Panetta sent a letter to the FAA the same day they asked you to join the round table and in that letter they misrepresented the select committee's recommendations and so the select committee had only recommended that the changes that could be made that FAA deemed feasible should be done and we're pushing you to move it back to Santa Cruz so the congressional's near to need to hear from you a that the city in the county say don't and b that the select committee said don't do it thank you okay so any members of the public that wish to speak to this item okay we'll bring back to the council for further discussion and action anyone councilor matthews I will go ahead and move the recommendation that we have before us here we've had a lot of language thrown at us recently and I honestly haven't had time to digest it but I think the the drift of what we have here represents our historic position it's a one-year commitment and our underlying position is quite strong that the impact should not just be moved around that the overall goal should be to lessen the noise impact in general and I think we can represent that I think that's represented in the language we have here I would like to say also I would like to have a staff as an alternate it's really helpful on something like this to have a staff who's actively engaged in tracking the relationships with the federal agencies and so forth not that we don't but that's not unusual I'm thinking I'm a representative on the mid-county groundwater agency and our water directors the alternate for that so I think that's it's not unheard of and we have talked about being able to participate remotely I don't think I certainly hope that the round table meetings are not going to be anything on the order of what the select committee meetings were that was a heroic investment of time but I think if we can find a way to do it remotely so both our representatives and the community at large can participate that would be a good solution so that would be my preference to leave leave the represent representation as defined here so I'll go ahead and make that motion okay I have another motion if there's not a second yeah I have another one too yeah okay so seconded by Vice Mayor or seconded by Council Member Chase for the discussion well I'm not prepared to support the motion as is I don't think that some of the language changes that we've just discussed are very complicated and I also think that we ought to have a council member as an alternate so I'm not I'm guessing those won't be friendly amendments but I'm going to be offering them as amendments which I suppose we'll have to vote on separately but well if I could just discuss here is there any reason I couldn't have two alternates no I think I I like having a designated staff support who's tracking it now my my feeling is also we have other priorities too and I think this is for the next year or however long we're there's going to be meeting and I anticipate it's just going to be one of the council member listening what for feedback is we have a position that we've unanimously stated in the past and I'd prefer that our staff be dedicated to do and work on some of our other priorities here locally and if it is something that we want to do we're going to allocate a not an insignificant amount of money $12,000 and I think that we if there's a council member and that wants to serve as the primary participant and an alternate that serves as you know the alternate that we could address right now then we have those and it won't require the staff to be using their time on this matter during over the course year we already have the chief administrative officer from the county that's going to be attending um and I feel like that's throwing a lot of resources um at this right now I would move that um council member brown be the alternate um to this well we have a motion and a second on the floor well as an amendment to the main motion I wonder if you can't we'll just make them we can just make I mean we can vote on this and then I'm wondering if I like the idea of a compromise with potentially two alternates and I think um I think regardless in one year from now we do want to assess the investment and the time commitment and if this is truly a time suck and both council members aren't able to attend on a regular basis and staff is then burdened with a massive amount of time in addition to the 12 000 for uh being a member that we should revisit it then but I think that is reasonable and I'm fine with that in terms of being uh council member brown as the other alternate if interest um but I think it's a nice compromise position I would support that and I'm happy to incorporate it as well um so who would be would you are you suggest would you two alternates yeah I'd be happy to be the primary with uh both council member brown and a designated staff person so you're the primary council member browns alternate and um so would the staff member be going every time if there's a meeting hopefully we have I mean this is what we'll assess we'll play it out is we uh they have no authority we'll see how effective we can be and it may not seem like a big deal now it has seemed like a big deal in the past and it may seem like a big deal in the future so I think it is important that we track it and that we be engaged so did staff go over when um Don was participating I don't think so he was just independently doing no do the bylaws of the round table say that it should only be elected officials I can answer that council member crone um the the draft bylaws did however some of the largest members Santa Santa Clara County Santa Cruz County have said a condition of us joining is that the bylaws would have to be amended so that there can be staff member participation on the committee so and I I don't know if any of cities have taken that stance but so even though it says that that was an early um version provided some months ago and the expectations that's going to be renegotiated and that's actually I think work starting now to accommodate those larger agencies that would need to be involved and we could also just say we concur with that condition of participation it has to be worth our time I agree with the mayor I don't concur because I don't think I think it should be us the council members and the staff should not be doing that so well there's a motion you've got a motion on let's just let's just kind of I've got some other amendments or either friendly or not that I'd like before because don't we need to do that before we vote on the motion I want to restate the motion the motion is to have a council member a council member alternate and then also an alternate staff participate in this effort and that was seconded by council member chase so motion by council council member math you seconded by council member chase that's the motion on the floor would you like to hear my amendments now if you have one either and all you can we can discuss or I'll just we can vote on them separately so you know I feel really strongly that and I appreciate it Tina that you have suggested that there will be restating the city's position but I think it's important to not for accountability purposes but to have this in the record I'd like that third bullet to say motion to direct the mayor to write a letter to the federal aviation administration request and yeah and congress members eschew and panetta restating the city's position and I'll try to make it a little more specific here that and and I don't know how to fit this I'm sorry I'm digressing for a moment but I do so okay so let me see if I can just do it so congress members eschew and panetta restating these city's position referencing the county's similar position and reiterating the select committee's recommendations that there be no moving of the current flight path if the committee's nine conditions were not met I think it's important to remind them of this so that's and so there we are and then and requesting representatives from the FAA and affected congressional districts attend all round table meetings all in italics I'm being picky here and then you know I'd really like to see again because the resolution you know and the county's resolution just simply says um whereas without warning the FAA move the historic flight path um I mean something like that I you know I would just prefer that because again I was it just doesn't um it doesn't it sounds like that could be going anywhere and I'd prefer that we be very clear in our resolve I have a thought this is not urgent and I think we could punt this for one meeting and hash out something and come back with refined language if it's okay that's that'll work I mean I just don't think it's that that complicated um I don't either but just want to make it less confusing where we're going okay so what's your preference I mean I know you've worked a lot on this can we throw the resolution up there and you put in the words that you want can we Bonnie can you do that we throw the text of the resolution up there no well work it's it's I mean if the preference is to punt can we just move the um the rest of it I don't know or is it is it just the content of the letter that you're no the so I've already the content of the letter is bullet three in the in the motion that was up I mean the way I heard that the resolution amended it did seem like it could be pretty easily done um so I'm just going to pull up pull it up right now that helps me just to make this larger and aside from the typos for which I apologize if you want the word version up I'm just going to copy and paste it over thank you Bonnie we'll know it's the first paragraph so I'm just going to do this much copy okay oh I'm up a little odd can you still see that if I make it larger okay so what I heard and this is wordpad so what I heard is that this would be struck I would just strike that that would just go away and then start with where as congress member spear eschew and and former congress member far formed a 12 member select committee to study the this is what you said before the shift made by the federal aviation administration in the historic flight path of passenger aircraft southern arrivals into san francisco international airport period you know it may for for um emphasis um change and I and also change the scent procedures leading to drastic change in noise and community impact to get rid of that so leave that but I don't think we need to you know include west side sand Lorenzo valley capital because this is these are all the um communities that are not wanting it over their their jurisdictions and what we're saying is we want reduction overall we we don't want to be doing this so it just seems confusing to so that just it just my perspective and it's not that big of a deal but um it just seems like if we just said whereas congress member spear eschew and former congress member far formed a 12 member select committee to study the fAA the federal aviation administration shift of the historic flight path or southern arrivals from san francisco airport and change descent procedures leading to drastic changes in noise and community impact and make recommendations and then we just instead of the issue include that strike the first did I capture it is that the only change you want there changed the descent procedure and so instead of some procedures change the descent because that's really the big issue I mean that's lower decent when they were coming in higher the impact wasn't as great okay is that the only change you want and that's fine I just I'd like to see it I like to see what we're voting okay that's fine I didn't prepare it to be put up there in advance I apologize and all the rest of it's okay yeah all righty fine is that you accept that nobody else asking a second can you had no other changes on the recommended the main motion recommendations so do are you okay serving as the alternate council member well I suppose since I said it was a good idea I not to say yes sure okay so we have the motion and we request that there be a staff yeah I'm gonna I'll support it but I don't support having staff assigned to this but I mean I'll support the intent of it so I just like for the record just say that I don't agree to that but I do agree to participate on council level can before we write this letter can we look at the county's resolution resolution that came up and if they are similar can we do united front on the language that's similar so it looks like hey the city and county are in agreement and this means some I think it means something significant are I based this resolution on the county's resolution yeah so it's it's nearly identical but I'm happy to pull it up really quickly I think let's just go for the intent yeah yeah I think it would be important to just reference the county as well because you know and so maybe we just add to the motion that we make our cover letter reflect the county's position as closely as possible does that sound good sounds good okay so there's a motion and a second any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye who's opposed none with councilwoman Arroy and absent I'm just going to say that I I do support the council members but I just I didn't support the staff participation okay so that concludes that item now we'll move on to oral communications oral communication is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda are there any members of the public who wish to address the council can you get a show of hands thank you if so if you please line up to my left those will have you'll each have two minutes to speak there have been three people that requested in advance to have additional time as an organization so Denise Ellarick from the harm reduction coalition of Santa Cruz County you're up first then you will have Keith McHenry and then Robert Norse each speaking to the mic please technical skills and the red one the red button oh there it is hi I'm Denise Ellarick and it's nice to see everybody tonight thank you mayor and council members I wanted to come and talk to you about a coalition that we kicked it kicked off in April and a group of us from Santa Cruz recently went to New Orleans to the national harm reduction conference and it was really exciting and mind-blowing and this isn't an excellent title by any stretch of the imagination but I wanted to come and talk to you a little bit about harm reduction and what it is and what it's not and how so basically it's acknowledging that an activity or behavior will occur and doing all we can in the community reduce the impact to the harm to the individual and the community and obvious examples are related to driving and seat belts and airbags and that kind of thing and we for years decades in Santa Cruz I didn't know this until I saw a whole map mapped out as early as 1989 we had a rogue kind of underground syringe service going on during the AIDS epidemic back in the day and and then in 1995 Santa Cruz was the fourth community to have a the national syringe exchange commission permit a legal permitted program so what I mean to imply here is this community doesn't know what it looks like without a syringe service program one of the most important functions of syringe service is disposal of used syringes and the the situation that the community experience now is extremely frustrating I talked to substance users that are just as frustrated as you or I or the city or downtown streets team but without the program or with limiting it the situation would be even worse and some other examples of the services that are offered at the syringe program at the county are stated I don't have to read through them all but basically it's connecting with people and reducing the chaos around their substance use with connection and the data reveals that over and over and over that if and when and that's the hard part a user is ready to stop they do sooner when they participate in use a syringe program especially when the treatment is available in the county where the program exists and I mentioned that because prior to the Affordable Care Act and drug MediCal waiver with the amount of use in the community even before the opioid epidemic treatment has been scarce so it's the capacity is building more beds and more treatment is available and that's an excellent thing but what is not harm reduction and this is where I think there's been some misinformation in the community especially with law enforcement is it's not getting people to stop what they're doing that's the quickest way to turn someone away and push them away and they'll never come back again so it's not coercive referral it's not telling people they have to stop and this is the deal breaker so the county's been running the program since 2013 they took it over kind of in an emergency but in 2014 in a tiny community in Indiana of about 5,000 people they had almost 200 cases of HIV and the estimated cost of that on Mike Pence's watch I might add is 58 million dollars and that's an underestimate because it doesn't take into consideration the treatment for hepatitis C this community could not legally purchase syringes like we can this community had no syringe program like we do and this is the result so this is a negative impact of lack of scarcity and lack of services this is sort of an outdated map already because this is from April of 18 so after that happened in Indiana the CDC did a national vulnerability study a risk study and we're fortunate that Santa Cruz was not on that map but Lake County and Plumas County just southeast of Shasta were and so Plumas now has a program running butte county or what's left of it poor butte county is under wraps here they're actually in conversation to get a program up and running this is the good news yeah you can have to wrap this up on the slide this is the last one so there's been a 15 this is the cures data from the safe rx coalition which I also volunteer with so there's been a 15% increase in suboxone prescriptions and there's also been a 13% decrease in the number of opioid prescriptions and emergency department visits and but the trouble is that the overdoses are still high so I would love to help and work with the county with the city with the community members that want to continue this conversation thank you very much okay next up is Keith McHenry from food not bombs yeah thank you very much for giving us time um this is uh hunger and homeless awareness week and people uh largely college students are doing things to um try to bring awareness to the amount of increased hunger and increased homelessness there is in the united states and uh that is also true here in Santa Cruz where we often get six or seven newly homeless people arriving to our meals at the beginning of the month every single month and they've been most recently children and parents and um so one of the things that you know we see that society finds that it is not appropriate to call people um racist comments or homophobic comments or um things things of that nature but it seems to be fine to be to say derogatory things about those that can't afford housing and they're living outside and that uh is um quite quite one of the reasons I think that it is okay to have anti homeless laws to put up fences to um to you to basically uh not respond like what for instance I get I do public records act requests and you can see very very harsh anti homeless things said to an otherwise liberal city council that will vote for like sanctuary city and so on but there's no uh I think if somebody said that about a person of color um or somebody that had a sexual preference that was different the response would be in the public records act request back to those people that that is not appropriate but we don't get that in fact some of our council people actually will uh cheer on the anti homeless rhetoric so um when we see the country going so far into this uh denigration of people and particularly at the national level it's really important that we hear locally sort of uh change our attitude and start to go out and visit with the people living on the streets get to know them as people as friends find out really why they're on the streets and I encourage you all to to do that and um it's uh the very dangerous actually to have this anti homeless attitude and so I'm providing you with some information about that so in the anti homeless attitude that was okay to to uh to support in the in the 30s led initially to the first group being rounded up or the homeless and they were told to where they had to wear um black triangles and uh eventually those people were placed in concentration camps and then as you know they were worked to death or starved to death or in many cases just incinerated and so I'm encouraging you in solidarity with our homeless people to wear a black triangle and I'm going to provide you with black triangles and I'm going to provide you with some information and I'm going to give you a sticker for uh to put like on your computer or something uh hunger and homeless awareness week and um I encourage you to bring down the you know to show that really the fence around San Lorenzo park is just there for really maintenance purposes and make sure that it comes down before the um um river street shelter campground is closed and that uh we show good faith that um that there's maybe a letter from the city council demanding that the gates not be uh locked at the post office so people can't sit and rest on the on the steps and that we ask the police and the rangers to not only obey the letter of the law of the Boise case we're uh ruling in the NYTZR court of appeals but also to stop um taking people's vehicles and arresting people and taking them for for um trespassing so thank you very much thank you um mr. Norse on behalf of Huff members of the community those of you are here folks out in the television audience council members the Santa Cruz City Council is unfortunately not to be trusted on the homeless survival shelter issue we must find ways to support each other hence Thursday's 4 p.m camp quest rally at the main post office 90 of those outside this winter will be sheltering themselves day after tomorrow on November 25th the community survival campground folks will gather just outside that new lockout the poor wrought iron fence you heard mr. McHenry talk about at the main post office to discuss determine and scout out locations that the city council refuses to do today we heard Cynthia Matthews and David Chorazas did they call for immediate expansion of emergency shelter no rather with even more money pouring in for shelter they backed expanded curfews on the main beach and stricter enforcement of the sleeping van it's those filthy homeless that create toxic conditions at cowl beach not bird shit and inadequate treatment of middle class sewage so many broken promises now last august Susie O'Hara promised to keep the small barbed wire boneyard river street campground open till next April she then turned around and briskly fired critical employees and the campers depending on her for a shelter till April promise they get kicked down the road starting November 16th they're herded to the 7 a.m. sorry 7th Avenue night only shelter with a once only pass in response the afternoon before this abusive deportation process begins consciousness and action invites you to come at 4 p.m. and help create the force to push back we invite you to bring friends sleeping bags musical instruments signs and stories there'll be food and beverages provided we'll hear from those outside from experts and locals and out of towners and those who refuse to be forced out of town and will look for a camp spot the federal courts have ruled if you ain't got the shelter you can't pretend you do chief mill stated in today's sentinel that we're not going to go around the ninth circuit court really parks and rec rangers have been merrily issuing trespass in a closed area tickets month after month towing away homes on wheels issuing bully boys stay away orders demanding move along when there's no place to move to we'll need you you to bring cell phones video audio and witnesses to ensure that our law is enforced if our law enforcers abide by the law no alternatives other than the city council's traditional hideout or get out strategy is what's being proposed here recently gussied up with lots of windy talk and broken promises about shelter the waiting lists for the river street mini shelter and the poly loft were closed closed last i heard the afc rotating shelter is full the 7th avenue winter shelter can serve only 60 to 100 reportedly less and the cops and rangers are breaking up where most of the homeless community stays outside the issue of winter survival campgrounds is even more important so come on thursday 4 p.m to the post office steps to what i call camp quest gather outside our own little mini trump wall designed to separate the well to do from the wretched similar poor folks keep out barriers have risen around laurel park grant park star of the sea and now san lorenzo park we may go to some of these places in search of sanity to provide our own security and seek to sleep thank you thank you next speaker you have two minutes hi my name is michael spadafora i'm a business owner down at the gateway plaza um first of all i'd like to say i don't understand why you guys wasted so much time on airlines flying over i think we have other issues he pointed out the homeless issue i have an issue at the gateway plaza all of the tenants down there do the property owner does we pay for a morning graffiti cleanup we just paid 16 000 dollars to our fence reinforced we pay for our first alarm service from 8 a.m to 9 o'clock every day i've been broken into three or four times everybody else gets broken into all the time and now we have a large homeless encampment moving in behind the river street store there was 15 10s going up to 20 10s i don't really have a problem with homeless but i have a problem with the 10 tweakers i've had to kick out of my store and since last friday it's escalating right one problem after the other i don't know if you guys have gotten the emails from my landlord but your economics development lady um bonnie linscomb she's been dealing with we sat through meetings with the police department three or four times a year we have the officers come down and tell us what we can do what we can't do and it's just a hassle and it's makes it i have employees quitting uh office max i think they're pill fridges like 10 000 a month cost pluses off the charts their storage ross boarded over their bathrooms me i have to tell the family you can't use your bed use the bathroom because i can't tell this guy over here he can't use the bathroom because he uses it like a bathroom um it's just it just goes on and on and i'm voicing the frustration of every all the tenants down there um and it's you know this problem's been going on for a long time and it just keeps continuing it keeps getting worse and worse and it's a lot of people to just yell at my customers st francis school tries doing drop offs in an afternoon right they pick up their drop off their kids in the morning they pick them up in the afternoon they stop doing a drop off there because i got people yelling at nothing you know and it just goes on and on i kick people out from sea bright i got a store over there they go back this way so anything you guys can help i think it's much more appreciated than the planes that wake me up overnight i get walking out by people breaking into my store and the cops call i can beat the cops to my store i beat the cops to the store by 25 minutes the other day thank you and you've left your contact information with the clerk well okay next speaker please hi my name is mark de carlo and i am currently at the river street camp right now that's that's closing in two days and i just wanted to talk to you guys about the um the problems that has caused the the closure at new murmur 15th at versus april 15th what happened basically was what people when people heard that was we're going to be there through spring they started spending money to winterize their little space that they have basically they spent a couple hundred dollars for four people that i know there's just four people in there they spent 200 dollars each either for new tents or for tarps and the scaffolding to make like a tent light structure uh it will be nice if you guys reimburse those guys that's really what i wanted to tell you guys and also that decision has caused a lot of stress obviously um but i'm just here to speak for those four individuals who have some financial losses because of that decision and it would be nice if you guys would reimburse them that's that's about 200 dollars each for four people it's about 800 bucks um other than that uh it would be nice to have more shelter maybe next winter also uh what's going to be done with that space after everybody leaves i know there was supposed to be a car uh place for people to park the cars in and live in their cars maybe you could put that there instead i don't know what's going to be there after everybody leaves but if it's going to be still be an empty lot maybe you could have people park the cars there as uh that was part of the april 15th um i think that was part of the decision for the april 15th also to have 20 people move in part of that was the as you guys are aware i'm sure the the 50 there's supposed to have a place to park cars for people who are car campers anyway i just thought i put that in the reimbursement for the the people who were winterizing themselves there and maybe a car camp in that and that's in that location and that's pretty much all i wanted to say thank you next speaker please bob lamanica there isn't housing let alone for 50 to accommodate the well over 1000 estimated homeless in and around santa cruz a recent escapist diversion demonstration that took zero courage to show up for santa cruz courthouse drew 300 the time has long long passed to wait for political expediency to demand immediate remediation of homeless abject poverty here in our community where it takes real courage principle and honor to stand up and so a citizen action has arisen thursday november 15th four o'clock starting from the downtown post office in support of immediate remediation of homeless abject poverty something santa cruz can truly be proud of a demonstration of local application of values thank you thank you next speaker please i got a couple questions um on the river street camp as they're exiting i'm trying to uh increase the services that we have for winter shelter this year and this winter there's no storage that set up for anybody um and i was wondering what the 1220 river street because two years ago like that's where we had to pick up and we had a couple connexes and stuff there right now people who have bicycles like you can put three on that bus but anybody who has any carts or any more bicycles in that like they can't go so i was wondering is that a possibility as i'm trying to do some negotiation and stuff which the salvation army would need a little more money for staffing and stuff but that's sort of a separate issue can you pause for a second bonnie you can just go through your questions and so that's the first one on that about a second and then and um we i assume that staff has your contacts so yeah questions be recorded they get back with you okay okay okay so the one question is because about a storage site like you have a few connexes that you already have so having a site because you couldn't really put a connex at lime kiln and coral is my first question do you want me to just name my questions yeah okay okay so having a right now the staffing at seventh avenue like they had to do a contract to low budget contract which means they only have two staff there they have a security person in there but that's also because the staffing was low um with the heat money coming in i'm trying to apply for more money as a separate contract to have a couple case managers there that can help that but it's sort of asking you guys whether you support more services for the winter shelter and allowing for the possibility of some of the storage stuff it's sort of that's my question to you um other than that um the other sites the laurel street site was something that the neighbors didn't like but the idea of bussing people into that site and bussing people out the question then also is how do you feel about that because before that was off the table and the salvation army isn't against using the site so how would you feel about that are sort of questions that i ask as i do my back negotiations that was it okay i'll just say generally when you have the oral communication we'll not we're not going to respond to to the to questions that are posed right here but um earlier today we had discussion and um we'll have a report out on december 11th on the status of the homeless programs yeah i was helping set up the project connect in washington so i couldn't be here for that okay next speaker please i'm um here to talk about the syringe program and kind of bounce off denise's um uh presentation so i want to be part of the solution here in santa cruz people who use drugs i'm a harm reductionist and i would like for the city to look at the syringe access service as a solution not a problem because um for the first time i went and visited the syringe program and i empower you guys to go there and visit it and see what they do because i had no idea what services were available what the people needed and how many people access services through the syringe program and it not being open much is a problem and it would help there's many people that are housed and unhoused that use the program if you have money you can order syringes off amazon if you would like and um i'm definitely in promotion of increasing harm reduction services and harm reduction services are much more than just um syringe that you know is small and um i just i ask every member of city council to please visit the program see what they're all about see how they help people to services and see how many people become employed become housed get into treatment and before they even get treatment they become employed and and are off the streets and they still use but we have to clean up the community right everybody wants to see no more needles no more you know infectious disease spread so be part of that solution and join us and and help help the people that nobody wants to be an addict i've never met one person who says i enjoy being addicted to drugs but they use drugs and that's what happens so i thank you guys and ask you guys to please visit your syringe program thank you okay other than the gentlemen standing here is there any other member the public that like to speak okay sir you'll be our last speaker go ahead god bless the Davidian Psalms i am agent orange aka drake mitchell d lb for 1865 i first visited Santa Cruz in 1986 three years before the major earthquake i came to Santa Cruz to have coffee my most recent observations demonstrate an improvement in the community health regarding some very pernicious problems that have troubled leadership and councils for a very long time one in particular is a service during the day so that those who are overburdened have a place to store in the middle of the ubiquitous storage wars some of their belongings during the day so they may travel and walk about with a lighter load during the day i consider this to be an innovative new program that fills a crucial need it's a sign of hope for more rays of light the other development i've seen is that at the beach there is now a welcoming community there are tents that offer free dream interpretation something the civilians need just as much as those with extremely chronic sleep problems we're approaching the end of my two minutes uh the best drum circle i've seen in my life occurred halloween evening uh in santa cruz downtown some of it was captured by action eight uh i wish to shout out to drum skull matt hardwick 105 pioneer street sweet sea santa cruz thank you next speaker please any other member of the public that wishes to speak at this time that hasn't already spoken sir you'll be our last speaker yeah hi um i just i don't know i'm kind of sitting this meeting first and i've been to and i noticed that the oral communication is for a period that's of stuff that's not on the agenda and i just also think it's funny how all eight of your oral communications have had some sort of relation with house nurses and santa cruz or some other related issue um you know it just seems like overall your priorities aren't really aligned with what the community is looking for in terms of getting it done um you know provide some showers and showers and whatnot for the homeless people provided care for them actually like help them get ready in life um also once again uh post office Thursday for the 15th four o'clock we're going to be meeting up there protesting organize if you're watching please come and show your support that'd be great you know just want to actually like see some change and i notice that y'all really aren't focusing on a lot of people want to see change that concludes oral communication for tonight we're going to go back to our regular agenda which is the item number 23 it's the review of the council meeting calendar are there any changes for no changes any questions about the meeting calendar now and i'll go on to 24 bless you to the city council we'll review the meet uh actually it was doubled we have it uh listed twice so we save an agenda 23 and 24 okay as are uh 23 24 it's seen uh those are the end of the the items no other action items so it being 24 24 is the review the meeting calendar the report out uh i saw 23 24 okay okay so anyways any um any members of the public who would like to speak to items uh that or actions they've done since their last meeting the captain i mean members are council the council members i was already transitioning um any uh chris we'll start with you do you would you like to make any comments on things you've done since the last meeting uh now i've got two coming up the community advisory group for the university is going to meet soon and uh also the integrated waste task force but uh other than those two it's been all campaigning all the time you think all right yeah um our report on metro uh we had a uh full day retreat of board members um which had been preceded by a full day retreat with staff and and labor representatives uh regarding a long range longer range strategic plan for the metro um having come out of the dark days of cutbacks and of services and um really a tough time um now that sp1 uh has been sustained uh that uh liberates us to be more forward looking there's some expenditures that are being now authorized um one is going ahead with a massive investment in it it's a million plus uh which is on time bus apps and being able to pay for your bus on highway 17 with your cell phone i mean they're they're kind of basic um but uh it's a longer term investment uh in the it integrated it system for metro that will really improve both efficiency and customer service um we were able to get a whole bunch of buses and vehicles including some articulated buses from vta is basically surplus equipment so made a big dent in the obsolete um rolling stock um that was good and but mostly people were celebrating the um success of um well defending sp1 defeating prop six was just uh jubilation thank you both you and council member chase and and i should say we uh we are trying to focus on particularly council member chase has been on the uh capital committee for metro trying to um um uh get some focus and resolution on the pacific station our cooperative uh the potential for cooperative uh project with metro and our uh affordable housing project and uh that seems it's been frustratingly stalled but i think part of it was metro getting out of its uh really tough financial situation being more forward looking and so we want to refocus on that trying and we did as the council remembers did authorize a couple of participation in a couple of joint studies with metro what's the feasibility for rearranging that space etc and those are um being concluded those studies so um we'll be working with uh economic development meeting with metro and some of the other stakeholders who are very eager to have a role in that um the santa cruz community health centers and dantes are very interested in having community facilities there we we know of course of the housing advocates so we're trying to just basically uh decide on a project whatever it is and move forward and we we think there's a whole lot of potential there and that uh we're we're going to really have some focused conversation with metro you want to add anything to that you've covered it um looking to see if i i think those are the important pieces okay councilman brown i think substantive yeah i'll just say i i've seen a few of the council members there was a lot of um groundbreaking uh or ribbon cuttings downtown there's several new businesses a lot of local businesses uh opened their doors downtown there was fiber um there was fijes there was also 11th hour coffee and it's a lot of you know young people really open up businesses and it's great to go in there and see that kind of energy and then the other was um we had and councilmember crone was there the um armistice day on november uh the 11th the clock tower there was a presentation and a wreath that was laid at the at the world war one memorial that was downtown um organized by the veterans for foreign wars and um they did events throughout the year on the 11th day of each month um in the downtown and then culminated into a presentation there that included um in addition to councilmember crone congressman panetta um and supervisor friend and myself so it was it was a nice gathering of people and um the homeless garden project created a wreath that was laid at the at the memorial and will be i think displayed up there for the next uh several weeks so that concludes all the council business today um i'll adjourn the meeting thank you for being here