 Okay, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the 12 p.m. public portion of the closed litigation session of the August 28th 2018 meeting of the City Council. In this part of the meeting the council received public testimony thereafter the council members will move to the courtyard conference room for the closed session. I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you. Council Member Krohn. Present. Matthews is currently absent. Chase. Brown. Here. Arroyan is currently absent. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Tarras is absent. So before we have an open public comment I have a brief announcement. The City Attorney will provide a report on items listed on the closed session agenda at the beginning of the 12 30 p.m. session. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed session agenda? Now is your time to speak. Any members of the public wanting to speak? Okay. So hearing none I will adjourn the meeting to the courtyard conference room where the council will go into its closed session. Are we ready to get started? So good afternoon. Welcome to our 12 30 p.m. session of the August 28th 2018 meeting of the City Council. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you. Council Member Krohn. Here. Matthews. Here. Chase. Brown. Here. Arroyan. Here. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Tarras is absent. And if the clerk could please lead us through the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and through the Republic for Religious Stans, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. At this time I'd like to have the introduction of new employees. And I'd like to invite up the director of planning, Lee Butler, to introduce his new employees. Good afternoon. Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Oscar Soto. Oscar has 29 years of experience in the construction industry. He started out as a carpenter and eventually became a licensed general contractor. And he also has law enforcement experience. And these two skill sets are a great match for his role with us as a code compliance specialist and rental inspector. He comes to us most recently from Pajaro Valley Unified School District, where he ran the maintenance department there. And Oscar is married to his wife for 25 years and has four children. The two oldest are going to college, one of whom is playing softball and the younger two are going to St. Francis Central Coast Catholic High School, where Oscar coaches football. He also enjoys riding his Harley Davidson, the outdoors and gardening. So please welcome me and please join me in welcoming Oscar to the team. Welcome Oscar. All right. And now I'd like to invite up Mark Dettel from Public Works to introduce his new employees. Good afternoon. Mark Dettel, director of Public Works. Come on over, Jen. I have two new employees to introduce today. Next to me is Miguel Carranco. He's a solid waste worker filling an existing position. He was born in Santa Cruz and grew up in Watsonville, currently lives in Watsonville. And he was a bartender and a customer service rep, sales rep and a suspension technician. Graduated from Pajaro Valley High School, likes to watch soccer games and he plays soccer. He's an avid hiker, mountain biker, and a road biker. And he likes to travel. An interesting fact, he's been to Cuba. So that's kind of a cool fact there. Next Miguel is Janice Briesen, a parking enforcement officer. And Janice actually has been a temp for us. She started three years ago and we're happy to have her in a full-time position. She was born in the Santa Teresa area near San Jose and she's lived in Ben Lohman for the last 20 years. She's married and has two daughters at SLV High School. And a morkey, a Yorkie and multi-smixed dog named Chewie. So her past work experience, five years at Baymont in the kindergarten class as a teacher's aide. She's worked at Seagate doing freight auditing and fixed assets and RMC materials doing payroll and lucky stores for 18 years in management. What does she do for fun when she's not working? She enjoys cooking and bringing the crew's treats. That's nice to know. And spending time with the family and the friends going to the beach and art festivals. So please join me in welcoming our two new employees. Thank you. So at this time I'd like to read and recognize a few proclamations and I'll start with the proclamation declaring August as Muslim Awareness and Appreciation Month. And we have Husein Ahemen. I'll try and process it. To receive the proclamation or to say a few words? Oh, come on up. Good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon. Vice Mayor Watkins, council members. On behalf of the Muslim community of Santa Cruz, I really want to thank you and appreciate this gesture. It's a very important one. It means a lot to our community. When I make the announcements on Friday, we usually have our service for people like, wow, this is big. So that's very, I really appreciate that. In times where American Muslims are associated with a lot of negative remarks and harassment and these positive postures will give them an encouragement that in this country, regardless of your faith, as long as you do your best, you abide by the law, you have a dream and you have a role and you have a place in this beautiful country with us. And thank you so much. Thank you. And that's so very true. Thank you. Hello. Thank you, Vice Mayor Watkins and the rest of the council. My name is Simena Usman. I'm the government relations coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations. What we do is that we provide free legal services to people who are experiencing any Islamophobic discrimination, hate crime, school bullying. And so to have, we've been working with the state of California and they actually were initially the ones who for the past three years have introduced this resolution to make August Muslim Appreciation Awareness Month. And so that's why we're working with several city councils and we're very thankful and appreciative for the City of Santa Cruz to also recognize this designation because it does mean a lot to the Muslim community. I mean, it's been a very trying time. But at the same time, this is where our government and our local government and our community stands firm with our community as well and that we are part and parcel and that we were truly appreciative of this. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your work. All right. I'd like to have the mayor come in. And I'll go ahead and bring it. I'll just read a few lines from the proclamation. So where as freedom of religion holds a distinction as a cherished right and a value upon which this nation was founded. And the history of the Muslim, the history of Islam in this country dates back to before its founding or originating with African slaves who brought their Muslim beliefs with them to the Americas and who later contributed in numerous ways to the founding of the nation. Today, there are millions of Muslim Americans, both immigrant and native born of diverse backgrounds and beliefs. And I'll just move to now therefore I on behalf of the Mayor, David Terazas of the City of Santa Cruz do hereby proclaim the month of August 2018 as Muslim Awareness and Appreciation Month in the City of Santa Cruz to respectfully acknowledge the rich history, the contributions and guiding virtues of Muslim Americans to command all Muslim communities in California for their lasting positive impact that they have made toward the advancement of our state and country and to extend to them the respect and the camaraderie every American deserves. So thank you very much. Any other any comments from council? Okay, we'll move right along to the next presentation in proclamation, which is the proclamation declaring September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And we have Ishtar Carter from educational outreach director from Jacob's heart here. So Vice Mayor, thank you so much for having us today and all the council members. Jacob's heart, thanks you all so much for your support. We exist to improve the quality of life for the families with children who are challenged by childhood cancer. And I ask you all to join me in wearing a gold pin for the month of September on your envelopes. And I also hope to see some of you in your families at our upcoming events. I gave you guys some flyers. We have Kid Rages in Watsonville, September 23rd. And we will be out there celebrating many of our families who are with us and also those who we have lost. I also have with me today one of our Jacob's heart family members who will say a couple words. I'd like to introduce Moises. Hi, my name is Moises Ventilla. And one year ago around this time my daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer. And I'd like to compare this to being like a game show contestant. And you're invited to a game show you did not want to be a part of, who wants to be a parent of a child with cancer. And my child had brain cancer. And if you were ever contested on that show, you would know that there's always a lifeline. You can call on somebody. You can connect with the audience or whatever. And groups like Jacob's Heart has been there as a lifeline. And I will tell you, without that lifeline, without that emotional support, without some of the financial support that Jacob's Heart and groups like them offer, parents like me wouldn't make it through. I was a bank manager before all this. And now I'm switching to become a software engineer. It gives me a little bit more opportunity and freedom to kind of schedule my own time so I can spend more time with my family. And I want to thank you for recognizing this month and being aware that childhood cancer does occur. It could hit you and you just don't know. And I didn't know I was working six days a week as a bank manager. And I didn't see it coming, but it came. And you'd love to have somebody like Jacob's Heart around. So thank you so much for recognizing it. So before you sit down, I have a proclamation to present you on behalf of the mayor if you are up for it. So I'll just also read a few lines from the proclamation. So whereas the character of our community is revealed in how we treat our most vulnerable, and each year one in 285 children in our community are diagnosed with cancer. And whereas cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among children, more than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenial anomalies, and AIDS combined. And the families and children with cancer in the city of Santa Cruz receive essential services from Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services, a local organization that has gained national awards and recognition for improving the quality of life of hundreds of children with cancer and thousands of family members. And now, therefore, I, on behalf of Mayor David Tarazes of the city of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the month of September 2018 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in the city of Santa Cruz. And I encourage all citizens to join me in honoring Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services for its 20 years about standing support to our community and acknowledging its contributions to Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, honoring children with cancer in our communities. So thank you for the work you do and for being here. Definitely a theme of how we can support each other in our communities. I appreciate that. At this time, we have a 25-year service pin recognition for Hugh Dalton, and the presenter is Rosemary Bernard, Water Director. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council. Thank you so much. And whenever I come to Council and I see one of these, it's really an impressive thing to see the kind of dedication that so many of our employees in the city have brought to their jobs year after year, doing all the things that need to be done and that often sort of go unnoticed at the general level, but then people sort of, if they stopped do them, would really notice. And I want to tell today about Hugh Dalton, who has been with the Water Department for 25 years, and he is our Water Quality Manager. And this is the person that makes sure that the water coming out of your faucet every single day is safe to drink and is high quality and meets all the regulatory requirements, which is a really complicated job and an extremely important one in our community. Hugh began his career as a chemist in our Water Quality Lab up at the Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant, and he's developed analytical methods and standards that are still in place today. So he's set a whole process for sampling and monitoring in our system that are extremely important. He was promoted to the Water Quality Manager in 2008 and he brought his extensive experience in laboratory procedures to making our lab one of the nationally acknowledged and accredited labs for environmental labs, which is extremely important. He's brought in and trained many employees in these methods to make sure that there's consistency across our whole operation. They gave me a list here of just a sampling of the kinds of techniques and monitoring requirements that he meets. There are 18 on the sampling, so I'm not going to read them all to you, but you can notice that they're on everything from bacteriological to chemicals to starting up our various facilities like the belt treatment system, so those things all have to be monitored and operate within. Someone used to tell me, we operate in water quality or in the water drinking water business in a zero-defect environment, which is a pretty darn impressive thing when you think about what we do every single day and what people take for granted. Hugh's a champion of the water department and also the Citywide Safety Program, so he has really contributed in our organization to us having a very vibrant safety program that we're really proud of and it's gotten some new energy recently as a result of his contribution and the contribution of other people who've really taken on the safety issue of employee safety and workplace safety and it's a really strong element of our organizational culture. As a manager, he was kind and supportive of his staff and is always encouraging personal and professional development. He's always willing to discuss the finer details of his complicated work and how it relates to drinking water production with anyone who asks. One of the things I saw recently that he did was a whole description of how your water heater really works and what happens when flushing happens and how to take care of all of that and it was done with the customer information in mind. It was really a great piece of work. So with all of this hard work, it's hard to believe that Hugh has any time for fun, but he does. He loves to snowboard and serve and is even known to golf. I'm told he's a home diesel maker, biodiesel maker and a terrific garlic farmer and I don't know if those two things are related in any way, but maybe they are. And he traveled to South America to visit his daughter who was studying abroad and he learned Spanish to make the trip easier. And there also are impending nuptials for him soon with a friend from high school, so that's really great. He cares really strongly about his work and this community and is dedicated a big portion of his adult life to making sure we have safe water and I'd like you to join me in thanking him and acknowledging his 25 years of service. Thank you. Thank you for your service. So I have a few announcements before we move on to our regular meeting. So today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsanacruz.com. Jennifer Cameron is our technician this evening or this afternoon and I would like to thank her for her work today. All city council members can also be emailed at city council at cityofsanacruz.com. If you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item, we'd like to receive your email by Monday at 5 p.m. before our council meeting. This provides us with an opportunity to review your email and include it with the rest of our agenda packet. Please do bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and the city council constitute public records and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public. Accordingly, if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to be made public, you should not include that information in your correspondence. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left and it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside of the chambers. At this time, I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. Hearing none. And now I'd like to ask the city clerk administrator to announce any additions or deletions. There was item 22 which is the cannabis ordinance, amendments and update was rescheduled to September 11th. Okay. So I have a brief announcement on oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will generally occur at the conclusion of the afternoon business around 5 30 p.m. but may occur before or after 5 30 p.m. Okay. And now I'd like to turn it over to our city attorney to provide a report on closed session. Thank you vice mayor Watkins, members of the city council. All of the items on this afternoon's closed session agenda were liability claims. I'm going to list them. They are the claims of Errol Hepburn, David Myberg, Glen Shank, Timothy Lowe, Charles McClellan, and Marlase Schumate. Those are also listed as item 10 on your consent calendar this afternoon. And there was no reportable action on those items in closed session. Thank you. Okay. Now's the time for our city manager report. So I'll hand it over to Martin Bernal, our city manager to update the council. Thank you mayor and council or vice mayor and council. I just wanted to do a brief update on the charter amendment committee process that you considered at your last meeting on August 14th. I actually wanted to also hand out here a we prepared an informational item for you on the work plan, but I'll do just a brief overview of that. So you'll recall that the council directed that the committee be established and you outline the membership and also the scope of work that the committee would encompass and that's up there on the screen for you. So it looked at a variety of different issues related to directly elected mayor, district elections, compensation, and a number of other items. So what staff has done is prepare a sort of work plan for your consideration. It's an informational item as requested by council. Can I pause you for just one moment? Is it possible to get that TV on or not right now? Okay perfect. Go ahead. I see the screen in front of me. Thank you. No problem. I also have copies of the... Okay perfect. Just in case. We're following along with you. Thank you. Nice to have a hard copy. Thank you very much. Well that's going... We can go ahead and follow with your hard copy here. Thank you. Okay. So with respect to the committee selection, just some dates here to note. First, each council member will directly appoint a committee member by September 7th. So I know you all are working to do that and to provide those names to my office. Then the city manager's office, those are the directly appointed by the council members. Then there's the at large, which are six members that would be appointed at large by the city council. And so we're currently, this week we'll issue the application and then we will then ask that they return applications by September 19th so that you are able to then consider those appointments on September 25th. So that's the timeline to be able to complete that by the end of next month. So those are just the committee selection process. Then with respect to the proposed work plan, and you'll see that in the FY, there's more detail there too, but essentially what we did is looked at other communities who have done similar processes to what is envisioned here in terms of reviewing the Charter Amendment and the scope of work. And developed a work plan that essentially would provide for approximately nine meetings within a final presentation to the city council at a subsequent meeting. And that would begin in October of this year with the various topics spread out over these monthly meetings. And they would go through approximately August of 2019 with the final presentation in September of 2019. So just wanted to point that out. As far as the resources that we required to support this, it would require obviously some staff time from my office, the city attorney's office, and the city clerk's office. And so that would have an impact. And so what we would do then is just to be clear about what the impact would be, which would involve potentially just extending the time frames on existing current projects. But we'll bring that back to you so you see that more clearly. So I'm happy to answer any questions with respect to the work plan. Council Member Mathews. I think it was understood when this was brought to us that it would involve some rearrangement of existing work plans. So when you come back, I hope you'll be explicit about the things that will get delayed or postponed. Is there any other questions by council? Would it be okay if we put the interviews at 7pm so people could have some sort of time certain and it wouldn't conflict with their work? Hours? I think that's when we usually do like commission interviews in the evening. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And do we envision that process would be like when we do our appointments to our annual appointments that the council does for like commissions and things like that, like a similar process where they come and they submit applications to us. Exactly. If we want to come talk to us, they can. Exactly. And then the council votes. Right. And you'll get the materials. You'll get the materials ahead of time. Okay. But do we anticipate we would vote in that meeting or in a subsequent meeting? I believe that the intent was to make the appointments by that meeting. Got it. So the idea would be to provide you with the applications ahead of time so that you can make a decision to September 25th. But it's up to the city council. But I think the timing is, as I recall, the goal was to try to get them completed by that time frame. But if you want to have a two-step process, that's absolutely fine too. I'd actually prefer two steps. I mean, the interviews are, for one thing, not mandatory. I mean, they're very helpful. But then sometimes in the course of an interview, you see someone you want to follow up with, et cetera. So, I mean, I've had people contact me, some of whom I know quite well and others sound very promising. I don't happen to know them. So, and I think it's actually better if the appointment, if the interviews are one component of a meeting and the appointments are at a subsequent normally scheduled meeting. If that'll fit to the timeline, I agree because there's a lot of people who I know really, they reach out to us a lot via email, but they can't come to the meetings in the evening regardless of, you know, what time they are. So, I think that could be helpful. Okay. That's the preference of the council, certainly. There is no hard deadline here. I think we were just trying to meet the goal of completing the initial direction, which is try to do this by the end of September. But if having an extra couple of weeks helps with the selection process, we certainly will do that. So, okay. Are there any other further questions from the council on this item? I just have one brief question. In terms of the timeline, do you have or anticipate then in the December date to incorporate new council members appointees, or how does that fit in knowing that some of the direct appointees will, that won't change? I don't know. Did we factor that in? Right. I think we talked about it. We did talk about it, didn't we? Yes. And the direction was that the council directed appointees would be by this council and they would remain and continue. Okay. And December 11th would just be an update based on what's going on. Right? Okay. And then the council would have to, like many other items, would have to sort of catch up and brief themselves on all the other items. Sure, sure. Unless there aren't any further questions, we'll move on. Thank you. Is there anything else in your update today? No, that completes my presentation. Thank you. So that moves us to our consent agenda. First up is the consent. These are items 4 through 18 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? Council Member Cron. Item 8 and 9. Okay. Are there any other items that any council members would like to pull from the consent agenda? No. Okay. Okay. Are there any council members who wish to only comment on any items? Okay. So if there are any members of the public that would like to request an item or to speak to any item on our consent agenda with the exception of items pulled by council members, which include items 8 and 9, now is the time to do so. Are there any folks here who would like to speak on any of the consent agenda items other than items 8 and 9? This doesn't include the consent public hearing, right? That's right. This does not include the consent public hearing. Okay. Seeing none, I am now looking for a motion on the remaining items, with the exception of the items 8 and 9 for consent. Move approval. Second. Okay. Moved by Council Member Matthew, seconded by Council Member Chase. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. So the motion passes unanimously. With Mayor Taras's absent. I'm sorry, with Mayor Taras's absent. Thank you. Okay, so we'll now come back to the items that were pulled and that includes item number 8. So I will ask if Council Member Crohn has any comments you'd like to ask. Thank you. I really appreciate the staff bringing this forward. Martine has been monitoring this along with other folks in the city. And I think these are good things for the Council to be supporting. I would like to call to Council's attention Prop Number 3, the water bond, which is not being supported by several groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Sarah Club for many reasons. And also our Republican candidate, John Cox, supports it as well, but I just want to throw that in. And so I was wondering, evidently, it's shifting the cost of taxpayers. There's a lot of private groups involved, one in particular, that will reap tremendous benefits from this. And they were the ones who paid the bulk of the money to gather the signatures, ag interests. And I just think this is a contested sort of thing. And I don't think it's something that I think we need to look into more. Whereas the other propositions seem to be clear to me that who's supporting and who isn't. And that there are things that we should be supporting. So I just wanted to bring that in. I would ask if a friendly amendment to take three out that we don't support three, or maybe just vote on it separately. Council Member Matthews. Voting separately would be fine with me, but I see our water director lurking in the wing. So I'd like to hear. And I see this is recommended by staff. So I'd like to hear more details. Sounds great. Thank you. So Proposition 3 is quite a lot like Proposition 1 that was on the ballot four years ago, I think. And it is, but it was generated in a slightly different way. It was generated by initiative in this go around, as opposed to by the legislature putting a proposition on the ballot. As noted in the staff report, my analysis of this is that there are probably more than $3 billion of funds that would be in this available through this proposition that could directly benefit the city in a number of ways, whether it's stormwater management or its supply augmentation or its treatment plan improvements that all of these things that are on our horizon here in the next few years. I noticed from Councilmember Crohn's email that he sent to the city manager on the weekend that one of the concerns of the legal women voters is that by passing these kinds of propositions that water users won't pay their fair share of the cost of the water system. And I will tell you that our water users are paying their fair share now, all of it. We don't really have any, we don't have any federal or state funding that's mitigating any of the rate impacts that we're passing on to our customers. I think that our customers are doing a lot of really good work and we have a lot of really important work to do on our water system and the resources that will be available in this bond measure or this proposition would really help us to at least have the opportunity of mitigating some of those impacts to our rate ratepayers over time. I think that our applications for and potential use of these funds will be very done in a very public way. There'll be a lot of accountability for them and I can't speak to the how else they might be used around the state but I can tell you that we would take it very seriously and I think we have systems and checks and balances in place to make sure that if we were to receive these funds that they would benefit and that our customers would also benefit but in a fair way that everyone would get their fair share of the benefits from mitigated rate increases. Good question. How much do you think out of the 8.9 billion that's being asked to borrow or to bond? And by the way the legislative analyst office says that when you do that 8.9 billion ends up as 17.3 billion when you pay those back so 8.9 17.3 how much would Santa Cruz be receiving from that money? Well the analysis that I did in looking at the provisions of the tax or the bond measure indicate that we would have projects in the city and I don't mean just in the water department but certainly mainly in the water department that would be competitive for nearly three and a half billion of those dollars. It doesn't mean that we would get them but most of the either grant funding for things like water treatment improvements that's a very that would be a very valuable and we would aggressively pursue the opportunity to get some funding for some expected improvements to Graham Hill that we're going to be doing. I know that there are stormwater management issues certainly in supply augmentation given our schedule and the time frame this money was likely to be dispersed. Some of the supply augmentation things we would be doing could potentially be funded and those are going to be expensive also. So I think that the fact that out of the not nearly 9 billion that three and a half billion roughly of that are things that could directly benefit us we obviously didn't get all that money but we would certainly be heavily competing for resources from this pot. The last thing I'll say is I just think it's and I totally support what you're saying. I just think it's the wrong way to go. If you look at the the legislative analysis office also says that we will be paying $430 million a year and from the state budget and this is why the Sierra Club as well as the League of Women Voters are not in favor of it because we are bound to hit a recession because we've been we're one of those high highs right now economically and that money will have to be paid and it'll be competing with all the other programs that I know this council cares about in the area of social services. So I think that's one of the reasons or one of the main reasons that the League of Women Voters does not endorse Prop 3. Any other comments? Council Member Matthews. I'm very much convinced by the details that have been provided about the direct potential benefit to the City of Santa Cruz from these measures. So I will go ahead and move the recommendation for supporting all the propositions and ballot measures proposed. Second. Okay so we have a motion by Council Member Matthews and a second by Council Member Norian. Can we split Prop 3 out of the five six? That's fine with me. Okay. Consider it second. And I'll just also note that these measures were also endorsed by the League of California Cities generally. Okay. Thank you. So just for clarification could I ask is the intent to adopt two separate resolutions one dealing with all of the matters that are addressed in the current draft resolution and the other dealing exclusively with Prop 3? Yes. So I guess we should say resolution supporting statewide propositions one and two and opposing propositions five and six. And then we will separately vote on resolution supporting Proposition 3. Three separately. Okay. Thanks. Go ahead. I'm a friendly amendment. I noticed that Prop 10 was missing and I think that is something that really is of interest and I'm wondering and the City Attorney advised that maybe we bring it back on a separate agenda on September 11th. I think yeah it's not noticed let's there's time we'll bring it back. Okay. So we have two motions. The first motion by Council Member Matthews and seconded by Council Member Norian is to vote on all of the recommendations except Proposition 3. Excuse me. No. Proposition 3 and we'll go ahead and take a vote on that motion then we'll return back to the second motion. You need public comment first. Excuse me. At this time we have an opportunity for the public to speak to the Council on these items. Are there any members of the public who would like to address the Council? Council Member Brown. I have a clarifying question regarding the process for adding consideration of Proposition 10 was I just want to clarify are we asking that that Chris were you asking that that be added to the motion to direct staff to come back or was the I'm not I just want to make sure I know what I'm going I would I would suggest that that be brought forward in the form of a motion you could do that after you've adopted the resolutions. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. So are we clear on what we're voting on for the first motion? Yes for the first motion I have a comment on the second but I'll save that until. Okay. So we'll take a vote on the first motion. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's supported unanimously with Mayor Trazos absent. Okay. So now we move to the second motion which I should probably make sequentially now very much perfect. I move that we adopt the resolution supporting Prop 3. Second. So that was motion by Council Member Matthew second by Council Member Norian. Okay. So we'll go ahead and take the vote on that or I'm sorry. That's right. Okay. Thank you as I stumble through this. Appreciate it. Okay. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. So that passes with Council Member Matthews, Chase, Council Member Norian and myself in favor with Council Member Brown and Council Member Crone not supporting the motion. And Mayor Trazos is absent again. I had a comment but I'll just be in touch with Rosemary about my concerns. Okay. Is there any further discussion? On the advice of the city attorney I would move that we put Proposition 10 the repeal of the cost of Hawkins on the September 11th agenda. Second. Any discussion on that? I think that's something that could be initiated by individual Council Members. Okay. Can't come forward. Sure. Initiated by individual Council Members. I have other things I want to put for Council endorsement as well. Okay. So it's probably for that reason I would oppose the motion before us. So in other words just prepare a report and bring it on the 11th. I'm fine with that. I'll withdraw my motion then. I don't know if the second is okay with that. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. So that moves us right along to our consent public. Oh, excuse me. I almost missed. Now we have number nine. Item number nine which was also pulled by Council Member Crone. Yeah. I was wondering. I had asked for if there's any history concerning this. If somebody could speak to that on staff. Someone contacted me about the past with this particular unit and just wanted to hear if anybody has anything, I guess, from Jessica. Good afternoon, Councilor Jessica Mellor, Housing and HUD program specialist in the Economic Development Department. I did get Council Member Crone's email and I did send a response of a slightly after a closed session had already started. So I apologize for that. The request was submitted by the property owner on June 6th, 2018 after her daughter who is listed as an equal property owner vacated the property and this caused the owner occupancy requirement to be unfulfilled. So the property owner also contacted me last year during the ADU monitoring letting me know that this may be a possibility this year that they wouldn't be able to fulfill that requirement. So I don't know of any history, you know, the questionable history I haven't heard or found any evidence of that. But you know, they brought through the correct process this year as far as I can tell and they were aware of the situation last year and they wanted to follow the rules laid out in our ordinance, one of which is this limited deferral being brought to the council. A past Council Member told me they were caught years ago and so that's probably why they brought it maybe to us now. I'm wondering, I like the rents that I'm seeing in the staff report. Is there any way for us to give them a one-year transition and keep the rents the way they are for one year? I don't believe there's any way to put in a rent restriction because it's the units themselves are not under the short-term rental ordinance, it's in place right now because it was built after 1995 with the February 1st 1995 date. So we couldn't hold it under the rent control ordinance. We could negotiate with them just like they're trying to negotiate with us, no? It would be out of the ordinary, that's not how the ordinance 2014-14 is stated. I don't know if that would require extra ordinances or changes or anything, but I would recommend to move forward with the standard request. Any other questions from Council Member Brown? I guess I have a follow-up question for the city attorney about the processes by which we could ask for a non-increase in rents in return for an exception to our current ordinance on the books regarding EDU. I mean, I guess I'm just saying if the part of the request suggests that the reason for this is to want to keep tenants stable in place and asserting that below-market rents. So I would just like to see that guarantee solidified if we're going to be making an exception in this case. I'd be happy to look into it, but I haven't had a chance to analyze that in any meaningful detail. Any further questions? Yeah, I have a question for Ms. Miller. What do you see in the interest of the city that we make this agreement? I mean, I think the Council's on record of not wanting owner-occupied ADUs or excuse me, when there's an ADU on the premises, owner-occupied house, because there's something about stability of the community in the neighborhood that's the reasoning, I think, behind it. Well, the other options in order to meet the owner-occupancy requirement are to require the owners to move back to the property that would displace tenants in one of the two units. It's also to remove part or the whole of the ADU, which would in turn remove a home for the residents. So we'd be displacing tenants in any other case to remedy the owner-occupancy requirement. So this is in interest of the tenants to keep them in their units. But if that was really going to be followed, we'd make sure the rent wasn't going to go up, because there's no security for them. They could easily raise the rent, whatever they want, especially since you have already said that it's not under the current ordinance of the rent freeze. Okay, Councilor Gis? Well, I don't know if this is necessarily a question, but a point. We, through the Housing Blueprint subcommittee, dealt with this issue in lots of different ways, and I can't actually remember where we ended up on this, but I thought that this topic was coming back to us at some point. Sorry to call you up, Lee, but you probably remember what ended up being literally reams and reams of recommendations where we are with this particular thing. Sure. Good afternoon, Vice Mayor Watkins and Council Members. That did end up being one of the recommendations from the Housing Blueprint subcommittee that was accepted by the Council on June 12th of this year, and the recommendation was to explore and evaluate what could be the pros and cons of a non-owner occupancy allowance on ADU properties in exchange for affordability restrictions. And so we will be doing that analysis. We have not completed that analysis yet, but that is something that we have direction from the Council to prepare. There was not a specific recommendation one way or the other. It was just, let's talk about this to see if it's worthwhile for us to pursue. Okay. Thank you for that update, and this was something that did come up in our very well-attended community meeting at Loudoun Nelson or London Nelson Center, and it received mixed reviews. It was actually, some people were all for it, and some people were kind of like, I'm worried about the neighborhood quality sort of impacts, and so it was something we felt like there was enough feedback on that we did need to pursue it because there's pros and cons, but it's something we should actually thoughtfully evaluate before we would make that change. So thank you for that update. Council Member Matthews. In the development of the updates of the ADU ordinance, we did be very clear that we wanted to stick for the time being with the owner occupancy requirement. That's something I personally support. We also understood that from time to time life circumstances happen, and people do need to be moved away from their home with an ADU for a discrete period of time, and I think the owner here was very clear that they understood the conditions, the provisions of the ordinance, and at the end of the two-year period, they were prepared to either move back or sell the property and to abide by the underlying restrictions. So it seemed to me pretty straightforward. I know we have done these in the past, rarely, but we have done them, the extensions. But why no guarantee of raising that? I would be, the city attorney has said he has not had a chance to look into the details of applicability. I would be happy to move the request with the addition that we direct the city attorney to attempt to build in a rent stabilization provision to the two-year extension. Just to follow up on the earlier question, I think that's fine. The ordinance allows the owner to not occupy the property for a period of up to two years under circumstances established by the City Council by resolution that may require the property owner. It says that the property owners may apply for temporary change in use, allowing both units to be rented for a period of no more than two years with the possible extension of one year by the planning director if the circumstances warrant. I think what you could do is by raise resolution establish a standard that requires units, at least one of the units to be maintained as affordable under the city's inclusionary housing requirements as a condition of that type of an extension. That's not before you today, so we could have as part of this motion also giving direction for an additional provision. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Just to clarify, that would be asking staff to bring us a resolution for what the ordinance appears to contemplate. So there's a motion on the floor. Seconded by Councilmember Norian. Is there any member of the public who'd like to speak to us on this item? This is item number nine on our consent agenda. Okay, seeing none, we'll return back to Council. Council Member Cron. I was wondering if anybody knows for the current inclusionary ordinance, what would you be charging for an apartment like this? Is this what it is? Is it $1,200 a month? Is that what the inclusionary currently says for a place like this? We'd have to do some research and I could send you our charts for the rent and the incomes to clarify that. I don't have that information right now. That wouldn't want it to be higher, you know, like when it came back and it was, you know, they're actually charging below that, which is great. But I think within the information available to us right now, we've given direction. Sure. And then do you have a comment? I just want to say quickly, I don't, if we get too much into the minutiae of this, I'd be really worried that what if there's somebody getting this great rent and maybe they make a little bit over the amount that, you know, would make them eligible for a low income unit? I wouldn't want to do that to the individuals currently renting either. So I think the way the motion is now make sure that those folks don't fall into what could be a little bit of a trap while at the same time we're protecting the rent they're receiving and the city gets that benefit. I'd like to protect the rent now because nothing stops these folks from raising the rent as soon as, you know, maybe they kept it low because they knew they were coming to the council. They can make that argument and then boom, I mean, just, you know, no guarantees. Right. There aren't any guarantees, but I don't, I don't also want to get them in a situation where they make let's say $5 over the amount to be qualified is a quote low income and then therefore they, you know, they have to leave. So I think it's, it's, I like the way that the motion has been worded because I think we don't get them into that trap while at the same time really expressing what our desire is. Either way, I think we could, you know, it's not a guarantee either way. I don't think it will fall under the inclusionary ordinance though, right? I mean it's not going to automatically go, oh, it's because the person, it's, it's something separate. So that, and I mean, don't we negotiate rents all the time? I mean, city, you know. This is different though, because it's not us leasing. This is, there's someone who owns something and so I don't know if we can dictate an exact dollar amount without it being part of an official program. So that's, I'm now, I thought I was really clear and now I'm getting confused. I, my understanding was the, that the request would be for staff to come back with a resolution that as a condition of exception in these cases, that the rents would not be raised and, you know, perhaps over the 2% or whatever it might be in the current moratorium rather than triggering the inclusionary rates and formulas. That was my, that was my understanding of the council's direction, but that resolution wouldn't be applicable to the action. And be for future applications. All right. Is everybody clear and prepared to vote on item number nine at this time? Okay. We asked the public. We had no comment from the public. So at this time, I'd like to see how the council stands. All those in favour, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That passes with council member Crohn opposing and Mayor David Charles is absent. Okay. So we will move on to our consent public hearing and this is item number 19 on our agenda. Are there any council members who wish to only comment on this item? Are there any members of the public who would like to request this item be polled or to speak on it because now is the time to do so? I'm looking for a motion. I think the staff has done a good mid-course adjustment and so I will therefore move the motion before us, also including resolution. Okay. Moved by council member Matthews, seconded by council member Chase. Any further discussion? All those in favour, please say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously with council member Tross is absent. Okay. Next on our agenda. Oh, go ahead. I'm seeing that the folks for the tree appeal are not, don't seem to be present. I don't know if we want to go or are they? Yeah, for truth. But I mean, but the applicant. This item has been noted for 230 anyway, so it has to occur after 230. And if I was jumping ahead, sorry. No problem. Okay, so we'll move on to item number 20, which is the density bonus zoning ordinance amendments. And we have Carol Berg, Housing and Community Development Manager, as well as Lee Butler, Director of Planning here to present to us. Apologize, I just pulled up the wrong presentation. Carol Berg, Economic Development and Lee Butler, Planning and Community Development Director. So we are back with the density bonus ordinance. Just get it going. And as you may recall, this came to you in October and March as well. Because there was some confusion at that time, exactly what the density bonus ordinance did, I included a guide to the density bonus ordinance in your packet, which I hope you found useful. And I'll also just do a quick preview or overview of what the density bonus ordinance does and then go into the two changes that are being proposed or the several changes that are being posed. Density bonus definition is that it allows developers as a program that allows developers to obtain more favorable local development requirements in exchange for offering to build or donate land for affordable or senior units. And in California, this is required. They have the density bonus language that is in our ordinance is essentially state mandated language with a few exceptions. And it is under that state law, the density bonus for the developer is their entitlement. And the benefits can be approved as a matter of right. In other words, the city council or the planning commission or whatever proving body it is has little room to really deny a density bonus if certain requirements for approval are met. So basically a project that qualifies to receive a density bonus has to have at least five units. At least 5% of the housing would be restricted to very low or 10% to low income residents. For ownership housing, you can go up to moderate income where 10% or more of the housing needs to be affordable to moderate income housing that's not available for rental units. And then you can also have 10% of housing units in a project or more available for foster youth, disabled ventrins or homeless persons, and the rents are restricted at a very low income level. And the project can also donate land to qualify as opposed to providing units for a very low income project. And for a senior housing project, no affordable units are required, but the project has to be 100% senior. So that's how a project qualifies. And what the city gives back are three things, three components to the state law. First of all, you get your density bonus. In other words, you get additional units, a certain percentage based on what you're giving in terms of affordable units. You can go up to 35% of the project. You also automatically get a slight reduction in parking standards that is given with the density bonus. There are two other hearts to this benefits as well. And one is the incentives where an applicant can say it's not financially feasible to develop this project. And therefore, I need extra hide or I need setbacks or I need some kind of a change. And these are called incentives or concessions when it's linked to the financing of the project. And you can get one to three concessions, again, linked to how many units you're providing. And the city can deny this request if it's detrimental to public health or that it's not needed to create affordable housing and how we tell that is we require that they provide us with a performance in most cases. And then the third one, which we were a little less clear on before because this is all new in operations, is waivers. Now, you can get an unlimited number of waivers and waivers are if there's a physical barrier to being able to build the additional density bonus units. In other words, that 35% or 20% or whatever the additional units are. And that can include any kind of physical barrier like the zoning only allows you two stories, but you need three stories. And again, the city can deny this if it's detrimental to public health or it's not really needed to build those additional units. So as you can see, it's pretty difficult to deny this either kind of request. So this is an overall chart that gives you a sense of the range of density bonus and what this means. You can look at the bottom of the chart, a 35% density bonus, which is the maximum you can get. If you do very low income, 11% of the units need to be very low income. If you do low income at 60%, 20% of the units need to be low income. And then if you do moderate income, and this is for ownership only, you go up to 40% of the units. So you can kind of see it's geared toward really the rental housing, not necessarily the ownership housing. And we would expect it to be used more for that. So this is how it basically works. You have a base project which is equivalent to what the zoning allows. And in this case, we're saying the zoning allows somebody to be able to build 20 units at this site under the zoning requirements. So that's your base project. So developers are saying, well, I'm going to provide 11% of these units at very low income. And I want a 35% density bonus. And they've already built out the site in plans to maximum with the 20 units. So they will need to add an additional story in order to get the density bonus, which would be seven units. So they get the additional floor only if they request a waiver or an incentive for that extra story. And they have to either prove it's a physical barrier, which is an easier thing to prove, or a financial barrier. So when we were talking about the density bonus ordinance before, we focused a lot on the incentives, but really what's beginning to come forward to the city are requests for waivers. So it's something and there is no limit on waivers. So now how does this fit with inclusionary units? You've got your two very low income units. State law requires that these inclusionary units can be counted as the density bonus units. So you have a 15% three-unit requirement for inclusionary. So what happens is you overlap two of the units, and then the third unit is just an inclusionary unit. So what you would have is you would have two units that would be at very low income, because that always goes to the most strict requirement. And then you would have one unit that would only be inclusionary at 80%. So the density bonus ordinance did this on purpose in order to encourage the development of affordable housing and the overlay. The benefit the city gets, of course, is it gets two very low income units, which are a real advantage for the city. So in October 2017, the city amended the ordinance to be in compliance with state law. There were a lot of changes that happened just before 2017. And so all of these went into effect. And the city is in complete compliance with state law with a few little word changes that we're doing now. And at that time, the council also considered the amendments that would have two additional city options, that there is a little flexibility in the ordinance. And so you heard this in October and then again in March. So the only thing that we're talking about right now is these two options plus a little bit of cleanup. So the option one is that the city can define the approvals process. And the current ordinance, we had developed a tiered system, tier one, tier two, tier three, and it got the bigger the ask from the developer, the higher the tier it was classified under. And that determined who would actually approve the application. Tier one was with the planning director, tier two was planning commission, and tier three was with the city council. Tier two and three required performers. And the thing that it fails in, in that the density bonus waivers were not a part of this tier system and we're beginning to, like I said, see more of those. So the problems with doing it the way we have it right now and why we need to change it is that the tier requirements are inconsistent because the waivers are not included. You might have one project that asks for an extra story and it has to go to the city council. You might have another that does it under waiver and just is heard by the planning commission. So tier one incentives and all waivers do not require public hearing right now. And this is something that was really important the last time it came around. So that's not second problem. The third problem is a potential for a requirement to add approvals. It could cause like potential delays or extra cost, the added steps to developer. And the city wants to facilitate in the development of housing and not slow it down. So by, you know, maybe it could have been approved just by the planning commission. Now it has to go to the, because of the tier system has to go to the city council as well. And so in this, you know, what we're saying that this is a problem, it could slow up the project. So here are the solutions that we're talking about and have included in the amendments. The inconsistency solution is that the approval body would be based on the project requirement, not the incentive type. And this takes care of waivers. You know, the same waiver and incentive would be treated the same in a project. Problem number two was the public hearing, which you didn't have the waivers and you didn't have tier one going to a public hearing. And we've put this in that all projects will have a public hearing, whether it's at the zoning administrator or the planning commission or the city council, will have a notice public hearing. And the third problem was the potential for extra delays in the cost. And again, they would not require an extra step. It would just require what the project would normally require. And just a note that financial performers were required for tier two and tier three. And the way it's written now is that we've basically said and they weren't required for tier one. And so performers would still not be required for tier one as a way to encourage developers to ask for a 20% change in a setback or something like that. And tier one is basically anything less than 20% change in setback, 20% change in landscape area, or something like that, which we considered relatively minor. And if they don't have a financial performer for that, it encourages them to go that direction, then that's good for the city. So then the second option that the city has is to set affordable unit parameters. And the only parameter that we really set in the last one was the minimum square footage for affordable units. And the problems with that, if you look over at the chart on the right, is that there is a downward trend right now, especially for studios. And so what you can end up with is our minimum square footage, which is 500 square foot for a studio, actually could be higher than what the trend is saying it is. So it makes sense to look at what happens in the future. And the other problem is that the minimum unit size in the chart may not be consistent to encourage the goal of smaller unit development. This is trends go downward and we're like holding the line and it could actually end up being higher. And in order to stay up with these trends, we may have to come back multiple times to amend the ordinance. So the solutions to these problems, the support of a smaller unit goal is to just set the minimum unit size at 75% of the average unit size. So then if the project is fluctuating and maybe going down in the average unit size, then the inclusionary units or the density bonus units would also be going down. And then the flexibility over time, again, you would be, it would be variable. It would not be linked to a specific number in the ordinance, but it would be linked to the actual project. So that flexibility would be built in. So the two main items that we were talking about having you approve as options. We also have some cleanup in terms of affordable rent. We wanted to make it clear that these units could be rented by a Section 8 or similar federal assistance program. We did put that it would be applied at the discretion of the Planning and Community Development Director because we don't know what's happening in the future. We don't know what programs will be happening from the federal level. So this allows us at least to be able to say, yes, we think this program should, maybe this one doesn't, but it gives us some flexibility in there without coming back and changing the ordinance. We also had some consistency with state law, sorry, in that there's a definition of a major transit stop looks at all of the buses that go through here. We had left out a word that basically indicated it was just individual bus lines. So we made it very clear and matched state law on that. And there's no real option for that because the state requires us to do that. And we also removed some sections that no longer are applicable in the ordinance. There may be a category of zoning area like an overlay zone that doesn't exist anymore. So we took that out and that we, again, in another section, eliminated review requirements referencing the tiered system since that would go away if you voted for these. And so that is basically it. If you have any questions of either Lee or me. Thank you for the presentation. Are there any questions from council members? Council member noise. So the beginning of your presentation, you said we're pretty much adopting this because it's the state regulations and all cities therefore must adopt this. You said with few exceptions. Yeah. So what would be great is to just see what those few exceptions are like, what are we do? I know you kind of explained that, but it'd almost be great if there was a chart like this is what we have to adopt because the state says so. And then this is what we're doing. Okay. You have already made all of the state law adoption. So we're only looking at the two variations that we can, and I call them options one and option two. Okay. So those were the exceptions? Those are the exceptions. Those are the only two exceptions. And the rest of it was just cleanup. That is not really changing the ordinance at all. It's just making sure it's either consistent with itself or consistent with state law. Okay. Great. Thank you. Other questions from council members at this time? Yeah, I have a few questions. You know, first of all, I mean, I think that it's important that we be really clear here that what we're talking about today is where state law is absent, local jurisdictions can speak. And we've had a lot of communication about these changes, a lot of concerns expressed about the places where this may actually reduce community input. So I want to be clear, I want to be sure that all of our questions are answered and that people get to speak to us who are here today in the event that there are some folks here and perhaps have some additional questions after that. So in terms of the question, I get the rationale for using a percentage of square footage in order to not be changing the amount, the actual square footage over time, right, the flat number. And I understand the county has recently done something similar and 75% is their standard. But I'm wondering about how that matches up because, you know, the city, you know, perhaps we have more denser, smaller units in the city. What the, I mean, what is 75% of unit in the county mean relative to a unit in the city? And I know that's a, it's a difficult question to answer because there's variation across the county. But just some kind of sense of what the difference might be there because we're talking about potentially ending up with very, very tiny units. Well, they still have to meet the minimum size requirements that are in the zoning ordinance the way it is now. So we're not talking about units that we, you may not be, you may have a project and maybe you couldn't do a 75% reduction. And also when they're designing them, it's, you know, the same size units tend to be a little easier to put in a project. So you may or may not see actually the reduction up to 75%. It's just setting a floor. But that floor may be reached before you get to 75% because it may say that your unit size minimum for a particular type of unit is certain square footage that's above that. You might add anything. I would just say, you know, for, as an example, you know, we may get a small unit project with 400 square foot units. They could feasibly go down to 300 square feet. So long as they're meeting all of the criteria in the zoning ordinance that allows for that 300 square foot size. So we would also be looking at things like if the unit is the same number of bedrooms, you can't say, well, all of our studios, we've got half studios and half one bedrooms. And so that equivalency, the 75% is based on the bedrooms. So you would still have to provide half of your inclusionary units as or in this case, the density bonus units as one bedrooms and half of them as studios. And each of those would be limited. So they couldn't do all of the smallest units. You couldn't have all 300 square foot units if your studios were at 400 and your one bedrooms were at 800. Thank you. So a couple of other questions relate. So another question that occurred to me related to the and others. Thank you for pointing it out to non residential developments. So there are ways that affordability, the relationship between affordable units and commercial space in mixed use projects, to the extent that those commercial projects or occupants may have some impact on neighbors. I mean, I think that's a major concern for neighborhoods. And so is there a way that we can include some kind of language about, you know, not having those adverse impacts. So, you know, I mean, I'm just thinking about people's experience when large grocery trucks are coming in and out at, you know, five o'clock in the morning, it's very loud, you know, other kinds of commercial spaces that may attract lively night time populations and music or, you know, noise. Is there any way to try to get at that? And when we're when we're negotiating over the possible, the density of concessions and or waivers, the density bonus ordinance doesn't control what district they go in. I mean, doesn't allow commercial to go in a residential zone. And it's a little different when you're talking about their requesting concessions. Because the state has made it mandatory, the city doesn't really have a lot of negotiating room. It has to basically approve, unless they can say it's going to be harmful to health or, you know, to health or safety, or they don't need to do the incentives. But even if they don't need to do the density bonus, we don't control the density bonus ordinance doesn't control that there's going to be a development there. It doesn't control the basic development. I would just add that there isn't a direct link between those types of conditions and the density bonus itself. However, our standard development review processes evaluate those. And in instances where we have things like potential for late night activity and drinking establishments and so forth, we have use permits and those use permits give us the opportunity to put in conditions on the uses themselves. And so when the density bonus comes in conjunction with those types of uses, we've got these other tools, either the land use entitlements that allow us to put in site design characteristics or the use permit requirements that allow us to actually condition the uses themselves and identify when deliveries occur or identify the noise levels to a greater level of specificity or closing windows if they've got amplified music inside and so forth. So we have some of those controls. They're just not inherently linked to the state density bonus outside of the other entitlement provisions that we have. Thank you. So I have a couple more questions if I could. And these are in no particular order just kind of as I was thinking through. So Carol, you mentioned that when we're speaking about waivers that they're unlimited. So, but my understanding is they're only unlimited to the extent that the city allows for them. So we're not actually talking about, you know, when we say that there are one to three automatic incentives or concessions, that's as prescribed by state law. That's different than this piece. So I'd be interested in hearing a little bit more about that given that some the proposal is to change the review process so that more applications under density bonus may end up coming directly to staff rather than coming before the council. We are after all the only elected body that is involved in any of these decisions. So just, if I could just get a better understanding of that, I think it would be helpful. The waiver, they can't, they can ask for unlimited waivers, but we can basically say to them, and most of these waivers you'll probably see are for the extra story to accommodate the 35 percent or whatever they're getting is their density bonus. We can do an analysis which we would do on each project and say, well, yes, you need the additional floor to get these units in, which means there's no way we can not grant a waiver. But you don't need a change in open space requirements or setbacks or something like that. And they could then say, oh, but from a financial standpoint, and then go over to the concessions side of things, but the big ticket item, which is the extra floor, could not really be denied no matter what approving body is doing it. And you mentioned less community participation. Actually, the change would provide for more opportunity for community because every single project that goes for a density bonus would have a public hearing and it would be noticed to neighbors. So on that note, in some cases, yes, it would provide additional public opportunities for public engagement. In some cases, it will mean less because we're talking about one public meeting potentially for every project, depending on how things go. So I just want to be clear about that. I think that there's some concern about that. And I do have some concern. I don't know exactly how to address it, but I hope we can at least try to identify some kind of, I mean, not to say that the process that's been set up is not meaningful community engagement, and we have another agenda item about that. And I appreciate the work that's gone into this. But meaningful engagement, at least for me, and I hear this out in the community, means that there is some kind of iterative process, that it's not simply a public hearing where information is transmitted to the community, people who choose to come, assuming they've been noticed properly and all of that is in place, but leaving without really having an opportunity to engage with a developer in early stages of planning. And I think that's something that we talked about in the Housing Looper and Subcommittee, is something that we really wanted to try to see happen. So I'm just wondering if you could speak to that. I know it's on our agenda for later, community engagement, but I'd really like to see something codified in our, if we really make these decisions about increased opportunities for density beyond the scope of the state law, that community engagement is going to happen, and how it will happen. This is not proposing to go beyond the state law. This is just proposing to go up to a maximum 35%. That is actually something the Council did request us to look into the potential of actually providing for density bonuses over the 35%. That would include, require a lot more analysis, and you would have a second chance to talk about that. But this one just is going up to state law, and I think Lee wants to talk a little bit about the community participation. Thanks. I would say that we absolutely agree with you in terms of the meaningful community input and the ability for community members to contribute early in the process where they have the best opportunity to influence the direction of the project. And so you'll hear later on in your agenda the community outreach policy that is geared towards that early community outreach. I also would like to comment on just the approval body that hears this. So what this is, what these changes would do is it actually mandates that there is a public hearing in many instances there may or I would say in a limited number of instances there are no public hearings required for these. Most of the time there is some public hearing that's already required. So if there's a PD that's associated, if it's a ownership project of five or more units, then that tentative map is going to trigger city council approval. And so there are a series of entitlements that by their very nature are going to require either planning commission and or city council approval. What the changes do is it also ensures that if we had a small project, for example, one that was just meeting the thresholds, five-unit project that is going up to six units with the density bonus, that there would be a public process in terms of the public hearing. Now what you'll hear later in the community outreach policy is that based on where that is located the city may also require that there is a community meeting for that. But if that's located in the downtown where you've got an infill project and a few units on top, that may not necessitate the same level of community involvement as something that's going into an established neighborhood. And that's why they're looked at a little bit differently. But back to this itself, the changes are intended to at least allow that public hearing in any instance where there is a state density bonus as a minimum level of hearing from the community. And in many instances, they're in most instances, I would say, they're also going to be part of that community outreach policy that's directing them towards additional outreach as well. Okay, I'm sorry, I have a lot of questions here, but I'm almost done. So another question is related to the, I just want to make sure I'm reading this correctly, that in fact there will potentially be cases where the requests for, for example, setbacks height, you know, increased height allowance. And I want to, I have a clarifying question about height and parking could come without a pro forma is that, that those, those incentives could be, and or concessions could be offered without a pro forma. And I'm trying to understand if that is the case. No, no, no, that is not the case. Unless they're, unless they're requested as waivers. So if they're requested as waivers, they do not have to provide that is not a financial issue. So you can see here on the waivers on the far side, number three on the slide here, that is if they're physically precluded from constructing those units. And so we can't require a pro forma in that instance. The concessions, I'll let, I'll let Carol jump into the concessions. Okay, basically, as I mentioned, it's 20% increase in lot coverage, 20% reduction in setback, a lot coverage again, required landscape area, required open space, reduction in off street parking just to the level that they get it reduced anyway. They, they don't have to ask for that as a concession, but because they get a small reduction. But if they're reducing their parking by substantial amount, they would have to, or more than that amount, they would have to go through that approval of a city rental housing density bonus, which is the automatic one that we have under the inclusionary ordinance and then approval of fee waivers for affordable units, which is under another ordinance. So really the only things are the 20% reductions and then the reduction of off street parking just to the level that the density bonus automatically allows. And can you remind us what that is? Because we're talking about one bedrooms going from 1.5 potentially to one unit or one space. One, okay. Yeah. Are there any other questions from Councilmember, Councilmember Crum? Yeah, can you walk me through why this kind of new system, that's, that's different, but it's one without tiers. You're getting, you're eliminating the tier system. Correct. And how is this going to be beneficial for the neighborhoods and combination that the tier system wasn't necessarily beneficial for the neighborhoods other than certain require, certain changes came automatically to the city council. But since we have built in a requirement that every single density bonus gets a noticed public hearing, it's basically covered. In fact, there's a higher degree of contact with the neighborhood and protection of the neighborhood and what's being proposed than there is in the existing ordinance because everything has to go. Any density bonus has to have a public hearing. And just in that respect, don't you have to have require public hearings now before we even make any of these changes? I mean, for the bigger projects and For the, for the bigger projects, generally, yes. There can be some instances, however, you know, the, the counseling one that came up fairly regularly as part of discussions with the HPS. There was a 16 unit project, I believe it was 16 units or so across the street from staff of life. And now, well, that didn't use the density bonus to my knowledge. That did not require a public hearing. And a project similar to that, that was using the density bonus that only, that only used a waiver or that used a tier one or multiple tier one concessions wouldn't necessarily have to have any public hearing. However, the new provisions that we're recommending would require a public hearing for those. How many units constitute a large project right now? There is no definition. So just, there's public hearings for large projects. But does that mean for every project is a public hearing or just large projects? That is not a distinguishing characteristic as to why a project triggers a public hearing or not. There are, there are some thresholds. I'll say like in certain zoning districts, it says mixed use projects with greater than 10 units, I think is, is one of the thresholds. But, but in other zoning districts, that isn't called out. So it varies by zoning district, but there isn't something that says a large project. There are some that say, if you're doing a mixed use project over certain thresholds, then you need to go to a public hearing, but it's not called a large project per se. Thanks. And I'm going back to the picture of the low income units of all the boxes. How many units will eventually be in this building that we're looking at? 27, if they get the 35% density bonus. And will those two low income units, they can be 75% of other studios or other one bedrooms or how does that work? It would depend on, well, they'd be layered on top of an inclusionary unit. So they would, if for example, 50% of the units were one bedroom units and 50% two bedroom units, that means that half of the units would be one bedroom and half would be two bedrooms. And what we would look at as staff, since there'd be one unit that would be cut in half, we'd discuss that with the developer and make sure that maybe it was a one bedroom unit, but it was a large one bedroom unit, or it could be a two bedroom unit that was maybe smaller. So we'd work with the developer for that third unit. But the two density bonus units would have to conform with what we're doing with the inclusionary units. So if we change the definition of square footage of what a one bedroom is, if it's 75% of the inclusionary, 75% of the market rate one bedroom, does that change past projects that we've previously approved that they call them studios, but now that they have this kind of square footage we're talking about, can you then call them one bedrooms? No, the square footage doesn't define the unit, how many bedrooms a unit has, the square footage defines, I mean, the number of bedrooms, the actual bedrooms that qualify as a bedroom define whether it's a one bedroom or a studio, you could have a very large studio and not maybe be the same square footage as a one bedroom, but the one bedroom has to comply with all the requirements of having a bedroom. Could you go back to the bus intervals, I just was trying to understand that 15 minute bus intervals, what does that mean, like where is the actual bus stop? For example, the Ocean Street, Water Street intersection has multiple bus lines that go through there, so during the peak hour, if you look at all of the bus routes, they have a bus that stops there at least every 15 minutes, and so that intersection qualifies. Each individual project, if they're requesting reduced parking under the near a transit stop, we'd have to do a current analysis of that intersection because the bus line always is changing their schedule, so we'd have to see if they met that 15 minute interval during the peak hour threshold. Thank you. It says in our staff report that the 75% is the average square footage is what's used here of all market rate units, and it says that's the similar to the county's 75%, so would you say that our 75% is going to be exactly like the county's current ordinance? 75% applies to city units, the city has made a, the city council hasn't tried to encourage smaller units, so hopefully we would end up with smaller units in the city because of your actions to encourage those smaller units, and therefore 75% would be smaller. More questions? Just one about setbacks. Can a developer ask for setbacks, even a setback of zero? Could that, within what we're looking at here? They can request that, yes. And would you say that that's compatible with a neighborhood that is adjoining to that zero setback? It seems kind of... They would have to prove that that's the only way that they could get either the additional units or it was the only way that it was financially feasible for them to develop the affordable units, so they would have to prove that's the only way they can do it. Thank you Mayor. Are there any additional questions or clarifying comments from council at this time? If not, we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment. This is for item number 20 on our agenda, and each member of the public will have two minutes to speak, and I will be consistent with that time frame for everybody. So public comment is now open for item number 20. Any members of the public want to speak to the council on this item? I'm back. And also I live right next to that intersection that Carol was talking about, so the thought of a zero setback, and we are an established neighborhood, but it sounds like none of this would make any difference for us. What surprised me is that only two people here asked any questions, and I wonder if you were tested to explain what this is, if you all could really do that, because it's pretty confusing and complicated, and I don't... Actually, I'm not even sure this came up so late if you're voting on this today or what, but I wonder if it's really understood the impact that taking away neighborhood protection, even more neighborhood protection like this could have. Public hearings are nice and necessary, and I totally support them, and I'm glad that's in here, but my experience is in every case, and I've been to a ton of these, it always comes down to, oh, we don't want to put more burden on the developer, and if the developer has a burden, maybe he won't do it, and it happens again and again and again, and I feel like taking away the tears, taking away the protection of the elected people, you guys, is wrong. We need that protection. This may not seem like a big change to somebody who might live in the country, but to somebody who's being impacted by Ocean Street Area Plan, who's living in a small neighborhood of single-family homes to hear this neighborhood impact discounted, and claiming that one public hearing and a little bit of posting is actually neighborhood protection. I can tell you from experience over and over and over, public hearing is nice, but it doesn't... Unless it has big teeth, it won't do anything. Thank you. Any additional comments from the public on this item? Good afternoon. I'm here to request that you do not make these changes. The tears are the very, very small mitigations for the neighborhoods, and it's disconcerting for me to realize that we're looking at more impacts to the neighborhood when we haven't even looked at the design review that came up yet. All this stuff is coming up now, but we're not looking at things that actually could help us live with the impending density that we will be facing, and also the early notification and the kinds of notification that's so important. I'm concerned to take a reduction in 75% of what the county has in terms of the size of units. We have a unique situation in Santa Cruz. We have students, three, four students in a unit, and I can imagine at that 400 square foot unit going down to 300 with three or four students in there, they may not be legally on the lease. We all know this happens in Santa Cruz, and I just can't imagine more of this kind of density in our town. I'm recommending that you do not modify the tears. They're inadequate for sure, but they're at least something that the community has, and also I would recommend that you do not further reduce the size. Thank you very much. Hi. You already started. My name is Candice Brown, East Morrissey. I'm imploring you not to pass this. I'm from east side. It's not just the major corridors that are impacted, but most of Seabright. These are multi-family zoned areas. The tears are allowed with the state mandate. It is allowed. We're not violating any state mandate. A public hearing in this case could be a zoning administrator, which is one person without any deliberation. It's a city staff. That is considered a public hearing. We saw instance recently where, at the last minute, four clauses were added on a project that had been in review for three years, and that was used to negotiate some onerous terms with another developer in that same area. You probably know what I'm talking about. It was negotiated outside that public hearing process, so therefore it was not a public hearing. But that's what comes down. We've seen tentative map after tentative map that's approved without any negotiation of affordable housing, since when has that ever been used to improve a project in any way? These are just approved. We are at the mercy of you right now, and we are imploring you not to pass this. This will have such impact. I cannot imagine what our world will look like in the next five years, and we also know a project that has not pulled building permits. It's of the size of a studio. It has not been built yet. They can put a wall, and so this will be one bedrooms according to this analysis. So to say that this project will not impact other projects, it will. I think you're making a big mistake if you vote for this, and I really implore you not to consider the east side of Santa Cruz. Thank you. Any additional speakers would like to speak to the council now is the time. Okay. Seeing none, I will return to council for deliberation and consideration. I'm looking for something in the report, so I was pulling my microphone. I'm not quite ready if you're ready. Well, I mean, I think there are a couple of areas that I want to talk a little bit more about. I mean, I have some concerns about elimination of the tier system and the assurance that this is going to lead to more community engagement. I mean, it's an empirical question yet to be answered as with many things. So I'm very uncomfortable with taking us down a path that may actually have unintended consequences for lack of a better term. So I'm going to start there. I would be interested in hearing more from staff about the public hearing process. What do we mean? And Director Butler, you said, well, some projects will obviously require more an enhanced or expanded public engagement process and others may not. I mean, it's just hard for me to wrap my mind around how that's going to be determined. At what point will the city council have a say in how that's determined? I mean, a lot of these projects may fly through without us even knowing unless we really pay attention. So I'd also like to talk about some council notification anytime a density bonus application is submitted so that we can track those and monitor them. I just have a quick question for clarification. I know that we have item number 23 that will be coming to us later in our agenda that is really about community outreach policy. Are some of these concerns going to be addressed during that time as well? They're certainly related with respect to what approval body the application goes to. The community outreach policy does not speak to that. That is strictly dictated by the zoning ordinance. So the zoning ordinance specifies that certain projects go to an administrative approval, a zoning administrator, a planning commission, or a city council. And so those are the tiers. And what this would do is it would eliminate for any projects using the density bonus, it would eliminate the ability for that to be an administrative approval, and it would, and as the speaker noted, it could be at a zoning administrator hearing. If no other approval body is required to act on that application, the planning commission, or the council. And of course that action can be appealed if it were at the zoning administrator. It could be appealed to the planning commission or it could be appealed to the council. I ask a clear and fine question. So in those circumstances, then it could still follow that same process. Then if the zoning administrator hears it, it can be appealed up to us. It can be. I think one of the things that we heard the last time was a concern, well, there is a cost with that. And there is a cost to that. But there is that ability in the zoning administrator action can be appealed to the planning commission, and then the planning commission's action can be appealed to the council. I think just a point of clarification. So as I understand this, the approval requirements, this doesn't change them. It actually makes them consistent with any other projects. So the approval stay the same. In addition, this adds another layer that isn't with the other approvals, which is that public hearing noticing requirement. So this doesn't give these projects any additional benefits as it relates to the approval process just to clarify that. It adds an additional requirement. So with respect to it, when you're looking at the approval processes, and you can clarify that, Lee, but that's the way, just to clarify that. That's correct. In most instances, the applications themselves, not the density bonus, are going to dictate that a project has to go to council, for example. If someone's doing that subdivision with five or more units being created, it's got to go to council regardless. And the tier process actually did that. The tier process actually provided for different levels of approvals. This actually makes it go back to comply with every other project. So it makes it consistent with it. Whereas the system we have now actually did that. It's variable. Exactly. With less potential possibility. Exactly. This just makes it more consistent so that it's like any other project. So density bonus or not, it doesn't necessarily give it some different kind of approval process. Okay. I want to go back to the question. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. Do you have additional questions, Councilor? Or did you feel that your question was the answer? Well, I guess I have a comment, I suppose that in theory, this is another layer. But I just feel like there's a lot of, and if we're implicit in the idea of more flexibility means the potential for less of a review process from the perspective of the public. And so I just want to be really clear about that. And I think that's why people are expressing concern here. So my question was answered in theory. Again, unintended consequences. I'm pretty sure we're going to be, if we're talking about streamlining a process, I think that we're more likely to see more appeals coming our way than not in the future. So I think we should just be ready for that as well. Any additional comments? Did you have a, sorry, before Council Member Chase, did you? Mine was actually related to tears. And so Council Member Brown got that. Okay. Council Member. Just how is public hearing defined? How do we, is it defined now and will it continue to be defined like that if it is? There are provisions in both the local ordinances as well as state ordinances that put in minimum requirements for public hearings in terms of notification. In certain instances there are publication requirements in the newspaper. In most instances there are notification requirements mailed USPS notifications. Now that isn't always the case if it's a large citywide project. For example, we're not required to mail notices to everyone in the public. But there are implications for publishing in the paper and mailing to the surrounding area. And that'll be part of, if this goes through, that people will get noticed in that way that Right. For more projects than what are currently required. So tier one wouldn't necessarily require that nor would waivers. But again, most projects end up going to a public hearing anyway by virtue of one of their requisite entitlements. So they have a design review permit or a special use permit or a PD permit or a tentative map. Something that they're doing will trigger that public hearing requirement. But there are a limited number that don't. And those wouldn't right now if there are waivers or tier one incentives or concessions, those wouldn't trigger a public hearing. And we're saying that anytime you're using the state density bonus you need to do a public hearing. You talked about appeals before appealing to the planning commission appealing to the council. How much does that cost the appellant? I believe roughly right now it's around $700 just ballpark. And so you know that the council really has an interest in affordable housing and how will eliminating the tier system and passing what's before us stimulate the production of affordable housing more than it is now or will it? So it has the potential to one it simplifies things a little bit anytime that you're making your regulations a little bit less complicated and it makes it more readily understandable to the staff, the community, the development community as well. Furthermore, I think there is a potential that it reduces the time that is associated with that. So if a project we're needing to go to the council under the tier system, but it only needs to go to the planning commission under the proposed amendment, there's a month associated with that. And some may say a month isn't a lot of time, but there is a really substantial cost both in terms of carrying costs that the affordable housing developer would have on paying the mortgage for that property as well as the opportunity cost not only of the lack of income for an additional month where they wouldn't be getting the income from the residents, but also the residents who would be moving into the affordable project that are having to be out in the market for another month. So there is a timing consideration. Is it huge? A month, maybe two on the top end, but it's something that we obviously and you all obviously hear from the developers on an ongoing basis is that timing is important and that's no different for affordable housing developers as it is for market rate developers. Same issues. And just to clarify what some people are saying, that density bonus, we are complying with state law, but eliminating the tier system has nothing to do with what the state is asking us to do or mandating. That's correct. We can maintain the tier system as we have had it. We could modify it. The tier system itself doesn't influence our compliance with state law. Just can you give me one or two reasons why we want to eliminate the tier system then? Simplification and timing. Just to sort of follow up on that, one of the things that I did hear from you then is also this is something that we can modify, adjust and evolve over time to make sure it is aligned with our community and our needs and really the intention behind the policies. So this is something we can review in three to six months from now, see how it's going, modify if it's not, producing the outcome we hope to see or meeting the needs of the community and so on over time. Since it is our discretionary policy, correct? That is correct. I would say the one thing that I would say regarding that is we don't typically see a lot of state density bonus proposals and that is consistent with other jurisdictions as well. However, I do think that that is changing and just being very blunt, I expect there are going to be more projects coming in that are proposing to use it and so if we do a review, it will be incumbent upon us to have some projects that we evaluated coming through the pipeline and so after that time we could certainly report back and say, well, here's how this project was or was not affected by the changes. I appreciate that because I'm an advocate for continuous improvement knowing that we have to be in action and are ultimately intending to continually improve things, but there are lessons learned along the way. So I appreciate that as a potential next step. Are there any further discussions or? I don't mean to be tedious, but I really want to make sure that I'm clear when we're talking about the parking. I want to just go back to that for a moment because elimination of parking, it means different things in different neighborhoods, speaking of neighborhood protection. When there is no other off-site parking available besides street parking, that means that makes a big difference in neighborhoods versus places where there may be parking garages, other parking spaces available. So I just want to be really clear and I guess I'm not sure how it could be that parking reduction could not be, how is it that a developer would come and make the case that the parking reduction is not a financial, there's no financial reason for that. It's just curious to me how that could be. I would suggest that if you want to eliminate that from that, the list that is now saying you don't need a financial performer, that wouldn't really affect things anyway because they're allowed to do the density bonus level of parking. They can also under concession ask for a further reduction in parking, but this wasn't what it was intended to cover. So I don't think it would really change the ordinance if we eliminated that particular one. Well, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Council Member Brown, what you're getting at is if someone, so a project is entitled to the lower parking ratios, but they can request to go above and beyond that. And I think what you're getting at is how would we, if they did that through concession, how would we establish that it isn't in fact making the project more financially feasible. And it is going to be very challenging because as we've talked about in many instances, parking, there is a substantial cost to it, whether it's surface parking, but particularly if it's structured parking. And so there very well could be a real argument from a developer that the parking is reduced. I think what it boils down to in many instances is that developers also want to right size their parking. And so while they can request that concession, one, they are limited by the number of concessions that they request. It's up to three based on how much affordability they're requiring. So if they're requesting other concessions, they may or may not be able to request the parking as well. But then two, they want to make sure that they have enough parking for their residents because there's going to be a demand for that parking. And so it's a balancing act, but you've hit on an important point that the city does have very limited flexibility in many of these instances where a state density bonus is being requested and either incentives or waivers are being requested. So thank you for that, but just to be clear, so it is possible for us to eliminate parking as through the waiver process is something that could be requested without a pro forma that we could require pro forma. And it currently does. So the concession that's identified right here in tier one, I'll pull the information up. I just wanted just to try to clarify. Sure. I'm speaking about so incentives. Yes, there is a pro forma required because there's financial need demonstrated. Am I getting that wrong? Only for our current tier two and tier three. So right now these tier one, which are shown up here, which is the 20% increase in lot coverage, 20% reduction in setback requirement and so forth. And it says here that a reduction in off street parking is also triggering, excuse me, is also not triggering a pro forma to be required. And I think Carol's looking it up right now, but that is the standard reduction that they're entitled to. So if they're just requesting the standard reduction, if we go down here to tier three, tier three should have, and I may need to stand corrected here because it may not actually, the parking may not require, if you give me one moment, I'm gonna, yeah, if you give me one moment, I'm gonna check the ordinance itself instead of the tiers here. Are you looking at that right now? Yeah, tier three concessions, reduction of off street parking ratios below those permitted by government code section, et cetera, et cetera. And it's basically anything that goes below the basic amount required under the density bonus ordinance by the state would have to would require pro forma. Yeah, so what I said, what I said was correct. I'm looking at this here, tier three concessions, reduction of off street parking ratios below those permitted by the government code so that they have the government code by right. And if they're going below that, then they would have to provide a pro forma and they would still be required to provide pro forma. That hasn't changed in this project. Thank you. Yeah, I know that was tedious. I really just needed to. Sorry, that's a lot of detail and a lot of different options. So appreciate the patience as we looked up those codes. Okay. Any further discussion or councilmember willing, ready to move the item or? I will. Yeah, I appreciate all the detail. And just to state the obvious, this is a first reading and there's very often additional thought and changes when we get to the final reading as well. And clearly, this is the case where the both the council and community interests in promotion of affordable housing and providing meaningful opportunities for neighborhood input and compatibility on projects are crashing up against each other. And we all understand the drive to make a significant movement in the affordable housing to the extent we can. I think taken as a whole this through the provision for public hearings for all of the projects is actually an additional protection for the neighborhood interests, all of which have been mentioned and and do provide simplicity, greater simplicity and timing that relates to to cost. So I'm going to go ahead and move the recommendation as presented for the first reading understanding that we're going to give this a lot of thought as we go towards the second reading. So motion by councilmember Matthews second by councilmember Chase. Any further discussion by the council? What did you mean by the affordable housing crashing up against the Well as we make all the concessions and waivers greater density. These are things that are of concern to neighbors, neighborhoods particularly and they are also components in the ability to provide affordable housing, deeper affordability, more affordable units. It's a pretty clear formula. I don't see it that way. I think what's before us I believe is not good for the community and it's going to lead to increased traffic, increased use of the water, it's going to add considerable market rate units to our housing stock but I don't see again much affordability being asked for from the developers. I think if what's on the candidate in public agendas for this fall election it's about affordable housing and homelessness. I don't think this council is addressing it with these ordinance amendments that are before us. If we seriously want to address those two issues and improve the housing stock in Santa Cruz, eliminating the tier system is not the way to do it. I think the tier system is in place to work with the level of how those neighborhoods are going to be affected, the impacts on those neighborhoods, the level of impacts on those neighborhoods and I think that's what the tier system actually addresses. Eliminating the tier system will lead to less neighborhood input, not more. I won't be supporting these recommendations. Okay. I'll make some brief comments. Thank you. I am in support of this after a year and a half of hearing from the community and working with our committee on this. This is very complicated but in specific around the tier system one of the things that I consistently heard and I think we heard as well from outreach is that the variability that exists in these processes which are already really complicated makes it very difficult for the general public to engage in these processes in a meaningful way and so I am in support of trying this new process in conjunction with what's proposed in item 23 which we haven't quite gotten to yet. Well we'll talk more about meaningful early engagement of the community in way more projects than they've been engaged in now with much more wider noticing and more opportunities to really at the point where you can really impact projects before they're approved. So I'm in support of this. I know that it's complicated. I know that it is not something that everybody fully supports but this is on our way to developing more housing in our community and that is what we ultimately need. Any additional comments from council members or are we prepared to vote at this time? Yeah, I mean affordability isn't written straight into this because we all know to get affordability you're going to need some subsidies and we know that the state has passed several bills that are going to be allowing subsidies to come to communities so we can partner with developers. So it's hard to write in those specifics in in this tier three plan and like council member Chase said I'm really excited about the community engagement item that is coming up that I think will address a lot of the issues that people see in tier three in regards to engaging with the neighborhood. So I think I can get behind this and obviously we have a second reading and I'm open to hearing you know any sort of other ideas in between now and then. A quick comment since I've dominated this for long enough you know I just want to say I you know I really appreciate all of the work and thinking that's gone into it and I like council member Chase you know I have learned a lot and and have a pretty good sense of the intention of the planning department in moving in this direction. However the more I it feels like the more I learn the less I actually know about how this is all going to work and you know there are a lot of unknowns here and so I can't say that I'm prepared to support the motion today I do look forward to having a conversation in the interim before a second reading to see if there are some areas that can be clarified for me. Additionally I don't want to put us through any more of that right here today but and also some ideas about ensuring that the council does have timely information as these you know as we get an increase in density bonus applications over time and some formalized report back so hopefully we can work on that in the interim and but for today I just I don't feel comfortable saying yes without knowing more. And I can remind the council members that the staff is always available for these types of items for individual meetings to help clarify this type of complex kind of content and how we can be best prepared for the time when it comes before us so just to remember that that is something that we have available to us and yeah I was going to suggest that if if there are questions or clarifications that you need just please go ahead or even the public just go ahead and submit them to us so we can be prepared for the second reading assuming this goes through and be able to have that all in advance so that again those clarifications and information can be provided at your next meeting. If I could just say one more thing you know I appreciate that and so I think part of the unfortunate piece of this is in making a decision there are a lot of questions I have that probably can't be answered until we actually put something into practice so I'm still grappling with that as well and so I just wanted to be clear that it's I don't think that staff hasn't been forthcoming with information and it's part of the more I know the less I understand. It is complicated after all so let's look at it for everybody so to the extent that we can help. I agree I agree and I know that there's the unknowns and sometimes it's about just being in action and figuring things out. Councilmember Cronin we'll go ahead and vote. Thank you. I agree and I know that you're there's well intention to point to staff and I and I think I do ask them a good deal of questions but my orientation to politics is that this is the public arena where we I think can debate and talk amongst ourselves because we can only talk to two other council members that you raise questions in this in public so the public can see you raising those questions and that you are actually like doing your homework and wanting to engage them and I think that it's really important that asking questions of staff that people in the community have asked us I've had a dozen people this week say they watch it on TV believe it or not I'm watching right now and they would like you know to know that there is a level of conversation amongst council members and that how public policy is made that there is engagement amongst the council as well so many times if I'm bringing forth an issue I really do want to hear from other council members and from staff in public. Yeah it's the healthy balance okay at this time unless there's any further discussion we'll go ahead and vote on the island before us all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay so that passes with council member brown and council member crone opposed and mayor david trousers absent okay so we now have a a tree permit appeal item number 21 before us I would like to take a five minute break as we transition thank you and we'll see you in a stretch 11th inning what is it seventh inning stretch okay so next step on our agenda is item number 29 21 excuse me 21 which is public hearing for the tree permit appeal for 1420 King Street this this item is an appeal which will be conducted as followed staff will present their report the appellant will have 15 minutes to speak and present evidence in support of the appeal opponents or the responding applicant will have 15 minutes to speak and present evidence public comment will be two minutes the appellant will have five minutes to rebut and then we will return to council for deliberation and action so at this time I will turn it over to staff for the presentation thank you Leslie Keady city urban forester so the recommendation before you is either a resolution upholding the appeal submitted by Sally Schultz reversing the parks and recreation commission approval of a tree removal permit okay pardon me just for one second apologize okay for jumping right in it came to my attention earlier that there was a request to postpone this item so before we get into it we will hear what that is and take that into consideration I apologize it was recommended to have the appellant and the applicant talk to council to request a possible postponement of the item just to clarify there was a request that came into the city clerk I believe yesterday by the applicant to continue the hearing to give the applicant further time to prepare um city clerk consulted with my office and I advised that whether or not the matter could be continued would be up to the discretion of the city council if the council is interested in hearing from the applicant on whether or not to grant a continuance this would be the time to do so uh if you do my recommendation would be to give the appellant an opportunity to respond to the request uh and that would be before you start hearing the matter on its merits okay so uh council I see the people shaking their heads no that's not what they want okay so if um if the person who requested the postponement or the continuous wants to state come on up communication we inquired what would be the process if we wanted to postpone it and you informed us of what the process was but we actually decided not to postpone it yeah sorry if that confused you but we appreciate that you remembered thank you there we go thank you and thank you for looking into it staff and we'll go ahead and proceed as planned so right now we're on the portion that is the staff presentation on this item thank you so uh to reiterate the recommendation is two part either you would uh adopt a resolution upholding the appeal submitted by sally schultz reversing the parks and recreation commission approval of a tree removal permit application number 18-0077 submitted by Eduardo Toledo and Victoria Sanchez to remove one giant sequiatry at 1420 King Street or you would adopt a resolution denying the appeal submitted by sally schultz and upholding the parks and recreation commission approval of tree removal permit 18-007 submitted by Eduardo Toledo and Victoria Sanchez to remove one giant sequiatry at 1420 King Street so a bit of background on April 26th of 2018 Eduardo Toledo and Victoria Sanchez submitted an application requesting the removal of one heritage size giant sequiatry in their front yard at 1420 King Street the property owner reasons to request tree removal in summary were foundation damage which had been fixed but which would likely occur in their opinion sidewalks are starting to lift neighbors plumbing issues and their front yard is useless the application included an inspection report for the home and a letter from a landscape professional who recommended tree removal i inspected the application and at city staff's request the property owners performed a route examination to provide information to document the foundation damage and they opened that area up demolished a concrete patio walkway and undug and exposed the routes staff observed large routes however its staff's opinion these routes could be pruned and eliminated and that a root barrier system could be considered to lessen the chance of reoccurring damage the exposed routes do not appear to be adversely impacting the structure in my opinion and it is my opinion also that the application to remove the tree should be denied as it does not meet the requirements per resolution ns23710 exhibit a1c1 and additionally i feel that this tree is eligible candidate for the heritage tree grant program which could be utilized for root pruning a root barrier system and also any maintenance on may 11th of 2018 the applicants filed an appeal of my staff decision and included a detailed letter in your packet to support their appeal on june 4th 2018 the parks and recreation commission held a hearing on the tree appeal i as staff presented items and information and they deliberated and upon consideration of my presentation and the information provided at the hearing the commission had a differing interpretation than staff on the resolution ns23710 uh 710 pertaining to criterion standards as to when trees are approved for removal and the commission decided that the home had been damaged by the tree in the past and that there was a likelihood of property damage and that the tree was an inappropriate size species for their lot and that ultimately would require removal at some point due to size and ongoing damage potential so the commission reversed my denial and voted 6 to 1 to approve the removal of the one giant sequoia tree and on june 13th 2018 sally schultz filed an appeal of the parks and recreation decision to reverse the staff denial of the tree request and she included a letter in your packet and this is my presentation so again it's 1420 king street appeal of the parks and rick commission approval of application 18077 to remove one giant sequoia tree staff findings a sequoia tree is approximately 50 feet tall with a db h or diameter breast height of 53 inches the tree is well balanced of normal size and color with typical branching structure the trunk is sound and solid with a minor list or lean in the upper crown there were no insects and only minor disease present which is typical for this species i also provided in your packet a second opinion a peer review submitted my mr. james allen which as a similar arbor cultural interpretation is what i have this is the tree looking at it in the front yard of 1420 king street this is another angle that shows the minor lean of the upper crown other staff findings tree roots are evident and mostly parallel to the foundation tree roots have been pruned and removed in the past by the previous owner and the foundation has been repaired only minor roots have regenerated in the areas where they were previously eliminated it is not obvious that the potential cracks in the foundation are currently associated three roots also the inspection report for the home does not draw complete nexus to the cracks is being specifically caused by the tree it talks about seismic activity and overall settling of the foundation is also damaged potential for the cracks these are the very large roots after they demoed the walkway patio area adjacent to the home that you will see after the demo and again they are mostly parallel to the foundation and i didn't see any cracks in the foundation that were obviously attributed to tree roots this is just another angle of the root matrix it's the same amount of roots that were under the patio area parallel to the foundation and then they continue going under another paved walkway area towards the rear of the property this is where some of the roots were pruned in the past by the previous owner you can see that root has been pruned and this is the regeneration of root pruning and it's very nominal this is where another root had been pruned away from the foundation and there is no regeneration staff findings tree roots are present on the surface of the neighbor's lawn the neighbor has potential concerns about root impacts to her sewer system the roots have impacted the public sidewalk which appears to be minor at this time these are the surface roots in the neighbor's yard these are the minor cracks in the sidewalk area which it could be from the sequoia tree but it's possible that these cracks were also caused by the trees that were in these cutouts in the sidewalk before the crepe myrtles were put in and i actually gave these crepe myrtles to the previous owner more staff findings the tree is approximately 15 feet from the owner's structure the tree is approximately 25 feet from the neighbor's structure staff recommends a root pruning the roots that are parallel to the foundation and installing a root barrier system upon approval the heritage tree grant program can be utilized to protect the home address any potential sewer impacts and for any sidewalk repair this is the tree proximity to the home approximately 15 feet and the proximity to the neighbor's home of approximately 25 feet and at this distance i feel that a root barrier panel would be something that would allow the tree to coexist with the structures recommendation that the city council upholds the parks and rec creation commission decision to approve the tree removal of one giant sequoia or that the city council reverse the parks and recreation commission decision to approve tree removal and denies the tree permit application to remove one giant sequoia which was the initial recommendation made by staff and i'm bound to resolution as to how i determine my decisions and the findings i would have to make are the heritage tree has or is likely to have an adverse effect on the structural integrity of a building utility or public or private right away physical condition or health of the tree such as disease and infestation warrants alteration or removal or a construction project design cannot be altered to accommodate existing heritage trees and i don't believe that the findings have clearly been met in this case for this resolution and i feel that the roots can be pruned and the tree in the structure can coexist and that concludes my presentation thank you okay at this time the appellant will have up to 15 minutes to speak and present evidence in support of the appeal just a quick question sure um uh james allen you mentioned his name was he working for the city or was he how did he get involved because i know he's a very noted arborist in town very well known yeah i in the past when we've had tree appeals um both commission and council in the past have asked if i was the only arborist to investigator look at these and um so i obtained a peer review on this um from mr allen my other question is how much is a root barrier cost was it contained that information here i didn't see it uh well it depends where they would put it and so uh gosh i would probably i'd guesstimate it might be about four thousand dollars to do the front portion and the side of the home uh could be about three would a heritage tree grant cover that yes it would cover 50 percent of a total of that and not to exceed five thousand dollars total thank you mayor could you just um respond Leslie on the are the roots typically for these types of trees i know the ones you referenced from the neighbor's yard were surface roots is that typical are they deeper well it always depends on your soil profile and if you have clay below the grade or if it's sandy soils sandy soils promote a deeper soil profile for root development and growth so most of the case these trees are fairly deep rooted because they're native to the sear and about a mountain range where they are drought tolerant so um it's my suspicion that you would have a combination of some surface roots because they're coming up to get the lawn water or landscape water but um when they did the root exam we didn't really see too many roots which were surface which would lead me to conclude that the bulk of these roots actually are subsurface and fairly deep thank you would you recommend to someone in a residential neighborhood to plant this type of tree as part of landscaping or just something that you would do to enhance your yard if you were looking to plant trees i don't generally recommend tree species for anything out of our public right of way that's more of a landscape professional or a private sector arborist opinion but um it is a very large tree species um when you bring the giant sequoia out of the sear and about a mountain range and you put it down in Santa Cruz next to the ocean where it's not um endemic or it's not an area where these trees generally grow it's unlikely that this tree will get to be as huge as the general Sherman or some of these other large kings canyon sequoias they also are impacted by our fog and the moisture in our climate and so that slows the growth rate they also are subject to a pathogen that's a fungal pathogen that also slightly stunts the growth on these trees um so it's it is a big tree species but it's not going to be as large as the ones that are in the native habitats so it sounds like you know it won't grow as tall as the general Sherman's kind of an extreme comparison and i've i've been up there so it sounds like this tree could grow more oh it'll grow more uh there's uh i'd say maybe five or six in our community it's a fairly rare species for our community and um the largest ones in our community might be 20 feet taller so not too much larger in growth um diameter so it sounds like the type of tree that say a landscaper um probably wouldn't recommend somebody put in the yard unless it's a bigger area in which like someone who has maybe a pretty enormous size backyard yes it is a very large tree species proportional for the lot size and i would say most landscape professionals would assert that thank you there aren't any additional questions at this time we'll move on to the next portion of the process and that is the appellant which will have 15 minutes to speak and present evidence in support of the appeal thank you good afternoon um i'm sally shills i've lived in the west side for over 38 years and i am appealing the decision of the parks and recreation commission to allow the tree at 1420 to be cut down because according to the staff report as the conditions for the tree removal have not been met we have so few of these trees left that possess such stature and beauty the tree is in good health and has been admired and appreciated by the community for many years the city arborist assessed the situation and recommended use of proper root pruning and root barriers to address the concerns the report stated that the proper root pruning would not destabilize the tree in fact the city arborist stated that this is one of the healthiest coyotes in the county this recommendation was made by a professional city arborist there is also a second one that leslie mentioned a second certified arborist who also concurred with the original findings i have had several friends that have mitigated large tree root problems with much success under the heritage tree ordinance that uh which leslie also pointed out there are you know it needs to be of a qualifying size and unusually beautiful a distinct specimen and a rare or unusual species and provides valuable habitats the decision by the park in order to remove the tree is based on resolution and as 23 710 exhibit a the heritage tree has or is likely to have an adverse effect on the structural integrity of a building utility or public right of way no evidence was submitted that the tree roots were adversely affecting the foundation of the house the only submission was a home exception reciting foundation damage that contains no mention of tree roots and no invoices for repair included it seems that the owners the new owners seem to be fear-based and not fact-based the city arborist gave clear options to respond to any concerns including a root barrier system and responsible root pruning both are industry standards and protecting structures and for protecting structures and preserving trees i am besides the 135 signatures that signed the petition to save the tree i have another 90 to submit to the council here over the over on 89 members have signed this petition to save this majestic heritage tree i hope you are encouraged to do the same thank you thank you and you're welcome to submit the additional documents to our city clerk okay okay at this time the opponents or the responding applicant will have up to 15 minutes to speak and present evidence good afternoon my name is victoria sanchez and this is my husband aduardo teletto and i'd like to start off by thanking you the city council for the opportunity to address the safety issue for my family and neighbors who live on the west side first of all i'm very concerned that today's tree permit appeal is being used for political purposes and then it's become part of a bigger political agenda that might that has my family and our neighbors in the crosshairs this was organized by sally schultz who is in her own words as she said to me going to have her first dog fight my family is not interested in being on the receiving end of a dog fight we did not ask for my husband and i encountered salary want sally wandering our street trying to collect signatures for a petition we were surprised when we heard from some of our neighbors of this tactic we invited her to come see our tree issue and hear the information from us she hesitated and came and seemed quite surprised to see the magnitude of the tree roots and to hear other info about the case she was not aware of how could she be aware of those issues when she doesn't live in or near our home nor has spoken to us or any of the neighbors who have expressed repeated concern about their own safety regarding the gigantic sequoia tree we clarified that as a solo peeler she had the right to withdraw her appeal if this added info now changed her mind but she claimed she couldn't because the ball was already rolling with some big people and others involved this is concerned us because why were big people getting involved in our family's safety matter i don't even know who they are we asked her to extend invitation on our behalf to those people to come see and hear directly from us but oddly enough she later informed us via text that her comrades were not interested we found the use of the term comrades very perplexing and disturbing because we thought we were community not adversaries why wouldn't people want to have all the facts about an issue and learn about what is at stake for the families involved it really made me wonder so it leads me to believe that this appeal has nothing to do with our specific situation and has a predetermined agenda that focus on their say of the trees packed one whose passion i can admire but it's disregarding public safety and our particular case at hand so we want to remind you city council members to please look at this as its own individual unique case that is a grave safety issue for our neighbors and us as well as a financial burden we ask that you consider everything here carefully with an open mind and with logic and being reasonable such as the park and rec commission did when they decided with a nearly unanimous six to one vote i repeat a six to one vote to grant the tree permit they voted this way because they saw the danger posed by this giant sequoia to our family in the community they logically and unemotionally saw that an inappropriate scaled non-native tree caused damage to the structure and will continue to do so with the roots that are heading straight to the pillar connected to the roof they saw dangers of problems with city infrastructure mainly sewer lines and sidewalks they saw the temporary nature of the proposed root barrier which fails to address the issues on the neighbor side and the sidewalk that keeps raising every day even higher so this is an increasingly expensive battle that this tree would cause for the owners and city alike they saw the private property components and the undue increasing financial burden clean being placed on a single family they did not want to in their own words just keep kicking the can down the road yes please so i ask you to set aside all the biased political chatter you might hear today and focus on this individual situation first of all we'd like to start by saying we are nature lovers our family hikes camps beachcombs and participates in junior guards we understand and respect the importance of trees in our community and environmental science so let that be very clear edwardo and i are both first generation university graduates i'm the proud daughter of immigrants and edwardo himself is an immigrant to this country we have worked very hard as individuals and as a family to get to where we are today we are very proud to have purchased a home on king street and while this physical structure is important and paramount because it contains our life savings our family and their safety are even more important we decided to move to the west side of town last spring because this is where our life is centered our kids go to school on the west side our friendships are there etc at the time when we purchased the home we were told the previous owner was dealing with a terminally ill that the terminal health issue and we should try not to bother them with too many questions later some months after moving in and obviously after us go crowsed closed our neighbor chris parsa who'll talk later told us about this destabilizing root job that was performed by the previous owner so we realized this tree although it's beautiful and we love it has become a ticking time bomb and a nuisance in fact there should have been a proactive forward-thinking city ordinance in place requiring permits permits before residents can plant non-native trees like an invasive giant sequoia in a dense neighborhood so we're going to give you a little bit of background about the sequoias themselves first all right so thank you i'm just going to walk quickly because of interest of time but i'm just so you have an illustration in front of you you see the sequoia it's right in the middle the giant sequoia so these trees can grow up to 300 feet high okay so that's the equivalent to a 27-story building just imagine that having in front of your house the tree itself right now is 60 50 to 60 feet high so it's going to continue to grow to five times what it is today five six times okay the tree by nature is invasive okay the tree roots can actually someone asked the question about the roots the roots themselves can actually go one acre in the square footage okay this is according to the california national parks okay so the tree itself is very invasive and you can see it so let's carry on quickly okay so really quickly sequoia has grown a forest and their roots intertwine with each other so they help support each other our tree is a single tree and has no other trees to help support it so it appears to also be trying to intertwine with some of the plumbing in our poor neighbor's yard and we assume it's heading towards the sewage under king street to the sewer lines if it's not already there we have no way of knowing but that's definitely a potential hazard that could already be a hazard if a sequoia falls in the forest it opens up a patch of light in the canopy where the tree used to be the other trees compete to get to the top of the canopy our tree has no competition and nothing blocking the light so it is growing faster even though it's not in it's in its native area and because it grows faster the rings are wider less strong and more susceptible to storms and wind in addition we have a lot of ground water that comes down from the maramar hills area our neighbor has a well behind his house we often see the water going down the street and we were told by various people in the industry that are not certified arborist because no arborist wanted to come and talk in front of city council so we couldn't get an opinion to give you we tried very hard they said that this tree is accessing groundwater and so it's just sucking it up it's not it's got nothing to compete with and it's really spreading its roots very far so this is our home right here right so you can see we're in a corner lot right the tree it's massive it's actually uh tilt right so it has a list i'm not sure how safe that list is but it is there and it's very not not not noticeable many people can see that also another point to take into consideration is unfortunately our house was built in 1929 our neighbor's house was built in 1917 back then they did not use rebars on the foundation so anything that starts pressing against the foundation will crack it and that's what's happening with the roots so again any any pressure will just crack it immediately okay so this is the tree itself so you can see i was trying to put a graphical representation of where the tree should be how much is tilt and right now we're at 60 feet high 50 to 60 feet high if you were to take this now to 100 feet remember keep in mind this tree can grow to 300 feet high okay you're gonna actually stop at 200 because i just didn't want to keep going right you can see the the tree completely leaning on our house completely leaning on our neighbor's house all of our bedrooms are actually on the right side of the house so that's where we sleep if these three were to fall at night our whole family will be killed okay so yes so you get an understanding also the tree the tree right now did some calculations online the tree weighs about 30 000 pounds right now as it is okay keep that in mind so keeping that in mind i want to read you the letter of what our neighbor told us some months after we moved in leslie the city arbor's had been out a few times checking on everyone's concerns about the tree and chris parser writes one day about two years ago michelle wash the previous owner hired day laborers from san lorenzo lumber and they used power tools and jack cameras to dig about five feet into the ground and remove roots of the tree on her side of the property so that she could build a patio of decomposed granite material which you see here i became extremely alarmed and worried about the safety of this operation but she wouldn't stop permits were never obtained so this was done in preparation to sell the house to us and we had no way of knowing because you know like we said we weren't allowed to ask many questions and what seller in the market that santa cruises had in the last years is going to give permission for someone to dig up their entire yard we know that's unrealistic to be able to check that so somewhere the ball was dropped between the city and this owner there should have been more communication and monitoring to avoid the situation we weren't privy of this how would we be so we had the arborists come out to see the tree as soon as we'd heard the story and um the arborist said that the tree was obviously inappropriate for this size law and would need to come out at some point i'm betting that jay allen the other now famous arborist would agree yet the city arborist denied the permit why probably because we'd already fixed the foundation so she claimed she couldn't see the damage it wasn't visible in the home inspection or claimed in the home inspection as being such my understanding is a home inspector is not an arborist so he wouldn't legally be able to claim that the receipts of the repairs and all the routes going straight under the pillar attached to the roof so because we're diligent homeowners who take care of things proactively we feel we were penalized and had we been like the previous homeowner and let everything sit to the point of the serious situation we're in now perhaps we would have been granted the permit where the arborist very own eyes could see the damage so as the park and rec commission member said this is just kicking the can down the road the expense of the tree and its removal is only growing by the minute and it's putting our kids and our family and our neighborhood in danger because if this falls down and it kills someone who you know we as owners and the city are going to be held liable and i don't think anyone here appealing this or anyone on city council would want to have that on that kind of tragedy on their conscience okay so we understand trees are alive and important and that's why we've agreed to replace the tree and we just want to make sure that the city council is looking at this as an individual case my husband will talk about why the root barrier is is failing to address all of the issues basically it would have to be a 360 degree root barrier to stop increasing cost for us as owners and for the city grant program which um even is quoted in 2016 july 13th uh kitty says the program disappeared for a few years this isn't a good times article during the economic downturn contains 25 000 k down from 50 k in the early 2000s so we can't count on this program to help us pay and it only pays for half of the cost and the 5 k doesn't even cover the sidewalk repair at the moment it's over 10 000 and as one family in a city of 50 000 we obviously aren't allowed to suck up the whole grant program that wouldn't even be legal or fair so it's just not a feasible reason or a way to address this issue okay so i was just going through some some images right so you guys can see the damages so the foundation was repaired the quote of actually the the invoice was attached to the ring only package that we submitted so that was there we had to remove the patio right because we had to expose all these roots that were there water was getting into the foundation as well we have a lot of cracks so some of the council members got a chance to walk the property they saw the cracks on the wall the walls are cracking because of the the roots right so let me just kind of go through this quickly yeah so so this is i just put a small illustration on where our house is where you have the tree in the middle right so the tree has a five and a half diameter rim right now so in order for us to do a safely prune of the roots we need to go three to five three to five times the diameter of the the tree away from the the base of the tree right so that means we have to go anywhere from 16 and a half to 27 and a half feet away from the base of the tree which means the barrier that was suggested 90 degree barrier that was suggested needs to be in our living room in addition to that our neighbor's house was never addressed the sidewalk was never addressed king and streaks were never addressed so it's anyways so we just want to make sure that all this is considered and we don't think it's fair to expect one family to keep this up for the city at their own expense and what's potentially going to be the city's expense because we're doing everything we can to mitigate the expense and the danger and if we are not able to get a permit then our hands are tied and then you know what are we going to do so we really want this to be considered it's going to be expensive every day that goes by it's going to be more expensive for us and for the city because it's going to cost thousands and followers more to remove the tree and it's going to cause more damage and I don't understand why we'd be expected to use up our kids college savings we have two kids we have retirement savings so that in a few years we'll be back here and you'll tell us okay yeah now you can remove it now we see it and this is a safety issue so it's a liability issue as well so we really hope you'll consider all this and all the reasons that the park and rec commission already granted the permit and see that it's the most logical reasonable thing to do in the best interest of us and the city thank you thank you okay so at this time we will open it up for public comment any member of the community can speak to the council on this item you will have two minutes to do so and if you will line up or gather on the on my left hand side of hello i just happened to be here but i heard about this uh tree again i'm trees are a big part of our community and um this is an iconic tree on the west side i mean everybody knows this tree um these property owners um purchased the property i believe about a year ago when they bought the property they were entitled to full disclosures about the tree and they bought it obviously knowing the tree was there um to say now that all of a sudden they don't really understand the problems with this property is being a bit naive um the picture they showed of the tree falling on the house was not the same kind of tree by the way so i think it's a little misleading and i also think that they're making it very personal with them in the community when you go into a community and especially when i went into the east side community and moracy um my neighbors didn't really talk to me for a long time i had to earn some respect i had to be there in the community for a long time and i had to learn about the community by being and existing in that community and i feel like maybe that's not happening here this is a beautiful tree and it deserves to be saved thank you my name is richard stover i live on king street about a block from this tree i want to bring to the council's attention the impact cutting down the sequoia would have on the city's climate action efforts promoting co2 captured by trees is one of the easiest things we can do to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change to investigate the impact of cutting down this tree i have estimated the amount of co2 captured in this tree with new growth each year to make the results understandable i compare the sequoia to the remove the sequoia removal to the city grant program of planting 500 trees to keep things simple i'll compare the sequoia to the new redwoods of the size leslie is planning is currently planting the analysis shows that in the first year after removal of the sequoia the co2 that would have been captured is equal to about 84 of leslie's newly planted redwoods you may be aware that the condition of the grant is 100 survival zero trees lost the removal of the single giant sequoia is the same as the loss of 84 trees in that first year if not killed the giant sequoia will continue to grow and each year will capture even more co2 than the year before in 10 years the amount of co2 captured each year would increase by about one-third of course if the giant sequoia is killed all that co2 is not captured instead we get ever-growing negative climate consequences from co2 left in the atmosphere the welfare of the city its residents and the world i ask you to uphold the appeal and save this valuable tree thank you hello i'm nathan kennedy and i think what we should do with this is if they are allowed to remove this tree we we should use get it used for lumber purposes or can be made into paper parts for houses or whatever but just one tree into the bunch that we need as a society so just if but if they end up a lot being allowed to take this tree down i'd say they should be made to plant several other trees like a minimum of at least five but several other trees in well in areas that are already well marked for not invading the our streets our houses and stuff but five at least five trees in an appropriate place would be good and you know if this tree has to get cut down which it looks like it does then we at least need to make sure that this tree is put to good use thank you good afternoon council members thank you for being here today and listening to all of us i know what it's like as a former council member and i'd like to just say i am a 49-year resident of the city of santa cruz and i'm speaking in support of upholding the tree appeal of sally schultz you have the over 200 signatures that have been submitted by members of our community to ask you to save this tree and i would say that um you have also the your city arborist recommendation and the recommendation of jane's allen a certified arborist who says the tree can be saved i'd like to mention briefly that in terms of the sidewalk there are many sidewalks in this city in much worse condition than that including many on walnut street that i have to walk on frequently i'd like to mention our personal positive experience on our escalona drive property with root barriers we have a for example a liquid amber tree which was uprooting our neighbor's driveway and we had it um we had it root uh root barrier put in the driveway was fixed and um it's happened 17 years ago that driveway is exactly where it is was before and there's no damage to our tree no damage to any building or any property my husband will address another root barrier that we've had put in on our property and so i think it's just um i think what we need to think about are the kinds of things that richard stover just talked about which is the benefits of the urban forest i hope you read the article that was in your and your packet about the benefits of the urban forest and the state urban forestry code emphasizes the importance of carbon sequestration and that's not a minor concern and the city's grant of course means that you are going to be in the business of planting more trees thank you thank you please uphold the tree appeal and thank you for your time thank you okay next speaker good afternoon council members i'm peter scott living also with my wife on the escalino drive um i wanted to tell you about a eucalyptus tree that's growing uh on our property and was growing there when i bought the property in 1972 which is what 46 years ago i guess um it's a very large eucalyptus tree we have several eucalyptus trees on our property but this is probably the largest of them it sits next to our garage it was uh destroying the floor of our garage it uh is a tree that is well i measured it by measuring the length of a string around it and dividing by pi the diameter is 44 inches it's a very large tree um it's uh turns out to be uh 20 inches away from the foundation of our garage about that far it's a home or a roosting place for birds it's um it was as i mentioned uh causing problems with the floor of our garage it was there before the house was built the garage was built in 1940 um but uh so what do we do about it well it turned out that uh uh leslie keedy had an idea which is you when we took out the rocks in the bottom of the garage here's the root of this big eucalyptus tree it's about this big in diameter what do we do about that we were low to cut it off i'll i'll stop and i just want to finish this one story you know thank you so much i i i've i feel very strongly that we have to have equity of voice and i try to stick consistently to the two minutes and you've had your two minutes so i i appreciate your comments and you no longer have any more time so thank you very much and i'm going to ask the next speaker to come up thank you okay next next speaker please hey um don't start my net am i starting oh okay i'm chris parsa i'm the neighbor i'm the neighbor on the receiving side of the list in the tree and i've lived in my i purchased my home in november 1999 so i'm going on 19 years in the neighborhood i feel i'm very well established i know all the neighbors on my block down several several blocks uh my children were born in the house my daughter's starting college in a few weeks so we have a very large presence in our in our immediate street when i first bought the house it was a beautiful tree it's still a beautiful tree it was not a very noticeable tree it began a very rapid growth around 2010 the first time i called leslie to say i was concerned i noticed a list in the tree the tree was growing very rapidly it began to encroach into my yard it destroyed my sprinkler system i was told by the plumber there were tree roots in my sewage line leslie came out she looked she recommended to the owner then to periodically measure the list of the tree to help me with my anxiety i started moving my son to the back of the house whenever there were storms i was very very concerned we had the el nino years that's been going on and on i've been living next to a homeowner that would sneak things in hire people from san lorenzo lumber do all kinds of things my next contact with leslie was about two years ago when she hired day laborers as victoria explained started digging with jackhammers in at the roots on her side i was already concerned about the stability of the tree i really almost went crazy calling leslie like you have what is going on she wants to build a patio it was all covered up actually the only unaltered roots are on my property mine is the only side i have the list and i've never cut any roots they've taken over my yard i feel like i i just feel like i'm being forced into this situation you know it wasn't an issue when i bought the home we live in santa cruz i don't feel like i should have to defend myself i live in santa cruz because i love nature my family loves nature that's why we're all here but i believe the spirit thank you very much reasonable thank you okay next speaker please hi thank you so much to the council for hearing my comments my name is silvana falcone i am also a resident on the west side i'm making these comments on behalf of myself and my husband dr matthew layman who could not be here today i've known this family four years the our pillars in the community our children have grown up together to insinuate that somehow they're not community oriented people is really really upsetting they are not anti-environmentalists they understand climate change science these are good people the tree in question is not natural to king street and i think that's been made clear it's a tree that was planted by two previous owners by people who may not have a fully appreciated or consulted with the specialists about the potential harm or the consequences of planting an individual giant sequoia tree long term and the harm that they may be causing future homeowners like the toledos the proposed plan is clear the current owners will consider the future and would replace the tree that was planted decades ago by previous owners without that fort site it is a sensible solution to a massive problem those who've taken the step of signing this petition that has circulated have done so without getting this family side of their financial hardships or the security and safety realities perhaps they should talk to them to hear from them directly and have some compassion and empathy regarding the the financial and safety issues facing the toledos and their neighbors the toledo should not be expected to undertake the burdens of city climate action plans it's not their individual responsibility to do so for the city to ask this family to undergo serious financial hardships for a tree that is not natural to this area is extreme it sends a message to working families in the city that it does not matter how much you give back it does not matter how much you work it doesn't matter how much you contribute to the community it sends a message that you were expected to take extenuating financial burden for a heritage tree that again should never have been planted in the first place thank you okay next speaker please is there anybody else who would like to speak to the council on this item okay okay hello my name is andrew harris i live across the street i'm at 1504 king i've lived there for 25 years over the 25 years i've watched drainage problems i've watched sidewalks uh on the side of the house between chris's house and victoria's house lifted uh i've seen water damage under the house i've seen the sidewalk lift on king street uh i'm i'm somewhat concerned about our newly paved king street which is so lovely and smooth at this moment um there is a pronounced lean towards chris's house every time there's a storm it's obviously anxious making i actually lived in a tree or lived in a house when i was in college and a tree did fall on the house it it certainly does happen anyway i think the tree is out of scale for the neighborhood and i hope you can let victoria and edwardo remove the tree thank you very much thank you okay and unless there's anybody else who wants to speak to the council on this item you will be our last speaker hi my name is debbie bolcher i live a block away from this tree i've lived there for 25 years and um i hope you make your decision based on science and fact and not emotion we've had a lot of emotion today the fact is is root barriers work and it's sad it's very sad i know most of the neighbors that have spoken and it's sad that the new owners are afraid of the tree that they have purchased however it's clear from both the city arborist's report and james allen's are who was also an arborist's report that removal of this tree does not fit the criteria of the heritage tree ordinance with a root barrier it can be prevented from affecting the structural integrity of the house and the tree is healthy and happy as they have told us owning a tree entails a responsibility for tree care and maintenance it's similar to owning a pet when one has a dog or a cat a person is responsible not only for feeding and grooming but also vet bills which can be very expensive and by the way taking this tree down is also going to be very expensive and i find it a bit disingenuous the concerns that caring for the tree is expensive everything's expensive here as homeowners my husband and i have assumed responsibility for the four london plane trees in front of our house which were beginning to damage the sidewalk on berkshire avenue this year we rerouted the sidewalk around the trees with the city's permission to save both the trees and create a new level sidewalk for pedestrian safety so you can a homeowner can take measures to both save a tree and preserve safety so please listen to your arborists and uphold the appeal thank you thank you so that concludes the public comment portion of the appeal i'd like to now invite the appellant back up if they would like to take five minutes to rebut i want to remind the appellant that they cannot present new information to the council at this time you are only allowed to rebut any information that was already presented so no new information can be introduced i just want to emphasize that it would take about 38 trees to replace the the existing tree and it would it would really help to if they could just be open-minded to trying root mitigation first and because it's supposedly according to the arborists it will give them 15 years of of solace there and maybe in 15 years readdress the issue about you know is this really a lost cause do we really need to get rid of this or can this possibly work i mean it's worth a try is the way that i'm looking at it to save a kind of a sentinel tree of the neighborhood that so many people want to save so and also what peter was talking about about that they put in like a half of a culvert thing and it helped stop the root mitigation for over 10 years so anyway it can happen thank you so much thank you at this time we'll return to council for deliberation and action or further questions apologies does the also the homeowner doesn't get another bite at the apple right in my script just a couple questions i had for leslie how much approximately would it take to cost take the tree down probably three to five thousand dollars would be my guess i mean a tree of that diameter and weight would likely require a crane for removal and that's probably about a 1500 a day for that piece of equipment on top of the crew and it's probably about a two-day take down so i think three to five thousand dollars would be a reasonable price for that and three on the low end for sure i know you said there's only like five of these in town um do you know of any history of sequoia is falling like no i have never seen a giant sequoia fall and last winter 2017 we had a tree fall almost every night at 2 a.m what's that bend in the tree that's pronounced you know it's always hard to exactly say why the tree would list that way but to project that it'll continue to grow in that direction is conjecture sometimes they'll list a little bit and then lean back towards the light and the light is actually opposite the lean so it's possible down the line that this tree might right its upper crown do we allow people to take trees down like when it's grow the roots are growing into the sewer line not typically for sewer and generally in sewer situations and in most of the cases we actually recommend not a root barrier panel but that they upgrade their clay pipe system to an abs system which is a plastic impervious pipe and it's impervious to root intrusion so on that side of the tree i would not recommend 360 degree root barrier i would as i stated 90 degree root barrier on the corner of the property and then an upgrade if their system's clay to an abs that would limit any collars within the root zone and the sidewalk is not that damage so i would recommend some minor grinding on that and not make that a large issue at this time for repair thank you very much uh mayor i have a motion i like to uphold the appeal without prejudice and submitted to by sally k shell's reversing the parks and recreation commission's approval of the true removal permit number 18 007 submitted by edward letele and victoria sanchez to remove on a giant sequoia tree located at 1420 king street and at the tree root barrier be installed with help from the city's tree fund and that the tree arborist report back to the city council in one year on the health and stability of the tree at that time second that was a motion by council member crone and a second by council member brown any further discussion or questions from other council members at this time council member norie so as this tree grows what will happen to the roots will they keep going to so the root pruning that occurred with the previous owner was probably i know the neighbors would understand this better than i do but probably about three years ago would be my guess and i didn't see any regeneration on that we've had cases there's one up on a street right up above on the west side where i actually issued a ticket to a sewer repair person who root pruned 180 degrees of the tree and i was really fearful that the tree would either be compromised or destabilized and the tree didn't miss a beat and the roots haven't regrown to compromise his sewer so it was another question i wanted to ask in the packets it talked about how root pruning can destabilize a tree and you mentioned that the other sequoias didn't have you know you don't know of them falling but do we know whether or not those roots and those sequoias have been pruned or not um you know i don't know if you can compare this tree to one in nature not falling when one hasn't been you know pruned and the others and the other has so there's industry standards and the app or the property owner alluded to that so we look at the diameter of the tree and we multiply that by three and we do root pruning based on my observations as these are very large matrix of roots but they're all parallel to the foundation so i think if they were root pruned back to where the pillar is which structurally supports the edge of the roof that um they would and a repair panel was installed that it would be unlikely for the roots to regrow and of course all trees come with some degree of risk and i can't say this tree's never ever ever ever going to create property damage or um cause some type of an issue um but based on what was pruned several years ago in the regeneration that i see i don't really see that roots would regrow so but once the tree grows and the roots are pruned so the roots stay the same size as the tree gets larger and you don't think that destabilizes the tree the roots will continue to grow in other areas and in as much as you prune a branch and it sends out side branches when you prune a root then it would be synonymous to that you would have some lateral development that would and uh regrow but closer back from where you've cut so the roots will grow they will but the tree grows yes yeah so there seems to be a difference of opinion here about uh the you know questions around structural integrity and the potential for root pruning and root barriers to address the concern at hand um and i i don't know that we i mean this is interpretation here and and some of that will be again um empirical question to be answered in the future i'm also very sympathetic to the applicants concerns about safety and i'm very concerned about um the the um particularly safety but you know the the costs to them uh of of trying to maintain this over time i mean you know i it's unclear to me um what that's going to take and how you know how quickly that will be required and at the same time i do want to find a way to save this tree if possible i am you know i'm hopeful that the um the arborist that um leslie your suggestion that uh that pruning and root barrier could actually um lead to these results and i'm not you know again it's a projection so i would like to if we're going to um uphold the appeal have some kind of uh time frame for report back to ensure that um we're what we expect to happen based upon your projections is actually happening or rather not happening um so that we don't leave uh this the homeowner and the neighbor hanging indefinitely um i and i appreciate your point about kicking the can down the road but i do think that it's worth a little bit more deliberation and time to figure this out i put it one year on the motion sorry motion okay thank you a bit maybe more time is needed or less time i i'm i'm amenable okay council member um i'll just say i'm totally conflicted on this um having um been involved in tree planting for decades and also spent bundles and bundles of money maintaining trees and taken a few out so um i will note this is in no particular i have great respect for james allen also i've used his services he does note in his letter it was a brief visual visual inspection ground based visual inspection only preliminary brief visual analysis um no additional trees or situations were observed etc finds it to be in good health but it's clearly a very limited assessment so i'm just to to make a note of that um in terms of a time frame to report back on any mitigations a year is just inconsequential i mean we're talking a long time um and i have to imagine if um leslie you may know this um but if the home was built in 1929 the tree was probably popped in the ground about the same time is that your assessment about 90 years old i don't think it's quite that old i think it's probably a 60 70 year old tree that might have gone in the 50s or 60s says somebody's christmas tree which was brought up at the we all know a whole lot of trees are optimistically put in the wrong place so um and um given the i mean how long do those things last a couple thousand years yeah we'll all be dead and gone by then but um potential for future growth is uh substantial here um to me the fact that it's non-native is not an issue there are plenty of good landscaping trees that are not native so the issue to me thinking about it is the potential to save a tree and um i think that that certainly is um potential but i also am concerned with the predictability of ongoing damage over time to both the current structure and the neighboring structure um we all totally appreciate the value of trees in this climate action um equation um but this is a matter of a particular tree in a particular place and we we do understand that uh replacement trees for the future are part of this um so those are my conflicts yeah i put them on the table i share i share your conflicts and i um i agree i i don't think anybody wants to cut down a tree and i also understand the potential impacts it can be have it could have or is having and i'm curious if i could hear from the staff or maybe from parks and rec commit like just sort of the sentiment of the parks and rec commission knowing that you know we appoint uh commission to also look at this and and their uh vote in favor of the removal of the tree stands out in conflict for your your position so i know in absence of that it's hard but it'd be interesting to hear your perspective or i don't know if you were there carol but um the the overall kind of feel of the commissions so i'll i'll take a first opinion on this um so i actually would look at them through the lenses of an arborist and whether or not they're viable options and look at the products that are on the market and what the warranty is on these and um so with the bio barrier panel they are a manufacturer's warranty of 15 years and with the um continuous root barrier panel you're looking more at about 10 years of um we installed one for example down on the liquid amber trees adjacent to a basketball court at our Loudon Nelson Center in 2008 and the court is undamaged at this time obviously the scots have installed root barriers and have had good success with them and um we have installed a root barrier panel on a tree off of branch of 40 that's um not a giant sequoia but it's a redwood which actually is more vigorous in our community and within five years we pulled the street up and there was no root damage and we didn't pull the street up because of roots but there was some drainage issues and so um and no roots had regrown adjacent to that root barrier panel so um I think the commission in looking at the resolution is a heritage tree has or is likely to have and they said well you know it's possible that um this was tree related that caused those cracks um the root exam didn't defend that but it's possible so they felt that there was uh possibly that the foundation had been damaged by trees and that I couldn't guarantee into the future that no damage would ever occur and so they felt that this likelihood clause um they just uh factored in um from a broader position than just looking at it from our Boraculture. Did you want to add anything Carol? Okay thank you okay I appreciate that. Yeah I think that's where I'm getting hung up because I keep looking specifically at the clauses in the heritage tree ordinance and basically number three is eliminated because it's not a construction project health nobody says there's any health concerns about it so it's really number one that that we should be considering here and the and it is helpful to know that that's what the commission kind of weighed in on was the likely to have because based on your testimony Leslie you're not feeling that it has had an impact to the structure um so I think many of us are sort of in the same position right now where we're trying to figure out what to do with this situation and there's not an easy answer on this. Question to Council Member Brown. With um Honorable Vice Mayor I one of the the person has their hand up and I'd like to acknowledge them the homeowner um wanted to add something. Okay. I I'd like to up to you okay it's up to the chair for additional time um I think the question of a specific interested party at the request of a council member as opposed to someone in the audience. Oh did you have a question? No it's uh I just I know your hand was up and I want to give you every chance and I'd say 30 seconds. Okay so I wondered why there wasn't someone here because according to the ordinance there should be someone here from the Park and Rec Commission either a director and I know it says designee but I feel that's a conflict of interest like why weren't the Park and Rec Commission members notified of this meeting. I'll get that question answered. Because my understanding is. Thank you very much. You've also had your chance. I I'm going to actually go ahead and stop you right here. No I'm going to go ahead and stop you right here. I apologize. We have a process in place so I just really want to acknowledge that process unless we had any additional comments. I apologize. I thank you though sir sir thank you very much thank you very much. Okay so Carol I'm okay so to acknowledge the question I'm assuming that Carol you're the representative of the designee on behalf of the commission. Carol Scourge interim parks immigration director. I think that really you'd have to look at the ordinance and I think I'd have to ask Tony to to respond to that. Right and and the appeal when it's considered by the city council is an appeal de novo in other words the city council takes a completely fresh look at the issues that are presented and and is required to make its own independent decision so so it's very uh unusual and rare for even a an individual commissioner to appeal and comment on the issues that are presented in an appeal from that body and it's really not done that the commission itself has a representative there to express the opinions of the commission at that time except to the extent that they may be contained in findings in the resolution. I see okay thank you for the clarification. If we're ready to go there if Council Member Cron would restate his motion. My motion is basically one of the motion that Leslie put forward as well. Just the additions if you would. My only addition is that we make every available opportunity for the homeowner to apply for money from the heritage tree fund and also that Leslie Keady our our city arborist report back to us in a year and the council take another look. So just to be clear I assume that the motion is to adopt the resolution. Hold the appeal without prejudice submitted by Sally Schultz. Right reversing the parks and direct commission's decision to approve an application and upholding the appeal with the additional caveat that Council Member Cron described. Would there be anything substantial to report in a year? So unfortunately when we install the root barrier panel and if we revisit it in a year then the property owner's going to have to do some digging because I won't be able to look at the ground and see yes roots are regenerating yes roots are in contact with the root barrier panel. I have to go with the manufacturer's warranty that or in my past 25 years of experience that once you install the root barrier panel you get 10 to 15 years. If we extend that if we inspect in a year then they'll have to dig a portion of next to the root barrier and it's an economic hardship. So putting a timeline on it is very difficult. I know. Council Member Matthews and Council Member Norring. Yeah I think reporting back in a year is meaningless. I'm curious to know you said there's a 10 or 15 year warranty on the root barriers and that's a short time frame in the life of a tree and particularly that tree. So projecting out we don't know what happens to these things plastic busts up etc so that again for a tree that will have future growth adjacent to a home it's 15 years but it's temporary still on the life of the tree. And that's where the commission was challenged with the decision. Yeah what about oh I'm sorry. Well I know Council Member Norring had her hand up so let me thank her. How much is it a place of root barrier around a tree like this? So the Heritage Tree Grant just did one over here on Union Street where the neighbor feud was taking place and it was $3,000 approximately so probably would be about a $3,000 proposition to do and and I would not do the physical root barrier panel I would recommend the bio barrier which has the 15-year product warranty on it and do the 90 degree and it probably would be $3,035 maybe four or so. And so what I was a little more opinionated or had a more firm opinion of this before sitting here with you today and deliberating this but I just can't help I keep going back to the wrong tree in the wrong place I mean it just shouldn't have been planted in that location in a dense neighborhood you know in a neighborhood with you know that doesn't have huge backyards they're not big ranch houses with big space it just seems like it should not have been there and I think about myself and the place of the people who are in the home you know and I don't you know making this decision don't have to live with the consequences of the tree continuing to be there of it possibly continuing to hurt the sidewalk which we all know homeowners are now responsible for the sidewalk and the cost of it which you know isn't chump change I mean I've seen some of those costs be $10 to $12,000 for people to fix sidewalks in front of their house I'm concerned I do share the concerns about the tree being destabilized just because you know we know these trees don't tend to fall if their roots aren't pruned but I don't know if we have any sort of studies to show how they how stable they are when they continue to grow and the roots have been pruned I'm not sure I haven't been shown any information on that and so you know my heart goes out to the family that you know would have this to deal with and it sounds like the neighbors too have come in and said there's issues as well so I don't know I tend to lean more towards the side of letting the neighbors do what they want with their yard and taking all the other facts into consideration so but I'm willing to have the open mind and keep listening to my other council members though probably at some point we should make this decision so I'm wondering if the maker of the motion would be open to modifying that second addition because I'm not sure that there's going to be much to say in a year and I don't want to actually add additional costs to the homeowner I'm wondering though if it would be helpful to have something in the motion that was responsive to some of the concerns that both the homeowner and the neighbor brought forward about their issues around sewer issues sidewalk issues basically if those types of reports were to happen over the next whatever period of time that we would consider that and look into is this in fact what is referenced in the heritage tree ordinance which is clause one having some infrastructure damage that to me feels like more more specific to what the heritage tree ordinance was intended for and wouldn't make the homeowners unnecessarily dig up any part of their property in order to determine if there was an issue but actually be responsive to something should it occur so what would exactly be the friendly amendment it looks like you're open to it but maybe council member Matthews has a modification I'll just say damage is incremental over time over a big time scale and if there were one and probably be 10 years I've honestly dealt with this you know replace the sewers and yeah you know you at the cost of many thousands of dollars dig up the whole sewer line out to the main and replace it with plastic etc that's and then and then the roots don't get in and similarly the damage to sidewalks and foundations you're not going to see it in one year couple years whatever it's it's incremental over time and by then it'll be five councils down just saying are there any other and the other thing too that I want to say I mean clearly to some extent this is a matter of personal commitment there are people in the audience and and I count myself among that too who voluntarily spend a good deal of amount of money pruning creating root barriers etc etc etc to preserve and contribute to the health of the trees and that's that's a personal path that they've made but the ordinance doesn't necessarily require that before I ask for clarification on the friendly amendment I just have a quick question in terms of the potential to condition if the tree were to be removed the home owners to plant more compatible trees for urban canopy how would that look in terms of so that actually is on a separate resolution to the chapter 9.56 and so what what this decision would be because they voluntarily suggested that they would replant as they post a $250 bond and then they replant either one 24 inch box tree or three 15 gallon sized trees and so since that's a city council approved resolution we can't tell them you need to put in something bigger or you need to do twice as much we have to be consistent with the rules that we've adopted which is that specific criteria and again Leslie that that doesn't necessarily have to be on their parcel so standard city lot that would be well if they bond and they do what they committed to is replanting then it would be on their lot if they change their mind and say we don't want to replant then they could do a hundred and fifty dollar in loofy and then they don't have to put in a tree but and we can condition mitigation if we if we want to and they voluntarily said that they would put in a new tree but the best we could mandate so to speak would be a 24 inch box specimen and it doesn't have to be something of that same stature it could just be it's just the size of container by our resolution right I mean again just saying depending on the tree three 15 gallon trees a short period down the line can be problems under themselves there again it's it's what are you putting in the ground so sure okay I prefer more flexibility on that I have a I have a modified a friendly amendment we'll see if it's accepted to replace the return in one year um so and we can kind of wordsmith this a little bit return to either council or public or parks and work parks and rec commission whichever is more appropriate should adverse effects to the structural integrity of a building utility or public or private right away occur subsequent to the root barrier and all the things that are included in the resolution it's acceptable but then what would you think would occur should they come back or should they not come back I mean at that point I guess that they can put in you know requests for removal potentially because at that point it would meet item one of the heritage tree coordinates and right now that's the thing in front of us that Leslie is saying it has not met that parks and rec commission disagrees because the likely standpoint so that to me would that's where I was trying to get to a little closer for myself to cause one I don't know Tony wants to weigh in on that I was just discussing this with the arborist the ordinance states that once a decision on an appeal is made that a new application can't be filed for a period of one year from the date of the decision were there new evidence discovered of damage to the foundation or other issues that constitute a valid grounds for filing an application for a permit in the future after that one year period has lapsed then a new application could be filed so we wouldn't even need to add that in because if there were something that came up I think that's right I mean the likelihood of some problem manifesting itself within that one year period is pretty slight and should that occur in the future a new application could be filed and the fact that you upheld an appeal in this particular instance wouldn't amount to a pre decision that issuance of a permit wouldn't be appropriate in a future instance based on the circumstances at that time and not to further complicate this but why not the sewer if it's a clay pipe which I believe is then you could have root intrusion within that next year or the sidewalk could lift an eighth of an inch more or a half an inch over the next year so it's just an awkward position that last time I was draw even more confident and I think the thinking of the parks and rec commission about the likelihood of damage and the fact that the trees going to continue to grow you know I'm struggling over this too but I think what was just said put me on the side of giving some relief to the folks who own this home the fact is that that was not a tree that should have a type of tree that should have been been planted there and it probably if it had been maintained maybe we wouldn't even be here today but it sounds like it was just hey this looks like fun it's a Christmas tree and then not much else thought was put into it the houses were there before the tree was put in the ground too okay well anyway is the amendment yeah I was yeah because it doesn't seems like that's inconsistent with what we would want to have in there anyway so I'll withdraw my friendly amendment I couldn't support the motion on the floor with the one year back return back because I don't think that's going to be telling and I don't want to add any additional financial burden to the a pellant I can withdraw the one year I mean I was just doing it because I thought it would be something for the helpful for the homeowner so I'll withdraw that part of the motion the one year and we're just going to go with upholding the appeal but I I really want the city to reach out and make sure that the homeowner knows that funds are available to help with the root barrier just to be clear Leslie is that it's not in the recommendation upholding the appeal doesn't there's there's two you either side with the commission or staff but if the appeal is upheld am I getting it right if if the tree is preserved there's no language in the motion which I think you could include being explicit about access to the tree fund that's that's where I'm going with that or is that just automatic anyway we don't have to be explicit well I'll be explicit I mean I really like to be okay okay so for clarification um maybe you could repeat your motion at this time and then we could go ahead and vote on on that well I'm going to include the truth on it to uphold the appeal without prejudice submitted by Sally K. Schultz reversing the parks and recreation commission's approval of tree removal permit application 180077 submitted by Eduardo Palero and Victoria Sanchez to remove on one giant sequoia tree located at 1420 King Street and at the tree root barrier being stalled with the help of the city's tree fund okay and that was seconded by council member Brown okay um is there any further deliberation at this time okay so all those in favor please say aye aye post no so that's a tie that a hung jury based on the tie the matter would automatically be continued to your next meeting oh you're kidding me okay due to the fact that the tie is a result of an absence of a council member okay not a recusal or disqualification we were just waiting to say that Tony I have a question so procedurally does this mean we have to go through this same whole process at the next meeting no you may just defer the decision provided that Mayor Taraz has rehabilitated himself by by reviewing the make sure he is okay members of the public would have an opportunity to address the council at that time I will make homemade Armenian food and invite him over if that would work to make sure he watches this before next meeting okay all right okay so I'll just restate the vote um that the vote was council member crone council member chase council member brown were in support of the motion council member matthews council member norian and myself were not and we will decide later okay this be clear it need not necessarily be the very next meeting but as soon as it can be scheduled in accordance with okay other pressing agenda matters thank you so should we continue thank you all right so the next item on the agenda is item number 22 which is going to be also continued until September 11th 2018 at a future council meeting and will not be discussed today okay we'll transition presenting thank you good evening commission council and you know I might just pause you for a second can I ask that we uh we're going to continue our discussion if you want to move your conversations outside so we can continue on with business thank you very much good evening council um nice to be here today we are um bringing to you our community outreach policy and this is a policy that has been um developed in response to direction from the housing blueprint subcommittee um and the intent of the policy is to provide more robust community outreach for planning policy changes and development projects so this is specific to planning department projects it is not a citywide policy sorry um there are certain key themes that came up with the housing blueprint subcommittee um that we were very mindful of while we were developing this policy um we wanted to be sure that it would provide early meaningful input from the public we wanted to expand outreach um especially I should say when no public hearing is required um we have also incorporated planning commission subcommittee slash site design and architectural review um early in the process and um the intent is also to provide some certainty in the process for the public for staff and for developers um and the way we've developed the policy um the extent of the outreach is based on the project size and the importance to the community and that was a specific recommendation from the housing blueprint subcommittee um pre application and or preliminary review for large and significant projects is um highly recommended for large and required for significant uh onsite posting is required for all medium large and significant projects and we um will also be recommending it for small projects particularly ones that we think are going to um have more community interest um we will also be um creating a new posting on our website that will be updated monthly that will be a list of all application current applications um and that will give the public notice of projects that are do not require a public hearing and that are um smaller than the size that would be required to have an onsite posting uh and we also will have added planning department community meetings to the uh types of um notifications that members of the public can sign up for and and I would like to say that we actually used that um that community meeting sign up for this hearing for this for this item and there were a number of people signed up already um while we were developing the uh outreach policy we did some outreach to the community um it originated with the housing blueprint subcommittee and um there were a number you know the subcommittee came up with um a hundred items and a number of those related to um this outreach policy or or have been incorporated into this policy we um had a community meeting on May 15th and at that meeting we provided a first draft and I had to say um I was the planner who who was manning the booth for this one and next to me was the adu booth and they got all the attention we also uh presented it at a developer's round table on July 12th and this is a sort of on again off again meeting we have when we have something that we think is of particular interest to developers or that we want um specifically to get developer input on we call a developer round table meeting um so we did that on July 12th and then we had a second community meeting on oh sorry I've got these two dates wrong one date is right one is wrong uh the developers round table was July 12th the community meeting was July 17th and um at that time we had incorporated the comments that we received from the first community meeting and from the developers round table into the draft outreach policy um and we got more feedback at this meeting um in general uh the feedback was just that they were really people were really glad that we were doing this and they thought it was a good idea um and then we also presented it to the planning commission at their August 2nd meeting that is the end of my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions any questions yeah actually I do um in terms of what would get posted in terms of um projects listed on the planning department website how far down do you go someone's everything adding to their house everything that is a a planning project so it wouldn't be building permits but it would be everything that comes into the to the planning department the long list I have a quick question I was curious in first of all I I know we're going to have comments even but since but since I can I think I might just say thank you I know that we had a very comprehensive report for you to go on and you quickly turned around what I think was essential and critical component component that crossed every one of the recommendations which is how do we engage the community in a meaningful way and I appreciate you being aggressive in and bringing this forward to us now um so with with that I want to also just ask for clarification in terms of how you were able to um come up with what you categorized as small development projects medium large and then significant like where where did that come from or did was that based on the input from the the community or did you just kind of how did we had a lot a lot of internal discussion with various different departments um just trying to decide what size made sense um if it's too small and doesn't require a discretionary permit it sort of defeats the purpose because there can't since we don't have any discretion we can't require anything from the developer so we didn't and we didn't want it to be something where um we developed notification fatigue so that we people were getting noticed so often that they just started ignoring the notices um so the the intent was to to find that kind of happy medium where they were going to be projects that people would would care about um and that they were uh not so small that that they there wouldn't be any meaningful input um and then and and then we just tried to you know fill out what well what's the biggest thing we have and then develop the medium size from that and if I could I would just add that at the same time we wanted to make sure we were building in policy language that allowed for additional levels of outreach if they didn't meet the thresholds in the policy there may be projects where um a a smaller number of units actually warrants a larger outreach effort and we've built in the policy language that allows the city to dictate to the developer that yes for this one we know there's going to be a lot of community interest and you're going to need to do these extra levels that would typically may be reserved for a large or a significant project for example additional question I have a follow-up question related to to this item about uh size and the the categories that are included here I understand the the rationale and appreciate the thought that's gone into this um but I have a question that I I really genuinely would like an answer to I mean is it really up to us to decide what projects will generate significant attention and make those projections I mean I think that the community deserves to have a voice in in what they're paying attention to so I'm a little bit concerned with looking at the 10 you know 10 unit minimum threshold and and I would like to hear more about that and perhaps the public well and that is partly um the function of that list if if we post that list and two days later we have you know 20 comments from the public obviously that is the project that people are interested in so if it is not one that would normally um rise to the level of of having uh you know the the required um noticing and community meetings that that would trigger it the other thing is that um like you we have a lot of communication with the public and we generally have a sense of when something's going to going to be when people are going to want to know about something and and when it is is not going to be important to the to the neighborhood um usually something that's in a neighborhood for one thing um and if it's a if it's a larger project that's along on a significant um location where there's a lot of traffic where people care you know something that people see a lot and care about then um we're going to know about that but we will be responsive to our comment to the comments we get from that list and so that's sort of the list is the is the failsafe for us um because there are a lot of people in this community that pay a lot of attention to what goes on in city hall and we expect there are going to be people who are you know the day that list is published they're going to go and look on it and if they see something that concerns them they're going to call us up and ask about it and that list will have the assigned planners contact information so that planner will actually be able to answer questions and and be able to make the judgment call of okay are people calling because they want to know about this project are they calling because it's more important than that and we need to have that community meeting thank you that's helpful but it sounds like what you just said contradicted what you said previously that if something you know isn't asking for variances is within you know all the boxes are checked that um they fit the requirement of building something we aren't we limited in how much we can tell that developer you know you can't do this you can't do that if they fall within all of the requirements if it's a planning application that's a discretionary approval okay so if they if if they don't need a planning approval if they just can go and get their building permit without a planning application then um we don't have any discretion on that one that's what i thought okay but something that falls out of that obviously this i just wanted to make sure that's what we're talking about here yes and i want to um lee reminded me that it has oh never mind okay he corrected himself any other questions from council members of the council microne yes on page um 23.2 it talks about the mailing radius and um um uh some members of the developers group felt that the mailing radius for all project types should be limited to 300 feet do they pay for the mailing or do we pay for the mailing they pay for the mailing they do yeah and what does that typically cost um uh i do you remember off the top of your head i don't know off the top of my head but there there is a uh i believe that we have a standard fee and it's sort of extrapolated across but i'm just trying to see like did they want less people to know about the project or i mean this is a community you know so i want the more people i know about it the better and deal with the problems early on um what but that also makes me think well who boxes of mail and um people don't read their mail and a lot of people don't so i'm wondering if there's other ways that we can put in here like is there a way of getting people's emails i mean i know we have a list now that we email people when they put their email on the list so we can't like i guess get the address their email address is there there's a specific okay there's there's several ways okay people can sign up for the community email email community meeting email to be notified whenever there's going to be a community meeting they can go on this list and um look at projects and if they see a project that they're interested in they can contact the planner on that project and sign up with the planner to get notifications for um that specific project so they don't want to know about all community meetings just about that project they can do that um and then uh uh if they are in the neighborhood and they can also sign up for um city council and planning commission and in fact any other any other of our advisory body lists so um there are a number of ways we um when we have community meetings and we have people sign up and and um we have a space for them to put their email on there and then we can we and again we did this for for this meeting for this project um we took the email from the community meeting and we made a list of that and we sent the announcement of this meeting to that list would you be in favor or are you um agnostic on making this 300 foot thing a thousand as you mentioned in the report some people said that or 500 or changing it um well if you look on the back of the policy at that the top green thing here we have um different radiuses for different type different sizes of projects so the small our normal public hearing radius is 300 feet that's that's our ordinance and it's also state law and then so for small we keep it at 300 medium is 500 large is 800 and significant is a thousand and I don't know Lee do you know of any community that does over a thousand square feet I've never heard of one I have not seen over a thousand radius and um that is um the something that we would do on a case-by-case basis oftentimes um if for example that captures everybody but a couple of properties on a block we would look at that and say well it makes sense to round out that block and that would be consistent with the practices and some other jurisdictions as well before you we're unsure what large means do you have a definition for small medium and large um we do uh small is I would add 20 to 24 housing units or um 2500 to 10 000 square new square feet of commercial development medium would add 25 to 50 housing units or 10 000 to 25 000 square new square feet of commercial development large would add over 50 residential units or over 25 000 square new square feet of commercial or industrial development and then significant projects are any proposal regardless of size or type that has the potential for significant city-wide interest it's on 23.4 of our agenda packet any other questions from council members this is so I notice under the community meetings um that we don't send a mail notice if there's more than a thousand recipients and that instead we resort to advertising in the sentinel um a lot of people I I don't know that seems like we would be missing a lot of people doing that um and it you know is there ever a time where you do your radius and you find it is more than a thousand people usually if it's close we'll go ahead and do the mailing it's quite expensive to send out is that much postage um and this is also by state law um if it's over a thousand if if it's over a thousand when you're noticing something you only have to advertise it at state you're not you're not required to oh it's in the notices yeah typically what we'll see is like a city-wide um policy or say we had some changes to the adu ordinance um we wouldn't necessarily mail to all 12 000 or so uh single-family residents however many it is that we've got um we would um say all right that is excessive let's put something in the paper but as Catherine mentioned if we do a radius and it's a thousand eleven hundred then we're going to take that in consideration particularly for development applications that have a more localized impact okay but you were saying that it's the cost of the developer to send that mailing right not the city it is but at the moment we have one um we have we have just the one fee for mailing so we have to develop and have city council approve wider radius mailing and and we have to figure out how much those are going to cost i'm not thinking of wider radius i'm thinking of the the numbers of people who would be getting the mailing and it says if it's a thousand or more we wouldn't be sending mailing and so that does concern me um because i don't necessarily think that you're going to capture as many people with an ad let's say in the newspaper and then you also have um at your discretion whether or not to use social media i think um you know perhaps there should be a requirement to use social media if we're not going to be sending mail over a thousand you know when it's over a thousand people so that's that's a really big concern of mine well do keep in mind that these are all posted on the site and um we also have the emailing and the posting on the the city's list of of projects so we're trying to hit this on on at multiple angles um the social media we don't the planning department does not have a well-developed program for notifying on social media as yet it's we we plan to do this it's not something that we have done yet and since we wanted to move forward we'll move this quickly we didn't want to promise you something that we wouldn't be able to do a good job of you know we don't want to start piece mailing this and then you know later figuring out oh that's how we should be doing it so so the intent is to to be using social media more but we don't currently have a sort of a template a way that we always do it are there any additional questions from council members before we go to public comment on this okay all right so this is item number 23 and i will now open it up for public comment each speaker will get be given two minutes are there any speakers who would like to comment on item number 23 um my i have several problems with this first of all i'm just really glad you're you're doing it and considering it and i think it's something i brought up in the listening tour um but i don't think it's strong enough and i think the categories are too big um you know your definitions of small medium large and everything because in the may meeting they the categories were defined very differently and much smaller so that um that handout defined it um small as i mean this is what the public got because i got this handout um small as um maybe this is a little too small one to two but medium was three to fourteen large was um 15 plus and um with a lot you know less commercial so these like medium is is huge here and um just as somebody who's been involved in some of these community outreach meetings like i said before and one of my concerns about removing the protections and the density bonus is like you can have these meetings but it always comes back to we don't want to burden the developer we don't want to make him give people bus passes or anything that'll make it you know it won't pencil out so if these meetings are really for the neighborhood fine but if it's a box to just check off and say we did our due diligence you know like the the one on water street which i'm sure you're all familiar with the you know the developer actually did initiate some meetings and that was great but in the end he changed the design he took away the pretty arches you know it's like so now it's a you know it's back to being you know and pretty you know it's not finished yet but if the if the policy has no teeth and the neighborhood really doesn't have a say you know i mean i think this should have been developed the policy itself with people like me and people who've been you know like pushing for this stuff for a long time it's it's still too developer oriented thank you next speaker please um my name is kandace from east morse kandace brown um well first of all it would be really nice to have this in the evening i had to take time off work to come to this meeting and obviously i had several items that i had to be here for but i think it would be really important to have at least one evening meeting for community engagement policy review in the case of other cities a lot of times when they do design review which is really an integral part of this it's done within a two block radius um it would be nice to also know how much these mailers are they're very simple things you can print out very easily with mail merge a very low cost to print out so i can't imagine that would be that expensive what maybe less than 50 it's the it's the postage that is yeah i know we can't i can't ask but that would be nice to know and also um it would be um important to align that with the densities of the zoning ordinance so if it's low it's less than 10 if it's medium or low medium it's 20 um if it's or medium it's third i'm sort of thinking out louder it's 30 to 40 depending on whether it's with studios or not um and then high density is 55 and that would be significant um these are not in any way aligned with the zoning ordinance which is kind of strange to me um when we do flyers in the community um we actually go just so you know at least in a five block radius um we also use social media we have email lists um we're not always as organized as we'd like to be but um we find that um in spite of all that people don't know about these things and we find it always interesting that that's not the case so we're always challenged to figure out a way to just reach out to people in general and i think that you guys are also but i'm just sharing that with you because the flyers are one form many people are not still on social media so although i would certainly support that as a requirement i think that's many people in our community are actually elderly and they don't use social media and they don't use it regularly as often as you might think um when we were involved with water street common project um we went through three community meetings and the first meeting was extremely contentious i mean extremely like um almost shelling matches it was very heated it was very emotional there were parents there talking about wanting to have you know housing for the developmentally disabled that there were other people in the community that were very upset about the impacts and there were a lot of parking issues and um the design was just atrocious quite honestly it looked like a prison and um there was no place for children um it just in no way was integrated into the the common space so finally um we had a second meeting and they provided three designs and people started to calm down and they started really talking about things and it there wasn't necessarily consensus but we started to align it the second meeting was very very important but it wasn't until the third meeting that we actually finally came to consensus and i just wanted to share that with you because i think that's an important part of the process thank you this item number 23 if there are any members of the public who want to speak please stand to side are there any additional members who want to speak to this item you want to stand to my left okay all right thank you hi my name is paul benjamin i asked that the city council give more time on item 23 for the exact reasons that our previous two speakers spoke up there really needs to be an evening meeting and far too many times the city council and the planning department have ignored the community this is really a community project we're talking about all the projects including water street the recent kayuga so kell avenue building these need to be about the quality of life there's long-term residents such as myself and we're seeing this lack of community impact and input there needs to be procedures and guidelines put forth before these items can be passed on already there's been quite a bit of staff debate on how to have outreach for the community it needs to go back and be worked on so there's real community support and outreach the orientation of each building is very important the design there's a lack of design here the guidelines need work thank you good evening it's really getting that late i'm calling i i'm talking today because i have concerns that who determines citywide interest for example in the 1024 so kell avenue this had tremendous community interest and yet the noticing was really just with the businesses and very limited in my view i did not know about that building going up even though i live just blocks away and that's because i wasn't in the noticing area i think there should be some great concern for buildings that are on the corridors that set a tone and i'm saying this in general i think it requires a greater amount of noticing because it really affects the the character ambiance of the town particularly as i said on the corridors and i think that there could be extreme detrimental consequences by putting buildings that are not complimentary with the community we want to support our community that's where we live that's where we walk to that's where we go to dinner at akiris and all these other wonderful east side restaurants and the wonderful shops we have there um i again i'm a bit dismayed that early the early noticing isn't really happening in the way and isn't being proposed in a way that in my view is really supporting the neighborhoods also again we need the design review thank you for livability on the east side okay so that concludes public comment unless there's anybody who wants to speak to item number 23 okay at this time we'll return to council for deliberation and consideration i just have one question so i know i saw it in the report somewhere and i can't seem to find it which did reference the community's involvement in things like design review early on where is that in here i read it's in the description of the community meetings okay thank you because that was an important piece of one of the things that well pause for a second thank you for bringing this back i'm really excited to see this this was the major push of the subcommittee was that we develop a process that was inclusive of the community and that we get that back to council as soon as possible so i really appreciate that we're hearing this today i'm grateful for the work that has been done on this and the comment in regard to the design i think was a huge part of what we heard in the communities that people want to have input on that in at a meaningful way and at a meaningful time meaning early on as soon as we possibly could in these projects so i i want to make sure the public's attention is drawn to that um which is basically phase two community meetings that's in that description right right okay perfect and i think that that does from my experience meet the um requests that we heard about the types of things that the public really wanted to have an opportunity to weigh in on so thank you that was my question any other questions or comments okay council member not much sure if i saw who's hand whenever i have a if you have a question okay councilor brown so um yes thank you very much for putting this together and you know i know that it's been a lot of work and uh going back and forth and thank you for listening to the subcommittee about this particular issue and trying to put that all together in a in a um package that um sort of got at um the areas where we were talking about community engagement all over the you know we were kind of all over the map so organizing us was much appreciated is much appreciated um and i so i think that's this that that um council member chase's question really got at my point earlier about wanting to make sure that this community engagement wherever it happens at whatever point that it is an iterative process that people that it is not just a one-way transfer of information to the public so they can um go home and like it or not like it and kvetch about it or applaud it right so um so i i do you know i i do want to follow that and really make sure that we get some feedback early on after you know as we go through this process to ensure that that it's like what's working what's not working you know do we want to change things in terms of the format for these meetings or you know you know other kinds of suggestions so i hope that we can find a way to make sure that happens um and i also want to say that i'm pretty concerned about the size design project size designations because i do think that um they seem to be um you know small you know we looked at an appeal on a 10 unit project uh at our last council meeting that was pretty you know it's pretty big project um relative to the neighborhood that it's um uh going to be located in and so i'd really like to see and i actually didn't have a chance to go back and look at the the zoning ordinance uh categories in terms of size but i do think that um you know i would feel much more comfortable with uh moving the outreach policy forward with an an amendment so i guess i'll make a motion that i would move the community outreach policy uh with the revision that we consider small medium large and significant according to the zoning ordinance unit size unit number for size um i you know i had kind of put some together in my head of you know small being perhaps five to ten medium um 11 i suppose to 25 um and then um you know and then i'm having a little bit of a hard time figuring out large versus significant because so i don't you know i mean i'm willing to entertain thoughts on what those differences might be um there isn't so each zoning district has it's allowed uses the uses that require a use permit and the general plan has things that are density based on units per acre that somewhat translate into the different zoning districts but this is a citywide policy it's not it's not based on a specific zoning district so i'm not sure exactly what the direction you're giving us is well the direction is primarily to reduce our concept of small medium and large and significant i thought maybe uh you know aligning it with our zoning ordinance in in the various neighborhoods would be helpful but if that's not then i can just say what i'm thinking so if for citywide you know five to ten being small medium 11 to went this feels a little bit um you know kind of just i'm just making this up but you know 10 to 25 would you prefer to give recommendations or have them come back with recommendations to us to modify this based on some sort of zoning criteria so it feels a little less arbitrary yeah i i mean i prefer that it not be arbitrary but i certainly my my um interest is that it's we're talking about smaller yes got it okay so that might be easier for you so that it's based on some sort of existing standard so that it's not just us kind of deciding on something smaller it may be challenging if i could it may be challenging if we're if we're basing it on a zoning standard the zoning standard would be different in different areas the general plan standard is different and so that was one consideration is you know is it the density that we're looking at and we actually decided to go with a physical number of units because in in some areas um it would have a different density allowed and other areas it wouldn't also just the flexibility that we included um was it was somewhat intentional to provide four differences in for example the the 17 unit project that we had just north of the catalyst you know um four stories three or four stories um 17 units you know would that really necessitate a community meeting you know maybe um it could but other other locations in the middle of downtown um may or may not um trigger a community meeting for you know 10 or so units um but i would just say that um having a specific number like if the council isn't comfortable at this point with the numbers that we have suggested in terms of 10 to 25 25 to 50 and over 50 then um having a reduced number is something that we can certainly use and um have for the developers and have for the community say this is what we're doing and we can report back and and let you all know how it's going after a certain timeframe so if i'm hearing you correctly you're saying to for us to create those numbers right now because essentially that's what is required well i would i would suggest if you if you all um based on your experience and feel for the community and and what has um been um perceived as a large project or a medium-sized project or a smaller project that you can go ahead and provide that direction i mean a policy is is fluid we can come back to you and say hey this is this is not enough we're getting smaller projects that really always need uh more community outreach or we're saying we've done five of these six unit meetings and no one showed up at a single one um do you think you know we should modify as as we should right i mean essentially that's how you would want to involve your policy but i i hear um i appreciate your point and i hear your perspective i too thought well over 50 probably it's already going to be significant at that point so i get i kind of get the scaling sense that you have but um so i think you know i if you want to continue with what your recommendation i'll just go ahead and i'll just go ahead and say it then okay so i i would move the uh recommendation to adopt the policy the community outreach policy um using an amended um requirement for and for under requirements and project definitions of small development project being five to ten housing units and then i can't even begin to do the math to extrapolate the square footage but if if you can do that that would just be based on the reduction to five to ten uh medium being um 11 to 25 large 26 to 50 or excuse me 25 to 50 26 to 50 thank you and then significant being we could maintain that um you know it could be large or significant as is a combined category basically because anything that's that big or and or smaller but of significant interest to the whole city would fall into that okay i'll second that question any other questions or discussion on behalf of the council for matthews and then yeah i appreciate lee that you said that policies are fluid because we'll learn from this um and sandy um downsize the um description of the different uh levels for housing units but not for square feet of commercial so um again it's hard for me to visualize do you have suggestions on that count do you think those definitions are still appropriate for the commercial i do okay i think that those definitions i mean if you think about 2,500 square feet um you know we get single family houses that are 2,500 square feet and and so um it if there's a location where a new building is going to present a fair amount of community interest we can um use those additional noticing techniques and take it from there um did you have a question yeah i'm just wondering if you could go over again the why density didn't matter somehow you couldn't compare the densities with um the numbers of units um this is a well it's a citywide policy and different zoning districts have different density allowances um so what would be um well we can just compare like we thought a lot about how the downtown compares with most of the rest of the city and you know two units in the downtown is basically nothing or five units in the downtown is nothing and if if if we're comparing it to the rest of the community the is there's just not a consistency so the the way the density in the general plan works is that if it's a particular zoning district it has this density but we're looking at a citywide so we're not looking at um it's an apples and oranges kind of comparison if we if we said um something that has a density of um 20 units and less then that would be saying in this zoning district we'll have this kind of a noticing pattern and in that district we'll have a different kind which is not what we wanted to do we wanted a citywide policy that addressed everything and and frankly you know uh in a single family or a low density district smaller is more important because um a small project can have a bigger impact than a small project where you've got a high density development on lease point of 17 units downtown i i definitely think a public a meeting neighborhood meeting would be appropriate so just just to to build on katharine's comment you know that 17 du might have been um 40 plus dwelling units per acre and so that could if we were doing it at a dwelling unit per acre category that could qualify as say like a large project but do we need to take all the same steps for a large project um for uh something there and and i think katharine was kind of hitting the point of if we had it based on densities then anything in the low density residential zoning district would get would get one set of criteria because there's a range of density that would go there anything in the next zoning district up would have a separate whereas you could have a large property in that zoning district and still be at um you know say 20 dwelling units per acre um but because of the area it could have a substantial number of units you could have 50 hundred units but if you're still at the 20 du per acre then you might be in a lower category of outreach okay question or comment are we at that stage i think so yeah we have a motion in a second so i just think this is a first pass to try and increase public notification and participation trying to make it relatively simple for the parties involved and um we can modify it going forward so okay so at this point it seems that we're at a time where we could take a vote on this item so all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed pass it unanimously with uh mayor traw's absent okay so item 24 and then we have public comment so okay jump in okay we'll go ahead and jump right in we got lee already up here cued up for item number 24 and then we'll do public comment following this item good afternoon again vice mayor and council members lee butler uh planning and community development director and um today i'd like to talk with you about ucsc growth and the impacts on sanikers and some things that we as a city can do about that um the council will recall that um following the um the measure on the june ballot they uh the council provided direction for us to um present to the ucsc long range development committee sorry long range development plan uh community advisory committee um the results of measure u and uh those were included in your packet showing a 77 passage overwhelming majority of the residents supporting that and so i wanted to as a means to set the stage quickly go through that presentation a little bit faster than what i went through it with them for uh you all but um just to give you a flavor of what we presented to them so we identified that this uh recent international study showed sanikers as the fourth least affordable place in the world to live when comparing incomes and housing costs so not a list that we want to be on and um we talked about the the various housing pressures obviously this is a great place to live with many things that attract people to live here and we've got limited land we draw tourists in and um short-term rentals and second homes are issues and silicon valley growth is undoubtedly a significant pressure on our community and of course ucsc growth is a big one as well and we're doing things to address every single one of these we're just focusing for uh this afternoon on the final one there the ucsc growth and what we can do so some of the stats that we pulled from the department of finance and the um ucsc stats um full-time students grew by about 6400 people between 2000 and 2017 the total beds went up by almost 3900 that's a lot of beds you know we we certainly appreciate them adding all of those housing but that that still leaves a significant gap over 2500 students that are out in the community looking for housing in that 2000 to 2017 time frame same time frame the city's population grew by nearly 11600 and um our housing growth we added almost 2200 housing units so let's uh pull those numbers together a little bit the population of the city grew by 21% but the student population grew by 56% and the increased student enrollment accounts for up to 55% of the growth in the city population between 2000 and 2017 that is a really significant portion now granted not all of those students are living within the city there are some that um are um off campus and and not in the city limits but nevertheless it gives you a sense of the scale of the student population growth versus the overall city growth when we talk about our housing stock we we did grow by 10% and that's the 2200 units or so that we added and the 2500 plus off campus students were competing for those 2200 units and I don't think that any of us believe that every single one of those students was in their own dwelling unit alone but nevertheless even if there were two or three or four of them that is still a very significant percentage of our housing growth that is is going towards students and that is an important component of our strategy for addressing affordability is the housing production and sometimes the growth of the students is working at odds with the housing production that we have if UCSC isn't keeping up with the housing production on their campus and then just as a fact um that the UC student population represents nearly 30% of the city population and one of the comments that we heard and discussed at that CAG meeting is noted at the bottom here and it was an important one uh important enough to add this note wasn't on the slide that we presented to the CAG but um we're talking just about students here and so when UCSC adds 6400 students they're also adding faculty and administrators and facilities staff and the families of those folks and and so there is an even greater impact than what we have identified right here when we isolate um just the the population of students that are entering our community. We also talked a bit about the costs and um the off-campus costs being lower than the on-campus cost estimates and that really serving as an incentive for many students to move off campus particularly if they're sharing rooms you can see that in the next two slides here where you know a triple is in the range of 11 or 1200 dollars um on campus and you know a 3300 dollar or 3400 dollar one bedroom unit if you had three uh students in there is likely going to be going except for maybe some of the most expensive places in the city it's likely going to be going for significantly less one bedroom unit going for less than 33 or 3400 dollars so again incentives for students to live off campus and it's reiterated in a number of their different dorm types and even the university town center here you can see a triple is almost 1100 dollars and that's incentivizing students to go out into the community we we conveyed the results of a measure you with 77 percent voter support and expresses the concerns that were articulated in that measure specifically in relation to housing traffic and water and we reiterated our position that we fully support the mission of uc to provide higher education in our community we appreciate the jobs and the cultural um amenities that come along with the university however there are impacts that the university has on our community right now and when we're talking about these potential plans for growth we first need to address the impacts that our community is already experiencing and we indicated that consistent with the council's direction we are willing to dedicate resources to protect city interest um we had a series of questions that um we would potentially get to and most of these were covered as part of the conversation without us us prodding them but um i wanted to to get to today the opportunities that we have to present the city interests and the first of course is our continued participation in the lrdp process that is proceeding right now and we have councilmember matthews and councilmember crone who are the council representatives there and i attend those meetings on behalf of the city manager as well and we have right now the lrdl rdp process the next step is going to be the development and the analysis of various growth alternatives that'll occur this fall and then in the uh the following that there'll be a preferred alternative selection in the spring of 2019 so based on that preferred alternative they will start developing the draft document and once they have that drafted document they will then use that for their seco analysis and they'll prepare a draft eir and that draft eir will get um public comments on it and they'll provide responses to that and then present to the uc regions both the final eir and the lrdp for the uc's consideration and potential approval in the summer or fall of 2020 so we're continuing to participate in that lrdp process um there are a couple questions on this slide that the council can consider one of those is resources dedicated towards additional communications with state elected officials and uc regions the next is whether not the the council uh sees it as something we should do to research coordinate and organize with other uc's regarding their current and or past lrdp approaches and then of course we will be commenting on the notice of preparation that's um the first step in the public outreach for the environmental impact report where they ask agencies what issues should be studied we'll be providing comments on that and then we'll be reviewing and carefully evaluating what comments should be conveyed on the draft eir um we did include in the agenda report that you know legal challenges are an option and i've got on the slide here that that is really to be determined and that is because you know we um genuinely want to work with the um uc system and the lrdp process to come to an amenable solution to the issues that we have and um if that does not occur then legal challenges are an option for us to pursue at this point it's too early to determine whether or not that's going to be necessary but it's something that the council should have on their long-term radar as a potential um issue um should the uh negotiations not get us to where we would like to be as a city that's what i have for you today and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have i think i think i thank you and i i'm wondering since we're nearing the 530 if we can hold our questions to after public comment and incorporate them in our comments in questions if that works for the council okay so this time i'd like to open it up to public comment for item number oh would it be appropriate if we could stop at 530 and i think there's a significant number of people here who are just here for oral communication and not for this item i think there's only one person here for this item or a couple maybe okay we should we should hopefully have it i'm assuming we can probably finish it up within close enough to 530 okay but if it starts to go over there i'm happy to consider that so if any um member of the public would like to speak to uh the council on item number 24 uh please do so at this time and you'll be given two minutes to speak sure i'm john aired and uh chair clues so i've been involved in this issue ever since uh the last round of growth uh just a couple things i want to highlight here first i think it's it's admirable and should we're supporting it that the uc is doing this outreach with the community advisory group i think uh both council member matthews and crone have been active on that and i think that's been helpful in addition the university has done some community and neighborhood outreach they've just started that the first meeting was on uh just a couple weeks ago uh and was held at the Lutheran Lutheran church up on high street and there were about 25 people attended there wasn't one person that was at all supportive of the university's growth i mean it was flat out no growth and there were examples as to the harm that's already being done to neighborhoods to their neighborhood to their lives as a result of the current round of growth there'll be a second meeting on also the Lutheran church and i would recommend that you attend just to get a flavor at sort of the street level of what your citizens that you represent feel about this that'll be on september 15th from 10 to it's a saturday i hope to get more people um i i think this is all good the real question is what's really the difference what impact is this actually going to have a 77 vote the policy position of the of the city council the policy position of the county which also is to keep the level here as it is until we've had a chance to catch up with the last round of growth the university itself admits that they have not caught up with their last round of growth let me just say one last thing you know i'm pretty consistent with my two minutes so i think i'm going to stick to that i appreciate it everybody gets two minutes and i'm going to stick to that so thank you very much i hope we gear up thank you okay are there any other members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item at this time hearing none or seeing none will return to council for questions and deliberation council member crown yeah i had a motion that i wanted to put up if and i have a copy for uh i really want to thank lee for that presentation he did a bang-up job at um the cad meeting the uh the outreach group and uh i thought that one slide is so telling and it's and it's what's driving rental prices in our town when you look at the university town center and you have three people sharing a room upstairs on downtown it's $1,100 each that's $3,300 so we know that you know our folks in town are going to be pegging their rents at that you know a little bit lower maybe sometimes significantly lower but still the kind of space that they're living in but uh thanks thanks again lee for that um what what i was originally going towards um was uh maybe giving some direction to our staff to uh city attorney or to the planning director but then um hearing from a lot of other folks i thought it'd be great to do some outreach and have a meeting amongst some of the stakeholders that we've encountered at our um at our cad meetings including the board of supervisors student representative uh and and city council and um kind of develop a strategy with them and have the supervisors go back to their um board and uh council member matthews and i representing this group come back here with a with a unified strategy about how we want to approach this i know i spoke with the city manager yesterday and he said that we could look into some um you know hiring a staff person to head this up uh because it's that significant and would require uh some time but i would like to do that in coordination with as we're doing with social services with homeless issues right now with our board of supervisors so i'm just putting forward this motion that the city's representatives on the community advisory group tag community members matthews and crone meet with representatives from the board of supervisors and the committee to limit university expansion clue which mr erid represents um and the student union assembly president or or other student representative the work of this group will be to formulate that uh uh formulate a plan that will include an overall city county strategy a joint funding plan that includes city and county resources and a timeline that considers ucsc's long range development plan and tentative schedule this working group will return to the city council and board of supervisors with a recommendation of no later than um october 9th 2018 and i think one meeting will do it for this group i don't think there's going to be more than that to sort of formulate what maybe strategy that we could pursue on both sides well on four different sides i've uh put here and i'd love to hear um comments and from all of you and councilmember comments or but well i i do have a couple of comments and um perhaps um i don't want to call it an alternative motion but um i i do think that um the um you know i'm really in favor of uh uh developing a collaboration and a formal process for collaborating with the county i think presenting a united front and getting going as mr erd said is very much important and so i'm i agree um councilmember crone with your perspective on that um i wonder though about the timing i actually think that given this is a longer term process as laid out by the l rdp um uh committee or the l rdp process is going to extend into next year um you know i'd really like to see a working group of this council that um works with uh the board of supervisors and i would suggest councilmember supervisor coonerty just because the university is primarily within his district and i know he's expressed interest in this um to participate in that and then um you know have a longer term working group that perhaps draws on some of the um the community members uh that and community groups that that you've suggested and perhaps others to really roll up their sleeves and and put together a work plan and perhaps with an eye towards um you know hiring somebody in the future so you know i'd like to see how the maker of the motion feels about um perhaps not prescribing the the uh purpose and being open to a longer term working group that would um be comprised of the mayor two council members perhaps and working with the county do others want to weigh in i'd like to hear from yeah i i personally think a one-time effort to deliver a recommendation in a relatively near future um is probably less effective than an ongoing working group i like the idea of a working group this is going to be an ongoing project and i think the strategies and the possibilities may very well evolve over time um i think certainly coordination between the city and um county and specifically third district supervisor and um other community resources as appropriate um can help get us there i think in a working group we can have access to strategy development both formal and informal that can help us um be effective so i really prefer the working group approach um i appreciate the thought you've given to this um but i think we're gonna have to stay on it for more than one oh i'm not at all um thank you um again i i wanted to do it for because i really feel like this whole thing is moving it's even though you see that timeline that they're going to go to the regions and fall or summer of 2020 there's a whole bunch of things that happen before that and if they if they don't see the city as serious players in this um it i think we have to do that as soon as possible and would you envision in the working group a student representative as well as uh clue members i i would say that i'd leave it up this is why i think a working group in an ongoing group would be important and and ask the working group to determine who might be included and of course i mean i think it's very important that student voices is included in clue as a group that's been working on this and has a lot of experience i think that that makes a lot of sense absolutely i just want to see a longer you know some people who a group of people who get together and really are committed to doing that work over the longer haul and that's really my my main concern so you can go ahead and put forward that motion and well i mean i don't want to i didn't necessarily want to offer it up as an alternative to you because i think they're really you know i'll second it if you're you know you want to put forward the motion i just want to see exactly what it is um okay first of for clarification excuse me council member is withdrawing his motion and council member will now state a motion okay so um see here i have put it together i'm from broadening this whole group you know anybody's thinking about university city relationships i i'm very happy about because it's really important well okay so i'd move that the the city council establish a working group in cooperation with the county to develop a detailed strategy for implementing the policies of the motor approved measure you will just put it out there to make clear um to assure that the city is active and effective engagement with the university during the development of the l rdp and then the composition of the working group um would be the mayor and two council members uh member of the board of supervisors i don't know if it's appropriate to name the third county supervisor without him so a member of the county supervisors um and the working group would report back to the council um with recommendations for further action within four months but um obviously with you know updates in between i also think um council member crone your point about um let me see if i can it's in the motion i think that you gave us here um that the city's representatives on the community advisory group um meet with representatives um you know and sorry i'm losing the track here i want to be really clear before we vote um so the city's representatives of the community advisory group cag council members matthews and crone work with the university's um stated goal of communicating to the legislature and community the full case depicting the extent of housing and transportation crisis that exists in san jacuz affecting both community host and campus like so i think getting at some of the points that were in the power point that you've given us that that be communicated because i don't want to lose sight of that while a working group is so is that i'll second and just to clarify what's been seconded it's to establish a working group as described and to direct that council member crone and i stay engaged with the cag process are those the two components are we part of the working group or is that up to the mayor i think that i generally when these working groups or subcommittees are established then the mayor i think that's i just don't want to go outside of precedent there yeah the mayor would appoint but i was just trying to my motion i was trying to like do you know staff is are so over burdened right now i didn't want them to feel like they had to be involved also if we already had a group that was getting together i mean of course lee is but there are planning directors always you know welcome at any meeting too what i'm hearing is your interest in being the two representatives along with the mayor of that working group anyone who's interested can contact the mayor there you go okay in terms of the i am sensitive though to the question of staff time and i thought a bit about that but i do think that it if we're gonna have a working group that's that is ongoing at least for a certain period of time that it's we're gonna need whoever that group is will need some coordination i don't expect it to be until a whole lot of time but getting us together figuring out i don't i mean i know how to do a doodle poll but i don't get just coordination okay you know the sounds like that would be manageable okay so we have a motion in a second um any further discussion at this time i guess the only uh your power point was great will you share that and make it available just just the graph please it's it's available as part of this packet yeah why did i miss it thank you you put it up on the website it's very informative thank you yeah that was great yeah appreciate it i wasn't going to mention it but i have to mention something in regards to the housing numbers there are waiting lists for housing on campus the cost of housing on campus is not pushing people to go out and live in santa cruz we are full and so i just wanted to put that out there as a university and also the cost of housing is what it is is because uc santa cruz they cannot use and none of the uc's one cent from the state of california on housing and so when they build housing they have to go out to bid just like anybody else would and like a developer would finance and so um unless the state of california provides some sort of relief for the university to build housing differently those prices really won't change and and but i just really do want to stress that it's not pushing people out to not live on campus there's there isn't you know we've turned the triples into the excuse me the doubles into triples and the triples into quads so that we just need to make that very clear that there's not some conspiracy to send students to live out in the community i think it goes to the point that was raised that we want to communicate and continue to communicate with our state legislators and exactly and have and you know a broader conversation about the impact okay just follow up on uh councilmember neroyan i what the it's the economic conspiracy is what it is it's on campus you have and i work with students you have the students from poorer families first-generation students receiving financial aid and you have wealthier students and those are the ones generally who can afford to live on campus the middle-class students do not are not choosing to live on campus because of the prices they're getting a lot of um uh pressure from their parents you know to move off campus save money finish in three years so i i think there is a financial structure that's that's in place and you're right that there's a waiting list but there's only you know half or 60 percent of the students up on campus are getting fine you know have the financial wherewithal to pay those prices there's a bunch of middle-class students who aren't getting the same you know financial aid right but we we we don't have any less students living on campus because of it you know we don't have dorms sitting empty for the most part so yeah i just wanted to make that apparent okay definitely more more conversation to come for sure okay at this point i think it's a good time for us to take a vote uh so all those in favor of the motion on the floor say aye hi any opposed uh passes unanimously with uh mayor trazos absent thank you okay so that brings us right along to oral communications uh so oral communications 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 okay if so please line up to the right of the dais to my left you will each be be given two minutes to speak and i want to um provide a brief announcement about oral communications so out of respect to other members of the public many of whom are not accustomed to speaking in public i'm going to ask members of the public to please reframe from clapping from cheering booing hissing or other similar types of behavior that might discourage any member of the public from wanting to step in front of the microphone to have their voices heard before our council so uh maintaining that level of decorum depending on the amount of of time we might we may adjust the comment period uh lower than two minutes but for now it's going to be two minutes per person okay go ahead i'm for each of us hello i'm natalex dot kennedy at gmail.com uh the issue i want to bring up is dogs downtown because for close to 40 years we had a dog ban down on pacific a couple years ago it was supposedly repealed but it wasn't actually repealed it was just modified into no dogs after dark which we really need to repeal because whether it's eight in the morning at eight or night if you want to take your dog for a walk you should be allowed to uh dogs are people too i think one of the biggest things that led to this dog ban was uh you know defecation on the street dog owners letting their dogs run around off leash uh stuff like that and none of those have really been addressed i think one thing we need to do is we need to strengthen we need to increase the fines for if somebody refuses to clean up after their dog when there's a defecation on the street uh we need to um make it a lot harsher for people that let their dogs run around off of a leash i even had a good friend had a small dog on a leash uh got run down by a big gnarly dog of whatever sort but uh this this owner had to take our dog to the emergency vet and it ended up in thousands of dollars in vet bills so there's that uh no dogs defecating on the street no dogs on a leash off of a leash should be uh put there but aside from that we need to completely repeal no dogs after dark you know people have their dogs and they should but uh the way the city's treating dog owners it's it's driving people away i give the last eight seconds to the next speaker that's okay okay thank you next speaker then thank you all for your devotion to the public good it's a little arduous for you i know that my name is nicholas whitehead i'm a co-founder of conscience and the action a group that is very concerned about the availability of bathrooms in in the city area um i was interviewing uh a young man in a wheelchair not a motorized one he had a health problem he was in the loudon nelson park he told me that they won't let him use the bathroom at loudon nelson park so he has to spend 20 a week on adult diapers wow that really sank in um a short while later i was talking with a woman homeless woman who told me she'd been raped twice then her companion also a woman said she'd been raped and they're very vulnerable homeless women they would have liked to have permission to use the bathroom at loudon nelson because they felt safer in there instead of having to do it in the bushes or behind a tree or in some yard we i myself went to the loudon nelson center and asked to use the bathroom i was very nicely dressed they said no i said well unless you're attending a meeting here or an event here or a class um i said what about if i had a serious medical condition they said the staff they said no exceptions no exceptions based on age or handicap that's just nothing the rules they're restrict we acknowledge there have been problems with the bathrooms we acknowledge that but we don't feel that ordinary public especially those in great need should be excluded we've talked with the city manager he was very gracious to us we particularly asked him ever thank you very thank you your time is up thank you so much okay i might come again you're always welcome to email us as well next speaker please you'll be given two minutes i'm dr michelle merrill and i'd like to speak about the climate emergency resolution in my training as a scientist we learn to be cautious and conservative about our predictions we try not to overstate things and we always try to air on the side of minimizing drama however a new report out last week argues that the reticence of the world scientific community trapped in our otherwise healthy habits of caution and due diligence we tend to downplay the potentially irreversible and catastrophic impacts of climate change and that in itself is a threat that should no longer be tolerated if humanity is to be motivated to make the rapid and far-reaching transition away from fossil fuels and other emissions generating industries in the report david splatney and denlap state it's no longer possible to follow a gradual transition path to restore a safe climate we've left it too late emergency action will eventually be accepted as inevitable the longer it takes the greater damage inflicted upon humanity human induced climate change is an existential risk to human civilization we're already seeing effects worse than most of the public's published predictions there are wildfires and choking smoke that are not limited to california these are happening in the temperate rainforest of british columbia with brown skies scarlet sunsets and orange moon rises last week in seattle as a result it happened in tropical rainforest choking equatorial cities like singapore in life-threatening haze this stuff is nasty to breathe i've been in both of these situations there are now parts of the arctic that most models had showed we're going to be resistant to climate change the ice that we thought was going to be the last to melt it's melting now hanswe keem shillen over ahead of the potstem institute for climate impact research writes that climate change is now reaching endgame thank you thank you for your comments i appreciate it okay next speaker please pauline seals and sense cruise climate action network i'll be very brief there are many stories this summer about climate disasters i have a report here about ocean heat causing marine heat waves pushing organisms to the limits of their resilience and beyond causing irreversible changes global warming will make tsunamis more intense threatening global coastal cities red tide in florida of course it's florida so they say it doesn't have anything well they don't acknowledge that climate change exists but i think i know we're a whole lot smarter indian floods record floods biggest in a hundred years hundreds of people killed and there are many many other examples the the serious thing is because the earth is so big it'll take a long time to start cooling once we reverse things so it's very important that we get started as soon as possible so please consider the climate emergency resolution and now thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you for coming next speaker please dear council members and city staff and members of the public i'm i'm jack nelson also here to speak about why would your council adopt an emergency resolution on climate um well to begin with destabilizing the earth's climate system is the greatest harm ever committed by human beings against other human beings and the natural world so the potential suffering is unthinkable and infinite i'm have with me a news story from a week ago just it's one more signpost along the way thickest oldest ice in the arctic north of greenland um being seen beginning to break up never been seen before backing up a little bit further for a little more in-depth information you might see the april issue of scientific american arctic meltdown the editors of scientific american chose to print this headline upside down to suggest that that's what could happen to our world what happens in the arctic does not stay in the arctic and just one poll quote here is strong arctic warming can lead to prolonged heat waves stalled hurricanes relentless rains and more intense fire seasons we all have something we can do to change course on this our city does our city is still thinking of building more of the infrastructure that admits greenhouse gases instead of investing those kinds of monies in alternate um in means of reducing our emissions uh this this particular article was written by a preeminent arctic researcher jennifer francis she describes meeting 15 years ago with a team of fellow arctic researchers and they were at that time uh thinking that we might see the arctic ice free and thank you at the end of the century now they're saying 2040 okay next speaker and you'll also have two minutes thank you i'm susan cavilliri am also speaking to the climate issues that we're now facing this is a brief poem that was in the new york times on sunday hold your breath a song of climate change the water's rising but we're not drowning yet when we're drowning we'll do something when we're on our roofs when we're deciding between saving the cute baby or the smart baby when there aren't enough helicopters or news crews to circle over everyone when sharks are in the streets when people are dying when people with wine cellars are dying we'll build dams and dykes put stilts on our v eights and golf courses cut down anyone who cuts down a tree we'll grow wings we'll go to the moon soon thank you hello my name is carol long a 30-year resident of santa cruz um and a lifelong advocate of emergency uh action on all kinds of environmental issues um i've this has been my main issue for more than 10 years um it's a really uh is an emergency uh i'm going to read to you facts about the fire smoke from the worst fires we've ever experienced in california and in the west and i'll just get as far as i can hear as climate change helps push up uh the number of wildflowers in western u.s communities face losing lives and properties but another threat also looms dangerous exposure to smoke huge fires have killed at least six people raised hundreds of homes smoke has shrouded much of california and gone eastward with nasa satellites showing fingers of smoke as far as salt lake city much of the smoke from the two fires near redding and another close to yummesty has remained close yosemite has remained close to the ground level prompting air quality warnings a big wildfire event not only impacts local communities but people hundreds of miles away uh said richard professor at university of massachusetts even if it's not your home being destroyed it's it is your problem you could suffer serious health effects once a forest turns into a roaring fire plumes of city smoke containing gases and microscopic particles are released symptoms like coughing burning eyes and shortness of breath occur uh widespread more seriously the smoke can can trigger asthma and lead to heart problems has been linked to development of cancer as summers become longer warmer and drier forests are transformed into perfect staging grounds for repeated wildflowers and increasing ferocity and this will not stop it will get worse in the 80s there was an average of 140 wildflowers thank you not 250 thank you for coming tonight okay so hi i'm brett garrett and i also want to support the emergency climate resolution we must treat climate change as an emergency because it is um we've seen in the past when there's been a war people the whole nation has pulled together to to fight the enemy and we basically the whole country needs to pull together our our president is going the wrong direction trying to bring back coal so it's critically important for cities like santa cruise to make a strong statement for the climate and for the planet setting an example for other cities setting an example for california and setting an example for the the nation please adopt an emergency climate resolution um and since i have a little extra time on another topic i just want to support the idea that bathrooms should be open downtown thank you next speaker hi i'm phil postener and this is my dog ahona many of you think she's cute i think she's cute but i want to tell you something a little while ago she went pee in a bus by city hall and nobody stopped her right now when she was peeing there are probably at least a dozen people in this city who are looking for a bathroom let alone at night time when they have a period or they have diarrhea and there's no bathroom open in this city i'm asking for your empathy care as much about human beings as we care about our dogs a point a task force we did have a good meeting with martin where you ask him to appoint a task force to deal with the issue of suffering homelessness particularly bathrooms a point representative of the police chief or representative some of us some of you we can solve this problem it is something we must do because we nicklas eye and others as with you reflect the issues of conscience and action please show empathy and conscience and allow some action to solve this problem thank you for allowing me to speak thank you for coming hi my name is al hindle i'm a resident of santa cruz have been here since 1982 and i also would like to support more public restrooms and hand-washing facilities part of my background has been in managing science labs where i was responsible for cultivating cells where you have to be ultra clean also radioactive materials and i can tell you people who are extremely careful will often contaminate things and this is not just the public at large so this is a civil matter we know societies such as the romans had public latrines where the human waste was washed away and i think it's very very important not only for the homeless population and their health but everybody in general and i can tell you from experience if i was to take swabs off this rail here your desks your microphones i would probably find e-coli i've found it over and over again in microwaves coffee cups plates food everywhere a lot of people are not very careful when they're defecating and wiping themselves and it's even worse when there are no hand-washing facilities and proper places for them to defecate and urinate so i would really urge that something be done about this um i've noticed at the library in the central library here the doors are now kept open i'm cognizant of some of the vandalism and problems that have happened in the past but i know there are ways around this um perhaps hardened facilities should be looked at uh that would be open doors stainless steel toilets stainless steel wash basins etc um i've found it so frustrating sometimes that i would be willing to be on closed circuit camera to be able to use a um a toilet or wash facility so i really urge if we're going to be a civil society that we do have bathrooms that are open hopefully 24 hours a day thank you very much thank you thank you good afternoon members of the city council then mayor um chase no who is now martin yay congratulations um i'm here today to speak in favor of the climate emergency resolution and i want to read to you this um beat of a publication uh done by the uh truth dick um it says in here that we are now having an environmental problem right now we are having a planetary transition we have already pushed the earth into it the mathematic mathematical models of the for the future of the planet had three trajectories one is a massive die off of perhaps 70 percent of the human population and then an uneasy stabilization this icon is complete collapse and extinction the third is a dramatic reconfiguration of human society to protect the biosphere and make it more diverse and productive not only for humans but for the health of the planet this will include healthy all consumption of fossil fuels converting to a plant-based diet and dismantling the animal agriculture industry as well as greening deserts and restoring rainforest so the job that we have a hand is no easy but you know if we don't leak it split we all are gonna be transitioning to another place okay so um i'm here to support that and because i still have a little bit of time i'm still in green this is a surprise for me but um in case that you don't know i have been homeless twice in santa cruz and i have been unable to use bedrooms because there are no restroom available so if you have a little bit of compassion within yourselves it's when you are in a wheelchair it's very difficult to go to the toilet no matter what toilet there are many places in here that i cannot enter because it's not accessible okay i had sometimes to drag myself to reach a toilet put in my hands and whatever was in the ground so get those people people any one of you could be homeless one of these days let me remind you of that too okay give a little bit of compassion and dignity okay have bathrooms that's a human need and just as the little dog that was pee outside well you know we all have to pee thank you next speaker please and just to get a sense of who still wants to speak before the council we're in oral communications you have two minutes to address the council at this time if you're interested in interested in speaking please line up to the left and i see then the gentleman in the gray shirt will be our last speaker okay go ahead you can get started go ahead my name is Ursula and first i'd like to thank you all for your service and your compassion towards the public first and foremost to me the most important thing is to take care of the homeless before anybody does anything else as far as spending money take care of the homeless that's where your money needs to go that's where Santa Cruz's money needs to go and i'm pleading with you people don't have to suffer you can be compassionate you can be kind and open a bathroom to me the most important bathroom to start with to open is the london nelson community center open that bathroom next after that you could put porta potties in every public parking lot also what you can do is have designated parking spaces for RVs and people who live in their cars people who live in RVs and cars two spaces and if you put it in every parking lot it would make a difference and then you can designate in your parks our parks at the camping space for people who live outside and i thank you for your attention thank you hello uh kief mckenry the great great grandson of uh dr james mckenry that signed the constitution and was secretary of war under washington and adams um anyway i um rented uh with money from the community at portable toilet for the area downtown because there were many many complaints by the vets hall the post office lulus all those places wanted a toilet there i rented a toilet tried to secure a permit from the city there's no such permit so i'm encouraging the city to have a permit process so that when we rent toilets we can put them out there without the city confiscating them i think that's uh if the city's not going to provide the toilets and the citizens are going to provide the toilets then the city should not interfere with the citizens ability to provide the toilets the um second thing is that many people came to me in the last week explaining that their cars had been towed that they were living in their cars this is a massive problem happening right in the last uh week and a half that many people who live in their cars have lost their homes the city has come out apparently there's a clampdown happening where each of every single person told me that they got five tickets in one day and then came back to find that their car was gone and it was taken to a salvage there all the cars have been taken to salvage yard um outside of the county and cannot be retrieved and these people now owe hundreds and hundreds of dollars and have lost their homes and are now living in the streets as a result of a policy of this city and so instead of trying to solve the homeless problem we're uh actually officially trying to do something to create more homeless people in our community it's bad enough that they have to live in their cars but now they have not even that and they've lost all their belongings and their clothing and all the things that are important to them so uh it would be really great to stop towing people's homes and discarding them thank you okay next speaker next speaker please so members of the community the audience here and council um please we I invite everyone to stop by the Loudon Nelson Center and uh ask to use the bathrooms I've actually talked to people who don't believe this is true they say oh you can use them if you walk in no that's not the case if you refuse file a complaint there and then establish a record that people older people younger people disabled people homeless people everybody unless they're part of a very small select group that's they're using a program can't use the bathrooms these have been closed since march with no action from Izeth Ray who's the boss there nor from Martine Bernal who sits over here and has access to plenty of bathrooms it's a health and safety issue surely hepatitis a scare common human decency I could run through all these respect for the elderly and disabled I've mentioned being faithful to a Santa Cruz spirit and historical traditions we have here particularly vicious is why these bathrooms were closed that's one of the reasons I'm wearing a bathrobe and carrying a teddy bear it's a solidarity with people outside who are homeless for an examination of relevant emails finally released mostly between Izeth Ray the Loudon Nelson boss and her staff and superiors the concerns seem to be campers both day and night in the park let's make Santa Cruz more unwelcoming to the homeless while pretending to be more common sense and caring no matter what the impact on the general public rent control advocates seem to be recognizing that this ongoing war against the homeless affects all renders more laws to drive the poor from the parks fence off and lock up the park at night that's happening at Loudon Nelson finally shut down the bathrooms and call police if people piss on the grass they can pay thugs with tasers those are parks and rec employees to scare folks away but not to monitor bathrooms and real problems arise go to Loudon Nelson you and you out there have to do something about this this council is not okay next speaker please other before you before you get started just confirming are there anybody is there any additional speakers for public comment one more okay so you'll be our last speaker then go ahead thank you i'm just going to speak briefly about the bathroom situation so he mentioned isis there is a she's administrator of loudon nelson and i think she is someone to interface with directly about like the problem with the the bathrooms not being open to the public had loudon nelson anymore because it was i think it was her administrative decision and i feel it was kind of in brinksmanship with a cohort of people that were doing illegal things in the bathroom and the public shouldn't suffer because of that like and when i say the public i'm you know i don't mean city council i mean the public at large and general people now what did happen when i came to council i spoke about the the bathroom stall at the metro and it's been fixed and it's great it's it's now there are two stalls in the men's bathroom and it's it's absolutely wonderful that it got fixed and i don't know how it happened but i'm glad i had the opportunity to come here and speak to you about it the other things i wanted to talk about i want to talk about how ugly the library idea is the the parking garage on top of a library reminds me that national or no scientific american that he held up with the arctic meltdown upside down you know just just a really stupid weird idea and i think you guys should stop throwing money at it another thing i wanted to talk about is i heard kind of i don't know if it's a rumor so much as you know just an administrative procedural thing but they're talking about not having a the salvation army vets hall shelter this year for the winter time and i think you know there's plenty of time to rethink that because that is something that is quite a relief valve and helps a lot of people and there'll be a lot of suffering if you guys dain to deny that program i know it's expensive but i think it does a lot of good thank you very much city council steve plage i'm really happy this evening to be able to come to you as a member of consciousness and action as you may have gleaned from some of the comments earlier really was started by nicholas whitehead and rabbi phil posner and and keith mckendry and robert norris focusing on opening bathrooms at night when our unsheltered population really needs them you know i think you'd all agree that there are bathrooms around town that are open during the day and that's really to the city's credit to make that happen i want to add that one of our first meetings we had was with martin brunel and we suggested to martin that he opened the san ronzo park bathrooms would have been closed for a number of months and really to our to our surprise and delight of those bath that bathroom was open and remains open so we can work together to make progress happen to really provide some facilities some human dignity for people who need it so badly particularly overnight i think that's the thing that conscience and actions focused on the thing that brought me to that group was to really be able to work on that i will tell you that in the absence of elected officials action there are private citizens who are willing to step up and do this he's mckendry is going to sponsor a party the aclu of all folks has offered to sponsor a party of the united nation association has offered to sponsor a party the santa cruz homeless depot of which i'm a part with phil posner so we are willing to do this and i'll echo what keith says is that you know find us a illegal permitted means to do this if he if we go to the city and say we want to do this it's citizens who want to participate in the solution and don't want to just complain to you constantly about what you're not doing we are willing to do our part as well but we need some help we need some help elected officials who can pass emergency legislation you can change ordinance who can make this happen so that we come to the city and say you know we're going to put bathrooms in the ultra mat parking lot or we're going to put bathrooms over by uh the city uh by post office and one more moment thank you thank you thank you very much for your help thank you okay that will conclude oral communications at this time um we now have our item number 25 which is the interim homeless facility planning item and uh we have susie o'hara and uh assistant city manager tina she'll to present council could be smoked uh oh okay i just go back to you guys can roll shambles to be there you like me to begin maybe uh maybe one second maybe just one okay could we maybe um get get staffed to uh get us a list of the porta potties that are open all all night because there are bathrooms that are open and it'd be great for uh the public to know that and maybe put it on our website or you know where people can uh go um but just having a list would be great yeah we can do that let's go ahead and get started i think they'll they'll come trickling in all right good evening i think it's safe to say uh vice mayor walkins and council members i'm susie o'hara principal management analyst in the city manager's office and i'm co-presenting with with assistant city manager tina she'll tonight and tonight we'll be presenting on the interim homeless facility update and really in that encompassing our recommendation along with the other hap jurisdictions the 2018 2019 north county winter shelter plan so with regard to the presentation overview um our pictures here those are river street camp staffers i wanted to give you that context i'm going to be really talking about this in two general areas one is giving an update on the process that we are going through for the phase two implementation of our three phase plan to ultimately open a permanent year-round navigation center that includes updates on the process of public engagement our funding opportunities and agency leadership and in thinking about that timeline and the process that we're undertaking we are um here today to make a sorry excuse me yeah a copy of this because you're passing it around the brown act requires you to make it available to the public and i think you have a copy i'm watching on the screen thank you susie sorry i had to look a couple of times to clarify okay thank you so given the timeline of the complicated process that we are undergoing with regard to the phase two planning we have come to a recommendation along with the county and the other hap jurisdictions for a winter shelter program to really serve the immediate needs that we have for shelter as we enter into our coldest and wettest months and we will go over those aspects as well so with regard to an overview of where we're at with the timeline and goals objectives of phase two i want to talk a little bit about the timeline we've been at this since may of 2017 i think it's somewhat hard to believe because we've been at this for quite some time but in may of 2017 during your budget hearings you recommended to prioritize your round shelter that really helped to embark the city council as well as our other hap jurisdictions and thinking about that prioritization including what would be the cost the feasibility etc five council meetings later in june of 2018 was your last action associated with this you extended the river street camp through august 2018 as you can very well know that's just a couple days away so as we go towards this process it's important for us to not only today make a determination about what to do with the camp but think about that within the context of this overall planning effort so i wanted to refresh your memory on the council direction over those six meetings there has been consistent recommendations from the council to increase shelter capacity from seasonal to year-round with this three-phase approach and staff has significant responsibility in addition to our other partner jurisdictions as well and that is to develop and deliver a cost effective multi-jurisdictional and an inclusive model to meet that council direction and i mentioned this responsibility for a couple reasons one because this this has been a very complicated process as you can see in those three areas it's important for us to think about all of those in equal parts and with similar level of coordination with the other jurisdictions but it's also also knowing that because of this responsibility that we hope to deliver a successful program but there's also going to be flaws and we will re-recognize that so one of the areas that we are working on is is public engagement and the challenge of homelessness as we know is not new to to santa cruz but i think it's fair to say that the crisis that we're experiencing is changing and becoming very complicated in this process it's important to engage with the diverse cross-section of stakeholders that are involved in in these discussions as you can see across the bottom elected official service providers site neighbors homeless community business community partner jurisdictions these just name a few and what we have learned through this process is that it's very important to take the steps of identifying the problem that you're trying to solve and do that first before you start talking about solutions our three-phase approach really talks about solutions we need to take a couple steps back and talk about the problem and get some consensus on that before we move forward and so therefore we need some time good evening council members tinnish all assistant city manager and on that point this is something that councils directed as well the public engagement and it's you know we're taking it very seriously and it does take time we wish things could have happened more quickly but here we are to have that thoughtful inclusive process we needed more more exploration of the interests of the issues the problem definition and where we all fit into it this very complex puzzle with our jurisdiction vis-à-vis other jurisdictions and then this happened as was reported to you both in june as well as the city manager's update at the august 14th meeting some unexpected opportunities arose as well which further complicates the funding picture and these two are and this is actually a photo of governor brown signing the budget susie actually got the the accurate picture but the state you know there was that surplus money that's coming down to all the continuum of care entities in the state of california and we know that the santa cruz county coc will receive nine point six million dollars this is significant it's a huge influx of funding no one knew this is on the horizon prior to may april when things were talking about them became real i believe in june and now we're grappling with what do we do with this opportunity we know there's three years to spend it and how what are the priorities across the entire county so right now the half the homeless action partnership which is the name for the continuum of care and it's a consortium of the jurisdictions and service providers are working on a process to come up with how do we refresh our priorities how do we think of the best way to not only direct these dollars but other dollars how do we how are we directed to be more responsive to the needs that our county is feeling now and we anticipate the future so it's a different sort of conversation and again not something that we are aware of when we are back in february and and working through this really complicated issue with the council and community so there's that on the left of the slide on the right and this is reported as well and you're all very familiar with this that housing bond that will be on the november 6 ballot and as part of that there's about 20 20 million 21 million dollars a pot that would be available countywide for homelessness related projects so these are you know suggestive of 30 million dollars potentially flowing into our county to solve to solve for homelessness in in the vast array of ways that could be done and the city of santa cruz has a strategic plan that focuses on the unsheltered visible homeless population but there's other needs and priorities across the spectrum as well as well you're you're very familiar with so it's it's been a diverse conversation and that in a complicating conversation but a very encouraging one because it's provided a great place to get people together get entities together in a way that perhaps hasn't happened we have great synchronicity we're moving in the same direction we're having such productive conversations and you can see from the slide that in addition to all the stakeholders are on the engagement slide we have a huge amount of agency partnerships and interests and their own publics and communities that need to be respected as well but um knowing that the challenge of homelessness is so incredibly intractable we really believe that not only do these jurisdictions have a mission to tackle this but so do the other sectors this really is a community-wide issue so we are when we're thinking about how we we plan our trajectory forward um how to present a responsible responsive plan to your council and to other entities we are we're thinking of all these things and and so in light of all this you know we really had to confront what's what's feasible we've been coming with updates kind of short run updates short run solutions and we realize we actually do need to create a reasonable time horizon to confront these challenges the the opportunities are bigger than we thought the stakeholders to engage are bigger than we thought as we know hearing from our community all spring as we talked about homeless sites and in a county-wide strategy you know these are just a lot of very topical important conversations and so we think to really honor that conversation to be responsible we need we need more time we need more time to do planning more time for community engagement and and more time to find out what's happening with funding so we can really sift out the appropriate approach that we think is the best way to go so we have been assertive we've tried to move things forward quickly and I think that's that's a worthy ambition because it it responds to the importance and the urgency of the issue but we just need more time to be able to put all these pieces together and that's become very very apparent as we worked very hard through June July and August and so as we are we are coming to this realization that a larger horizons needed we also have the very real need that there is no north county winter shelter plan in place so as the council knows for the past two years the association of faith communities and then last year the association of faith communities plus the Salvation Army operated to do dual shelter operation and we were told that that organization or afc had a short term commitment we are so grateful for them stepping in but we always knew they were not in it for the long long run and so we needed to come up with something and so the HAP again the Homeless Action Partnership of which we are a member but not the member or driving necessarily came up with the plan to talk about some of our immediate shelter needs and that's Susie will go over that and that's what the recommendation before you tonight yeah so given the timeline that we are discussing and we really think we need in order to be successful moving forward with the next phases of the navigation navigation center plan we'd like to recommend recommend for your consideration a three-part plan for really solving our challenge of lack of winter shelter space in our community those those include an expansion of the river street camp by 20 tent sites to accommodate up to 75 to 80 individuals who are in large part sleeping outside an expansion of the HSC poly loft by 20 shelter beds to accommodate up to 60 individuals and that expansion expanded access to the hygiene services as well and then also expand and diversify our capacity by supporting a safe parking program to include 50 parking spaces and if we can move forward with negotiations with the HSC and the AFC with regard to the the second and third points there we hope to be able to open those expansions by the time winter shelter is usually operational in mid-November I didn't want to mention on this that Tina and I did do extensive outreach with the neighbors directly adjacent to the river street camp letting them know about the potential plan asking for feedback as to current experiences and we did not receive any objections to the extension so to wrap it up and talk about recommended council action as noted in the council agenda report that would be to approve staff's recommended 2018-2019 homeless action partnership north county winter shelter plan by extending not to exceed April 15th 2019 which is the typical close of the winter shelter program and expanding shelter bed capacity at the river street camp authorizing staff to explore a temporary shelter bed and related hygiene based service expansion for the homeless services center poly loft and then also authorizing staff to explore proposed association of faith community safe parking program I did want to note as noted in the staff report as well we're not asking for any additional funds at this time we do believe that what was allocated during the June budget hearings will be substantial to get us through this planning horizon so we're happy to report that we would not be asking for additional funds at this time and we do believe that the state funding which is expected to come in in January will help to supplement our local funding sources so with that we're concluding and have an opportunity to provide feedback and answer questions thank you Susie and Tina and I'll open it up to the council to see if there are any questions at this time so how will all this be governed like for instance this will all be funded from the same pot right from the half is that yeah so the expectation as we move into the next stage of discussing this with the half jurisdictions is to ensure that that north county winter shelter distribution apportionment that has been historical historical will continue in terms of the governance I would I would yield to Tina on that yeah and that's it's the same way it's always operated so the homeless action partnership and the jurisdictional committee will manage that it will be basically three prongs of one program so rather than having a place or two places as last year where people are sleeping there'll be just three locations but we'll all be managed together and tracked together did I answer your question yeah and you know the river street camp in my eyes has been successful in regards to you know it hasn't had an impact in the neighbors it's helping the individuals that are actually staying there will the the way the river street camp has been managed will that translate to the other locations well for the river street camp the operations would remain the same so the same sort of shuttle in shuttle out resources coming there the the great accountability and community building that's there currently would remain the same the homeless services center would manage the 20 additional beds so they currently have 40 beds and so we are discussing a possibility of just expanding that so that would fall under their program parameters as part of this and then the other one would be an offsite somewhere else in the county for that and so it wouldn't be directly related but in terms of what the city would be controlling it would be operated the same okay so the city would have control over the river street camp in regards to rules and regulations and how that's run would we have a say for instance in the safe parking program i would welcome that feedback i mean it's a pretty nascent idea and there's outreach happening and so i think that there definitely is room to talk about what are the interests where the considerations or concerns or things that you'd like to see happening so we'd love to get that feedback from you right i just wanted to make sure that that was available and then when we get to april does that mean the river street camp is going to have 20 less beds because the winter shelter part of this goes away the authorization would be for the entire camp then to be extended until that date and then the entire camp would close okay and then the where the other two are operating for instance at the river street camp you can stay there all day if you'd like come and go as you please um will that be available at these other two locations or is it going to be more of the traditional winter shelter model i again that's an operational detail we haven't fully cross that bridge yet so i don't want to speculate at this point um but i would know that we would continue river street camp that would be an all day operation that may not be feasible in the other locations based upon their constraints and the other organization's needs but so we have yet to to talk through exactly how it would work and are we looking at possibly having people who are currently homeless in santa cruise today be the people that have priority for this these expanded spaces because you know what i don't want to see is people who aren't currently here grabbing these spots i want to see people who are currently here being able to get these spots as opposed to people coming in from other communities correct yeah and that this is something that comes up a lot as you know this council has discussed it other members of the community discuss it there are some things to be mindful of in terms of not only discriminatory practices but also not saying this discriminatory but when you're actually selecting one cohort cohort over another could we do that legally how are things going to work there secondarily it's also practicality so i think that this is an ongoing question that we will talk about but there are no set policies on that right now i'd really like that examined um because i you know i see people who are currently suffering out on the street who are here and so my hope is that we could craft some sort of rules and regulations that give those folks who are here today a preference okay no no no other questions uh by council yeah i think since we are talking about homeless services and we've heard a lot about it what would it take i mean i just really feel like we could put our heads together and open loud and nelson open the bathroom there and what would it take to do that i don't think that we're necessarily prepared to talk about that within the context of the shelter program um it seems like um that might be better answered by martin i mean i would love to to if there's consensus or maybe there's not i mean to get that bathroom open to the general public because i've heard more than once that people who go in there are not getting the code even though um others have said no just go in and they should be relatively give you the code for the bathroom and and it should be okay well first of all the the the shelter program that's before you really has nothing to do with this with the bathroom uh facility now nelson but i can tell you that at least from the staff perspective our goal is to make it as available as possible and i think the the changes that have been made there have really largely been needed in order to just be able to maintain the facility in in a safe condition and that's simply what's driving it and so to the extent that for example when i did meet with individuals you know we looked at where we could make changes and and respond to the need uh an open facility so we did that but in this particular case it's just they've tried many attempts by having monitors by there's been a variety of things have been tried to maintain them open and they just haven't succeeded unfortunately and so it's just gotten to the point where for public safety purposes it just needed to be managed differently unfortunately it's not that there's not an interest in providing the services it's just that it it conflicted with the day-to-day operations of the center just wasn't able to function uh for the use of the facility and and what's the activities of the facility unfortunately okay i didn't get the questions by council members um for staff at this time okay seeing them we'll uh now open it up to public comment on this item this is item number 25 if you would please line up to my left uh every person who is interested in speaking to the council will be given two minutes i will be consistent about that and i um also want to uh reinforce what i stated earlier in regards to decorum and experience of all those that are present in the um in the chambers today and making it a safe and open space where anybody can feel uh welcome to speak to us so i appreciate that in advance and i'll go ahead and and hand it over to you hi my name is dora burlanga and i've been a santa queues resident for the past 35 years this is my home this is my community and i'll do anything for it and i have unfortunately i'm homeless but fortunately miss susie has done an awesome job putting this homeless shelter together it's tough it's it's not easy it's it's as it once says no cookies and creams i've also been fortunate enough to get a job with the homeless shelter rear street camp should i say as a driver and i shuttle these people in and out and i hear their bitches and moans and all this i reframe myself from sharing my own so i can listen to them don't take this away from us it's brought up through self-esteem in so many ways don't don't kick us back out to the streets it's a good thing for santa queues it don't take it away if anything get more people involved in it to make it possible for the rest of the people to get off the fucking streets excuse my language to get off the streets and yes i agree with you help your help us first the locals okay the homeless ones not the ones that keep coming from other states and cities and stuff they come here they destroy my home i don't like it don't take this away um it means a lot to people these bathrooms yes another thing but that's that's a whole another topic in this place people come when they get on the shuttle bus take me home take me on dora and for them to say that excuse me it's um some of these people never call a place a home again yeah it's a tent it's it's they're on a platform but it's home for them they're able to keep their belongings there and not worry that they're going to come back and they're not going to be there they have showers that restroom they have meals they have conversation you know don't take it away from us thank you for coming thank you thank you for coming and speaking next speaker please hi vice mayor council uh brent adams uh chair of the senator's coalition of homelessness and director of the warming center program a couple things here first i want to talk about the warming center as your backup to everybody who sleeps outside and i will say scalable to infinity every single person who sleeps outside this winter will have a place to be not a population cap you need to work with the warming center bring warming center into conversation about how not just to clear ourselves and say we've got to get this this plan done but what is our actual base of need within the city let's take responsibility for all the people sleeping outside let's take make it a community agreement that not one person middle-aged woman with a walk are sleeping in a doorway and we saw many last winter despite the winter shelter we have a shuttle van how do we work with you how do you work with us to make sure that we're providing the best possible service for people who sleep outside let's take this on let's take it real not just kind of a functionary thing that i see us doing when i say functionary that's what i would assert and i don't i'm not trying to uh sour any bridges here but 50 people in that encampment i should see this city council slamming their fists down in in aggravation two thousand dollars per tent per person per month and now you want to extend that it just doesn't make any sense in relationship to the number of people we have sleeping outside we can do better we as a community should take a responsibility for the basic need and try to provide safe clean shelter by any means necessary yes a safe parking yes a transitional encampment and Eugene they cost 10 percent of what we're spending and they don't have the three layers of security crime goes down and people where's the data by this time i would expect to see a data sheet of of people moving out people you know specific data where is it smart solutions said a smart solution has to be evidence-based and produce a measurable set of data why aren't we talking about that a few years goes by and we've forgotten everything we've learned so i assert you're not really doing real work in my view thank you okay next speaker please hey nate alex dot kennedy gmail dot com uh what i got to say about these shelter programs the river street shelter coral street the river street camp all this stuff that we're doing right now well it's good and all but what we really need to do is multiply it by four or more and have a lot more of these kinds of programs out there uh and what i also have to say regarding the whole bathroom issue for the general public that means me all of you when we go downtown and we want to use a restroom if it's a coffee roasting company if it's starbucks if it's a any other restaurant down there we i should be able to go in and say here is a two dollar deposit of purchase to say that i am a customer and i can go and take a poo before i go and order a meal we really need to have that in the city a new ordinance saying that that any i'm gonna go ahead pause for just a second this is the item on the river street camp we had a time for oral communication so just to be mindful of the i'm not sure where else to put this in and a lot of other people are talking about the uh the restrooms as well and that was that was at the oral communication so i just want to remind you that this is here we're discussing the update on the interim homeless facility and any any public comment related to i will close with this all the council members here all of you i really want to talk to you in person i've sent out an email to everybody and i haven't gotten a response yet but i want to talk to you guys face to face not in front of the whole council but in person as soon as possible i already said my email so that's that next person thank you thank you next speaker hi yep keith again and not the guy in the picture um who's a very nice man actually and uh i really love chris so um anyway see um you know we we it was kind of introduced that we've been working on this since may of 2017 and i just like to remind people that we stood here in 1988 and 1989 and encouraged a number of solutions including after the earthquake taking federal funding for earthquake redevelopment and focusing it on single room occupancy hotels and many other things which would have then resulted in there being many less people living on the streets i'd also like to point out that it's a myth that um programs in a city attract people from other cities that's not actually true there's no statistical evidence of that it's been a it's it's one of a number of urban legends that are falsely spread i would remind people i was homeless in cleveland in the winter and everybody said how wonderful it was in cleveland the soup kitchen was great and all the homeless are coming to cleveland in the winter we hear this in every city in the united states it's a it's a myth so they're unfortunately this uh what is true is a homeless family did come here believing that they had work and a mom and dad and four young kids and um they their car broke down they had so many problems they didn't really get the job they thought they were coming for and they ended up homeless so the people they weren't coming for services they were coming here because they were promised employment and didn't realize the housing but most of the people that have come to me in the last month who have just become homeless we're just we're already living here and they were paying rent and even though their rent freeze their rent went up and they uh two months later ended up living in their cars or on the streets so part of what we have to be doing is not looking for increased issue of homeless people from abroad but the increase in homeless people from here thank you next speaker please my name's andy davis excuse me would you mind using the microphone thank you okay that better okay uh my name is andy davis i am a resident of the camp and i'm wondering if there's a hidden agenda here because it says that 20 more people are like 10 sites are going to be moved into the area but we don't know how it's going to happen and we want to know is it going to mean taking away the washing facilities what is it what's going to be taken out in order to make room for 20 more people in a place that already is overloaded with uh half of two-thirds that amount oh go ahead we'll have that amount even we'll we'll we'll uh we'll take note of your question and we'll respond to it after public comment you can't comment now tell me but after after we're able to finish that public comment we'll be able to get back to you on that question oh okay thank you sir okay next speaker please evening i guess my name is mary besan i've been homeless for 18 months as a result of an accident i am sane i am sober and i am very busy i am redesigning and reformatting programs within my community shelter i work for and with downtown streets i am the leader of the levy team i know every inch of the levy and exactly what is going on there okay i have a houseless art project an art project called houseless art we've just delivered pieces to the county fairer i am creating a stewardship on the levy of the various small organization so i'm a busy person and i'm homeless yes um i do not i can't even comprehend how everyone is sitting here smiling about this winter plan in the first place as i understood it correct me if i'm wrong the camp was originally river camp was originally to have 60 tents and that was limited to 40 by the fire department because they require that the tents be a certain number of feet apart so how you're going to add 20 without expanding the space i'm very familiar with that space does anybody know anything about this again we'll get to your questions after we are able to conclude comment but we'll take there were about 50 60 campsites on the bench lands last winter that i was cleaning up we going and clean up the campsites um there were probably another 40 up above that and under the bridge on water street there were 65 people on the program 65 to 70 at salvation army the same number at the vfw which adds up to roughly 250 there are 12 beds as i understand it about 12 beds and paul are in the loft how you're going to fit 20 more in there they're going to be really crammed how 75 people are going to fit in 20 20 tents that that is in a space that's pretty full myself i just i just don't see the viability of this as of today in the sentinel captain loveock of the salvation army stated that he had not heard from anyone thank you okay next speaker please you have two minutes starts i'd like to i think you have the ability to extend time i have been consistent with the two minutes and if you reach out to the mayor or us in advance for additional time then that will be granted but at this time it's been two minutes consistently for public comment on this item so that's what we'll be okay so my um my name's surge kag no you can go ahead and get started okay my name's surge kag no uh no a few of you saw you yesterday and i do consulting on homeless stuff and residential programs um and behavior modification and i've dealt with you guys a few times too um everything i say uh try to take it as improvement not trying to be critical or confrontational or anything i think more things get done when we work together um the process that we've had uh over the last year like i worked at the winter shelter and there's been from there's a lot of politics and i understand why things happen but there was very little information coming out back and forth from the city manager's office they were sort of told not to be sharing the conversations as much as uh i represent the a part of the hat too there's a there's a big group of agencies and then there's an executive committee and a governments committee and we don't know any of those conversations we haven't been in any of those i would say that the brown act probably covers that you were talking about it on um public meetings um public meetings we've talked about a couple times so for the homeless action committee uh the county homeless coordinating committee the two by twos it's this has been a really hard process to get information towards and so i'm going to say a couple things about the proposal and that's true i don't know the details so um if you're doing it at the loft and you're doing upstairs well what's the what about the people wheelchairs like it's a pretty small place um i'm a little confused how you're getting more beds in there when they when they did the refit they wanted to have more people they weren't allowed a little confused why talking about giving it permission now but there was a closed session last week or two weeks ago that was about modifying their lease maybe not connected just confusing why that happened a couple weeks ago but the conversation is now um the loft has a okay that's the two minutes so your time is up feel free to reach out in advance to get more time and we'll be able to accommodate that thank you very much and you're able to submit questions to us directly as well Phil Posner and Ahona i i want to commend i mean i think this is terribly important i do want to make a suggestion when one when one looks out there you don't see very many homeless people here Keith especially as you know does incredible job with food and our bombs he's in constant contact with homeless people Robert i work at the red church on monday's handing out bagels i'm also involved in other process homeless processes you know why they're not here because they don't believe you and they lack hope my suggestion a suggestion is city council people you need to meet with homeless people occasionally so come down to the red church on monday when we're served when that wonderful church is serving that wonderful meal the shelter church programs that were involved in please meet some of the homeless people so they get to know that you do care because right now they don't think you they don't think you care they don't come there's a sense of hopelessness we can change that and if we change that mentality we have a lot better chance of making your wonderful program successful but if if they don't feel part of it who thanks thank you are there any other speakers who'd like to speak to us on item number 25 okay mr. nurse you'll be the last okay um the you so let me get this straight you got 30 million dollars you can't open the bathrooms and you're going to provide less shelter than last winter that is to say you're not going to actually increase the number of people who are sheltered and even if you do if you add up the total because safe parking great idea glad to hear it but in fact it these people were never into shelter anyway they had their own shelter they provided it and they ran away luckily uh they could do it at night in spite of rachel's attempts to criminalize them outside they are still able to do that or getting hassled as well now the issue this is a small fraction of people you're providing for and yet you're you got 30 million dollars to play with supposedly or you know you have a certain amount of money and what you've got is hundreds of people outside what are you going to do about them in terms of at least leaving them alone letting them shelter themselves somehow because you are not you're more interested in developers consultants and other projects than in addressing the issues we've seen this time and time again decade after decade this should be no news to people watching this uh phil kramer could restore the meals at the homeless lack of services center that were discontinued two years ago you're going to do that phil i don't hear anything i understand he's in the audience not required to answer you can answer you can require that you can do i don't know i i stand sort of dismayed because you had uh the san lorenzo campground where people actually could come and go and rachel was in an era when she suggested you know they'll be able to come and go people can't come and go from the current barbed wire boneyard river street campground good as it is in terms of what it does in terms of limited activity and they should be given credit for that but it's only for a small fraction and it's heavily controlled and as brant adams who runs a free storage service which you've refused to provide it only it's it's limited but by three levels of policing and an extremely extremely difficult situation and please extend the time for people next time not just people thank you not just people who are thank you for contacting you in advance thank you very much okay you'll get the dialogue unless you do that concludes a public comment at this time i'll return back to council for action and deliberation are there any comments i'm prepared to move the staff recommendation i did want to follow up on the question because it's something that had occurred to me as well to try to get a better understanding of how logistically spatially we you see fitting more people into these spaces so the tense but then also in at the loft i appreciate that if there are any questions that you had sure sure so happy to clarify that so staff has been working to really look at the feasibility of adding these additional spaces and we are optimistic that both at their river street camp and the homeless services center that there is adequate space to add those 40 spaces which we hope with 20 additional 10 sites at the river street camp when we devise the plan for the river street camp in collaboration with our fire marshal we did leave a significant traveling it's unnecessary at this point to have that there are other ways for us to manage the ingress and egress of safety vehicles and people so that traveling which i think is about 16 feet wide is an area that we can put additional tents there are other efficiencies that we can contemplate there there is a huge dumpster there's other things that we can potentially move around and so we are optimistic that we can add those additional sites in terms of the hsc they have an area that is currently unused it's a pantry area that we are optimistic that we can put 20 additional beds in as well okay thank you what was the 30 million that he somebody is mentioning yeah so the 30 million was back to the funding opportunities that's 9.6 million from the state and about 20 million from the local housing bond measure for the county okay okay yeah and the salvation army was approached wasn't approached so the salvation army has been a part of this process so they did respond to the phase two rfi and we have been continually in discussions with them as to plans for this as we have moved along this process of discovery and understanding how better to move forward with public engagement we have recently reached out to captain harrell as well as the other rfi respondents to let them know that this is the currently the plan you know the city really never led the outreach plan and engagement plan around the winter shelter that was always a half jurisdiction responsibility that was led by the county um so if tina wants to add anything to that um that's where we're at with captain harrell thank you susie i will just add because i also read that quote in the paper this morning and caught me a little off guard because the homeless action partnership is the contracting entity for the winter shelter it is managed through the county and the county in working with last year's providers said they're not interested in doing it again this year so that is why we're not we were not pursuing an operation model with them so that is feedback we had received through the have you know from the county that last year's operators which included this salvation army are not interested so we will certainly follow up and find out where was the point of confusion because that's not um a place we want to be in but it was a bit of a surprise to us last question is it is it planned to move the showers as well and have people shower at the uh homeless services center so the team that i assembled to develop the site uh plan uh originally that's my copper and uh public works we're actually heading out there this thursday to talk about how to how to do this i don't have an answer to that question at this point but i'm optimistic that we can fit those 20 spots i don't know exactly how it's going to fit at this point thanks other questions we've had a chance to hear from the public at this time so now is the chance for us to deliberate um okay any other and we had and we had the questions so i appreciate that we've written down the questions and responded are there any any pending questions that were asked or raised just one cut feedback is that um we don't have all the operational details outlined and there's a lot of passionate interest which is absolutely understood and so as we work through these again working with several different partners to figure this out we will share that information with the council with the community who want to know the ins and out operational details but there's just much we don't know yet and we need to know if the council was okay with this intention to go forward and if the council is then we can elevate things for the next step of planning so far we just kind of gauge feasibility thank you and then also just to add to that one of the elements of that three part plan is to enhance hygiene services at the hsc so um with the homeless coordinating coordinating committee recommendations from last year the city has made an additional investment to expand those hours and we really do agree that it's incredibly important to have access for those that are at the river street camp those that are at the poly loft and others as well so that is one of the main goals of this winter shelter plan as well additional questions for this thing there's a motion on the yeah well i will move this back for recommendation second any further deliberation from the council from what i understand we are going to seek even more spaces for the winter or this is it right now so the plan that you have in front of you is the the expansion of the river street camp in the homeless services center poly loft and then really looking at the safe parking program that the afc has proposed which would be an additional 50 spaces so do we have a goal of how many people we'd like to have provide space for so with the current recommendation that's 40 additional beds to what we currently have so if you add that to the current capacity of the river street camp that's up to 90 which actually exceeds the average um daily use of the winter shelter and then on top of that 50 additional spaces for the river street camp i'm sorry for the for the safe parking program okay so okay thank you seems like there's a lot more to come in terms of more clarification on on how this will all unfold but essentially looking for the direction and we have a motion on the floor at this time as well as the second any further discussion on the council okay all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that passes unanimously with uh councilmember with that mayor trust is absent thank you okay i have just a moment to read this quote from i'm sorry the agenda we have moved the we are now finished with this item you're welcome to submit it to our our clerk thank you thank you very much okay we're now on to item number 26 i know okay so for item number 26 we have the uh review of the meeting calendar which is attached to the agenda and to revise it as necessary um are there any updates or changes and i'll ask our city clerk to provide those yes we did add the august 31st clothes personnel session this Friday okay okay any additional anything else that would be on that okay thank you okay go ahead and thank you we're gonna if you if you wouldn't mind finishing up your conversations outside we'll move on to our next agenda item thank you okay all right so we are returning to our uh item number 27 which is the um the committee the council members to report out on actions at external boards committees and joint powers authority meetings and for future meetings to to come prepared to provide updates and um anything that has occurred between the last time we met and you've presented on your topic let's see anybody do we want to just go through and starting to my left no any updates um well the uh area agency on aging seniors network gave staff provided some reports at our last meeting about disappointing news from Sacramento with respect to state funding for uh seniors programs including housing meals and other programs so that was unfortunate we are working together and i'll update you about possibilities for the city perhaps signing on to support future legislation and i also expect that we'll be hearing from some of those programs through our community programs process that's coming up so just wanted to alert you all to that the rtc the regional transportation commission has had uh uh very uh enlightening and you know interesting and um you know in-depth series of speakers about different options for how to use um railways and and trail production and alternative transit options um and so i encourage they're available on the rtc website um watch them if you can't come to the rtc meetings on thursday mornings at nine a.m. um then uh you can make those you can see those and they're they're actually quite interesting and thinking about the ways that we can use our our rail line and the trail oh and the airport uh i'm sorry not the airport the Monterey Bay community power uh policy board will be meeting again we just um you know we're in the process of trying to figure out how to set rates for the coming year which the general public will be interested in those will come up out in your bills um your pgb bills or they're still uh pgb but it's Monterey Bay community power that's um responsible for the um procurement of green energy so um we are it's possible that we'll see um we'll have some challenges with our budget that we weren't expecting but hopefully that won't translate into rate payer increases for the moment so the groups that i serve with uh they really haven't been meeting much in august except for ambag um their energy watch program is pretty amazing and i've asked at some point to maybe arrange to have them come to council to do a report um when you look at how many energy watch programs they have funded whether it's in our schools or uh low-income housing projects and how many conversions to solar there's been it's pretty amazing so um i wouldn't do them justice so i would like them to come and give a presentation and update us at some point um i also attended coffee uh was it coffee no ice cream with a cop uh at um marines and it was great it was really well attended lots of high fives and kids being able to crawl all over uh police motorcycles so i thought it was a really good community building event and hopefully um we'll see the police um department and maybe other departments reach out and do similar programs around town i thought it was great i'll i'll i'll end i'll kind of end with myself so we'll go over to uh councilmember crone do you have any updates on uh lee butler gave a great summary of the meeting last that last uh community advisory group meeting with the lrdp process um and my other group is meeting the solid waste is meeting this week lots of long-term stuff as you may know our redevelopment agencies were all disbanded some time ago and were then the assets and budgets were overseen by a redevelopment successor agency for the city of santa cruz and all the other jurisdictions and those also recently sunsetted by law so there's now a consolidated redevelopment agency successor agency committee or something with a name like that and so i represent the city on that consult which now looks at all the assets and budgets of what's left of all the redevelopment it's it's very um bureaucratic i think it's safe to say have i have i nailed that correctly anyway we charge on we have housing programs and we have funds and so but the oversight is governed by this committee now um metro um recently uh renewed support for the articulated buses for the coming year so that's really important to the students uh really makes a difference for them and uh have uh are definitely part of the education program on the impact of the repeal of the gas tax it'd be catastrophic to the metro so they are doing the allowable educational components of that again another long term not in the headlines group it's fascinating is the mid county groundwater agency that's a group that includes the city of santa cruz the so-called water district central water district and representatives of private well owners all of which um have an interest in the mid county aquifer and it's a highly functional group doing scientific research there's a citizens advisory group again by state law that's helping develop a groundwater management plan that has to be ready i think it's 2020 have i got that right plus or minus by the state so that that again the membership on that group was by application it's a very diverse and well qualified group they're making really good progress and um they're again you never read about it but it's making really really important progress on an issue that affects us as well as the mid county so um and i'll just say i uh at a personal level i went to the uh celebration and tribute to james oschbacher at the rio um i think it was saturday night the rio was packed it was it was very moving very loving and a genuine celebration yeah it was it was wonderful i had a question about the metro board or the articulated buses going to be used again this fall or that ceased because the the funding did not go no the university found funding to continue for the the school year okay thanks all three of them yeah so i'll just add to rtc we're also in the process of interviewing for a new director george dondaro is retiring and so that process is happening that'll uh board will make that decision relatively soon um and then also for uh all the many people who are passionately following the unified corridor study will be getting that um it'll be coming back soon we'll have lots and lots of meetings about that it'll be a very public process uh there's a lot of folks who are waiting on the outcome of that because that's really uh deciding that what our community wants to do with the rail corridor and then rachel do you want to report out on the public safety committee yeah i realize i forgot to mention that and uh when we were going by so we had two what i consider actually three really good presentations um the fire department gave a presentation about all of the um mitigations they're doing to try to avoid wild fire uh urban urban wildfires and it was really impressive uh they have a program called fire wise and one community up in prospect heights has really taken it to heart and they're doing a lot of you know clearing brush in their area getting dumpsters to do cleans to not allow fires to be ignited and there were several people who got up and were able to go speak with um abby who's from the prospect heights neighborhood to teach them how to start their own fire wise communities so um it was an excellent presentation in fact they got a big round of applause which i've never seen at a public safety committee meeting um then the police chief gave um some just statistics about crime numbers that look like they're going in the right direction but he tempered it with you know we really won't know if the new policing model is working till maybe we have around a year's data to to compare things to um but there was a report from william berry who has uh upper east side section and um part of that was safe way and how just some of the actions that they took a safe way there's around 125 less calls for service at the same time as we had last last year so he's realizing you know there were over 519 calls for service there and we had a discussion that perhaps we need an ordinance that talks about a trigger so when a certain number of calls for service come in it it sets off a trigger of actions that take place because there are a lot of businesses around town that have these high number calls for service so that's um part of the work that the committee is going to maybe present to council i'll just briefly say i um we too haven't had i haven't had that many meetings with some of the assignments we haven't had a community programs meeting but i'm sure that will be coming up shortly um the budget committee will be reporting out on some policy expectations and sort of recommendations and lessons learned that we um will bring forward to the full council for consideration moving forward um and then the homeless two by two committee did meet with the uh uh board of supervisors uh supervisor coonerty as well as supervisor mcpherson and staff just uh continuing the conversations on alignment and strategy moving forward um hence some of the outcomes that we had this evening um there will there is a potential for some shifts with the santa cruz live oak uh youth violence prevention initiative and they'll be having a steering committee meeting coming up that i'll be attending to um better understand what that could look like and i think that covers it from my end and i'll turn it over to staff to see if there's any updates on you i have one update on the library board um and you've you've uh i think read about this but though we did have at our last meeting a presentation an update on the bond measure and sort of looking at the cash flow and some of the opportunities to really try to leverage the funding that's available for the renovations and upgrades in the system and so what that translates into is for the state of santa cruz is an additional six million dollars uh so instead of receiving the 25 million we'll be receiving uh 31 million which is really uh fabulous and great uh uh and unexpected uh and what that'll do is uh it helps in in some part to offset the increases in cost so for example we had allocated out of our original uh allocation a two million for the branch of 40 and the uh garfield branches uh but that's probably not going to be enough so we'll probably add a couple more million to that to just make those renovations you know actually adequate uh and then the rest of the remaining five four million will go to the downtown library which uh brings that up to instead of 23 million we'll have about 27 million uh to be able to move forward with that project so the board uh meeting this week will will formally approve that it requires an amendment that'll then come back for the council to approve as well i just have to say this i wrote a jump bike rented one for the first time um other than just rock and going around the block um and it was great i just really enthusiastic and uh hope i start using those to get around town more like that yeah well thank you all for your updates and for your extended service on your community assignments and at this time um i will adjourn the meeting thank that gap i know don't worry your first your first full caring that's right