 Ready? Now we are passing now. So good morning. Welcome to the 11am public portion of the closed session of the May 26 2020 meeting of the City Council. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely. I want to thank the public for staying home to view today's city council meeting. If you wish to comment on closed session items now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Please note that there is a delay in streaming. So if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony there after the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Not on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak, you will hear an announcement. The time will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have finished commenting. Thank you Mayor. Council member is buyers. Thank you. Council member buyers. Here. Matthews. Here. Brown. Here. Golder. Cool. Council member Golder. He was here. After all that. Council member Watkins was going to be late. Vice Mayor Meyers. Here. And Mayor Cummings. Here. Sometimes I'd like to see if there's any member of the public who'd like to speak on our closed session item. Please call in one of the numbers that are on your screen and please press star nine to raise your hand and you'll be acknowledged to speak. I guess we can close the meeting to other members of the public and start our closed session item. I also like to ask if there's any staff on the line who are not part of the closed session. Good afternoon and welcome to our 130 PM session of the May 26, 2020 meeting of the city council. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsantacruze.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely and I wanna thank the public for staying home to view today's city council meeting. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, instructions are on your screen. Use your streaming device upon calling in and listen through your phone. Please note that there's a delay in streaming that you need to do on your television or streaming device may miss your opportunity to speak. All in the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on, when it is time for public comment, press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. The timer will be then set to two minutes and you may hang up once you comment on your item. You may also send an email to cityclarke at cityofsantacruze.com. Your comment will be shared with the council members as they are received. We'll be entered as a public record. And with that, I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, mayor. Council member is Byers. Here. Matthews. Council member Matthews. She's, I will confirm that she is here. Can you hear us, Cynthia? Oh, you know, it all went dead for a little bit. And you've come back alive now. Council member... Council member Brown. No. Here. Boulder. Vice mayor Meyers. Here. And mayor Cummings. I'd like to acknowledge that the land upon which we gather is the unceded territory of the Oaxaca-speaking UP tribe. The Almondson tribal man comprised of the descendants of indigenous people, taking to Mission Sanikers and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the central coast is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices of these lands and heal from historic trauma. And to begin our meeting today, we have a presentation from Sharon Papo, executive director of the Diversity Center. Is Sharon. Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you all so much for inviting me to be here. I'm really honored to be here. Bonnie, can you keep my presentation? Yep, it's up. We have it up. Okay, can folks see it? Bonnie, council members can't see the presentation. So you might need to share a screen. Right, we're working on it. Cool. Okay, fantastic, great. Wonderful. First of all, I wanna distinct the Santa Cruz City Council for your longtime commitment to being great allies to the LGBTQ plus community. And as they're about to go into Pride Month, I really appreciate your time to give this presentation. All right, next slide, please. I wanted to talk about a few things today. One is how COVID-19 has been affecting the LGBTQ plus community. What the Diversity Center's response has been and then what is going on with Pride 2020. So I wanted to make sure that the city council knows that COVID-19 has had significant impacts on the LGBTQ plus community. And some of the reasons why that is is because there are higher rates of smoking and asthma in our community, which means that a respiratory illness will impact us significantly. We have higher rates of HIV, AIDS and cancer. So we have more folks who are immunocompromised. One in five LGBTQ people live in poverty. And we are overrepresented as essential workers who are clearly at risk of more exposure to COVID-19. As I'm sure you all know, COVID-19 is not impacting all communities equally, who we get it. And folks who are Latino, Latino and African-American are at greater risk for dying. And if you put in sexuality and gender as risk factors, then the risk is even higher. And so I'm looking to know who's really bearing the brunt of the death and the impact. 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ plus. This number comes from the Williams Institute of UCLA. Our local point-in-time homeless count survey said that 33% of local homeless identify as LGBTQ plus. So it's in this range of over-representation. And LGBTQ plus elders are less likely to reach out for help because of real or perceived discrimination from service providers. Next slide, please. We did our own community survey. It's still in process, but I wanted to share some of the early top issues that have come up. One is that 31% of respondents have lost income due to COVID-19 and 20% are not sure yet. So that's a lot of folks who are really having an economic impact. 20% of our survey respondents expect to learn less than $25,000 this year, which is in alignment with what I shared in the last slide, which is one in five folks in poverty. 25% of LGBTQ folks don't know how to access community resources like food housing and unemployment. Mental health remains a top need with 33% of folks expressing concerns about their mental health and 24% of those folks feel they don't have access to the mental health resources that they need. Next slide, please. Heltering in place has been a really important effort to reduce the spread of COVID, but it's also had impacts on people's health for LGBTQ plus youth. Some of them are home isolated with families that are not accepting of who they are. And that has had some really, a very hard impact on some young folks. I think about one of our young folks who used to come in all the time and being at home in a not accepting household started really talking a lot about self-harm and we started getting very worried. So we reached out, found them a free therapist. They could talk to twice a week in there, sleeping now and thankfully doing much better. We see that these impacts in the national suicide hotline calls which have doubled since we've gone into shelter in place. And many LGBTQ plus seniors were already suffering from loneliness and isolation. And of course, sheltering in place has only expedited that impact. I think about one elder in our community who I called to check in on and she said, I am so painfully alone. And this woman is cancer and lives by herself in our trailer. And so we connected to give her 30 books and a DVD player and 20 DVDs to help her just get through this time in addition to grocery delivery support and other support. Next slide, please. The Diversity Center has been a really big pivot from an in-person space of having folks walk in and ask for resources to having in-person events and gatherings. We have really said, okay, who do we need to be now? So the first thing we did was we called over 350 of our active LGBTQ plus elders to check in on them. We've done those calls three times and we found that some of them have had needs that they really need support around that we've met. One of our elders fell down and broke two bones and needed help with a ride back from the hospital and getting groceries and figuring out how to get in and out of their bed and other things that we have been essential support around. We partnered with the Volunteer Center to deliver groceries to folks houses, non-contact, of course. And one of our donors to support restaurants donated a bunch of meals that we now can support the restaurants and have been delivering meals to those who are more vulnerable to COVID. And we have multiple weekly online social activities for elders, discussion groups, theater groups, singing groups. We have sit and chat spaces where Jenny Panetta came two weeks ago. John Laird is coming next week. So we're having wonderful gatherings that are vibrant and good places for folks to connect and not get alone. Next slide, please. For our youth program, we know that the internet can be a very dangerous place. So we immediately created our own online platform 24-7, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for young people to connect with other young people locally. And at any given time, we may have 60 or more young people actively involved. So there's always a space for them to connect with each other. And we have daily activities from homework help, queer history classes, cooking classes, and our three regular support groups. We are still continuing virtually. We also started a new English Spanish by Vingol Young Adult Group during this time. Next slide, please. For our transgender program, we moved our 18 monthly transgender support groups online. All of our groups are available online through Zoom and through conference calls. And we provided additional transgender-specific programming. Next slide, please. At the Diversity Center, we like to say that every door is the right door. And if someone is gonna reach out for help, we're gonna do all we can to say yes. For example, last week, Dominican Hospital social worker called us and said, I have a patient here who needs some help and they're connected to the Diversity Center. Can you go get these things and bring them here from their house? And within an hour, a staff person was in their car going to get this person what they needed. We are making mental health connections. We are starting next week. We're starting a coronavirus stress group led by a therapist. So we have a free weekly mental health space for folks in addition to our many other support groups that are peer-led. And we are doing all we can to meet our goals to support our LGBTQ plus community to stay alive, strong, connected, and resilient through this pandemic and beyond. Next slide, please. As I know that you are all looking at your budgets and these are really intense times, we've experienced that too, that some of our funders have stopped their grant making entirely and others have cut our funding in half. So while we are doing more than ever to show up for our community, we are looking at unknown funding into the future. We were very fortunate to get PPP funding, the Payment Protection Program funding, which was part of the stimulus package that got us funding through early June. And I wanna give a big shout out to Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, who is our bank who helped us through that process. And I know funded many local small organizations. Next slide, please. And we continue as the theme this year for Pride is nothing can stop our pride. And it's a virtual Pride 2020. And I hope that city council members and folks in the community will connect virtually because nothing can stop our pride. And so you can find all of these events on the Diversity Center Community Calendar. And some of the things going on, it's gonna be a whole weekend. Fab Friday is having a virtual party for men. The Dictransmarch is gonna be happening on Saturday on the Majesty Dance Party with Motion Pacific. The Diversity Center will be happening on Saturday. Pride celebration on Sunday with historical clips and interviews and entertainment. And we are encouraging folks to decorate their houses and apartments with pride flags and to be visible and prideful. And I also wanna give a big shout out to the MA and their Queer History Online exhibit that the Diversity Center partnered with them on is really exceptional. And I hope everyone will take time to visit it because it's a remarkable honoring of the incredible LGBTQ local history here in Santa Cruz County. Next slide, please. And that's it. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for your fiscal support of the Diversity Center. Thank you for your long time support of the Diversity Center and the LGBTQ community. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Sharon, thank you for that presentation. And for all the hard work you all are doing to ensure that people are connected and have support during COVID-19. I think that you were pointing out how this has been the sheltering place has impacted a lot of folks. It's great to know that the Diversity Center has resources to support members of our LGBTQ plus community. So thank you for all the work you all are doing. Thank you. Cynthia Matthews, any questions? No questions, but Sharon, thanks for everything that Diversity has done, will do does for all ages. You guys are great. And you know this, but I thought I just mentioned publicly, where is it? Here, you know about this. That's what PD did for Pride. Beautiful. Have you seen that? No, I hadn't seen that. That's amazing. These were issued to Santa Cruz PD to wear during the month of June. Oh, that's wonderful. Is that cool? Yeah. Yeah, hi, Sharon. I have not been able to catch up with you lately. So it's great to see you. It's been a crazy time. But thank you for the presentation. And especially for all the in-depth information you've been able to focus on, especially for our community. And to understand more about what people are faced with, it really kind of personalizes the need. And I, even though time, funding and things like that are, it's tough for everyone. I just, I really appreciate the statistics and the information that you shared today. It's given me a lot of information that is specific to our community. So I really appreciate that. And it's gonna be weird not to go to Pride on Sunday, but it's good to see that everything will be virtual. And I'll hang my flag on Saturday and off we go. So thanks for everything you're doing. And please stay in touch with us. If things come up for the community, please make sure to come and let the council know about any needs or situations that come up for us. Thanks again. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Myers for being out and proud means a lot to our community. Council member Golder. I wanted to thank you and everyone in your organization for all the hard work you do. And I appreciate the presentation because I didn't realize the parts of your work that involves reaching out to older adults. I am familiar with all of the youth outreach. And I even remember having the triangle speakers come speak to me as a child and it's just super powerful just to hear all of the work that you're doing for the LGBTQ community. And I'm just grateful to have you guys in town. And thank you. Thank you. And I want to make sure I give a big shout out to the Santa Cruz Pride Committee, which is a fiscally sponsored project of the diversity center. So they really function independently. And I just want to make sure that as we're talking about Pride, you know that there is a whole group of amazing volunteers who are doing a lot of big lifting in our community. And I want to make sure I give them a big shout out. I just want to thank you Sharon for your presentation. But also just for your work that you're able to do right now and this time and how you're able to pivot as an organization to really find ways to support individuals of all ages. But also sort of the online platforms and the opportunities for students or children who aren't feeling safe and having that community even if it's a virtual community is so powerful. So thank you for the presentation. I look forward to participating over the weekend virtually. And thank you for all the hard work you're doing as well as keeping track of the stats and the data so that we can also know how to best support the LGBTQ plus community. And just to add, I'm always amazed by how much work you all do and the enthusiasm that you bring to it even with limited resources. And I know that's true in all times. And so I do want to say that, I really want to be supportive in whatever way I can personally. So for people out there, if you're listening, obviously monetary contributions will be very important in this time. But also if there are ways that we can support you non-monetarily with our time and other opportunities, just please do stay in touch and let us know. And if you have anything now that you want to share, feel free. Otherwise, just stay in touch, please. Thank you. That's how your hand went back up. I've never met you Sharon. I'm Catherine Byers, but maybe I will soon. My question, I saw that one line, 40% people are on the poverty level. How about homeless? Are there any counts do you have on? I'm on the board of the housing matters. So I'm really involved in the homeless. So the local point-in-time homeless survey, believe it or not, that recent count, they found that 33% of respondents, responded they were LGBTQ. Oh, I didn't see that. However, the 40% number comes from the Williams Institute at a museum. So I think it's hard to get the exact number because we don't talk to everybody, but we know that we are far over-represented than the number of folks in the community. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I know for the questions from council members, Sharon, I just want to thank you again for reaching out and for taking the time to give that presentation today. So we better understand the work that you all are doing. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. This is to the next item on our agenda, which is mayoral real proclamation declaring June as LGBTQ month in the city of Santa Cruz and comes as following up on the amazing work that organizations like the Diversity Center does in Santa Cruz. I wanted to take an opportunity to acknowledge how much we are supporting members of our LGBTQ community. And so I thought I would read a few lines of the proclamation. So whereas on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, a courageous group of citizens who resisted discriminatory harassment and mistreatment, setting in motion a chain of events that will become known as the Stonewall Uprising and the birth of the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz continues to create an inclusive community that welcomes and embraces all people regardless of their race, gender, religion, culture or sexual orientation and encourages them to fight for their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And whereas the rainbow pride flag first used in 1978 and the transgender flag first used in 2000 symbolizes solidarity with the LGBTQ plus movements around the world were both flown for the first time outside of Santa Cruz City Hall in June of 2019. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz honors and celebrates all the hard work that the LGBTQ plus elders have done to create a community that embraces people who identify as LGBTQ students and their allies from the University of California, Santa Cruz have worked to support the efforts of the LGBTQ plus community of Santa Cruz for decades. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz continues to participate in and support events and organizations that support members of our community that identify as LGBTQ plus such as the Diversity Center and the Pride March whereas this year in honor of Pride Month Santa Cruz police officers have been authorized to wear rainbow patches to support the LGBTQ plus community members of their department and are raising funds to support local LGBTQ plus organizations and charities. And whereas this year marks the first annual graduation ceremony for LGBTQ plus high school, junior high and middle school students on June 3rd, 2020. Now, therefore, I just in time, mayor of the city of Santa Cruz to hear about proclaiming June 3rd, 2020 as LGBTQ plus high school, junior high and middle school graduation day and June 2020 as LGBTQ Pride Month in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all of our residents to embrace, respect and support the rights and culture of all individuals who identify as LGBTQ. Congratulate the LGBTQ plus students who will be graduating this year on all their achievements and join members of the LGBTQ plus community in their fight for equal rights in our city, state, nation and beyond. If there's any council members who would also like to speak this item, provide folks with an opportunity. And so I'll start with council member Brown. I just wanted to say congratulations to the LGBTQ plus graduates and the class of 2020. Your courage, your determination and your resilience in these exceptionally challenging times should be an inspiration to all of us. We see you and we applaud you on your day and I look forward to seeing you at your graduation on June 3rd. Council member Watkins. You just want to congratulate the LGBTQ plus community and the students and class of 2020. You know, now is the time where, you know you're having an opportunity to really understand yourself, to understand what it is that you want to do and you have already took that step. And so I just applaud you for your hard work and wish you the best of luck and also just encourage you to stay connected to those that see you and support you and want to see you thrive. So best of luck to the class of 2020 LGBTQ plus. All right, council member Matthews. And this is a graduation that will go down in the history books, but you should know at this time you are surrounded by community friends and family who wish only the best for your future. So congratulations. Yeah, my wife and I just want to wish the graduates all the best and especially right now let them know that, you know they need to be thinking about their future and certainly our community has a lot of work to do. It's unfortunate that we continue to have some of our rights and other things, the focus of rescinding things that are really important to everyone like marrying the person you love, keeping your children, having a safe place to live and being able to work at a job that you love. So I know that the future rests with all of you and we all progress by working together and fighting for the things that we believe in. So we're lucky to live in a place like Santa Cruz. I know you'll be extraordinary people moving into the world and just know that you have a community that supports you here and congratulations to the class of 2020. Congratulations on behalf of my fellow teachers that have watched you grow up and a number of years and you're graduating in the most non-traditional circumstance I could think of but I know moving forward you guys are gonna really change the world for a better place and I'm really proud of all of you and wish you all the best of luck. Thank you. A year ago I was invited to Gardner, Montana to give a high school commencement address. There were only 18 in the class. How delightful was that? But I just wanna mention that because my theme was fall forward, fall forward. Like Reggie Jackson struck out like 2,600 times but nobody remembers that. They only know how many homeruns he made and Thomas Edison failed in a thousand experiments but a thousand and one invited the light bulb. So of course the point is to all your students is there will be those little bumps in the road there will be those little failures but just tell them to fall forward, fall forward. Congratulations to them. Thank you all for those wonderful words and again to reiterate the class of 2020. Your work has just begun. Congratulations on all of your achievements. As we continue to move forward we're gonna need to work together to think about how we can innovate and learn from the impact that we've been facing with COVID-19 but we also need to figure out ways that we can continue to support each other and just know that there's a lot of people who have been fighting for a long time to pay us away for you to have your rights and for people to, for there to be acceptance within our community of people who identify as LGBTQ, people who maybe people of color and so just know that we're here to help you and as you now take on the torch of moving these rights forward. So thank you all for all of your hard work and achievements and we look forward to working with you all moving forward. With that I'd also like to end by congratulating all the nominees for the 23rd annual Queer Youth Leadership Awards and honor and celebrating queer youth and ally leaders and finally just to reiterate that as it was mentioned earlier, Santa Cruz Pride is still happening and will be in a virtual form and for more information you can visit the santacrusepride.org website to find out a list of when all the various events are gonna be occurring. Okay, so with that we will continue on to the next item on our agenda, which is move on. I actually have a few announcements to make and then move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television, channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsantacruse.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today instructions are provided on the screen. We will be providing these instructions throughout the meeting. Whenever we move on to an agenda item it will be opened up for public comment. Please note public comment is heard only on items on the council's agenda that we're taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers five through 26 with the exception of item 21 on our agenda. I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. Seeing none, I'd like to ask the clerk to announce any additions or resolutions. An opportunity for members of the public to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda and oral communications will occur all around six p.m. today. City attorney to provide a report on closed session. Members of the city council. The council met this morning in closed session at 11 a.m. by a Zoom conference to consider the following matters. Item A was liability claims. The claimant was CFAA insurance group. That item is also listed on your consent agenda this afternoon as item nine. Item B was a conference with labor negotiators in which the council received a report from its negotiators involving all bargaining groups as listed on your agenda. Item C was existing litigation in which the council received a report from and gave direction to its legal counsel in the matters of Jane Doe versus the city of Santa Cruz and Herman and Jenkins versus the city of Santa Cruz. And both of those matters are currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. Item D was significant exposure to litigation which the council received a report from the city attorney's office in regard to the claim of Gabriella Joseph alleging that the city's system of at-large elections results in racially polarized voting, violation of the California Voting Rights Act. During the closed session, the city council approved entering into a settlement agreement with Ms. Joseph whereby the council agreed to consider adoption of a resolution of intention to begin the transition to district elections commencing with the regular election of 2022. That resolution of intention is also listed as item five on your consent calendar this afternoon. As part of the settlement, the council also agreed to pay the sum of $30,000 to plan a legal counsel to compensate for legal fees and costs. The settlement agreement is a matter of public record and once it has been executed and delivered to all parties will be available on request by members of the public. And there was no other reportable action in today's closed session. And that concludes my report. City manager to report and provide updates on city's business COVID-19 response and events. Thank you, mayor and council. I wanted to just provide a really brief update on the COVID-19 shelter in place order. I did email you a copy of the presentation. So if you want to reference that you can do that. And I'm going to share my screen here so I can make this work. Can you see that? I want to just start off by saying that the changes are occurring really quickly here from the time that I prepared the presentation. There've been a couple of changes from yesterday and even from this morning. So things really change very rapidly between what's happening at the state level and in the county level. So we had anticipated that the health officer was going to issue a new health order today which she did actually this morning and which is effective at 11.59 p.m. So essentially by tomorrow. And so the main change there is that that order brings the county more closely aligned with the state children place order which has been a little ahead on the reopening the government reopening plan than the counties. I should note though that the beach restrictions that we currently have will remain. So those are not changing. The state is in what they call the early stage two where curbside for retail is allowed curbside and delivery only related to logistics and manufacturing, office workplaces, limited personal services, outdoor museums, childcare and other essential services can open with modifications. That's where the overall state is. We have not been there but that is where we were moving. So to give you a bit of a sense of where that will be beginning tomorrow. So in the order will again align us with the state and allow with modifications, these modifications involve putting in place measures to prevent the spread of the disease like facial coverings and social distancing, cleaning the number of different criteria. And in all of this is available on the state and county websites. But the major changes are that curbside retail will be allowed, which was not previously manufacturing will be allowed, childcare for those outside the essential workforce thus far had been limited to essential workforce children. Now it'll be open to those other areas that have been opened. Office space businesses will also be open now, although teleworking still remains strongly encouraged. And then selected services like car washes, pet grooming and landscape bargaining will now be allowed. Also outdoor museums, including open gallery spaces and other public spaces and modifications will be allowed to open. An example locally is the mystery spot, for example. And then one of the most recent changes that just happened over the weekend involves political gatherings and churches based on the governor's recent changes. Be those were originally in a later part of stage two but now are or even later stages but now are in early stage two. And the state goes by their stage two, early stage two and expanded stage two, which I'll go over next and then a stage three happens later. And then four is when we're completely out. So the next stage is called expanded stage two. And a number of counties in the state of California are already there. And to get to stage two, you have to go through the state of California and you have to meet a certain criteria set forth by the state of the Department of Public Health and there's county guidance on that. And the county has to, essentially the county board of supervisors has to decide to pursue that and they have to notify the California Department of Public Health and then have to submit and get authorization and approval to be able to do that. And that is the process that our health department is going through now. And what they expect to do is call the expanded stage two attestation is that on June 2nd, which is the next subsequent county board supervisors meeting that on June 2nd, the health department it doesn't tend to take the attestation variance package to the board of supervisors for approval. And so once that is posted on the state's website so they get approval, they go through the state, the state approves that it's posted on the state's website, then the county will be permitted to evolve all the way to the end of stage two, which is the expanded stage two attestation. And so that is expected to begin June 2nd, although the implementation is probably will be some days after that, perhaps June 8th or 9th, something to that effect. And we'll know more about that once they go through the process, but the major milestone here is June 2 when it goes to the board supervisors. Here again, as I understand, the current beach restriction all sorts of meaning, even after this expanded states to attestation process. These, what does the expanded states to mean? So these counties will be able to open up some additional sectors with modifications. Generally they include destination retail, like retail stores, including shopping malls and slot needs, dining restaurants and other amenities like bars and gaming areas are not permitted on stage two, but dining restaurants with modifications and schools with modifications. And so that is where we will be in the coming weeks by way. And then we'll see where we then move on to stage three, which the other major change that the board supervisor will be making is that the health order now that the health officer has issued will just continue to follow the governors of the state shelter in place order. So it'll be consistent with that. So that they essentially mirror, essentially mirror except for specific areas that the health officer calls out. Like for example, the beaches is one example. And then finally, I just wanted to highlight some of the things that are not permitted just for reference and I can add to move some that were here over, but those include things like personal services such as hair, nail salons, tattoo parlors, gems and fitness studios, hospitality services such as bars, wineries, Kingston rooms and lounges, entertainment venues like movie theaters, gaming, gambling, arcade venues, pro sports indoor museums, gallery spaces and zoos, community centers, public pools, playgrounds and picnic areas, night clubs, concert venues, live audiences, festivals, theme parks, hotels and lodging for leisure and tourism, hotel lodging for leisure and tourism for non-essential travel as well. Oh, specifically for non-essential travel and then higher education. So these are areas that are not permitted just for reference. So that is, oh, and then finally, I wanted to just kind of give a brief overview of how the weekend went by the way of reference. So don't have a lot of data yet, but we did the check-in with the department head team this morning. And the overall sense was that the Memorial Day weekend didn't went well overall. We didn't have any major incidences and the beaches were not crowded, particularly when you consider what a comparable traditional beautiful Memorial Day weekend would be like. And so there was compliance for the most part, although nonetheless, there's still, we did see individual groups from out of the area. And also there could have been better compliance with facial covering and some of the beach restrictions, but by and large, it went fairly well. And then we'll just have to plan for coming holiday weekends when we might expect to have additional folks come to the area and also with the additional openings and what impact those might have on people coming to Santa Cruz and also with the improving weather. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have or for any departments that are available to answer questions with this talk to the Children's Place Order. Thank you, Martin, for that presentation. Minute council members who have questions at this moment in time. Yeah, thank you for the update. And just wondering a couple of things. One, where are we at on testing? I know there was an update in one of the county communications about increased testing in the county, but I don't know exactly where we're at now. So, and I haven't got the most recent thing. So if you could just share that, if you know. And then also with respect to opening the beaches, I totally understand where the public health officer is at on that. And I think it's great that we've been able to kind of maintain some safety in that area. But just moving into the summer, has there ever been any discussion about how that might work? I mean, we're gonna still probably be in a shelter in place situation for quite a while. And I'm just wondering if there's any consideration that maybe we open the beaches during those daytime hours for walking or non-hanging out kinds of situations. And maybe that's to be TPA, but I'm just wondering if that is in the conversation. Great, all right. I'll start with that first. Yes, with respect to the beaches, it is sort of to be determined and it's evaluated on a day by day, weekend by weekend basis. I think with the goal of trying to sort of meet the health needs or criteria. And thus far, it seems to be working fairly well, there are modifications, but I think again, as time passes, I think there'll be a desire and interest in re-looking at that. For now, it seems to be working well, which is why I think the health officers continuing those restrictions even with the expanded openings in the other phases or in phase two. But again, I think they'll be revisited over time. There's also a, the county health officer has put in place a committee that's working with businesses and reopening. And I imagine that many of the conversations around that will happen in that group. With respect to testing, testing is one of the criteria that has a certain amount of testing has to be met before we can go to the stage two expanded at the station. And so that has been something that they've been working on. Testing has opened and is now more readily available. There's a state-sponsored testing site in Watsonville, which is available to any person who wishes to get tested and they'll provide testing, whether you have insurance or not, so anyone who actually would like to get tested can go to Watsonville or even go to the website and find out and actually be tested. Additionally, the University of California, Santa Cruz has, are also providing testing. That is starting to open up and providing more testing. So the combination of the state open sites as well as the university's testing has provided sufficient testing to be able to, they believe to be, to move on to the expanded stage two. So I'll piggyback on that. But in our meeting with the county health officer, who's also mentioned that they are actually encouraging people who are not sick or asymptomatic to go get tested as well. It helps us better understand, you know, what, how many people in our community might potentially can have COVID-19 in their asymptomatic so get further recommendations on testing as well. By having more demand for testing, they will then also provide for the ability to open up a new testing site in North County too, so making more convenient for people as well. Thanks for the update, Martine. I just, just been looking at some of the press coming out today. When we complete the, is it a testament? Is that the term? When we complete that process, yeah, at a taste, whatever that is. There's been notes in recent press today that barbershops and other things are gonna be opening for counties that have achieved that. Will we be opening those up as well once we've gone through the process or is the county anticipating continuing to keep those activities not, not allowable for now? My understanding is that those are in stage, would be like in stage three and this would take us to stage two, expand it. Now, the thing that's, you know, really interesting about this is that the governor, sometimes these things can change and they can move from one stage to the other. The prime example that just happened yesterday or very recently was churches. They were, they weren't on the list of expanded stage two, now they are. So I had to like modify my presentation just a few minutes ago. So, you know, it's possible that things could change but as far as I understand, you know, places like hair cutting places and salons are not in stage two expanded. Okay. Yeah, I'm just seeing some press that comes out, just came out within the last couple hours. So maybe just having, I mean, we've been updating our website really well. So just for the public that's listening, just a note for folks to realize that these things can change hourly, basically. I guess just all comment on kind of the face mask rules and probably that is the comment I get the most questions about from the public. And I think especially with regards to the density when you're in our outdoor spaces and really it's places like West Coast Drive where, you know, you actually do have people coming within contact, you know, within fairly close contact, but it is outside. So I think there's a lot of a little bit of confusion about the risk associated with an outdoor space where you really can't, you can't keep far apart and maybe you aren't running, but you're walking but you are walking within close proximity to people. So it doesn't necessarily mean we need to go deep into this, but I think that's a piece of personal and community protection that people have a lot of opinions about. And I think that's one thing that might be helpful to get more clarification as we move forward on what is that risk level and how are we weighing that? Because that's something that's probably the number one question I get is why aren't people wearing face masks and et cetera. So it's just, that's probably gonna be something we just have to figure out how to communicate the best we can about, but that's just for a comment for you. Right, thank you. Well, that is actually one of the, probably one of the most items that we get questions about talking to Ralph about that and for communications to a person and because it is a bit confusing, but as I understand, the guidance is that really the idea is that if you're going to go anywhere where there's gonna be a crowd of individuals, whether it's inside or outside, the distinction isn't necessarily inside or outside. It's gonna be somewhere where there gonna be groups of individuals and you're gonna be in close contact with them that you should wear a face mask. So if you're going out on Westwood Drive and nobody's there except you and five other people on the whole street, you may not have to wear it, but if you're going down there on the day that it's very, very crowded, the recommendation is that you do wear it. And so the best thing to do is to always carry a mask with you and then use it when you come into contact with groups of individuals, whether you're inside or outside, it's in my understanding to see if that's... If we could potentially think of a creative and fun way to maybe convey that more broadly in the region, I think that would be helpful. I mean, I think especially after the weekend like this weekend, a lot of people coming into town, if there's a way that we could use our website or use some of these PSAs and other outreach we've been doing out to, you know, Sacramento and all the way out to the region, so I'd like to come to Santa Cruz. It might be just a helpful, fun thing to do is to remind people to bring those with them and have them on them at all times. I think that would be a good practice for us to promote as a community. Okay, thank you. Number Watkins. Thank you for the presentation, Markine. And I guess one of the things that I'm understanding about the church is too, is that they're only open at a certain capacity, which is I think 25%, which is I think an important element to highlight. And then in regards to the modified beach hours, the 11 to five, as we get long for days and folks can find time after 5 p.m., how is that going or how is that gonna be monitored? Just having witnessed a lot of all of them gatherings right at five on the beach business weekend. I know we kind of blocked off that one, that one sort of that portion of half the middle of the day, but I'm just curious what the thoughts are on that. That is what, there's two concerns around that. One is that there is the longer days and also with the nicer weather and summer coming in the July 4th, the holiday weekends as well. There's a concern around our capacity to be able to enforce that. That is one of the issues that I can go or police department departments have a concern around. And so we'll be strategizing with the health officer and all the other studies to look at that. As I noted earlier, we are having to evaluate the situation on a regular basis. And our health officers very open to receiving feedback and has been very responsive to that feedback and to making adjustments to address situations that have all been changed and to the general public actually. So I think as long as we're able to sort of make adjustments that are consistent with good health practices that there'll be an openness to to modify those. And we will have to look at those. Don't exactly what they would be at this point, there's some discussions that would have to occur, but I think all things are really on the table at this point. I guess just the only thing I would add maybe just some community awareness education about wanting to maintain social distance and still trying to adhere to the best public health practices as they do go after hours of speeches. Right, right. Yeah, and also look through everything you mentioned, churches. And so all of these openings that are happening, all of these have modifications, they all have physical distancing requirements, cleaning, they all come with these restrictions. It's not just open and you can just go back to what you were doing. None of them are really going back to the way it was at this point. Seeing no further questions. Thank you again, Martin, for the presentation. Thank you. There are no updates. So on to our next item, which is council memberships in city groups and outside agencies. This is the time for council members to report out on committee meetings that have occurred since our last council meeting, as well as any COVID-19 related community efforts from our partner agencies. Thank you. I was just looking, trying to pull up my notes here. So yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of announcements from the meetings that I've been at recently. First, I think that most importantly, the community action board has now been has been granted as one of the grantees, one of, I think of 11 in California to manage the distribution of the one-time payments for undocumented immigrants. And they have had some challenges initially with the phone line. Just to give you an idea of the need, they received, when the phone number went live, they received 30,000 calls in the first hour. And this is not just for Santa Cruz County, but this is Santa Cruz Monterey and San Luis Obispo and San Benito counties. CAB is the administrator of the fund. And they have funding for a total of 3,400 payments total in those four counties, 30,000 phone calls. And by all accounts, some pretty desperate situations that people are describing. So I wanted to let people know that the new number is up. I can, I'll read it out, but you can go to community action board and it should be on the front of their page. And they're open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. The number is 1-877-282-7174. And if we, it might be, yeah. So that's the only number they have. And if you get a busy signal or no answer, just keep trying and let people know that that's available at least for the time being. I was also the area agency on aging board met and we discussed mostly what the state budget outlook is and a little bit though with the federal budget, but the state had been moving, the legislature and the governor had expressed support for moving ahead with some pretty significant expansions to some of the senior programs that provide services for seniors in California. And most of that has just kind of been put on hold. There has been, there have been a few recommendations to partially or fully cut, but there are significant challenges with those programs. But we are sort of in limbo here, hoping that because the expansion has been put on hold, that we won't be seeing a massive cut to those programs. And so that's kind of the, all is still up in the air, but things don't look horribly bad right at the moment for those programs. And I also will report on the Regional Transportation Commission. We're just continuing to move along with the alternative analysis. We're gonna be voting on preferred alternative options for the use of the real line at our June meeting. And I will report back then on what happens. And I think that's all, there may be more, but I think that's all for now. Sandy for that update. And I don't have any committees that I was able to meet with this time, but I was super excited to hear about what the work with the Community Action Board was doing. So that's fantastic. Thank you. But I do want to just extend warm wishes to the Muslims around the world as they celebrated the end of the polling months of Ramadan this weekend. And the breaking of the fasts has been really difficult without being able to gather as families. And it is a Memorial Day with yesterday. And I want to honor the fallen soldiers and older typically circumstances where people gather. And so just having the social distancing guidelines, I'm sure it was difficult for people celebrating both of those holidays this weekend. And I just hope that people took time to reflect and just spend time with the moment of gratitude and just quiet reflections since they couldn't gather in groups. That's all. I just wanted to provide quick updates on a couple of JPAs that I set on the Library Board and the 911 Center Board whose meetings have been really dominated by the same issues which is responding to the fiscal constraints and the situation as a result of the COVID pandemic. And so both the agencies are currently reviewing their proposed budgets to look at the impacts of the budget revenue declines. Both they, in particular, the library system relies on direct Countywide sales tax revenues and as well as property tax revenues from the cities. And the 911 Center is, they don't get a direct funding but they're impacted by the ability of their respective agencies to pay. But both agencies are looking at ways comparable to what all the other cities are doing which is to look at temporary measures to reduce costs in order to get through this difficult time. So I just want to let you know that both agencies are working on those issues that are totally consistent with what we're doing and what other jurisdictions are doing in the County. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I guess I would just, I don't have too much to report on. I was looking also over the different assignments. What is that cannabis subcommittee, as you know, on our agenda is going to be postponed and to our first meeting in June. I will say the farmer's market for those who are watching to continue to monitor what you can, when you can access the farmer's market, they have modified hours, but on their website they have information about the services that they're providing still. And then just in regards to education, I think there's still a lot up in the air in terms of how that's going to look in the school year in the fall as well as childcare needs. So the County Office of Education has a dedicated webpage to support those that are seeking more information about education and what is happening and changing really quickly. And then I guess I would just say that one sort of, I guess not a subcommittee kind of update, but just in general update, the health and all policies work has been highlighted on a webinar today, which was great. And it was showing how Santa Cruz is really ahead of the game thinking about how we're integrating the pillars of health and all policies in our efforts here now and potentially moving forward. And then last but not least, I just wanna give a reminder that the census is up and running. They're really working hard to increase folks who haven't yet completed the census. And there will be certain areas that they'll target certain populations to increase access and increase people responding to the census. And I do believe that there will be some chalk art like your talk or census is 2020 and I'll let you know and let the council know if and when that happens so that we can raise awareness about the importance of filling out our census here. No, I didn't have anything. Thanks. The Measure U implementation working group is in the process of adding a few students to its community advisory group. Although the look of that group is in a bit of a limbo now because of the progress on the LRDP and also un-clear how many students are gonna be on campus and reaching out to them with how that's gonna work. Metro, as I reported last time, dealing with deep, deep, deep service cuts in order to try and they do have reserves but they don't wanna eat them all up so they're trying to maintain basic services but some real changes and also protect drivers. They are continuing to move forward with global ticketing system that at some point in the future you'll hope to build system-wide and with these big improvements. The Downtown Management Corporation, we have the renewal of their assessment district on our agenda later today but I have been working with them also on the outreach for the E-Biz, the property-based improvement districts which has been in the process of combining DMC and DPA. Obviously the COVID, the emergence of COVID and all the uncertainties around our property owners and businesses has been a profound disruption in that process and so we'll see, we're still proceeding, we'll see how it plays out in the next couple of months. And finally, visit Santa Cruz, also the visitor industry local state national has been clobbered, we all know that and I've been very impressed how the local visit Santa Cruz has been coordinating with the news coming from the state trying to be both wanting to get back to business but completely wanting to be safe. And obviously there's been a good working relationship. Bonnie has been organizing outreach specifically to our local lodging properties. It's part of the effort that the Community Foundation put into gear with involving different economic sectors what do you need to adjust to the regulations to the safety orders, what are your concerns, how can we safely get back up? And so there is outreach going on and economic development is specifically reaching out to our local lodging places to engage them and find out how we can be of assistance to them keeping safety almost in mind but I think they've been good on the messages. Thank you very much Vice Mayor Myers. Apologies for disappearing there. My internet went out for a second there. I got dropped. Let's see. Yeah, I'll report on a number of items. Some have already been covered by Council Member Matthews. I guess just real quickly on the Metro. I think it's important to also state that the Metro has really taken it upon itself really early in the COVID-19 situation to adopt national safety standards with regards to sanitizing the buses every day. In some cases, multiple times a day. So that is a big focus of their work right now is to try to maintain the buses in the highest quality quality so that people feel safe while they're on the bus but also to provide safety to our drivers as well. So that is a big and they do have quite a number of videos, et cetera, on their website for people to understand how they're actually sanitizing the buses to keep them as clean as possible. So the other update is the Cowles Working Group is meeting actually this week. There is a big announcement that will be coming out. Several of you heard that through email so I don't want to really ruin the surprise but the work of the group has been successful and we are going to be looking at some outreach and press on the findings of the latest Heal the Bay report and that will be coming out towards the end I believe towards the end of June. So we have some good news to report to our community about that and the work there at Cowles Beach over the last several years with the Cowles Working Group partnership. The two by two committee which is the two by two homeless committee which the mayor and I sit on along with Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor McPherson. We've actually been having weekly calls with the county and city staff involved with our homeless response system. We have been working primarily over the last two and a half months, three months now on really understanding the needs through the COVID-19 lens but last week we started to pivot away and also get back to the work that the county was conducting with focus strategies and with the hope that we can begin to talk about the longer term homeless response, homeless programming that we need to put in place for the county. So we've been sort of making that pivot now and just want to recognize the county's commitment to starting to transition into the broader consideration of where our homeless programs will be going in the next year and my other committees. Lastly, we did have a downtown library subcommittee meeting as well this month. We had good attendance at our discussion and presentation by group four which is the architecture and sub consulting groups that had prepared plans for the potential for mixed use alternative as well for the library. It was well attended and we've received a number of public comments about that. We're planning our work over the next period to bring something back to the council at some point. So I think I'll end it there. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that most of the committees that I was on then mentioned already and I guess I'll just highlight with the library, one of the things that we're also working on right now is an evaluation form so that we have some pretty clear criteria for how our decisions are gonna be made on that item. In addition with the two by two, as Vice Mayor Meyers said, last week we were able to start having more conversations about long-term planning around homelessness. And one thing that we did receive as well was some information on how the previous $10 million has been spent and kind of where that's at. And we actually mentioned that it might be good to put something together that could go out to the public so the public can see how that funding is being spent. And so we're hoping that something will be available that we can share out that shows where the money from that $10 million that we initially, the county got for almost us where that's going. LACCO met and we approved a draft budget. And in addition to that, Roger Anderson and John Hunt were both reappointed by the LACCO Committee to continue serving on LACCO. And I think that's about all I've got with regards to the cannabis subcommittee that just also would like to mention that in addition to us meeting, we were also able to meet with some of the folks from the industry to hear their concerns and incorporate that into our decision-making process. So I just thought that we would share that as well. And that is all I have at this time. And so Council Member Matthews, see you have your hand raised. A question on the homeless two-by-two, I see Ron Prince is shown as the staff. Is he still doing that or is that book now taking that role? Yeah, yeah. We'll have to change that. We'll conclude our Council Member updates. Next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are items five and 20 on our agenda today. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items five and 20. Instructions are on your screen. Please remember to mute your streaming device. Press star nine to raise your hand and listen for the cue saying that you've been unmuted. All items will be acted upon in one motion, unless an item is pulled by Council Member for further discussion. Are there any Council Members that would like to pull an item from consent? Raise your hand. Council Member Matthews. No, sorry, that was what we had. I just have a question on item number 16 and a question on item 15, but I don't need to pull it. Thank you. You repeat those, sorry. Item number 15, Highway 1 and 9, just a question though and item number 16, Watersheet Bike Lane, just a question as well. No, not currently. One and 15. Numbers one and 15, perfect. Five and 15. Five and 15 as well, but I do have a question on 12. Hearing none, are there any members of the public who would like to speak on items on our consent agenda with the exception of items numbers 15? And actually before I open this up to the public, maybe if we could have the questions on item number, being by Vice Mayor Myers, followed by questions on items numbers 12 by Council Member Brown. And I'm not sure who had questions on item number eight, but we can also add that item as well. I just wanted to thank Public Works for the work on the Watersheet Bike Lane enhancements. I have talked to a number of residents up that way who are excited about the changes. There was one question, somebody, I can't remember if I received an email or exactly how the question came in, but just with regards to sort of the street cleaning machines, are they able to navigate into that new set of bollards and other sort of, you know, the separation? Are there any issues with that? That was the question that came to me. I was just curious if you could comment on that. Mayor, Council Member's Chris Schneider, Assistant Director of Public Works. So we work closely with Refuse Street Suite being Metro, et cetera, on the design of the project. We heard there might be one area that's a little tougher than was anticipated. So we'll be working with street sweeping again to see what the issue might be. Right, thank you. And yeah, again, just the, it's really nice to see us, you know, investing in really that, that really higher level of safety for bicyclists, especially on that busy road. So thanks for, thanks for the department's work. Appreciate it. Welcome. Council Member Matthews. Since it was full for comment, I can't resist saying that's a spectacular improvement. And it was really wonderful to see that you were able to go even farther than anticipated because of cost efficiency. That was a bonus to that. Brownie, you have a question, item number 12. Yeah, thank you. I, so we, I did get some information that answered most of my questions on this one. And I do understand that there is some flexibility in terms of, you know, how this is the early, early retirement incentive program for people who are listening or watching. So I think most of my questions were answered, but I am wondering because the timeline, it's a very tight turnaround. And that's a big decision that people are making about whether if they weren't anticipating retiring right at this moment. And so I'm just wondering what if that, if there's flexibility in that timeline, I know that we need to get those decisions made as quickly as possible, but so, you know, what's your thinking on that piece of it? This is Lisa Murphy, Human Resources Director of City of Sanctuary. I think that we could be more flexible on the timeline, but because we are trying to get these, the savings into this current budget, that is why we're trying to make this process move as quickly as possible. I certainly could if it was a council's desire to extend it maybe another week, but any longer than that, then we start to eat into any potential savings for our budget. I add also that it does also provide some flexibility there that I could, the City Manager could provide exemptions if needed, I think it's included in there as well. And then also this is just when they need to let us know, they don't have to complete the retirement process by that timeframe, it's just for them to apply. I thought I put my hand up. Oh, some people, yeah, go ahead, Kevin. Oh, thank you. Lisa, you, there was a question earlier today, you mentioned you might have some data available that what happened was it 2009 or 10 or the last time we did this? Yeah, I did, Council Member Fierce, in 2009 there were three people who took advantage of the program. And then later in 2011, under different circumstances with the library, there were 12 folks that did it in lieu of a layoff. So it wasn't a large number because again, if you remember, there must be an associated savings by freezing the position or a like position for at least one year in order to achieve the savings. So I anticipate it'd be a somewhat limited number of individuals that will be able to take advantage of this program. Thank you. Mayor Cummings, was item eight pulled or were you going to make a comment on it? I'm going to hold on to item number eight to answer the public on the other items. Okay. Mayor, for the item number eight, were you, did you have questions or did you just want to, I was going to make sure that it was highlighted no matter what, is that your intention? Yeah, yeah, that was the intention. Okay, no problem. I'll go ahead and let you do that then, thank you. If you get the public to weigh in on the items that have not been pulled, and then before we make the vote, I'll just make comment on item number eight. So if there are members of the public who would like to speak to any of the items on consent with the exception of items numbers five and 15, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you will have up to two minutes. And again, these are items on our consent agenda with the exception of items number five and 15. By most excellent letter, you would know then it is not appropriate to display the rainbow or trans flags in the council chambers. It would be promoting the full agenda of a tiny special interest group above all others. While you say it acknowledges their contributions, neither flag represents the totality of union that the American people have in the national U.S. state or city flags. Flags represent ideas and beliefs and we do not pledge allegiance to these proposed flags. Perpetuating this unique special honor yet bestowed on no other flag beyond your terms year after year is inappropriate hubris. Opinion changes, leaders change and future leaders should be deciding the manners of recognition after perhaps you are no longer there. The meaning of those flags is not as clear as you say. There are numerous beliefs of these communities which have not gained the full acceptance of the court of public opinion and indeed not unanimous acceptance even in those communities themselves which have no official spokespersons although many pretend they do and speak loudly. I would cite beliefs like continuous encouragement of children with gender dysphoria to promote, maintain and encourage such feelings or even adults injecting such children with puberty blocking drugs up to and beyond the age of puberty where most would normally revert to identify with their biological gender. These are vehemently up-questioned by many as agents of child abuse. Other beliefs such as gender being a choice or that there exist many dozens of multiple genders of choice or that children as young as eight years old should be taught in school that questioning their gender is appropriate also have many strong opponents of those beliefs. These flags are also representative of those disputed beliefs. None of those beliefs have been validated as approved or acceptable in the big court of public opinion. And so then what we are supposed to be honoring with such flags lacks sufficient clarity and full acceptance. This is more of a leftist social justice warrior agenda that actually installing a symbol deserving of such truity, honoring for instance of, well, we should be honoring for instance national sacrifice or beliefs so that the American state or even national NIA flags possess. Time is up, bye. All right, next speaker. Hello, this is Dana Bagshaw. I wanted to speak on item number 15. So I'm not sure how to. Okay, we'll switch back in the queue then and we'll have you lower your hand for now and when that item comes up on the agenda we'll have you raise your hand again. I'm just calling in from the phone. I don't know how to lower and raise my hand. I just got a star nine. I can lower your hand for you, but yes, you just got a star nine. All right, thank you. Thank you. Next member of the public, you're on the line. It ends in four, six, seven, eight. You are now on the line and you have two minutes. On number eight, I hear other people coming in. If you're watching this on your TV, there's a bit of a delay. So now's your opportunity to speak. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is Brett Garrett and I just want to thank you very much for displaying the rainbow flag. As a gay person myself, it is very meaningful to me and I think of when I was younger and just how important it is for people to, for members of the LGBT community to see support from City Hall. So thank you very much. All right, thank you. The public would like to speak to us on our consent agenda items with the exception of items number five and 15. Now is the time before we go back into, before we take our vote. So please call in if you're watching and press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. Yes, hello, City Council. I just got onto this meeting. I'm glad to be here. I didn't think I was going to have anything to say on this subject, but I'm going to say it anyway. So, you know, it seems like what's going down the pike is that human beings are going to be altered. We're, the children are being taught all kinds of things in school, but this RNA force vaccine that will be a force vaccine is going to change the human being into a humanoid. So, I'll be speaking of that later, but I just appreciate finally being able to listen to you guys. Thank you very much. That's it. Thank you, Council. And I just wanted to make a comment on item number eight, which was displaying the LGBTQ pride flag and transgender pride flag at City Hall. Last year, Vice Mayor Myers at the time, Mayor Watkins and myself brought this item forward and we brought it back on our agenda because we just realized that rather than having to vote on this every year, we thought that it would be, you know, good if we could just ensure that we are honoring and respecting the members of the LGBTQ community who are living in our city and all the people who are helping them fight for their rights that we would have on our agenda that we would fly these flags every year outside of City Hall to honor those members of our community and all the struggles that they've faced over generations. In addition to that, we are also interested in whether during the time of the month, during the month of June, moving forward, we can have those flags flown inside chambers as well. And so that's the item that's before us today. And as we, and we've had a number of items today, has been honoring our LGBTQ community and just want to find ways that we can continue to support those members of our community. So really happy to see this on our Consent agenda. I want to thank Health Member Watkins and Vice Mayor Myers for joining me at putting this on our agenda and I look forward to moving this forward and supporting our community during Pride Month. As I see your hands raised, you're muted. Going on to number, start the agenda number five, but you may want to pass the Consent agenda first. Yeah, I have to move the cursor. I will go ahead and move the Consent agenda with the exception of items five and 15. Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Watkins. And I'll turn it over to Claire to call the roll vote. Mayor, Council Member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Vice Mayor Myers. We'll move on to the items that have been pulled from our agenda starting with item number five and Council Member Byers. I know you had a question on that. Well, I get my question. I know some of you Council Members have dealt with this over the last many months. And this was kind of the first time. And so I'm glad it's on the public agenda and I pulled it off the agenda so in case people want to speak to it. And given that, there are a couple of questions I had. I don't, yeah, Tony's there. The demographer, are we just accepting the demographer of the Santa Barbara law firm or tell us who the demographer is? The demographer is a firm that has worked successfully with communities all over California, well over a hundred. And this is someone who was identified through our research and through the League of California City's City Attorneys Group that we communicate with on a regular basis. And the company is an outfit called National Demographics Corporation. And they presented a city with a proposal on April 22nd of 2020 to provide the demographic services related to really the whole step by step process from the adoption of the resolution to doing the demographic analysis to the public outreach and ultimately considering adopting district boundaries and an ordinance to implement that. So no, this has not, this came from our own research. Thank you, I did not know that. In terms of all the public hearings that you've been saying the staff report is going to be considerable amount of staff time and public hearing time, have you designed a timeline and what I could look at in terms of is this a year we're talking about over a year or anyway? I guess I was looking for some kind of a something in writing showing the timeline, nothing. Yes, and we have done that essentially. I mean, I could just verbally go over it right now because we've communicated to the council through privileged communications. But what we envision is that in late 2020 and through mid-2021, we would create an outreach plan with the assistance of city staff and the expert demographer. Sometime in mid-2021, we expect the 2020 census data to be released. And then once that is released, we can analyze that with our expert devices and craft, districting options for the city. And then in early 2022, we would have probably more multiple public hearings and outreach, including website, announcements, press releases, public meetings, publication of draft district maps for members of the public to view and consider and provide input on and ultimately adoption of an ordinance transitioning to district elections. Sometime around early to mid 2022, excuse me. 22, correct. Does these consultants, do they design the district lines or have we thought about a, you know, Citizens Committee? What they do is they analyze the demographic data and then they make recommendations to the city as to options that you would have to adopt, you know, population balance and otherwise adopt the various district boundaries. And then ultimately, the manner in which the districts are selected, the council has some discretion in that regard, but ultimately it would be a city council. Okay. Good. Those are my questions. I will make the motion if the mayor is ready. Maybe. We'll, I'll let everybody go through questions and open up for public comment and then a little break back. Motion. Council member Brown. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification that council member Byers asked the questions I was interested in. And I thank you for the clarification on the demographer because I, in looking at it, it just looked like there was a high level of correlation between the communities that have received these letters of intent to sue and the demographer kind of coming behind those on the heels of those to get that business. So I just wanted to say thanks for clarifying that this was a independent recommendation idea based upon kind of more extensive conversations. And I think, you know, just while I have the floor, I'll just say really quickly, you know, we're just in a place where we are kind of being forced to move in this direction. And I think there's a lot of interest in the community in participating in this conversation. And so I'm glad we're finally putting this on our open meeting agenda. And I look forward to seeing a robust community engagement plan moving forward. Thank you. I do want to mention, Captain, in case you haven't seen it, but we did get a pretty detailed proposal. It was part of a closed session packet from the demographer. And so Tony can provide that to you. What a process might look like with huge amount of outreach and variety built into it. And of course going to support the motion, but I think it could be helpful to the general public. And I asked Tony about this, if that in an appropriate form could be made available to the public, because it's not secret information. I think the useful to advance the discussion. Thank you. And send me a copy, Tony. Yes, thank you. I'm happy to circulate that to the council. And it's also, it was sent to the council under the cover of an attorney plan privilege communication. But the document itself, I do not consider to be privileged. I just, just to make sure that my point is clear, I'd like to clarify my statement is that, ultimately it would be the city council that will decide the manner in which the district boundaries are chosen, which is not the same thing as selecting the district boundaries. If you saw in your correspondence, there were a number of comments from members of the public who suggested forming a citizens committee to ultimately select the boundaries. And that's an option that the council could consider, whether or not that's a good idea is something that the council will be able to, to hear from the public on and discuss as the process looks forward. Okay, thank you. Council member Watkins. Thank you. And I appreciate the questions to get more clarity. Tony, did you, I know that there's been work done with Santa Cruz City Schools process and the alignment, is there, can you speak to that in terms of what we received as the council in regards to this potential resource to help us move forward in a, in a neutral way? Could you clarify that? I'm not quite, I'm not quite following that question. Well, I guess I have the, since Santa Cruz City Schools just recently went to district elections, it seems to me, if, if, if you can share how that could align with how this demographer can help us navigate this forward as well. I believe it was the same consulting firm that assisted the school district with its demographic analysis. Of course, as you know, the boundaries of the school district are not determinist with those of the city. So the district thing would not, I expect look the same, although there may be similarities. And I have not carefully followed the process that the school district underwent in order to choose its district boundaries. I was involved, as you know, in the charter amendment that was approved at the March primary election that removed provisions from the city charter that specified at-large elections for the Santa Cruz City School District. Oddly in my opinion, but that is no longer a part of the charter. Maybe just one sort of suggestion or thought is as we move forward, we can speak to them to understand what their experience had been and learn from them as we move forward as well. Certainly could do that, yeah. I have a couple of questions, Tony. The, some of the communications we've gotten also speak to potentially having an elected mayor of some, some form. And so during this public process, I assume that along with the district elections, we could take up those kinds of ideas as well for discussion in our public meetings, as well as be able to debate that with the community. I think that's also something of interest, but I'm not sure that the community understands that the district elections is sort of a separate item from the elected, you know, looking at the possibility of an elected mayor. Is that correct? Yes. Run the process at the same time. I think one of the issues that has already come up in communications from members of the public and will be part of the discussion is whether or not in transitioning to district elections, the council should also as part of that process have an at-large elected mayor with probably an even number of districts in conjunction with that to maintain the odd number on the council. So that's something that can be part of the discussion. Yes. Okay. And I just, just for community, you know, disclosure or whatever we want, however I want to frame it, but I did attend a number of the district presentations and public meetings and they were, I would say fairly well attended for the school district, district team process. I thought that the presentations were really well done. It was a pretty solid process for the events that I went to. So it's good to see that at least one of those have gone through the community. Obviously the vote went very well, but those were good meetings. I thought they were very well informed and worthwhile of attending. Thank you. Council Member Golder. What Donna said, because I went to some of the school board meetings and saw how it was presented. And it was like the demographers presented different, you know, ideas. And then there was a community input and it was a great process. So I think it's talking to them about how they structured it might be a good idea. Council members will turn it over to members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item. If you'd like to comment on this item, now's the time to call in, if you haven't called in already. This is item number five on our agenda, resolution declaring City of Santa Cruz's intention to transition from an at-large city election process to a district-based election process. If you'd like to comment on this item, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when I allow you to speak, you will be given two minutes. So if anybody would like to speak to item number five on our agenda, please press star nine. Please call one of the numbers on your screen and press star nine to raise your hand. City council in public. My understanding is in 2018, the population of Santa Cruz was 64,725, and 64,725 persons. So I hope this isn't gonna be enacted upon, my understanding is until 2022. So I'm hoping the public has another chance to comment on this because it seems like it's creating more bureaucracy. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. This is your last chance to comment on item number five, a resolution declaring City of Santa Cruz's intention to transition from an at-large city council election process to a district-based election process. Please dial the number on your screen and press star nine on your phone once you've entered the room. If you'd like to comment on this item for the members of the public who wants to comment on this item, I just say that it's unfortunate that we're in this position because I think that for many residents of the city, there's not so much of a preference to move towards district-based elections. However, I hope that as we transition this process, that the community weighs in heavily on how we should do this. And as we move into district-based elections, we understand how the impact of this is having on our community as well in terms of who's able to be represented on council. I have one more question for Tony and then I will make a motion. Now with our charter, where normally this would be a vote of the people, where are we on solving that dilemma? Do we have to put it to the vote of the people? We don't. And what courts have held in dealing with other charter cities is that the provisions of the state law and particularly that the California Voting Rights Act essentially take precedence over conflicting language in a city charter. If you'll recall what we did with the school district they had already adopted by district elections. And I think they used them in the 2018 election process, but we hadn't repealed the provisions of the charter that specified that large elections until March of this year. So I would envision something along the same lines. If the council does ultimately adopt an ordinance implementing district elections then a proposed charter amendment would come along as a cleanup item after that. Okay, thank you. And they are ready for motion if you are okay. I'll move the resolution declaring the city of Santa Cruz intention to transition from an at large city council election process to a district based election process. You're muted, Justin. Justin, you're muted. I'm challenging the participants list, but I just see a hand up in the attendees section. So I'm not sure if there's somebody still trying to speak or if that's just from the past. I just wanna make sure everybody gets to public comment if they're interested. Why don't we turn it over to this member of the public. Thanks for pointing that out to comment on this before we take it to the vote. Can you hear me now? On this item. I'm sorry about that. I did try to call on the phone. My name is Candice Brown from East Morrissey and I just wanted to say that if you wanted participation, broader participation from the community in our community government, then especially for the X community, then it would be desirable to have materials in Spanish and also have transfers easily available and make it more accessible to that demographic. That would be a genuine step and it's not necessarily about district elections. Also district elections can be a variety of things in Santa Barbara. They have four districts. They have three at large from which one is selected as mayor. And so there are many different variations on this theme and I just wanted to mention that as a possibility also. Thank you for that. All right, thank you very much. Also for a vote on this item. We're taking a vote. Council member is Byers. Aye. Matthews. Aye. Brown. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. He didn't recognize him. Aye. What can I say on this? Vice Mayor Meyers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. Aye. Let me have it unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next item that was pulled from our consensus agenda is item number 15, the subject of which is the high one and nine intersection improvements. And so there are a couple of council members who had a question. I'll start with council members Meyers. I don't have one now. I'm okay. Council member is here. I'll start with council members Meyers. I know there were other council members. That's a lot of feedback. Yeah, Mayor, somebody's listening to the meeting and there's a delay. So that's going to cause an issue. Somebody's listening to the meeting and there's a delay. So that's going to cause an issue. All right, thank you. Yeah, I do have some questions on this item. I know that we're pretty far down the road with the intersection changes. And so I, but things are, given the changed landscape at the moment, I just feel like there's some questions that I want to make sure we get clear before moving forward. The first is last year when this came before the council on another action, we directed that this intersection improvement plan go to the Transportation and Public Works Commission for review. And in particular, I was interested in looking at bike safety and potential recommendations to make that a safer intersection for bicyclists and pedestrians. And so I'm just wondering what happened with that. I didn't see that it occurred. So that's my first question. And then I have, most of my other questions are related to the funding because we are in a pretty changed environment here. So I'm wondering kind of how much has been spent so far. I see kind of adding up from the resolution and the series of actions that have been taken since 2004. It looks like for the consultant here, about a million dollars a little bit under prior to this action today. And, but I know we've incurred other costs. And so if you just have a ballpark how much we've spent to make this move forward. And then the CTC, the agenda report suggests that the CTC will fund this project. And construction is somewhere in the $5 million range. So I'm wondering, is that money already like allocated and it's sitting somewhere and just getting approval is what we need to actually receive the funds to make this happen? I just, it's like kind of continuing to go down this road without knowing if we can actually get it done in the near future or kind of move along the timeline that we had kind of anticipated. I'm just wondering about those kinds of changes or potential changes. And then finally, I have some concerns about how we commit our traffic impact fees. And I know that we do have funding through our traffic impact fee fund for this project. But I'm wondering is, are we looking at encumbering that money from the future traffic impact fees for this project? What does that mean for the potential to get other projects funded through that fund? And finally, sorry, it's a long list and I just kind of put them together. So I'm sorry, I didn't get these two sooner. The last one is, is there any potential that the city could request measured D highway project funding to perhaps offset some of that cost that the city will incur that's not coming from other sources? And that's it. Thanks. Mayor, council members, Chris Schneider, assistant director of public works. So the five questions, council member Brown that I heard was the public works transportation public works commission. So the project was presented at an open workshop on public works projects and programs. And so it was presented to the public relating to some of the design of the project and the bike lanes that were included with the project as well as pedestrian improvements. And as part of that process over the last year or two now, green lanes have been added and there's a bike lane southbound on highway nine and there's a shoulder northbound on highway nine which is considered the bikeway there. The cost to date is approximately three million and that's been for the design and the right-of-way. And there will be other costs associated with that. The CTC is, the city was awarded five point over five million in grant funding for the project. So that money is set aside, but we have to go and Caltrans is our partner in this and they're going to schedule it for the California Transportation Commission for the required vote for the funding and to move the project forward. We're in a really tight timeline in that the grant funding expires in the fall. We've done all of our extensions up to this point. So this matter before the council is very timely. The traffic impact fee program pays for a number of intersections within the city of Santa Cruz for improvements. Some of the intersections that have been funded already are the two roundabouts in the beach area and a number of other projects. This is one of the biggest projects that's funded through the TIF program. There's also been some redevelopment agency funding early on in the project and the TIF has an adequate balance to fund the project. It's been funding as it goes and we'll have enough money plus some for paying the local match to the grant. The TIF program also 15% is of the TIF program pays for bike and pedestrian projects that are separate from the intersection improvements that we do that also include typically bike and pedestrian improvements and another 5% that goes to neighborhood improvements next to adjacent to a, shoot I forgot the word for it, but important development project. And the fifth question, I can't read my note. What was that? Yeah, that was about the possibility for additional measures to be funds if we could apply for the highway portion of that distribution. Right, I believe the commission is fully committed the measure defunding to highway one improvements towards Watsonville. However, it wouldn't hurt to ask, but I don't think that it'd be likely that they would allocate any money to this project. That's kind of what I was getting at because being on the RTC, I know that we have budgeted for measure D highway funds, but I just thought, maybe we could put that in the mix as well. Thanks. Chris, I don't think I got the answer to the commission. Do we have, or is there before us a recommendation from the Transportation Public Works Commission? No, we held it, we had a meeting, but the meeting was a public workshop where different projects were presented and that time the commission was part of that meeting and where the project was represented there. So they didn't want to weigh in on this huge project with the recommendation offered? They have in the past. However, the last several years, the item has been going to the city council directly because there's a variety of issues. The design had already been decided a long time ago, so it's mostly been the right-of-way acquisition and things like that and permitting that we can take into the city council the details of the project. I just kind of stunned one of our big commissions that we use for a lot of stuff just didn't have a warm right place. The commission wanted to have it at the workshop so that it could be presented to the public in a different format than the formal meeting. Sure, that would be a different format. We just, I think only yesterday, maybe I got this morning a really detailed letter from Rick Hyman on all the bicycles. I hope you've got a copy, can you? I mean, there was a lot in there and I think step by step, I hope you got it. There are about four items and they, and as I told Rick, we would discuss it with Caltrans. The majority of the items are on the State Highway and require Caltrans to approve before it can be included in the project, but we'll be forwarding that to them at our next meeting. Because he's a real kind of note what he's talking about, I think. Yeah, he always does that, absolutely. I want to go back to the CTC. So by the way, do we have a lobbyist in Sacramento? I don't know, do we? We're lobbying for this money? Well, these were part of grant applications. Okay. For Caltrans. Nevertheless, to go before the CTC, so there's a big grant sitting there and they vote on it, I take it. Is it scheduled for a vote? Well, it is not yet scheduled, but Caltrans is the one that schedules the meeting with the CTC and it won't be a city moving the project for the Caltrans since it's there. They're responsible for this election. I don't know if their meeting as often as ever. I've just had a lot of experience with that going before them for that final vote. Do we have any idea when it's gonna be? I believe it'll be in August. And that's the final approval, the up or down? Yeah. Yes. But I think most of my answers have been covered. So for the sake of time, if there's no other questions from council members, we'll open it up to public comment. So if there are members of the public who are listening or who are watching, this is now the time to call in. There should be a series of phone numbers that you can call that are on your screen. If the first one doesn't work or is busy, I encourage you to try another one until you get through. For those people who have already called in, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. And I'd also like to ask that Rick Longinati, if you're watching or listening, we did approve you for additional time. So please let us know, announce yourself when you have been unmuted and we will give you the additional time. And with that, I'm gonna open up the lines to the first number of public. All right, you're on the line. Good afternoon, this is Brett Garrett. This project will bring more cars, more pollution, more carbon emissions. The city has declared a climate emergency, so it's a bad time to expand highways. The city has a serious budget shortfall, so it's a bad time to expand highways. The city is investing in transportation demand management and this highway construction will do the exact opposite. Construction costs will go up dramatically as a result of COVID-19. So again, it's a bad time to be expanding highways. I know you've received at least 60 letters asking you to drop this project. So please drop this project or at least put it on hold. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hi, it's Rick Longinati from the campaign for sustainable transportation. And I have a PowerPoint that Bonnie's gonna put up and let me know when you've got it up, Bonnie, because community television's about 30 seconds behind, so I'm not watching the screen. Rick, so she just put it on. Yeah, what I wanna talk about is we have these aspirations. We have these goals of Vision Zero, Health and All, policies, climate action plan, and they represent really the aspirations of our community, really heartfelt aspirations that all of us care about. And so the opportunity today to decline, to proceed with this project, is the opportunity to close the gap so that we actually get to these goals. Next slide, please. And Action Plan had this goal that we reduced within Count Town car trips. I don't think anybody thinks that we actually did that from 2012 to 2020. And in order to get to that goal, we really need to put our investments where our aspirations are. Next slide, please. So this is a slide on Safe Streets. Hopefully that you're seeing what I'm seeing. Santa Cruz is number one in cities similar size in California in injuries and deaths to bicyclists and are averaging number 11 in injuries and deaths to pedestrians. And so this is what I mean about the gap. We're not on a trajectory to do better than this. And we have this River Street project which is great. It's one of the Water Street, I should say. It's one of the best things that I've seen in a long time makes me smile, but we're not getting out of that number one position unless we reorganize our priorities. Next slide, please. Aside from, you know, even if the issues of climate change and safety were not even around, we would have the issue of does this project make sense just from a cost effectiveness? Is it soft traffic congestion? And as we know from the research, you can't alleviate congestion by expanding highways. It just doesn't work other than just in the short run. Next slide. So the CalTrans did an environmental review of this project and they found that the vehicle miles traveled would increase by 10% compared to not building the project. So in 2030, if you didn't build a project, you would have less vehicles on the road than if you built the project. And of course the greenhouse gas emissions would go up. Next slide. So there's a shift in California, I hope that we can echo that shift here in our city. Sequa no longer considers traffic delay a significant impact. So in the IRs going forward, we're not gonna have a mandate to widen the intersections. Next slide, please. So hopefully you're seeing a photo of streets with 60 people and the amount of space that it takes to transport 60 people. This is what our general plan is talking about. What it says, traffic engineering in past decades generally focused on improving vehicle mobility by extending roadway capacity too often without consideration for increasing person trip mobility. We're in the middle of a transformation. And our city needs to catch up with what's written here in the general plan. Next slide. It says we should accept a lower level of service and higher congestion at major regional intersections if necessary improvements would be prohibitively costy and or result in significant unacceptable environmental impacts, which I would submit that this project does. It's one of the most costly projects we've got. It drains our traffic impact fee and it has a 10% increase in greenhouse gases. Next slide. We'll skip the trend. Sierra Club, I think we have a caller from Sierra Club. Next slide. So we do have alternatives. We have ways to reduce vehicle trips. We are seeing that downtown. There's more we can do downtown. We could do that city-wide. We could do that UCSC. We're making progress or safe streets for bikes and pedestrians. But as you know, we have so much more to go to get off that number one spot in deaths and injuries. So that's about one minute. Okay. It's not a safe project. The commission never considered this project. They never said send it to an open house. They didn't have the possibility of even having it on their agenda. The council really needs to, at today, to send it back to the Transportation Commission for their input. Thank you very much. Yep. Well, you have two minutes. All right. Thanks very much. Thank you for everything you're doing and good afternoon. My name is Bob Morgan and I'm calling representing the Sierra Club. I'm the chair of the transportation committee in the Sierra Club Santa Cruz. I have two statements to read. They're both brief sentences. We advocate the policies to implement charges for parking and highway access, ingestion pricing and transportation control measures rather than increasing road capacity for vehicles be considered before highway expansion. The first statement, the second statement reads, we ask all cities to promote alternative modes of transportation that prioritize white walking and bike over vehicles, building and supporting public transit, reducing and eventually eliminating parking. Those two statements come from the National Transportation Policy of the Sierra Club. Thank you very much for all of your work. Thank you. Are you up now? Yes. You're online. Okay. Good afternoon, council members. Michael St. representing Citizens Climate Lobby, Santa Cruz chapter. Our group is totally opposed to this one slash nine intersection five and any projects that increase greenhouse gas emissions in vehicle miles traveled. Also any project that will widen roads and highways causing induced travels should not be considered. And the funds from those car-centric projects be used for pedestrian safety, protected bike lanes, et cetera, throughout not only our city but our county. If this situation worked of widening and a lot of the widening has been done in California at Los Angeles would actually have no congestion. I have been an environmental advocate for four years now and the amount of projects harmful to the environment seems to drastically outweigh the environmentally sound choices. Some examples of these are Jeep dealerships, the bad ones down on Soquel Avenue and lieu of home housing. Possible 400 space garage between Lincoln and Locust, a library project which increases reduced demand. Ox lanes between Soquel and Freedom Boulevard a 29% increase in vehicle miles traveled. Sustainable Soquel project was shuttled in favor of a Nissan dealership. Capitola Mall is now considering a town square with over 3,000 parking spaces and another induced demand project. Kaiser Medical Center, 700 parking spaces induced demand for vehicles. Midpen project on Capitola Road and also suggested widening of Capitola Road to go along with that project, more induced demand for vehicles and your Highway 1-9 intersection inducing demand. Some of the good projects I'll throw in, protected bike lanes, which I see occasionally, rail trail is underway, free bus passes and the green paint on the pavement for bikes. Good projects, but they pale in comparison to the image that the mega projects will be due for our environment. This Highway 1-9 intersection. I'm gonna have to cut you off because that sound was in there two minutes, but thank you for calling in. Again, my name is Candace Brown from East Morrissey and also I joined the Transportation Public Works Commission in February and I can attest to that we have not had any official review of this project during that period and including our main meeting. Also, there was mention of the circle at 190 Westcliff. It wasn't clear that there was funding for that. So, and the comment was that he wasn't sure if that project would happen. So I think the traffic impact fees need to be reassessed relative to all these projects. We have so much information and we have so many decisions to make. We have to look at local versus regional impacts, different modes of transportation, both yesterday and tomorrow, and what will the economy look like in the next three to five years? What is now becoming into focus is a timeline of the vaccine for COVID-19 by the Pulitzer Prize winning and UCSC alumni graduate, Lori Garrett that says that the best case scenario for vaccine is three years best case scenario for a type of vaccine that has never been tested before, even on animals. So we are dealing with from this day forward with a new reality. We have to reassess decisions such as this that will spend all the traffic impact fees that will be moving forward. Otherwise, we cannot do anything for bike and public safety, pedestrian safety through the city, throughout the city, I should say, as people adjust to low cost transportation, what was true yesterday is not true today. As our leaders, you not only need to lead but you need to show courage, true courage. We are at a time that we need to reassess what we are doing with this money and if we make a mistake, we cannot make it up later. So we do need true courage in this at the moment. Thank you. Project is going to cost a lot of money and probably will not increase the traffic safety. There are better ways to increase traffic safety and they are the opposite of widening roads. They involve gradually narrowing roads so that human psychology gets people to go slower. We need the funds that would be spent for this safer bike and pedestrian venues and that could include Pacific Avenue and some other places who allow the businesses to flourish as they place, for example, cafe tables outside or clothing racks outside, taking advantage of good weather and social distancing. Save the money for better things, don't do this project. Thank you. If you have not had a chance to speak yet, please press point in time so that you can have your hand raised and then you can be called on. There are other members of the public who would like to speak on this item. Now it's time to call in. Please call one of the numbers on your screen and once you have entered the meeting, please press start on on your phone to raise your hand so that you can be called upon. Provide two minutes to speak. Sheila Carrillo, hello, everybody. What I wanted to say is, in light of our climate catastrophe, which is the crisis of all crises, we couldn't do anything less wise than facilitate the use of more cars through road widening or adding parking. I urge you to prioritize addressing the climate crisis and seek transportation alternatives for thinking, not backward thinking, just contribute to saving the future of our children. Thank you. Additional members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item, I thought there's one more. Yeah, good afternoon. This is James J. and Whitman again. I would just like to second the cautioning of spending these funds because it seems like what's gonna happen. So I appreciate at least the two other civic members that recommended cautioning these funds. Thank you. Do you have a council for action and deliberation? I want to appreciate those who called in. This is a project. I think the questions that council members had initially were answered. And this is a project that has been in the work for a very long time. And we are coming upon a critical decision point, a deadline. And so I'm going to join and move the recommendations before us, which includes approval of the plans and specs for the Highway 1-9 Intersection Improvement. Motions approve the construction management services request and there's additional language that goes with this. And motions approve an amendment to the contract with the engineers for additional work, incorporating the full language and the recommendations. We're motioned by council member Matthews. I saw the council member Byers hand was up. Did you have a question? Or were you gonna second the motion? Not seconding the motion and I will just have comments who are ready. Vice Mayor Myers, I saw your hand was up. Next. I will second the motion. The motion made by council member Matthews seconded by vice mayor Myers. And I'll bring it back to council member Byers for your comments on this item. Project has been going on for a long time. I think, I mean, way, way back. And I must say I paid a lot of attention to it all these years and it's never, ever been since to me. And even since that, now we have the emergency climate change that the council has determined it is an emergency. And here we are contributing an overwhelming amount of anti-climate change and good stuff happening. I don't, we talk about following the data all the time on the coronavirus. And for some reason we just don't pay enough to the data that has come out regarding this project. Accordingly it's gonna help 10% I think of the traffic by 2030 it's not even gonna matter. It's gonna be obsolete in that many years. We've seen that with the extended lanes on highway one. So it's a bad for our buck but more importantly is just bad for our environment and bad for our community who constantly is raising the issue of climate change. We have one letter about the pedestrian safety but if anyone ever parks they're waiting for the light to change. I wish we had stats on the number of accidents. How can we think that the accidents, some are minor but some barely get through but is overwhelming the unsafe conditions of all those lanes. So now we're gonna add lanes. I can't imagine how it could be safer not to mention. I know somebody even raised the issue all these trees are going to come down too. I only put that in because it is gonna be so ugly and nothing we should be proud of. We should be proud of and I hope we are proud of putting the tunnel for bicycles to tannery. But that's a way of doing it. We could have pedestrian and bicycle more tunnels and so people don't have to go to the current number of lanes which is so difficult. The general plan really did talk about reducing and lowering the level of worrying about congestion. This is a good example of that. And I know it's been in the works forever. There's always a grant out there and we're always running to catch the timing on that grant that happens all the time. And nobody wants to lose access to three to $5 million but sometimes you just say, whoa, we need to take this back. We need to re-look at the safety, want them to read, let the Transportation Commission really, they're our experts, I'm not an engineer. And no, no, commissions are not either but at least they delve into it. I delve into it because we got it on Thursday and didn't even know it was coming before that. So it was the timeline. And just the last thing, we're in a, we don't know what the future's gonna look like, absolutely nobody. All I see is more and more people are walking, more and more people on their bicycles. We may have a whole new look of how we go about our day to day. It just could be so different. And if we, this will scare people off for sure walking or bicycling but if we just delay it and just delay, sit back and watch our community changes or doesn't change or changes one way, we simply don't know. But I think at the minimum we should delay this project till we settle down and see what's going on and really take a much deeper look at the safety both for bicycles and pedestrians. I will be voting no by the way. Thank you. Council member Brown. Yes. Well, I won't repeat the comments that council member buyers made but I really wholeheartedly agree. I have been supportive of moving this project forward during my time on the council and at the RTC. I am, and so I don't wanna appear to be just completely changing course but I do think that the changed environment really warrants us stopping and taking a look at what we're doing here. We are in a fiscal emergency. We have clearly a climate emergency and I recognize that these funds are kind of, much of it would be extra funding and these pots of funding are not fungible and so it could lead to a loss in potential funding but I'm not really ready to continue to move forward at this time and in particular I'm gonna just highlight my concerns that the Transportation and Public Works Commission did not review this. I supported this moving forward the last time we voted with the understanding that that would happen and it hasn't and it could have because we've had lots of time between that vote and today and so coming up against this timeline, it is unfortunate but I think it's unfortunate that we didn't have that commission review as directed so I will not be supporting the motion today. Thank you. I understand the comments that were made in terms of hesitation and I too have seen this project evolve over the years and also somebody who patrons that intersection on a regular basis I have to say that it's definitely due for improvements for safety. I under general circumstances I pretty much drive there to work or patron the area on a regular basis and it's definitely overdue I'd say. I just wanted to get clarity if I may. My understanding was that the commission did review it but they decided to do it in a different way and I'm wondering if maybe Chris is on to clarify that for us. Oh, thank you. That's correct. The commission decided to have it at a workshop so they felt like they could get more input from the public in a more informal setting and that's why I took that. They didn't ask to reschedule it at another meeting after that. Okay, okay, thank you. And that's it, thank you. Maybe you could just highlight how community members were able to weigh in on this project there and what was the sense that people were getting what the commission got from having this in an alternative way. No, it was a little while ago. I don't remember the exact, all the exact details but I think generally people were supportive that the bike lanes had been added and were supportive of the design. The project has been through the public process a number of times through environmental review and the design and every time we're taking kind of action on it, essentially today is administrative actions to move the project forward. If the city doesn't take this action then essentially we're at risk of not doing the project and losing the $5 million in grant funding, not only to the project but to the region, it would go back to the state and they would use it elsewhere. So it's not just a question of losing the money for the project but it's losing the money locally. Great, thank you. Vice Mayor Myers. Chris, I've been taking notes that I might have missed. When was the public workshop held that was requested? Oh, I don't recall exactly, I don't recall the date. It was about a year ago, a little bit more. I can provide that information later. Okay, thank you. I mean, that was a significant meeting. I'm not surprised you don't need to remember the date but you think it was over a year ago, a year and a half ago, two years? Did they have pictures of the, I mean, a lot of information. Did they have what we're seeing in terms of the design? Yes, definitely. Okay, good. We had boards with all the design, the number of lanes, lane widths, all the information, cross section. Thanks, Chris. David, I want to thank first the public for calling and weighing in on this. I know that this has come before us on a number of occasions and we moved to get to this point at 19. There's concerns on both sides that need to be taken into consideration. I know that for one, many people now are really concerned with gathering in groups and being in situations where they are in close confinement spaces with other individuals, which really makes us have to wonder about how that's gonna impact massive transit, right? Are we gonna be able, are people gonna want to get on buses and trains? And so I think we need to continue to explore those options as we move forward and hopefully we'll have a vaccine to be able to invest in that. But there is, it's uncertain whether we'll see a trend in people wanting to drive more electric vehicles and the capacity for that. And so I think as we move forward, we need to continue to understand how we can make our city more environmentally friendly while also meeting the needs of growing populations and people who need to get around in a way that's efficient and safe. So those are the comments that I'll make on this and if there's no further questions or comments, we can go ahead and take a look all the way. So the motion before us is, and the approval recommendation that's been outlined by the staff, the motion was made by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Vice Mayor Myers. And so I'll turn it over to the clerk to call the vote. Mayor, Council Member Byers. No. Matthews. I'm gonna vote no, but I also just wanna comment that I just found the direction that we gave was last June 23rd at our meeting in 2019. So if the decision to hold a public workshop was after that, then okay, but that's not my understanding. So I'll be voting no, thanks. Boulder, Watkins, Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. So I'm gonna vote no just because I feel like it's the Council Member's fire. The next item on our agenda, June 9th, 2020. And so the next item on our agenda is item number 22, amending the Santa Cruz Municipal Code related to election campaign expenditure and contribution limits. So I'll turn that over to Bonnie Bush, City Clerk, to provide that presentation. Thank you Mayor, Council Members. As you all know, we have a contribution and expenditure limit ordinance in the City of Santa Cruz and the last election cycle, I noticed it was really out of date and some of the dollar amounts needed to be updated. So it's really a housekeeping update to the current ordinance. Member of the public, would like to comment on item number 22, please call in at this time, Cooperation Council Member Matthews. Yes, this is really administrative housekeeping. I want to thank Bonnie for catching that it needed to be updated. So if there are no questions for others, I'll go ahead and move the motion before us. Okay, we'll motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Watkins at your hands raised. Yep, second motion. Okay, so we'll motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Watkins. There's no further discussion on this item. Then we can move to a roll call vote. Council Member is Byers. Aye. Matthews. Aye. Brown. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. Vice Mayor Meyers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. That's unanimously. Next item of general business is item number 20, Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessments for Fiscal Year 2021. For members of the Public Works Strictions Meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on, now it's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff for the council members who brought the item forward, followed by questions from the council. We then take public comment and return to the council for action deliberation. And so today, our presenters on this item are Bonnie Bush, Director of Economic Development and Avery Allen, Downtown Association, Interim Executive Director. Good afternoon, Mayor. I'm Bonnie Lipscomb, Director of Economic Development and I will just introduce the item and then turn it over to Avery. We are the fiscal agent for the Downtown Association, but the work conducted by the Downtown Association for this Business Improvement District is conducted by the Downtown Association and they prepare the annual report. So I'll briefly just say that this is an annual assessment, we've been the fiscal agent for the Downtown Association for many years. This is the annual approval of the assessment. The one difference this year is that there is a larger effort to consolidate the two assessments we have. So both of our regular assessments are on the agenda today. The Business Improvement District, which is this item and then the next item, item 24, which is the Downtown Management Corporation, which is a property-based improvement district. So we'll take both items. The larger project-based improvement district that's being considered right now will come before you potentially on June 9th. We're in the process of meeting with property owners right now and can answer any questions when we get to that item as well. But with that said, I'll turn it over to Avery Allen who can sort of continue the introduction to this item and then we're both available to answer any questions that you have. Great, thank you, Bonnie. Hello, council members. I wanna do a quick sound check. Can everybody hear me okay? Great, I actually have some incredibly loud neighbors. So if you start hearing a dog barking and children screaming in a pool, then flag me and I'll throw on some headsets and we can just roll from there. I did wanna briefly just introduce one of my colleagues who will also be speaking as a presenter on this agenda. I'm Sonya Bruner who you will see on this Zoom call as well. She's our operations director as well as coordinate our membership. She'll be speaking as well. As Bonnie said, I'm Avery Allen. I'm the interim executive director for the downtown association of Santa Cruz. And I'm here just to give you a little bit of background and some more context when looking at our annual work plan and budget that we submitted to the agenda today. For those of you that don't know, the downtown association is funded through an assessment of businesses within the downtown district boundaries. And that is a assessment in its current format that was created back in the 90s. The purview of the downtown association, there's multiple pieces to it and it evolves and changes. But most of it is working as advocates for our downtown businesses. And I would say that that's a piece that we're really strong at. We have very close relationships with most of our downtown businesses. We work within marketing for downtown as well. And then we also provide a lot of event support downtown, whether it be through events that we present ourselves like the downtown holiday parade or Santa or the wine walks that you see happening or working in partnership with other independent producers that are producing events downtown that we can support, whether it be Santa Cruz Dance Week or the Cabrera Contemporary Music Festival. Another piece of what we do is also clean space and welcoming services. And that piece of what we do has evolved and changed quite a bit over the years. We currently are contracted with through the Downtown Management Corporation to offer ambassador services. And we have our downtown chaos as well. It has been downtown for many years. This has been quite a big year for the downtown association, a lot of changes. Back in July, my predecessor Chip who was with the organization for over a decade stepped down and relocated to Boulder, Colorado. And I stepped in for a year long contract that was based on Chip's recommendations to pursue a strategic plan for downtown Santa Cruz, which the board approved and we move forward and we were able to partner with economic development on that strategic plan and hire an outside firm to oversee that outreach. And I have to say beyond the benefits of that strategic plan, partnering with economic development and Bonnie Lipskin and her team has been really invaluable in deepening the relationship and the partnership between our two entities so that we're able to offer better support to businesses downtown. So that's been great. Through that strategic plan, we did some pretty widespread outreach working with this firm, Progressive Urban Management Associates. Many of you are probably familiar or have seen that acronym at some point in the last year. We did a lot of work with downtown stakeholders. We met in focus groups. We met in round table discussions. And then we also offered an online survey to our community and received 3,000 responses with input around what people saw as where the need was downtown. And that work led to recommendations to form a PBID or a property-based improvement district. You will hear a lot more about that potentially as time goes on. So I will not speak a lot more on that topic beyond to say that through all the research that we have done across the country and certainly within the state of California, the PBID is absolutely our best way to move forward in streamlining our efforts around maintenance and management of downtown Santa Cruz. And whether it's something that we're able to move forward through now or we're able to move it forward potentially next year, it's something that is again, absolutely crucial. So I just can't reiterate that enough for moving forward. So through that outreach to the community and the strategic plan what you would see reflected in the PBID budget is a really significantly increased, clean, safe and welcoming budget. And a lot of that would look like a massive expansion of an ambassador program most likely contracted out to an outfit entity that does that kind of work in communities across the country. But on that note, I thought that it would be really important to hear a little bit more about the current ambassador program as well as the kiosk program that really does serve as that clean, safe and welcoming program currently. So I'm gonna pass it over to Sonia Brunner for just a quick moment to talk about those two programs. Thank you, Abrahach, can everyone hear me okay? Okay, Sonia Brunner, Operations Director with the Downtown Association. And my role is I oversee the programs, the information program and the downtown ambassador program which we currently manage in-house. And thank you, Bonnie, for bringing up the slides and we'll just talk through quickly. And I thought some pictures really would connect it for everybody to show the value and understand how wonderful both of these programs have been in our downtown community So starting with the ambassador program next slide, it started as a partnership of the City of Santa Cruz Downtown Association and the Downtown Management Corporation. It launched next slide in October 1st of 2018 and the map is showing the district of where the ambassadors patrol and that would be Pacific Avenue from Laurel to Water Street and the side street. The downtown ambassadors is to be the best part of people's day in downtown Santa Cruz. Next slide. They proactively look for visitors who might be needing assistance, proactively communicate with and update downtown business staff, identify and resolve vandalism, graffiti, waste, debris, cleanliness issues, they liaison with any relevant city staff and other downtown partners including rangers, police, public works, outreach workers, downtown streets team and really strive to track recurring issues and work helping to manage the downtown space and the landscape and anything that's happening, continually looking for ways to improve each block. Next slide. Things like replacing the doggie poop bags and the pet waste dispensers along Pacific Avenue and just following the best practices of downtown management organizations, being friendly faces with a smile and outreaching to anybody downtown that has questions needs help and just being welcoming and friendly and a support. Next slide. So manage the downtown app C Quick Fix. As you can see, there are a variety of shortcuts to access which has been very handy for a lot of businesses as well as the public. Next. With the C Quick Fix app, we've been able to collect data and reporting and here are just some of the top categories that ambassadors help to manage to get resolve, whether it be themselves taking care of it or finding who can help take care of whatever the situation is. And so it just contributes to the clean, friendly atmosphere. Most people, for example, we've had seven reports of the sidewalk bench is being damaged and most people don't know who to contact about that, whether you're a visitor downtown or a business where a bench is out in front of your business, for example. So in lots of little ways, they are the connector to help manage all of downtown issues and needs and questions. Next slide. Our public works for cleaning the sidewalks. It is the number one issue that they help resolve. So just a little quick overview, that's it. And I will move on to the information kiosk if we can go to those slides. We're hoping for a potential expansion of the ambassador program. And like Abra said, potentially contracting out to another company that does this around other cities and other states. Okay, the information kiosk is in front of New Leaf Community Market. Next slide. Information kiosk, the city is our landlord, and we were established in 2012. And so we just celebrated our eight year anniversary and it was very exciting. You'll see on Facebook for the information kiosk and wonderful pictures that units of our full-time staffers put together to commemorate and celebrate all the wonderful moments. The information kiosk serves around 10,500 visitors a year from the county, regional, national, and international locations. Next question, next sample questions we get at the information kiosk. It's a tiny one-person operation, but definitely mighty. And not only do the staff at the information kiosk showcase promotions or posters, events, music, art, shows, festivals, same-day events, the staff also works really hard to know about things happening in the city and the county to be able to answer questions, provide maps, brochures, directories, even maps to neighboring cities for visitors that may be headed there next. Next slide, please. These are just last year's. We keep track, if anybody's ever interested, we would love to share the data that we collect. We definitely collect data of each visitor, where they're from, and it's really fun to see, for example, in the international countries they're visiting from. And as you can see in this data, for example, we have a lot of county from within the county visitors too that are coming to ask questions. The information kiosk is definitely a central hub for connecting the information in downtown Santa Cruz, providing information on all the area services, the downtown businesses, and opportunities, even to find that perfect lunch. And you'll see on the left are two of our downtown rangers. In the middle is Maverick from Santa Cruz Warriors, and on the right are some international visitors at the information kiosk. And that's it. I just wanted to give a quick overview for them. We're not familiar with either program. We're really out of our staff and people and the impact it's had downtown and with our community downtown. Thank you. Thank you, Sonia. And I'll just wrap up. I'm not gonna keep you too long and I have a really big agenda still. But I just wanna reiterate that the kiosk program is amazing. I'm sure all of you have encountered Allen or Venus. They're really at the heart of that program. They're absolutely incredible. And our ambassador program has been just a huge asset to the organization and to the downtown community. It really has allowed for a bridge between our downtown businesses and our organization. We get to hear from them quite often through our ambassadors about what they need and what kind of support we can offer. It's also been great to create this network downtown between Santa Cruz PD and Carter Jones and also our rangers downtown. It's just like our little kind of walking communication mechanisms downtown. So it's been incredibly valuable. And as I've said, these kind of programs are hugely significant in their impacts in downtowns across the country. And if we would be able to expand that program, it would be significant. And one of the mechanisms for that would be the PV that's being proposed. I did wanna mention that to some of the work that the DTA, the Downtown Association is doing during this COVID pandemic, like everybody else had to pivot really rapidly and try to figure out what we could do to support folks. A big piece of that was offering education and advocacy and being that mechanism where information came through. And as soon as we heard about things, sharing them with the downtown community, being available at all times by phone and email and educating them to the best of our ability through our website and our social media. Another piece of that was building partnerships with other city entities or other business organizations so that we could offer those resources to our downtown community as well. And then lastly, one of the big pieces has been a big pivot in marketing. Immediately upon seeing this happen, we just quickly moved and I'm really proud of our staff. Sonya, Marina, Toft and myself are the three administrators for the Downtown Association and it's taking quite the effort to get us where we are but we were one of the first downtowns to be able to shift rapidly and completely change the interface of our website to support what was happening with takeout and online sales and things like that and actually has been pointing to many of the national fronts for a downtown to look to. So we feel really proud of those efforts that we were able to support our downtown in that way. And now of course we're pivoting in another direction. So it's a moving target right now and we're just trying to be prepared. I wanted to quickly just mention our work plan and our budgets. We, I created that probably over a month ago because we needed to have our board vote on it. So you can imagine incredible amount of uncertainty in creating a work plan and budget currently not knowing what we're looking for. I did put in a 20% decrease expected in our assessment budget as our assessment is funded through business. We are preparing that there will likely be businesses that do not come back or there will be businesses that will need to wait and hold off on paying any sort of assessment and we really want to support them to be alive, survive and thrive at this point. So being able to do that. We're also taking a shift over from our route which actually pull a lot of funds and capacity being that that's not something that's realistic at this point away from that and moving that funding and capacity towards economic development hoping to partner more with the staff over there and support our businesses and then also trying to redesignate some funds back to clean, safe and welcoming as I have reiterated I cannot tell you enough the more people on boots on the ground people walking around the more support our downtown is gonna get. So currently we're looking at how do we expand the ambassador footprint beyond its current and how does the downtown association find funding to support that because it seems absolutely crucial at this point. So all in all, we're just preparing as our small staff to just be ready at any moment for any change that might happen especially as these re-openings are rolling out what can we do for our downtown businesses and our downtown community. That's it. Great, well thank you for your presentation for all the work that you all do. All these programs seem really great and with that I'll turn it over to council to see if any council members have questions. I don't. Well, I don't really have a question. I just want to appreciate all the work that you have done and your ability to really be nimble in these challenging times. I'm glad to see the team in charge is taking that very seriously. And I just, I love hearing from you. So thank you for everything. Vice mayor Mara. If there's no other questions, mayor, I might go ahead and make a motion to move things forward but I just want to be respectful to see if there's other questions. Sure, and we also, I just want to remind folks who we need to open up for public comment. Still a comment, right. And we'll click on any further questions or comments. Comments from the public. So if there are members of the public that would like to comment on this item that's before us which is item number 23 Downtown Association parking and business improvement area assessments for fiscal year 2021. Please call in at this moment in time if you haven't already. And once you are in the meeting you'll want to hit star nine on your phone which will allow you to raise your hand at which point we will then acknowledge you and you'll have two minutes to speak on this item to raise a hand. Mayor, I just wanted to mention that the item before you is both a motion as well as a resolution of intention to levy the assessment. Thank you. Members of the public who would like to speak on this item. And so I'll bring it back to council for action deliberation. Council member Matthews, do you have a comment? I'm happy to second the motion. It was made for both the motion to approve the plan and adopt the resolution. I was going to say that, but go for it. Go for it. I was going to say that. I'm going to go back and get back into it. But yeah, everyone to be like, that's the call in what the downtown are doing and throughout our community really. But particularly for downtown who've been going through the Puma project and what's their future and our grand vision and whammo, this thing comes at you. And to see the extraordinary energy and creativity and sense of community coming forward. We understand that well. So just pass off to all of you guys. Yeah, I'd like to just echo, yeah, my appreciation to the downtown association all your work over the past year. Leading the report, especially just all the amount of outreach and the day to day contact that you took to truly talk with property owners and business owners downtown is really, really appreciated. We don't often do that well enough and just really appreciate all your work and really trying to make sure that everyone was well informed. And I've heard lots of compliments about your process. And so thank you for all your work and we'll see what happens as we move forward here. Hopefully things get better. Thanks you guys. And I'll just echo the sentiments expressed by my colleagues. So thank you for all the hard work you're doing. And there's also a lot of members of the public know because I know we as council members have been receiving lots of emails about closing down the streets downtown. And I know that the downtown association has already gotten out in front of that and has been conducting surveys with the different businesses. And so just really want to appreciate all the work that you all continue to do to try to meet the needs of our downtown and the visitors and residents of Santa Cruz. They're common. I'll turn it back to the city clerk to call the roll. Thank you Mayor, council members, buyers. Please unmute your microphones as well. Matthews. Hi. Brown. Hi. Boulder. Vice Mayor Meyers. And Mayor Cummings. That is unanimously. All right, thank you all for joining us on that item today and for the presentation. Yep. Thank you. fiscal year 2021. And this will be presented by Bonnie Lipscomb director of economic development. Thank you mayor. This is the property based improvement district or PBID that is managed by the downtown management corporation. And the assessment this year is, it's not changed from last year. The contract that we have though was just talked about in the previous item. And that is the majority of this assessment, 204,000 out of the 2018 goes towards the contract with the downtown association for the ambassador program. Additionally, we supplement that for ways to clean up downtown security cameras and other downtown specific pieces. Can I stop for a sec? I'd like to ask, if you're not speaking, could you please mute your microphone on the volume for a few minutes and then I'll be able to present the presentation. So the overall assessment is 218,000. The majority of that 204,000 goes towards the contract with the downtown association for managing the ambassador program. We additionally supplement that with cafe extension area and our kiosk grant to provide additional waste removal services downtown and some contribution towards the trolley as well as our security camera program. So this is the annual assessment. As in the earlier item, we all also are looking at a larger property based improvement district that would merge both the downtown association and the downtown management corporation if that does go forward, that would be on the next agenda. And we would include phase out language both for the DTA assessment that we just discussed as well as the DMC assessment. And those would phase out at the end of December if the larger PVID is approved for consideration next month. So if the larger PVID is approved, that would be effective in January. So we still need approval of both this district for the PVID, the smaller PVID as well as the one that you just approved so that we have continuity of services in the downtown. There is a contribution from the city and this district we do own property within the district. It's approximately 39,000. The majority of that is parking related property. There additionally is the Del Mar and a couple other city owned properties within the district. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Seeing none, I will open up public comment on this item. So the item before us is item number 24, cooperative, retail, management, business, real property, improvement district assessment fiscal year 2021. There are members of the public who are streaming this meeting. If you'd like to comment on this, now's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. If you've called in and you'd like to comment on this item, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. Members of the public, council members, this is Robert Norris of Hop Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom. I attempted to call in on the last item and I wasn't able to get your attention, though I did get the proper numbers. So although these two items are closely related, the press, I can make these comments. The ambassadors program has been almost universally disparaged and opposed by homeless organizations throughout the country. It is a proto-police agency which masquerades as something that's been with helping tourists. And I think Sandy Brown and Catherine Byer should know better than this. Although Catherine Byer's initiated this whole thing back in 1995, as I think part of a well-intended mediation proposal to deal with conflicts that were involved and are still involved with the police and homeless people in public spaces and that will continue to be involved. I would say before you hoard this kind of assessment and I think you should do a revote frankly on the last item, because members of the public, at least I was not allowed to speak. I think maybe it's a fault in the system, I don't know what. But I think you need to see the stats on what are the numbers of contacts that involve connecting with the police and connecting with homeless people and directing them to follow the downtown ordinances. This used to be a very heavy part of what the host, which is now called the Ambassadors Program did. It's a proto-policing mentality which spends time, money, and the inappropriate use of force to privatize the sidewalks. And while I appreciate what some of the hosts do, the Info Bureau at the Kiosk, I think that's a good thing. I'm glad to see maps and tourist information given out. This other aspect is very dangerous to homeless folks. But who you see less and less of downtown, you might say, well, you know, that's all you see downtown with the COVID crisis. But in fact, because of the gentrification process happening in this community, we see less and less public space. And thank you, please consider what I said. Thank you very much. Again, if there are members of the public who would like to speak on this item, please call on the numbers on your screen right now. Enter the code that's at the bottom. Just raise your hand. Okay, seeing that there are no other members of the public who'd like to speak on this item, I'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation. Council Member Watkins. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to move the recommendation for the item. Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Watkins. I'll go ahead and second that recommendations by Council Member Watkins, seconded by Mayor Cummings, by Council Member Brown. Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to follow up on that, a comment from our last speaker, Mr. North, to ask if any, is there any data available about when those calls and the resolution of those calls, how many have involved the police? Do you track that? I don't know if that's for Abra or Bonnie or both. But it would be helpful to know if it's available. I'm processing that question. We do have data on both that the ambassadors record as far as the nature of the calls, those that do get referred to either the Rangers and or some actually get called to our mental health outreach. I would say probably more of them get referred to our mental health outreach support downtown. So we do have general data, it doesn't go into the detail of all of the nature of the calls. I see that Abra is back on, so I'll see if she has something to add to that as well. Most of what I was gonna chime in is similar to Bonnie and actually there is quite a bit of data. Sonya is really kind of our go-to around our reporting and I'm not sure though that there are, there is data specifically to every time they would call PD or not. We certainly could do a little bit more. I could do some digging and checking with Sonya and then follow up with all of you. So that you have a sense of that. But I will tell you that, you know, our ambassadors are trained almost exclusively as welcoming and host-related services to allow visitors to feel like they get what they need downtown and directing people in the right directions and checking in with businesses to make sure that they also have the resources that they need as well. I would add in just one thing is that that was actually the change we made two years ago from going from transitioning from the Rangers back to ambassadors, what so that the ambassadors did have that friendly welcoming welcome to downtown approach. So, you know, I think that is one of the major changes and benefits that were specifically requested by downtown businesses is that they really wanted to have that friendly atmosphere. So that's one of the goals I think successfully achieved by the ambassadors downtown. Thank you. If I could just say thank you. And if, you know, if there is data available, it'd be great if it could just forward it along to us, you know, no need to spend a lot of time, but it would be helpful to have that information, whatever you've got available. Thanks. Happy to. I would just add one thing that's not specific to the ambassadors, but it is specific to the data downtown is that we do have a number of calls for service in downtown. So we do have that data available as well. My roadmap is gonna be about, please unmute. Anna and I both sit on the Downhand Management Corporation Board and we do get reports at every, we meet every other month and we do get pretty detailed data presented and that's certainly available to you if you ask. And I think just a brief phone call reviewing more than just looking at it, but also present at the meeting to give reports in part of the agenda. Someone from BTE, but also social workers, outreach workers, other community resources available. So if you look at the numbers, they're not called out specifically by homeless, but request for information. That's what we'll see from visitors. Reporting of maintenance issues abandoned by the BTE facility to be cleaned up. So that's a huge amount of them. Maintenance needs, connecting to the businesses, informing them of what's happening, et cetera. Collaboration with the other resources. And when we hear, for example, the PV and the outreach worker talking with the hospitality workers, when there are particular individuals who have some previous things, contrary to the impression that may have been given by the caller, I would say the overall intention is to be welcoming and helpful. And when people need services, get them connected. Unmute yourself, Justin. Thank you for those comments. So is there any other council members who'd like to comment on this item at this time? Okay, seeing none, I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll vote. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Aye. Brown. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. Aye. Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. That was unanimously. Thank you, Bonnie, for bringing this forward. Our agenda is item number burdened into reconciliation effort and budget adjustments to the appropriate SBE2 grant funds. The presenters on this item are Sarah Noyes, senior planner, and Matthew Van Hop. Your audio, Sarah, if you've started, Matt is checking in on that. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we can hear you now. Okay, sorry about that. I've had some trouble with my audio on my, between my computer and my phone today. So I think I've got it sorted out. What we're talking about today is this effort that was directed by the city council starting last August to look at our current general plan, 2030 adopted general plan and our zoning code and look at the differences between those two documents and come up with a plan and a strategy for reconciling those differences. For the benefit of our two new council members, I'm gonna go through just a little bit of the background about how we got to this point of having a general plan and zoning code that aren't 100% in alignment with each other. The city began work on the 2030 general plan in 2007 and with a little bit of background work beginning as early as 2004. And then the final plan that the plan that we currently operate under was adopted in 2012. The general plan was really focused, this 2030 update was really focused on a lot of sustainability goals. So some things that we, that have come up through other topics today on your agenda. The vision of this plan was to focus on environmental, economic and social sustainability and allow, which, when we say sustainability in general, we mean allowing the current generation to meet its needs without forfeiting the ability of future generations to similarly meet their needs. One of the key features of this plan, this general plan was a reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And one of the tools that was used to achieve that goal and so reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also improving economic opportunity and providing opportunities for a variety of housing types. One of the key tools that was used for that was creating a set of mixed use land use designations that were new to the general plan. The city hadn't had any designations that were specifically reserved and envisioned for mixed use. And when we say that, we mean a mix of commercial uses and housing. These then also, so again, in support of these goals of reducing GH greenhouse gas emissions and sort of supporting the nexus of creating good economic opportunities for folks and good housing opportunities, these new land use designations were focused around the primary transportation corridors in the city along Mission Street, Water Street, Ocean and SoCal. So the zoning ordinance that we operate under also does allow for some mixed use, but the standards that are in that, in the zoning code differ from the standards that are in the general plan. The zoning code, typically when a general plan is update, the zoning code is updated, the zoning code is then also updated to match what's in the general plan. That process was never completed for Santa Cruz. And in fact, work was set aside on that project in 2017. And then in August of 2019, we got the council gave formal direction to cease work on that prior zoning effort, which was known as the corridor plan. And to begin work on a new effort that held as its priorities for maintaining the integrity of existing residential neighborhoods, preserving existing local and city businesses and focusing on creating opportunities for appropriate mixed use housing and affordable housing in appropriate locations throughout the city. So this report is the update for this month, for the month of May on this reconciliation effort. And before we get too much further into it, in the past and past updates, we have kind of talked about this effort around a zoning amendment as a little bit separate from any effort we might have around a general plan amendment. And in sort of writing the RFP this past month and thinking through this project, I think it's more helpful to think of this as the reconciliation effort is an umbrella under which there are current, there's currently one project and the potential for a second. So when we're talking about reconciling two documents that govern the development of land that currently don't have 100% agreement, we can amend either of those documents or both of those documents. So we could amend only the zoning ordinance. We could amend only the general plan or we could amend both documents. At this point in time, these are distinct topics, the effort to amend the zoning code, which is our project for which we've applied for an SC2 grant and then a project that might consider changing the land use pattern that's envisioned by the general plan. So I just wanna set that as the context that there is, the project that we have initiated is a project to amend our zoning ordinance and hopefully identify some of these challenges that have caused some angst in the community and also kind of contributed to not very much development happening in some of these locations where we are, where we had envisioned mixed-use housing, multi-family housing happening. And then there's, I wanna distinguish that effort from another effort that might be making a significant change to the land use pattern that's envisioned for the general plan. Both of those efforts are about reconciling the current discrepancy between the two documents. So just my last little bit of background here. In October, some of you may recall that the council directed staff to apply for an SC2 grant, which will allow us to acquire consulting services to create objective standards for multi-family and mixed-use housing. And I'm gonna talk about that a little bit on the next slide, what exactly that means. We have signed the grant agreement with the state. So those funds are coming in and part of this effort today, or I'm sorry, part of the item today is to adopt the budget adjustment of $310,000 into the 2020 fiscal year 2020 budget for the planning department to acquire those services. And then also in January of 2020, the motion from the city council was to refer this item about considering changes to the land use pattern to the planning commission for them to provide some recommendations about how making a change to that land use pattern might impact the local economy and the environment for housing, have them weigh in on the timeline for some kind of a general plan amendment and then consider how best to accomplish community engagement with appropriate breadth and depth from like that. As we reported in February, staff was prepared to take this to the planning commission in March. And because of the pandemic, all of those meetings were canceled, the meeting where this was scheduled to be heard in March was canceled. And so the planning commission has not at this point were provided any recommendations to the city council. And this additional time has allowed us as staff to really think through what's the best way to make sure that the planning commission really adds value to these processes and that we keep our public engagement, our community engagement really clear about the processes that are going forward. So we're gonna talk about that today also. Going into this, so focusing first on the zoning amendment. So this is a project that is launching that we are moving forward on. This is a project for which we have applied for grant funding, as I mentioned, the goal of this project would be to create some objective development standards that would apply to all multi-family housing. So multi-family housing, that's residential only multi-family housing that is part of a mixed use project at a whole range of densities. And previous council members will recall that there was a change in the state law at the beginning of 2020 that made this creation of objective standards much more relevant for all jurisdictions across the state. Essentially we can't use subjective design criteria of which we are accustomed to using in Santa Cruz to change the development capacity of a site. So if a site is zoned to allow 10 units, we have to have standards that really allow 10 units to actually be constructed on a property. Because we don't have very many in our code, it's very important for us that we get these created, that we make sure they're really strong, robust to the right standards we wanna have and that then we incorporate them into our zoning code as quickly as we can. So we've released the request for proposals, the RFP on this project and we're expecting our responses or the responses are due, I should say on June 19th. We're looking for proposals that really bring some creative points of view to a process like this. Because what we do know about our community engagement process given the current situation is that it's not gonna look the same as it looked last year. So we still are very committed to creating equitable community involvement. And so we're gonna be looking really carefully at these proposals to make sure that they're finding ways to make sure that we're reaching all the sectors of the community that will really be affected by the decisions that come out of it. These projects mixed use in multi-family projects, they really set the tone for a lot of our built environment. So it's important that we hear from everyone who will. Live in these homes that are built, who will live near these homes that are built, who will move through these neighborhoods where these multi-family homes are built. So as we move into that work, one of the initial phases of that process will be establishing sort of a, and then identifying among those parcels, where are we seeing parcels start to redevelop and where are we seeing parcels really, kind of not turn over and not redevelop. As we brought forward in the January update, staff has noticed that there haven't been as many development proposals submitted to the planning department for the parcels that were where the land use designation was changed in the last general plan update to the mixed use high density. This is a map that shows the scope, the parcels that are shown in color are the parcels that were changed to a mixed use designation in the last general plan update. The ones that are shown in orange are mixed use medium density, or in that lighter orange are mixed use medium density. The ones in the darker orange are mixed use visitor commercial. And then the ones that are shown in brown are the mixed use high density designation. So as I mentioned earlier, the 2030 general plan created these land use designations and the intention was really to focus new growth, both economic and housing into places where transportation options could be maximized and creating both employment opportunities and housing opportunities while maintaining the existing single family residential neighborhoods that kind of surround all of that with established homeowners and renters. So in looking at this map and thinking about how development has been happening under the current general plan, staff has noticed that only one of these mixed use high density sites has been entitled for development. And we're wondering why. Part of the process of doing this zoning amendment is gonna kind of dig into what are the challenges that are happening on these properties? Like why aren't we seeing them? Why aren't we seeing any interest in redevelopment? Because we are seeing that in the mixed use medium density and in the mixed use visitor commercial, we are seeing inquiries, we're seeing applications, we're seeing new housing get entitled and ultimately we assume it will be built, but they're bringing forward proposals at this point. We do anticipate that the planning commission will discuss these issues as we begin to sort of think about how we will address them through the zoning amendment and provide another venue for community input and engagement. The planning commission is really gonna be a component of the community outreach as we move forward with this zoning amendment project. So in thinking about the general plan amendment, as I mentioned, we really have seen this lack of proposals on the mixed use high density sites and we're wondering about them. So one of the, through that analysis, it could be that asking consultants kind of determine that some of these designations are unlikely to produce the housing that we know that the city needs and might indicate the benefit of creating some kind of change to the plan's development pattern, which would be necessitate an amendment to the general plan. A general plan amendment could be handled in a couple of ways, there could be a standalone general plan amendment process, the an amendment sort of reallocating a number of housing units could be combined with the housing element update, which is we're applying for a grant to some work has already begun on that, we're applying for a grant to complete that work that's later on your agenda today and the housing element update will be due at the end of 2023. And then lastly, one option, if a problem is kind of identified, would be to keep that in mind as we move forward into the next general plan update process which is currently anticipated to begin in 2025. Anytime we think about amending the general plan, one of the first steps will be really establishing that scope and determining how far upstream the problem extends. We know that the problem ends with these maps and these land use designations, these are the things that community members have really told us they don't feel comfortable with, particularly this mixed use high density. And also I think that we will learn through the zoning, the work that we do on the zoning amendment will learn more about what we can do to address the concerns and really dig down into what are those concerns. We have this concept of protecting a neighborhood. What does that mean? We held these focus groups in the fall and we had a variety of opinions on what the neighborhood, what does it mean to protect the thing, what are the features of a neighborhood that need to be protected. So there certainly is more work that would have to be done to figure out sort of where does the problem begin? Is it in one of our guiding principles? Is it in the polls, the policies? Sort of how far does it extend? And again, in that conversation, the Planning Commission will play a role as a venue for community outreach and in contributing also, you know, just their expertise and insight as longstanding members of the community. That brings us to our recommendation, which this is printed on your packet. I'll just read it into the record. We're looking for our recommendation is that the Council direct staff to proceed with work on the objective standards for multi-family and mixed use housing for the city's zoning ordinance, including an analysis to indicate the need and utility of a potential general plan amendment and direct staff to report back at key project milestones which require council input and decisions rather than reporting back on a monthly basis. And then second, adapt the resolution amending the fiscal year 2020 budget to appropriate the funds in the amount of $310,000 from the FB grant in order to purchase consultant services. And those of us with audio are here to answer any questions. I think for that presentation, I'll turn it back to council. See if there's any questions for now for staff. What's your members? I was on the Planning Commission for nine years that many years ago, but this is just a kind of deep, what I want to say, gutsy stuff that was policy stuff that was wonderful to work on. And I think I heard you say something that the Planning Commission would be a partner in this. You went very fast and I didn't quite get it. So of course, obviously my question is, what is the role of the Planning Commission, seven people who throw themselves totally into planning issues? So not my question. Sure, yes, I'm happy to answer that. Thanks for that question. Yeah, so I think there are a lot of ways the Planning Commission can really contribute and add value to this zoning amendment process. In the same way that we will be bringing this item back to the city council for comments on, at points when we have kind of a decision to make or when there's a key milestone, I can envision also bringing it simultaneously to the Planning Commission to also have a conversation. And then also many processes like that include a technical advisory commission or a community advisory commission that meets on some kind of regular basis to do the work on the project. And should that kind of a advisory group be formed for the zoning amendment process, the planning, we would assume that, some number of planning commissioners would be a part of that commission. My last question, did this, I'm sorry, you know, I'm surely pushing up on all this stuff. And maybe in the past, did this actual item go to the Planning Commission for comment what we're facing today? No, no, the Planning Commission has not reviewed this. This is our regular monthly update. These updates have been doing, we say monthly it's May and the last time we were at the council was in February and, you know, the month of March and April got kind of eaten up by the pandemic. And so apologies for missing those, but this item that's before you has not been to the Planning Commission. Well, that also answers, I kept seeing these words monthly update and I thought, well, I haven't heard of any. Okay, thanks. Right, right. Yes, yes. I don't have to use it. I might just make a comment for Catherine because you have to stick on to Planning Commission but when the state law changed requiring a more, well, actually requiring objective standards or just taking control completely out of the hands of local government, that issue came to the city council and said, yes. Rather than be given no local control, we get to actually focus on objective standards for review of projects and successfully apply for this grant to bring in the consultants to do that. If we didn't develop the objective standards, then we're just, we have no say, we just gotta approve what's been said. That was the very clear direction that council gave to go back to the department and work on the objective standards as a priority. So, Catherine, here's my question. That's a really quick version. Sarah, as I read your recommendation, it's the resolution to appropriate the funds to get going on the hiring consultant and then to direct staff to work on the objective standards and not to decide at this point whether or not to go for general plan amendments but as to work on the objective standards and move forward to assess somewhere in that process to make sense to also go for a general plan amendment as well. Have I understood that correctly? Yes, that's correct. We think that we are gonna learn a lot through beginning work on this zoning amendment and that's gonna provide really valuable information in determining whether and to what extent we might benefit from engaging in a general plan amendment. At this point, we're not making a commitment one way or the other. We'll say let's launch this project and see how it informs us. Yeah. Questions on this item from council members? Okay, seeing none, we'll turn it over to members of the public for public comment. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak to us on item number 25, the monthly report on general plan and zoning ordinance reconciliation effort and budget adjustment to appropriate SB2 grant funds, please call the number that is on your screen if you haven't done so already. Once you've entered the meeting, you'll need to press start on on your phone to raise your hand and when it's your time to speak to hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. Hi, again, this is Candice Brown from East Morrissey. I'm really happy that this is moving forward because there is indeed, as Sarah mentioned, for objective standards, it would allow some level of control and because of the new housing policies. But I also wanted to mention that it's really important to understand why many projects that were assumed would be built along the Kellenwader didn't happen. Part of it had to do with the quarter advisor committee which revealed that these parcels were quite narrow compared to let's say downtown or Ocean Street. There wasn't the 20, 30 year investment in infrastructure to go along with the high density. There weren't parklets, there weren't accommodations for the businesses and the street was where varied and in fact, in order to do a complete street, you would have to basically completely drive the side or midtown is some call it. And that would be impacting many beloved parts of our community. There was petition of 300 businesses owners on ocean water and so Caledad signed a petition in order to pull this back along with thousands of people from the community. So again, I think this is an important step to reflect and from everything that we've learned and also to ensure that there is both business and community involvement from people east of the river on these kinds of projects with you. Thank you. All right, thank you. We'll give another minute for other members of the public to weigh in or listening and you'd like to speak to us on item number 25. Now is the time to please call in. Once you've entered the meeting, you'll want to hit star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you'll be given two minutes to speak. If there's no members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item, I'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation on this round. I want to say thank you to our planning staff for trying to work through this, particularly in challenging times to kind of keep us on track. I really appreciate the work you've done and the thoughtfulness about how to develop a process that really does involve the public in a meaningful way. And I think it does, it absolutely makes sense to report back to the council on project milestones where we need to make decisions rather than on a monthly basis. So yeah, thank you for raising that. I also think it's really important to clarify the role of the planning commission. And so I understand that this is a work in progress, but I'd like to try to solidify that today. So I'm gonna make a motion, which and the city clerk has a copy of it. I don't know if it's possible, Bonnie, for you to put that up right now. So we keep people can read along. We make motions that sometimes get a little confusing. So I just wanted to be really clear here about what I'm proposing. So the first part is just as per the staff recommendation to, it's all move that we want direct staff to proceed with work on the objective standards for multi-family and mixed-use housing, et cetera as proposed by staff and to adopt a resolution amending the fiscal year 2020 budget to appropriate funds and the amount of $310,000 from the SB2 grant to purchase consultant services with additional direction as follows. So three, I'd like to request that the planning commission establish a subcommittee to fully participate throughout the proposed process by working closely with staff and the consultant on the task outlined in the staff report. I think that's really important. We have these commissions for a reason and they really do spend much more time than we have available to us to dive into these things. And for, in the consideration of a general plan amendment, I think it's important to reaffirm, we have, the council has voted to make sure that these are priorities in this process. And I think that restating that is important. So in consideration of general plan amendments to in the future, include policies affirming that the city's first priority is protection of neighborhoods and small business and maximizing affordable housing opportunities that those should be incorporated. We're mostly made by Councilman Brown. Councilman Matt, is that sorry, your hand has gone up. Will you, why were you wanting to make a motion to have a question? I was prepared to move the initial recommendation. I was on second, if I may, yeah. Councilman Brown's motion. Council member Byers. You know, I was asking staff at the beginning and my mind was going around because they mentioned something about an advisory body down the road, it just happened too fast. And I kept thinking, well, wait a minute, you got seven people who dive into all these planning issues. Why don't we use them as rather adjunct to this whole process? So I think Councilmember Brown's motion certainly covered that for me. So I certainly, Paul Harley adores it. Having also served on the planning commission for a million years in my day, I appreciate the role of the planning commission. And it seems to me that as the objective standards work goes forward, that is entirely logical that involves the full planning commission. It seems to me that's appropriate. Regarding the general plan amendment, we don't know at this point whether or not or how that component is the objective standards. So I think that, so I can't support that part of it. I just want to move something off my screen here. I would just say request that the planning commission be involved working with consultants in the development of the objective standards. I might even ask the planning directors, does that not seem a logical role for them going forward? Thank you, Councilmember Matthews and Mayor Cummings. Leave out there, I'm the planning director. And we actually had this conversation with the planning commission. The planning commission had a discussion about whether or not they should form a subcommittee. And at that time, they declined to do so. And that was really on the advice of us as planning staff in that when we get these responses back to the RFP, there may be a wide variety of ways in which the planning commission may be involved. Whether it's a technical advisory committee as Sarah Noisy pointed out and a subcommittee of the planning commission could be involved with that. But certainly as a body as a whole, they will also be involved in providing recommendations to the council and also serving as a means by which additional community outreach is achieved. And so we do believe that forming a planning commission subcommittee at this point is premature given that we haven't gone out to hear what responses we get back from the RFP. When we do bring the actual contract award to the council, which is expected in August, we would have additional information at that time that would inform us more about the process that the winning response to the RFP proposes as well as how we would be involving the planning commission. I was just trying to think of the words, but we'll know a lot more in the fall when we get the consultant on board. Everyone's used the word involve the planning commission, but I guess what I'm hearing is you're asking us to wait till then, maybe it will take a subcommittee, maybe it will take the whole commission to come up with standards. That correct? Are you just asking us to sort of delay this decision for this motion? Thank you, Council Member Byers. What I would say related to this is part of what we discussed with the planning commission when they considered this was that if there is specific direction or if the planning commission themselves had already formed a subcommittee, that could potentially limit the creativity that comes back as part of the RFP. So the responses to that RFP could involve some very creative ways to engage the planning commission either through a subcommittee or just as a body during the process in terms of check-ins in advance of bringing policy decisions to the council. And if there were a committee that had been formed, then the responses that we get will likely cater to that format, whereas another format may actually come out. And even if the winning bidder or if the winning proposal doesn't include the creative use of the planning commission, there isn't anything to say that we couldn't take that winning bid and say, hey, you know what, we had a really creative idea for how we might engage the planning commission as a whole or as a subcommittee or as a technical advisory committee, whatever it may be. And do you think you could do that as part of your project? And so that was one of the reasons why we suggested that we don't make that leap right now and that we wait and see what we get from those responses and then identify the best way to engage either a subcommittee or the planning commission as a whole or a technical advisory committee or likely some combination of that all together. I understand that. So at some planning commission in the past few months, they had the idea and you discouraged them. Did they just leave it at that? You discouraged them at this time not to have a subcommittee. Is that what I understood? That's correct. Okay, but we'll wait until the person comes on board. Okay, I understand. And in August, we'll be returning to you. We're expected to come back to you in August with the responses to the RFP and a contract. At that point in time, we should have a better understanding of how we can involve the planning commission and the ways in which we would be doing so. Okay, yeah, I'll give it now. Thank you for the response. You know, I think that, let's see how it is. So reform committees, council committees all the time. I feel like we often end up doing better work when a smaller group of members of the council can get together, roll up their sleeves, work with staff, sometimes others. Consultants, et cetera, in crafting recommendations. And so I don't see why this would be any different. I think nothing that a subcommittee does would be the official line of the entire planning commission. It's just a decision to create some opportunity for the planning commission members who are so inclined to really dive in and be more involved in this process in between formal commission meetings. So I, and I don't see how doing this now would necessarily limit the innovation of a consultant. I feel like that would be worked on together. And so I'm gonna stick with my original motion. I understand the idea that it may be premature, but I don't think it necessarily is because we're not directing them to take a particular position or do anything in particular other than be involved in the process. So the principle is really the same whether we do it now or in August. So I'd like to stick with the proposal to allow the planning commission to or give them the space to set something up. They can begin to determine along with staff how that work would be done and a consultant once they're on board. Yeah, I just wanted to thank the staff on this item. The staff report was really well written and I think it just continues to bring up the, just the difficulty of really what kind of occurred over the last several years, which is a general plan designation, the role at the update to the zoning ordinance and then this lack of cohesion in our community. And I think that the interesting part of the staff report for me was really identifying this diving deeper into really what does it look right? What looks, in terms of these mixed use designations, why are we getting some places where we are getting those kinds of projects brought forward but in other places, most notably neighborhoods on the east side, why those types of proposals are not coming in. And I think exploring that and having the time to really dig back into that is useful. And I think, Sarah, you sort of summed up the staff report with that visual that you put in your presentation, which is what does the future of housing, our housing mix look like? And so I think, although I agree with number four in the motion, I think we've said that many times through various motions over the last year and a half. And I think that overall our general plan policies support these concepts and certainly as we get into our housing element, that will be become apparent as well. I'm also, it's hard to ignore the fact that legislation is literally being written right now. The Senate in California has come forward with another housing package. Housing in general is just a moving target in California, I think, for the next several years. And so I think that the clarity of having the work done by the consultants to get started, have them begin to really dive into the work with the objective standards, with this lens and the ability to do this additional analysis. I think it makes sense right now. So I think item number four on the motion, I'm not sure that it provides additional direction at this time. And at this point, I also can't support the establishment of a subcommittee at this point in time in the process. It's very, most commissions and committees also taking the month of July off, we'll be into August and September before we know it. And I think it's important for the staff to work with the consultants, bringing necessary updates to the planning commission. But I think creating a subcommittee at this point is a little preemptive to the process. So I appreciate the intent and I appreciate the work of the planning commission, but I'd like to see a little more time before we do that step. The remaining parts of the motion as recommended in the staff report, though I would be supportive. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Council Member Mathews. Yeah, I'd like to ask if the makers of motion would consider changing item three to, at the time the RFPs come back to the council for action, at that time reconsider the role of the planning commission, the planning commission subcommittee and or technical advisors in working with the consultants. You get that? I actually feel a little bit uncomfortable with that because I feel like providing this authorization does not mean that they're gonna like set up a subcommittee tomorrow and start working and then all of a sudden go on a break. I mean, this is gonna take some time to move forward on. And so again, I'm just having a hard time seeing how the structure of committee like this is going to either derail or undermine or I think preempt was a word use the process in some way. I just feel like this is an attempt to involve the planning commission in a meaningful way in the discussion rather than just kind of the public meetings, hosting public engagement and getting recommendations to review. So I think it's just, it's a request to have more meaningful participation from the planning commission. And I'd like to see that decision be made today. If my colleagues do not agree, then I'm happy to revisit in the future, but I'd like to stick with this right now. Mayor Cummings, if we could have Council Member Matthews repeat her friendly amendment. Yes, well, I requested the amendment and I can make it an official amendment if necessary. For the purpose of the minutes, can you restate the initial? Then the RFPs are brought to the Council consider subcommittee and or a technical advisory committee and working with. Thank you. And I feel that this is a really big issue and it should involve the entire planning commission. I think this is what the planning commission does. If my proposal is not acceptable, then I would like to ask it to make the divide the motion so we can divide so we can vote on the initial part, one and two, separately from three and four. Well, I believe that's the pleasure of the mayor. Well, then why don't we divide the motion and we can vote on each of the pieces independently? And then there's a few Council Members who have further comments. So Council Member Matthews, do you have any further? The maker was not willing to take my suggestion for a substitution at this point, we'll divide the motion because it's willing. Council Member Watherman. In the interest of time, I won't repeat any of the comments. I guess I'll just say I really agree with a lot of the sentiments behind Vice Mayor Myers's response to how to move forward and interest in trying to kind of move in an informed way that's gonna allow us to kind of evolve and knowing that this will come back, I choose to divide in the motion. That was gonna be my recommendation as well. All right, thank you. Real quick, for Council Member Matthews, did you say a subcommittee and or a technical advisory committee? Is that in the motion or your amendment? That was what I suggested that at the time that the RFP gave the reaction that we would consider the involvement if any of those three individually were in combination. Okay, I just wanna understand those words. Okay, I'm ready. Bonnie, could you scroll down so that we can see bottom of number four got cut options before us independently? So the first motion is to direct staff to proceed with work on the objective standards for multifamily and mixed use housing projects, including analysis to indicate the need and utility of the potential general plan amendment options which require council input and decisions rather than reporting back on a monthly basis. So I will ask the clerk to please take the roll vote on that first item. Council Member Byers. Aye. Matthews, Boulder, Watkins, Vice Mayor Meyers and Mayor Cummings. Aye. The passed unanimously. The resolution amending 20 budgets to appropriate funds in the amount of $310,000 from the SB2 grant in order to purchase consultant services. Council Member Byers. Matthews. Aye. Brown, Boulder, Vice Mayor Meyers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. Aye. The passed unanimously. The motion before us requests that the Planning Commission establish a subcommittee to fully participate throughout the proposed process by working closely with staff and the consultants on the task outlined in the staff report. Council Member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Brown. Boulder. Watkins. Not at this time now. Vice Mayor Meyers and Mayor Cummings. Aye. So that- Hang on one second. I'm sorry. Was that on two or three? Sorry, I know- No, that was on three. Okay. Yeah, mine is a no vote. Okay, so that motion fails with somebody voting to be vapor and Council Member Matthews, Vice Mayor Meyers, Council Member Golder and Council Member Watkins voting in opposition. The ease of this motion is patient of a general plan amendment, policies affirming the city's first priority is the protection of neighborhoods and small businesses and maximizing affordable housing opportunities to be incorporated. Council Member Byers. Matthews. No. Brown. Boulder. No. No, not at this time. Vice Mayor Meyers. I'm going to vote no and for the record I don't- It's not that I don't support the intent of the language in this. I feel that this language has been brought forward in many other motions regarding this particular item and work of the planning with the general planned reconciliation process. So I just like that for the record. Thank you. And Mayor Cummings. Well, with Council Members Byers, Brown and Cummings voting in favor and Matthews, Vice Mayor Meyers, Council Member Golder and Council Member Watkins. The move is on to our next item of business. If you'd like to comment on this item now at the time, using the instructions on your screen, there will be a presentation of the item by the return to the council for the Liberation Nation. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Senior Planner, Kathleen Dunn. Good evening. Apologize, my computer is a little slow here, so bear with me. We're using on the previous project the LEAP grant that we're now talking about and a REAP grant, which is a regional early action planning grant, which we will probably be talking about in six months or so. The early action planning grant program is a non-competitive grant that is available to eligible jurisdictions, which basically just means you have to be in good standing to have submitted your required housing reports and similar things. The funding amount is based on population and the City of Santa Cruz is eligible for $300,000. It's a reimbursable grant similar to the SB2 and the applications are due July 1st. The program goals for this particular grant are to accelerate housing production and facilitate compliance with the implementation of the sixth cycle of the regional housing needs assessment. Projects that we're proposing to fund the main project for this grant that we're hoping to complete is the update of the housing element for 2024 through 2032. However, we don't know if we will use the entire grant that purpose. And so to be on the safe side, in case we managed to save some money, we're also proposing to use it for the objective standards for multifamily housing and mixed use housing in case they need extra money to finish that project and or for the expansion of the downtown plan boundaries. This is sort of our fallback position that we've been trying to update that for many years now. Our recommendation is that the city council vote to authorize the city manager or his designee to submit an application to the State Housing and Community Development Department for the LEAP grant or the LEAP planning grant. And I realize I ran through that very quickly. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. Thank you for that presentation. Vice Mayor Myers. I don't have any questions, but I would be ready to make a motion after any other council have questions and then public comment. Thank you. We have a number of questions on this item at this point in time. Hearing none, at this point in time, members of the public are interested in commenting on this item. Please call at this point, please call now. After you've called in, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you will be given two minutes. Hearing that there are no members of the public interested in commenting on this item, I'll bring it back to council for action deliberation. I know you said that you were prepared to make a motion. Yeah, yeah. I will go ahead and move the staff foundation of the resolution, directing staff, discipline and applications to the state of California local early action program, planning grant programs to contribute funding towards the city's 2024 to 2032 housing element update. I'll move Matthew so you had your hand up next. Yeah, I'm happy to second that and I'm assuming it includes that language authorizing city manager. Yes. And I just, this is just a question actually. Does this grant should we be just on getting it help just fund our own staff positions or consultant assistance or any combination as needed? This is just a question since we're looking at budget in the immediate future. Yeah, at this time, given the shortage of staff that we have, we're aiming towards hiring a consultant for the work. That was just an honest question. Yeah, thank you. No further questions at this time or comments. I'll turn it over to the clerk to call the roll vote. Thank you, mayor, council members, buyers. Hi. Matthews. Hi. Brown, vice mayor Myers and mayor Cummings. Hi, that's unanimously and we haven't, why don't we take a break? All right, what did you say was a time certain? All communications. We have that at on or around six o'clock. If that matters. Since we have about eight minutes, why don't we come back at six for all communications and then depending on the turnout, we might have another break before our evening session. Just waiting on Renee at the moment. We'll give her another minute. So once you're back, if you could please do our six p.m. session, the May 26, 2020 meeting of the city council, I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, mayor, council member buyers. Council member buyers. Here. Matthews. Here. Brown. Here. Boulder. Vice mayor Myers. I'm here pushing the wrong thing. I am here and yeah, I'm here. And mayor Cummings. Communications. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if you want to comment during oral communications, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to items that are not on our agenda. If you're interested in addressing the council, please call the number that you see on your screen. If the first number you call is busy, please try other numbers until you get through. If you're interested in addressing the council, please press star nine on your phone. Once you've entered the meeting to raise your hand and you will have two minutes to speak. It's your time to speak. You'll hear an announcement and we'll unmute it. We request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making the comment so that we can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes. However, it is not required. Please remember, this is a time for council to hear from the public. We will not engage in dialogue. At the table, we will address the questions raised at the end of oral communication. And I'd like to ask Robert Norris from Huff has reached out to us early to request four minutes. So Robert Norris, if you're listening, when it's your time to speak, please make yourself known so that we can give you the appropriate amount of time. We'll start oral communications. This is Robert Norris, yes. So Huff, homeless, united again. May 10th was declared police appreciation week. And indeed, I heard they were giving out several dozen sandwiches a week at some point and I'm glad to hear that. However, Food Not Bombs recently celebrated its 40th anniversary and it serves hundreds of people many hours a day. And it's time, it's time the mayor acknowledged this and declared next week Food Not Bombs Appreciation Week. They've taken action, they've provided food, motel vouchers, survival services. When the police contributions were forced illegal relocations and fences. City Council as well as its predecessors has a regular habit of rubber stamping the staff's presentation. This is another concern I have. In the current COVID crisis city managers edict seriously threatening the health and welfare of those outside. And without exception or debate received a thumbs up from a complacent, complacent and compliant city council. This is a dangerous situation in the community that wants real democratic process, public input and a significant discussion of important issues. Do your jobs. Don'tsman gagging any public input comment or questions on what is probably the most important section of the public meeting reports by the city manager and the city attorney who heard it again today if we were listening. There is no public questioning of these powerful people and the staff they work with whose frequently reactionary agenda reflects the interests of its own bureaucracy, private developers, select and favored non-profits and its own powerful department hits. Now last year several council members tried to let some air and light into this process. They tried to take the agenda making process out of the back room. There was even rumors of a progressive majority on the city council at that time. But apparently one person mayor Cummings turned the other way. And now of course he's even lost that powerful pivotable position as we see by his failure to be able to get votes today. Although I'm glad to see he's trying. Surrey and life necessities for those without shelter outside. Gestures that are likely to disappear once business as usual is reinstituted. Council members Glover and Crone were punished, silenced and evicted by the powerful interests whose narratives they challenged. Long presentations by staff members with no possibility of questions to be asked and answered from the public does us and the council no favors. While in its way survival encampments particularly autonomous resident run encampments have been a long time need and demand of activists progressive social service providers whom there are damn few in Santa Cruz and of course folks outside themselves. The Benchland encampments initiated as previous encampments have been by homeless people themselves into your attention or what they need. I'm indoors myself. We have lack of accessible potable water as of a few days ago, lack of electrical access so homeless people can charge their phones, have access to services into the latest COVID-19 updates. These are unmet needs ignored by the city manager as well as the obvious flooding problem in the Benchlands which may be coming up soon which seriously impacts them. City council needs to jump ahead and direct the city manager to provide the motel rooms for all who need them during this crisis and he needs to be directed to address the needs of the number of those currently outside providing the recharging sanitary and water needs that obviously impact their health and the health of the entire community. We're being told this is all an emergency. Well, has any council member do have the ovaries or the balls to stand up and make an emergency resolution given the fact that none of these facts were presented by the manager earlier. Thank you. And this is all communications portion of the city council meeting. If you've called in and you'd like to speak to us on oral communication or on items that are not on our agenda, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you will be unmuted when it's your time to speak. Anyone, we're on the line. Okay, this is Garrett Phillips. When monarchs ruled the self-annoyed authority coming straight from God or the Roman emperor maximus declared, all I survey is mine. That was one way to run an empire. Today we will just have to be satisfied with people being told they need security. The government provides the chains and then they are securing them. Besides the continuing COVID kill switch lockdown response is very helpful to the solitary and collectivist, socialist, communist and leftist because if it doesn't work, they can argue for an even bigger government footprint, savaging, self-responsibility, liberty and demand even more subservience to the all wise, even bigger beneficent central authority. It's also quite helpful backdrop to generating big pharma riches, a conduit for the congressional pork stuffers to distribute fortunes and ruinous debt, a chance to blame economic doom on the other political party for political gain to attack freedom, promote debt slavery, blame capitalism and bail out the bad actor corporations. Liberty, your job and a lot of us are now deemed personally non-essential and everyone else that is subjugating gets a hero's check. Nevermind this until we're safe I mean actually means never because we are never safe. Your life is not about being safe. Nevermind control is but an illusion and life is but a journey and don't get caught saying that any more than taking a prohibited walk on the beach between 11 and 5 p.m. Nevermind children have few symptoms and really very few die of COVID. Their personal growth is now permanently altered and they'll be the ones involuntarily inheriting the unimaginable debt dollars we burn like trash now and suffer from inflation produce wants and suffer the ever increasing wealth and a quality jet fuel of inflation. Keep saying this is the new normal even if nothing about this is normal. I'd like to be a member of an institutionally sociopathic ruling elite caste also but it looks like one needs to be Pelosi's nephew to be in that club or a regular maniac monopolis with the healthcare dominance ambition. The hospitals are now empty because people are afraid to go skipping needed healthcare and apparently Brainiacs aren't available to figure out how to safely get a haircut. I see my time is up. Bye. Public who would like to address some items that are not on our agenda. Now's the time to call in and raise your hand. Thank you. Hello, my name's Ken Bear and I'm a resident and employee of the city of Santa Cruz and I'm proud to be part of SCIU 521. This is a time when city of Santa Cruz and all California needs public services and more jobs not less. Just like a family that is a short on cash needs to raise funds that are needed to thrive. We need to raise funds to invest in a healthy future for Santa Cruz. We in SCIU 521 are advocating with our campaign invest in a healthy future now. We will fight for federal aid to support state and local governments. We have already begun to do this with our union brothers and sisters and SCIU local 521 navigate for the Heroes Act which includes $1 trillion in federal stimulus for state and local governments as well as hazard pay for essential workers. This bill has already passed the US House of Representatives now in the state Senate, excuse me, US Senate needs to vote on this bill and we are doing everything we can to support it even contacting voters in Arizona to tell their senator to vote yes. We want to partner with the city to advocate and lobby for the Heroes Act so we can invest in our city's economy and keep people working. As city workers, we have done our part when the last recession hit, this coming recession maybe avoided all together if partnered together to advocate for funding and we make decisions based on the facts when it is time the time to implement furlough is not now. We must evaluate actual impacts of COVID-19 on our city and look for options before we decide to cut. Some actions may include ensuring all departments are tracking expenditures for the purpose of drawing down federal funds and conducting office of all departments. Re-evaluating the need for existing consulting contracts, re-evaluating management structure to give them an increase in telework. Thank you very much for your time today. Yes. Whitman, I'm just gonna read something I wrote a couple of days ago. By Dane Wiggington, November 16th, 2019, presentation number 223, 10 wars are upon Earth's biosphere. This pandemic has produced at least these two results. One, established what seems like an almost trillion dollar funding for even more surveillance capitalism and make no error and either do your own research or inquire from me hundreds of links to the nefarious goals of the already patented vaccines. Two, the propaganda machines have placed fear on blind fiduciary trust in most citizens. Further, our children will be affected the most, then teachers and law enforcement and emergency responders, along with those who work in hospitals. As World War II never ended, the ABCs at war, C-Cliff High, now have wireless weapons installed in all the above, street lights and home technologies. As such, the next biological warfare, 36-month cycle wave will magnify cubed with the actual weapons, to put on my glasses, very few deaths from this bioweapon. Anyone can find my post and listen to my statements in Santa Cruz City Council about wireless weapons, weapons technologies released in 1976, 8,500 declassified documents from the U.S. Military Department of Defense, Department of Energy and the Surgeon General. I will include this information about other various serious issues going on with life on Earth by Dane Wiginton, April 25th, 2020. I will say this again about the sham. The shutdown has already greatly affected the global food supply change. If that is not remedied very soon, at gender 21, 2030, clearly established in Santa Cruz County in 1993, will achieve most of its goals at least six years early. And yes, I welcome questions and remarks from those too fearful to start thinking for their grandchildren's grandchildren. Thank you, my name is James Ewing Whitman. Yeah. Okay, if there's any member of the public that would like to speak to oral communications, please press star nine on your phone so you can raise your hand and we can recognize you. For those of the public interested in speaking to us on oral communications, I'll conclude oral communications at this time. However, before we move on, I just wanted to point out that after we had voted on item number 15, I received an email from a public works director. One of the concerns I had was having this item go to the Transportation and Public Works Commission and it turns out that at the request of the commission, they held a meeting on October 18th, or October 21st, 2019, adult elementary school where along with a number of other projects were on display for the community to weigh in on. And so given that we were able to understand that this did go back to the commission and there was further public engagement, I'd be willing to reconsider my vote on that item. I would make a motion to reconsider item number 15 based on the information that you just provided. And I also was able to read the email that was provided as well. Also in that motion, talk to members of others. No, nothing, no questions, I do have a question. I do have a question. I mean, that's exactly what Chris told us earlier. My understanding from earlier was that he wasn't sure what date it was. It was all of the date that was concerned. But it is true, the commission never sat down as seven commissioners and heard the project and took a vote. It looks, my understanding from the email that we received is that the request of the Transportation and Public Works Commission was that they hold this meeting and that this project be a part of that. So... I understand that, but instead, okay. I have an email and it did come. I understand that too, that's what he said all along. So I guess we'll call, we'll have a roll call to reconsider. What are we reconsidering? Just to confirm, this is a vote to reconsider the item and then you'll take a re-vote. Oh, okay, thank you. Yeah, I got it, okay, thank you. I wasn't ready for that. Council Member Byers? No. Matthews? Vice Mayor Meyers? Mayor Cummings. All right, so that motion passes with Council Members Matthews, Vice Mayor Meyers, Council Member Golder, Council Member Watkins and Mayor Cummings in favor with Council Members Byers and Brown voting opposed. Do next is, I need a motion from Council Members to on item number 15, Vice Mayor Meyers. We'll make a motion to, I'm sorry, the language one more time. Watkins, I'm sorry, my computer is just froze up on me here. Is that okay, Mayor? Okay, we'll go ahead and move the recommendation for item number 15, the Highway 1-9 intersection improvement, approve the plans and specifications for the Highway 1-9 intersection improvements and authorized staff to advertise for beds. Motion to approve the construction management services request for the qualifications and advertised for proposals and motion to approve an amendment to the contract with BKF Engineers for Additional Environmental right-of-way permitting, design construction, support services and authorizes the manager to execute the agreement in the form approved by the city attorney, authorized the director of public works to execute change orders within the approved budget. Motion by Council Member Watkins. I'll go ahead and second that. I'm so sorry, I'm just going to muddle things. What was the last vote we took? My computer froze up just for a few seconds after I spoke. So what was the motion? Do you want to finish this one and go to that? But I need to know what that first motion was about, not about what it was. The first motion was in order to have a second vote on an item, you have to make a motion to reconsider which was the first motion that we made. And now what we're voting on is item number 15. So how do I change my vote? I would have voted yes on the first one. Of course, I don't mind. Yeah, me too. I missed that. Okay. Esca, Esca, Tony, City Clerk. Yes, I want to vote yes to reconsider. The motion for reconsideration is on the table for all three motions. And so the council can just take a roll call vote on all three motions at this point. And if the council member decides to change their vote, they may do so. Tony, I think the question was that council members Brown and council members Buyers were fine with reconsideration. I mean, it wasn't clear. So how would they be able to change their vote to yes for the reconsideration? Oh, the answer to that question is that while a council member who is in the minority on an item that's before the council cannot make the motion to reconsider, the council member may vote on the motion. And if they choose to do so, change their vote. Mayor Cummings, if I may, we'll just make note in the minutes that council members Buyers and Brown, it'll reflect that their vote was to reconsider. Yes, the other way. So a council member who voted yes at the beginning, they could, couldn't they take action to reconsider and then we all vote? They can make a motion to reconsider, right? It's done. That's right. No, it's just gonna reflect in the minutes. Oh, I mean, it's close enough in time if a council member, I think at this point wants to express a vote in favor, as Bonnie indicated, that could be. Okay. Okay. I apologize for my inattention, but I was knee deep in the next agenda. Okay, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Bonnie. We need to make a motion to like re, I don't even know how to word it, re vote the last vote so that she could vote yes and Sandy kid vote yes, I can go around again. That would be a motion to consider, to reconsider the motion to reconsider. Ready to vote? Okay. Thanks, Ellen. Council member Buyers. Aye. Matthews. I'm assuming we're voting on the motion to approve the staff report now. Okay, now I am going to, to me too. We're, the vote is now on the, on the highway one nine item that we voted on earlier today. So the substantive, not the substantive one. I'm gonna vote no on that. Yeah. Me too. I thought we were voting on reconsideration. Just so that we are aware for the minute, we have a motion to reconsider which passed and now we are back on 15. The staff recommendation. Thank you, Bonnie. My vote no. I may have said yes, but no, yeah. So Matthews. Vice mayor Myers and mayor Cummings. Matthews. Council member Watkins. Myself voting in favor. Council members fires and Brown voting opposed. Item number one, general business resolution, ratifying slash confirming director of emergency services, executive orders, numbers 2020 dash zero seven through 2020 dash zero nine. And the presenter for this item is our city attorney, and Tony can die. Thanks members of the city council need more, more or less brief about this item. As you'll recall on April 28th, the council adopted a resolution both extending the emergency declaration and additional 60 days pursuant to the authority set forth in the government code for declared emergencies and ratifying a series of executive orders issued by the city manager acting as the director of emergency services pursuant to the authority set forth in the municipal code. That gives the emergency services director, the authority to issue rules and regulations on matters reasonably related to the protection of life and property as effected by such emergency, but under the terms of the ordinance as well as state law, those orders are required to be presented to the council for ratification or confirmation at the earliest practicable opportunity. And so a number of executive orders have been issued since then in particular executive order numbers 2020 dash 07 an order to implement CDC guidance regarding encampments at the bench lens order number 2020 dash 08 addressing parking on the Santa Cruz municipal work and order number 2020 dash 09 an order to update nuisance conditions on Coral Street and establish a nearby encampment that complies with CDC guidance. So those are the items that you're being asked to consider ratification at this evening's meeting and I'm happy to respond to any council member questions or comments. I thank you, Tony for that presentation. Are there any questions or comments from council members at this point in time? Okay, hearing none, council member Brown. I thank you, Tony. Can I just clarify? Maybe I already got this and I lost it, but so it looks like the first one on guidance regarding encampments of the bench lands is now forward and the others are after the fact. Is that correct for actions already taken this other two but the first one on the bench ones is moving forward from here? Yes, I think that's thirsty. Okay, thank you. Maybe there's some clarification because my understanding and having, I went down to the bench and recently was that there had been kind of a camp that was establishing itself and then the city had gone and kind of put up fencing and portable toilets. So just for clarification, is this kind of, was that to allow that to happen or is there something new that's gonna be happening in the bench? It is to confirm, it's literally just to essentially ratify the action that's already been taken, which basically establishes standards for the continued use of the bench lands as a homeless encampment. So it's called for laying out a plan providing for adequate social distancing, requiring those of the bench lands to stay within that layout plan and then abiding by basic rules of conduct for the encampment. It also directed the provision of restroom facilities, hand washing facilities and trash facilities at that location. Okay, I just wanted to make sure because it sounded like Council Member Brown's question was whether this was gonna allow for something to move forward and my understanding was that the action has already been taken to address the conditions at the bench lands this is just ratify. That's correct. It has been taken of the city manager way in. I was gonna say that, that it was to implement that the changes that have happened there so don't clarify that. Yeah, yeah, so I was just trying to get a sense of I understand that an action has been taken to kind of rationalize the space but then the operating procedure or the standards are when you're asking us to implement those moving forward, right? So they're being, it's been enacted but this is something that's gonna continue on. It's not just, we're just not, that's all I was asking you. Yes, it'll continue there until, right. I mean, conditions may change obviously and it's not a permanent solution for addressing sheltering. There are plans for that and work being done on that but for the foreseeable future, yes, is to be able to be able to maintain those standards while we have the, at least while we have the shelter in place. In place. The city staff for all the work that they've done at Coral Street and the bench lands. I had the opportunity to go to both sites with the police sheep last week and both of them were a big improvement to what was there before. And so I just wanna thank the community and the city staff for all the work they've done and really trying to improve the conditions for those folks who are who are experiencing homelessness and living in both locations. Thank you. Comments from council members. I'll turn it over to members of the public. If members of the public are interested in commenting on this item, they should call in now by dialing into one of the numbers that they see on the screen. After you dialed in, well, before that, if you happen to get a busy signal, please try one of the other numbers that displayed on your screen. Once you've called in, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And once it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and you will be given two minutes to speak. With them and have some procedures for doing this. Clearly the city manager has not found this necessary but the council can direct him to do so and to inquire what the real wishes and needs are of the people there. I was out there interviewing people the other day. They are concerned, of course, about porta potty problems, although those have gotten better and it heads off to the city for doing that. But there's problems with no electricity so people can't keep up with the COVID-19 updates, much less have their phones available. There's also no potable water, as I mentioned before, during the oral communications period. Camments are very important. And this is a good model if it is effectively integrated into having the residents have a real say in what goes on because they're the ones whose eyes are gonna be on each other and who really be, if you will, the enforcing agency. That's always the best way to proceed rather than having external authorities do so. So I would ask you to make a recommendation, if not a requirement, that there be some real consultation with them to get their real needs heard and met. Also, of course, the problem, with this thing generally, that rationalizing this order is that it also involves the fact that you have dangerous indoor group settings that currently continue, vacant motel rooms and people who are vulnerable as more and more tourists flood into town. Equally questionable was the 2020-09 forcibly removal of the Coral Street sidewalk residents, many of whom were given or still given no safe options of all a secondary 10-city crossing Coral Street run by the city. And finally, the arrival of Port-a-Potties long sequestered away are good or overdue signs. If the responsibility of the city council to come out in front of this issue, not simply serve as a cheering section for Bernal's makeshift patchwork solutions. So do it. Whitman, I don't consider myself a worthless eater and I don't consider anyone a worthless eater. This from Forbes.com today. The world's 25 richest billionaires have gained nearly $255 billion in just two months. This was my comment. The next few months will be exciting and a rather planned well execution of generations of planning. What if their wealth was seized and equally redistributed? 60 trillion divided by seven billion equals 9,000 for every human on the planet. When currently half the world population lives on less than $2 a day, that's 4,500 days of wealth. That's a 12 year salary, seven days a week. So what if that number was 10 times larger? As I believe the Vatican would and should, I say must be included on a side note, how much in taxes have those 25 richest corporate personhoods dodged due to current approved tax shelter laws? And yes, it might seem impossible, but in reflection and using India as an example, Bezos engaged through the test run of what has been proposed to retrieve number 21 and 230 about six years early, as far as a 95% population control. As India's middle and lower class have been crippled by Gates control of what was Monsanto and is now Bayer, which is a Nazi corporation, Bezos enacted a card currency crippled hundreds of thousands of small businesses overnight. So do I consider myself a worthless eater? Do you consider yourself a worthless eater? Thank you. How much would like to speak to us on this item? Please plus this item. We can move the recommendation. The recommendation, yeah. Council Member Matthews. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion made by Council Member Matthews. Does the council member that would like to second it? I'm happy to second the motion. Okay. We have a second by Council Member Watkins. Is there any further discussion that council members hearing none? I'll turn it over to the city clerk to call the roll vote. Council Member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Aye. Brown. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Vice Mayor Myers and Mayor Cummings. That was unanimously. This is an emergency ordinance, temporarily extending moratorium preventing residential or commercial evictions for non-payment of rent as a result of economic loss related to the COVID-19 end of that or to city attorney for the presentation. Thank you Mayor Cummings, members of the city council. This item is being brought forward by, it's actually being brought forward by the mayor and council member Brown for the council's consideration of an extension to the existing emergency ordinance establishing an eviction moratorium for individuals or commercial businesses that are financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant shelter in place orders that have been issued and have had such dramatic effects on the country and the economy here locally as well. That ordinance that was adopted on March 27th, an expiration date of May 31st, 2020 to coincide with an order issued by Governor Newsom on March 16th that waived or suspended provisions of state law that would enable local governments to act or to enact eviction moratorium ordinances. A little bit of a mystery as to why the governor didn't just issue an executive order to that effect, but in any event responding to that, the city council along with many other city councils and boards of supervisors, including Santa Cruz County, city of Watsonville, city of Capitola, adopted eviction moratorium ordinances that have an expiration date of May 31st. As we know, the financial crisis has certainly not abated and the expiration of the ordinance is looming. However, on March 27th, Governor Newsom also issued executive order number 37-20 that established a statewide eviction protections covering local jurisdictions that have not enacted similar ordinances to the one the council did. And then on April 6th, the California Judicial Council adopted 11 emergency rules in response to COVID-19 and the first rule states that a court may not issue a summons on a complaint for unlawful detainer unless the court finds in its discretion and on the record that the action is necessary to protect public health and safety and the rule remains in effect for 90 days after the governor lists the emergency declaration rate COVID-19. Now, you can sort of parse all the different rules and try to make a determination as to whether or not the Judicial Council order would protect every tenant in every circumstance that might be affected by COVID-19. I think it goes pretty far. I'm not sure that there isn't some potential individual whose circumstance might fall through the cracks such that this ordinance would protect them where the Judicial Council ordinance does not. And so I think that's the spirit of this ordinance. And what is proposed here is to extend the existing eviction moratorium about two and a half months to August 15th, 2020. And what that would do is it would enable the council to have the moratorium in place through the month of June and through the July recess before the council next meet. I think it's on August 12th following the summer recess. So that's what this is about. I will tell you that there's been significant discussion in the legal community, particularly the municipal law and local government law community about whether the city or whether cities like Santa Cruz have the legal authority in the absence of an order extending Governor Newsom's original decree to enact these types of protections, which otherwise arguably could be found in conflict with the state's unlawful detainer statutes which essentially preempt the field of eviction laws in California with respect to the unlawful detainer and eviction process. That's an unsettled question, but in moving forward, assuming the governor does not extend that executive order and I'm seeing no indication that he intends to, then we would be relying on the city council's authority in an emergency under an emergency declaration to defend that ordinance or its subject to challenge. And then lastly, I just want to point out that the latest information that I've received is that the county of Santa Cruz does not intend to extend its moratorium past the existing May 31st expiration date and the county council I've communicated with them. Their take is that the judicial council order basically accomplishes the same thing. City of Capitola will be considering an extension of their ordinance, but it would only go in effect if the governor does extend his executive order conferring that authority expressly on local governments. And according to an agenda report in the city of Watsonville's meeting for today, the recommended action was not to extend their ordinance, but I have not heard whether or not they've actually considered that and taken action on it. So I'm not quite sure what Watsonville is going to do, but the recommended action is to hold off on extending the ordinance for the time being. Happy to answer any questions or respond to any council member comments. But that will conclude my report for now. Thank you for that report. Council member Watkins. Thank you, Tony, and I apologize. I didn't hear your final recommendation, which is at this time based on your analysis to not extend our emergency ordinance knowing that the state has other provisions in place. Is that correct? I don't have a firm recommendation on that point given that that's a policy issue for the city council. As you know, I did have a confidential attorney client privilege memo that was sent to the council over the weekend in advance of this item. And without going into it, it does point out some of the potential that falls with the ordinance, but ultimately it's a policy decision to the city council. And I mean, there are some arguments that we could make that I could make to accord with a straight face in an attempt to defend the case. And so I'm not saying it's a slum, though there is some vulnerability there. And if I could, what I also heard you say was that our neighboring jurisdictions are letting their temporary emergency ordinances expire given what is already in place. Can you speak a little bit more to what Capitola is suggesting in terms of extending it only if the governor extends his? Yeah, their ordinance as drafted specifically reads that the ordinance would only take effect if the governor issues a subsequent executive order extending that authority. And it would only be in effect during whatever period of time that extension is in effect. And that in your opinion is legally safe. It is certainly a more defensible position given that what prompted, what was the impetus for the ordinance in the first place was the governor's executive order. Okay, thank you. Okay, Vice Mayor Myers. I just have a couple of questions. I don't know if the city manager or anyone from planning or economic development, I know these are sort of split between those. Do we have, I have reviewed the city of Watsonville staff report. So they have some statistics on evictions in the city that they're using to base their recommendation on. Do we have any idea of, are we experiencing evictions currently? I know we were worried about as we went into April and May that people were gonna become much more, I have problems economically with each month of closure. I just curious if we have any reports on evictions. I'm muted, Martine. So I'll see if I can get the lead on, but as far as I know, I don't have any statistics, but as far as I know, we haven't had a large number from what I've been told, but I'll see if we can get the more specific statistics for you. I was just sad that the courts are not, are not moving eviction case forward right now. So all of the actions are currently being state. So that is, so yeah, okay. So that might be not a proper data point then. I had a question, I recalled last month that we passed, I think legal services for tenant protections. So I know that we have funding available with CAB. I think we approved, was it 20,000? Just remembering from last month, we had legal service. Let me just look at the, I don't know, Bonnie's on or not, she might not be on. But I specifically thought our HUD allocation last month included using some of the CARES Act funding to poor tenant legal protections and other items, correct? Martin, did you recall that? I can't recall all the facts of my head for that. I think we do, we have had allocated resources for that, but I can't recall whether this addition but I'll find out for you. Okay. I think for that item, we, I think it was around 30,000 that went to community action board rental relief. I don't think we made any allocations to legal assistance for renters, but there was the allocation for the rental assistance. For rental assistance, okay. Thank you. That was, those are my two questions for now. Thank you. Are there any further questions from council members on this item? Okay, hearing none. If members of the public would like to speak to city council on this item, which is item number two on our evening agenda, emergency ordinance, temporarily extending moratorium, preventing residential or commercial evictions for non-payment of rent as a result of economic losses related to coronavirus pandemic. If you'd like to speak to us on this item, please call the number that's on your screen. Once you enter the meeting, you'll want to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. I'll turn it back over to the city manager. I was just going to point out Lee is on now. So he may be able to provide some additional information on the addiction experience in terms of what information we perceived or have available. Thank you, Martín and mayor and council members. Lee Butler, the planning director. And we have received a limited number of inquiries that have made it to me. And we have a number of resources on our website, some of which Tony Kandadi's office in the city attorney have prepared. And so we have directed folks to those resources. I do not have a sense of how many inquiries have come in that haven't made it to me, but our team is aware of those resources. And so they could just be directing folks to those online resources. So unfortunately, we don't have a good answer for you in terms of the overall numbers. It's strictly anecdotal and only a couple that have come my way. Okay, thank you. I'd like to provide comments on the items. I'm going to start with their input. And I think it's incredible that the county of Santa Cruz is offering to its community. I know I certainly appreciate it. I don't know if I'm leaving any, but I certainly appreciate it. That dozens of friends of mine, their businesses are going to hopefully stay above water. But what happens in a few months when that situation ends? So yeah, what is going to go on in a few months? So I posted something about 14 hours ago. I'm just going to read certain excerpts of it. Will Gates partners with DARPA and Department of Defense for new DNA nanotech COVID-19 vaccine? And my comment was, yes, Mr. Gaines, the free choice of not taking the vaccine is simply house arrest in one's owned or rented coffin. But how to explain this to citizens? This would be my answer. See Lena Pugh's presentation, September, 2019. So all I can say is that we're in a really tough situation and I don't hear a whole lot of commentary about what's going to go on in six months and a year or even further, because this is just crippling our society. So I'm just here and I'm listening and I appreciate all of you. Thank you very much. And that speaker you're on the line. Yes, hello, this is Garrett Phillips. I didn't write anything up for this, but just I have questions. I know you're not going to answer them, but you know, I am wondering where you got August 15th from. That seems like a very long time. You don't even know if there will be an emergency at that time. I don't believe, I mean, I'm not sure, but I'm not sure open-ended emergency declarations by anyone, including the director of health are sensible or rational. I agree that the governor probably doesn't have authority to extend his kill switch lockdown without going back to the assembly. And so this is very questionable. I don't know why the city attorney doesn't have an opinion on it. Seems strange. Also, you know, why you've picked winners and losers here and you said, okay, tenants are winners, landlords are big losers. I didn't hear the justification for that. That would be interesting to hear that. And you know, that's all for now. I'm done, bye. Hi, good evening, my name is Emily Ham and I'm with Monterey Bay Economic Partnership on their housing team. And for those of you who don't know us, we are a group of 87 public, private and civic entities throughout the Monterey Bay region, which includes Santa Cruz, the city of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County. And in March, we worked quickly to respond to the new housing realities and the ongoing threat of COVID-19 and issued a housing response position paper, which focuses on mitigating the impacts of the health emergency on renters, landlords and homeowners in our region. And we would like to thank the city of Santa Cruz for your efforts so far. We support the staff's recommendation to extend the city's moratorium to August 15th, which exceeds our standard request to all local governments in our region to extend their moratoriums to at least June 30th. And we also ask that they reuse further extensions open for consideration on a monthly basis. We believe that more time will help ensure that renters across the region are provided with sufficient economic relief and that we have time to work together to assess impacts and plan and implement policies under the new local and state budgetary realities. We also advocate for local, public and private funding for rental assistance, particularly vulnerable populations and individuals who do not have access to safety net resources. And we understand, of course, that most landlords are experiencing strong rent collection, 95% or higher, but there are signs that undocumented residents and others are already experiencing difficulty. So we would like to make sure that there are systems in place to help a very important part of our population. So we thank you again for considering our recommendations and your efforts to fill the gaps between local, state, and federal legislation. Thanks. Thank you. Good afternoon, I'm calling on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Worker's Benefit Council. The next speaker will be speaking in Spanish and I will be translating for her. Hola, mi nombre es Melissa M. Yo y mi esposo, Hermelio Carvallo, estamos aquí para pedir la extensión a la moratoria de los desalojos y para abogar para el consejo de la ciudad a respal de las demandas del consejo de beneficios para trabajadores del condado de Santa Cruz. Good afternoon, my name is Felicia Guzmán and my husband Emilio and I are here to ask for an extension on the moratorium of addictions and we are asking this to all of you city council members to be on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Worker's Benefit Council. Desde el 16 de marzo nos quedamos en trabajo como resultado de la pandemia del coronavirus y la orden de quedar en casa. Since March 16th, we have been without work because of the pandemia of the coronavirus and the order to stay at home. No hemos podido trabajar y estamos preocupados por la renta y los billes que tenemos que pagar. We have not been able to work and we are worried for rent to be able to pay rent and other bills that we need to take care of. Teníamos un poquito ahorrado, pero eso ya se nos termina. We had a little bit of a safe job, but that we've already had to use it. Ahora no tenemos para pagar este mes y no sabemos cómo le vamos a hacer. Nosotros quisiéramos pagar, pero no podemos. We don't have any more money to pay this month and we don't know what we're going to do. We would like to be able to pay, but we can't. Hoy no sabemos cuándo va, más va a durar esto y cuándo podremos regresar a trabajar, pero sí sabemos que nos va a tomar un poquito, más de tiempo, para poder hacer los pagos de lo que se debe. We don't know how much longer this is going to last and when we will be able to return to work, but we do know that it is going to take more time and that we will need more time in order to pay just the cost of our living. Y debemos continuar con la moratoria de los desalojos durante 10 años, como se está discutiendo actualmente en la legislación del Senado del Estado de California. Después de que los trabajadores puedan regresar a su pleno empleo. We should continue this moratorium for the next 10 years as it is being discussed in the legislation, the state legislation here in California so that workers can return to work and can have their full job back. Mantener la moratoria sobre la desconexión por falta de pago de servicio público hasta que la economía se vuelva a abrir y los trabajadores puedan regresar al trabajo. Maintain the moratorium on disconnecting for non-payment from home utilities and other essential services such as electricity, gas, telephone, garbage, water and sewage. For the duration of the pandemic crisis, including the time it will take workers to recover when the economy reopens and where workers that can finally return their jobs to find you in point. The next speaker will also speak in Spanish and he will continue after Felicia's comments. Hola, soy un extendero debido a la pandemia. No sé si otros consejos municipales para seguirse de aquí el gobernador use su autoridad influencias para detener las ejecuciones hipotecarias y las trabajado salario durante el menos un año después de que termine la pandemia. Puedo poner en práctica salarios dignos para el bien de los trabajadores mal plagados y por el bien de estar, les dice nuestras economías para todos. We need to mobilize with other city councils to ensure that the governor uses this authority to stop financial institutions from foreclosures and evictions. for at least one year after the World Health Organization's formal declaration of the end of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Enforcing living wages in the lowest paid workers in the city and the county are not paid living wages and cannot maintain housing, nutrition and sanitation. The whole community from small businesses where we shop to the health of those we serve will suffer severely. Thank you for your time. And thank you for also joining the first moratorium. Thank you for your comments. The public who's listening regarding an extension of temporary and residential properties for non-payment of rent as a result of economic losses related to coronavirus. Please call the numbers on your screen and hit the star nine on your phone to raise your hand. Once you've been unmuted, you will be provided with an announcement that you've been unmuted and you'll be able to comment on this item. My name is Melanie Dillman. I've been a resident of Santa Cruz County for my entire life. I have, over the course of my life, I have witnessed the disgraceful treatment of low-income workers and the unhoused people by our city government. I have seen just how far the money interest in Santa Cruz will go with the complexity of city council to squeeze working people and jeopardize the health and wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in our community. I see the police, I see the police harassing houseless people every day and I've seen money at interest, kill, measure, and rent control and get progressives recalled from city council. In Santa Cruz, a full-time minimum wage job nets $1,900 a month where the average rent is nearly $2,400. Hotels and many other properties are allowed to stand vacant while people are forced to sleep in tents on the street exposed to coronavirus and the coming summer heat. Since I've started volunteering with the local organization, Western Service Workers Association, I've also learned that there is rampant wage theft happening all over the county, particularly to undocumented workers. And I want to ask, how can we claim to be a sanctuary city when employers are allowed such free reign to exploit undocumented workers? Employment in Santa Cruz, unemployment in Santa Cruz stands at 19% and the recent decision to allow businesses to reopen will surely force low-wage workers to expose themselves to coronavirus. The masses government begins to act in the interest of the health and well-being of the people. I support Western Service Workers Association, the Workers Benefit Council demands for worker safety as follows. Maintain a moratorium on evictions for 10 years to allow for full recovery for workers to be able to afford rent in Santa Cruz. Two, maintain a moratorium on disconnections of utilities and essential services regardless of payment. Three, mobilize with other city councils to ensure the governor uses his authority to stop financial institutions from foreclosures and evictions. Four, enforce living wages. If workers are exploited and cannot afford housing in other essential goods and services, not only is their health at risk, but we also suffer the consequences. I would also like to add that I am formally incarcerated and I have experienced personally the horrible conditions of our local jail. Not only does the jailed population have to deal with extreme heat, extreme cold and poor healthcare, now across the country, jails and prisons are becoming incubators for coronavirus. In addition to the health and safety of our essential workers, we must consider the most vulnerable people. I submit that everyone who is currently incarcerated in Santa Cruz County jail, awaiting trial or serving time for nonviolent offenses be released immediately. And also that the police stop arrest for nonviolent offenses. Thank you for your time. So the last opportunity is to comment on this item. Please dial the number that's on your screen. And when you are in the meeting, please press star nine to raise your hand so you can be acknowledged and comment on this item. All the comment will close, all the comment period, and return to council for action and deliberation. Before we take action, I just wanted to make a few comments on this item. In the last meeting that we had had, when we first approved this, I was supposed to come back. And so we were very much interested in getting this item back on the agenda. With the one comment that was made regarding the August 15th date, I'll just speak to that. When we were kind of discussing the date, having the extension for additional months, but then the concern was raised with if the council doesn't meet in July, then potentially the protections could end and there's not an opportunity for council to vote on this. And so by putting it on the August, the putting date of August 15th actually allows us to have a council meeting before that date, if we wanted to consider extending it even further. So I hope that gets to the questions around the August 15th date. I just think that it's important that we remember and we are aware of how badly this is impacting residents within our community. We've seen disproportionate funding go to many of the small business owners. So while some businesses may have been able to use the PPP to help their businesses or other businesses that didn't get that funding and they didn't get additional city funds. And personally, I feel that if the government is asking a business to close its doors for the health and safety of the public that we should be doing everything we can to protect them because there are businesses that we're thriving and doing fine before this and are now struggling. And if the government's gonna ask the public to do something and the public complies then we need to do everything in our power to help protect them. And I think we've heard some of the comments especially from our unharmed documented residents. And I just wanna remind folks too that most of those $1,200 relief checks came out in April and for residents who were able to use those to pay their rent, no one has received any of that additional funding since. You've heard from the community action board that they had a 50% increase in requests for rental assistance. I think council member Brown mentioned earlier that they were incorrect me if I'm wrong here but it's only 30,000 or so calls for financial assistance for undocumented residents asking for temporary salary reductions. The state's also gonna be asking for similar reductions to for cost savings purposes. Businesses are operating at full capacity. And so a lot of folks in our community are gonna be in some pretty financially unstable times. And I think that it's important that as I mentioned before, that we as a city after having such good compliance from our community can provide people who maybe facing financial hardships with all the support they need so that they can remain on their feet and remain in housing. Because I think ultimately our goal is to not contribute to our homeless situation in the homeless population. We wanna keep people housed as best possible until they're able to financially get back on their feet again. And with that, I'll turn it over to council member Brown. Thank you. So I did have, I wanted to make a couple of comments but I did have a question and I'm prepared to make a motion but I have a couple of questions. So I wanna try to clarify this question around the unlawful detainer freeze or the kind of staying of those unlawful detainer motions in the courts. I think I heard you say, Tony, that this would continue for 90 days after the shelter in place is lifted. So I'm just trying to figure out though because that doesn't necessarily mean that taking no action here would be this, would in effect result, have the same results. So I'm just trying to figure out because it seems like with the unlawful detainer if they can't be issued now, they could be issued, can they be issued retrospectively once the stay is lifted? So I'm just trying to figure out what the difference would be kind of tactically for people if we just went with that. For any unlawful detainer, the action that's not been filed, then the owner or the landlord could not file an action in unlawful detainer until that order for that rule is expires 90 days after the governor the emergency declaration. So one could speculate on when that might be, but my sense is that the emergency is going to extend probably in some fashion for another. So I think the bottom line is there may be some circumstances in which a tenant could fall through the cracks based on the existing state orders that are in place and that this ordinance would protect assuming it's not challenged. I just haven't identified those circumstances yet based on the analysis that we've been able to do to date. So I think that's the real impetus for the ordinance should the council decide to move forward to see me. Thank you. Another question that I have is about, and this is kind of, I guess for everyone, the second part of this agenda report recommends consideration of other measures that the city might consider to protect tenants, residential and commercial tenants. And I just think we should have that conversation and at least try to think about what we might discuss at a future date. The mayor and I in thinking about this didn't want to bring fully formed recommendations, specific recommendations in ordinance language or anything like that, but we did want to open up that conversation because I feel like we are on the edge of a cliff here. And the story, what we just heard about the people who are hurting is magnified so many times over and it's not going to get any better anytime soon. And I just worry that if we kind of just wait to see how things play out, we are going to be kind of creating, there will be new problems that are associated with like potentially mass evictions, businesses that can't pay their backgrounds right away and all of these things. And so I just, and the mayor just kind of gave a few of those data points. So I do want to hear though, I am prepared to make a motion about some future discussions that I hope we could have, but I do want to hear from people what you all are thinking before we move forward. If anybody else. Yeah, I think I'm here to jump in. My hand is up. So next we have council members, Watkins, Byers, Golder, Matthews and then Vice Mayor Myers. Thank you mayor. And thank you Councilor Brown and Mayor Cummings for bringing this forward. I actually just was briefly reviewing the Watsonville agenda report and I have to applaud them for a really thoughtful process that it looks like they engaged in as it relates to this topic. I guess I'd like a little bit of clarification because I think what I'm hearing is that there are other policies in place that will likely get to the important rental protections that we need and that if I hear you correctly, Tony, you're saying that our emergency would carry legal risk one and two could only necessarily provide protection for sort of the exception, not the rule folks. And you couldn't even identify who those folks were at this time. Is that accurate? Yeah. And the council has done this before where there is an existing state law and the council considers adopting a similar legislative action as a city ordinance or law. In fact, another one is on the next item on your agenda. And so it's not unusual for the council, for city and state laws to be somewhat overlapping. So I guess I would say that it would protect anyone who is potentially the subject of an eviction, both residential or commercial until it expires in addition to whatever protections state law affords in that regard. So it wouldn't just help those that would otherwise fall through the cracks. It would be applicable to any tenant that's impacted financially by the COVID-19 crisis. Question for clarification was just sort of the legal, if all of our neighboring jurisdictions are feeling that, and I was sort of briefly looking at the, for example, the Watsonville staff report saying that they had a Watsonville eviction moratorium task force that they basically landed on that, their local eviction moratorium was redundant and that's unnecessary. And so I guess what I'm wondering is if your legal opinion, Tony, is that we would be outlying and legally vulnerable to then have an extension of a moratorium that is redundant and unnecessary. But if we couple that with other protections, which I know Councilor Brown was getting at, how do we kind of reconcile the two? Is that your opinion? Yeah, I would say that we would be an outlier in Anchorage County. I overheard council member Byers mention that she had heard from her son who happens to be County Council of San Mateo County that the county is extending its eviction moratorium. So I took an opportunity to go on their website and look at the agenda report for that. And what they're actually doing is they're extending the residential eviction moratorium ordinance to the end of June. And they are making that apply county-wide both in the unincorporated area and in the cities. And then interestingly, they also extended the commercial eviction moratorium ordinance for small businesses. And, but that only applies in the unincorporated area. So I'm not sure why they chose to make that distinction, but that's, so it's not unprecedented. Other entities are extending their eviction moratorium ordinances. I've not heard of a legal challenge to any of those yet. But as far as Santa Cruz County goes, yes, the city would be the outlet. I guess I'm just a little bit confused and I apologize for that. Cause I feel like based on the memo that we received, as well as sort of your legal analysis, it really alluded to that there would be, you know, legal liability with that. But if I'm now hearing you say that you don't know and possibly not, is that right? I mean, I guess- I think there is an increased risk of a legal challenge without the support of the governor's executive order. I just can't quantify the level of risk for you based on the dearth of legal research that's out there or of precedent setting case law on the topic. There may have been case law interpreting shelter in place orders and the ramifications thereof, you know, based upon the 1918 pandemic, but it's a really unprecedented situation in California right now. Okay. I guess I'm just trying to understand what sort of the, you know, given that there is existing policy in place that what is that risk? I guess that risk kind of balance we want to take in terms of being vulnerable with not only policy, but also with resources. So- Yeah, I think that's right. It's a continuum of risk. On the one hand, certainly there's a policy argument for extending as much protection to tenants as possible. On the other hand, the argument is offset somewhat by the fact that there are existing state rules and effect that provide similar, if not the same protection. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you, Sandy and Jason here. Do we have, I'm looking at what can the city do to help people in their day to day living and they're running out of money and all these bills are coming up? Is there any, maybe it's already been in the past or maybe this happened in March, I don't know. Economic development, is there what pot of money could we somehow subsidize people to meet some of these goals or do we have a program or if not, could we talk about whether we should have one or not, even Martin knows? We have Bonnie and Lee on- Oh, good. I think that Bonnie can help us providing the description and we'll have them on what we have available. Bonnie, so we do have that we budgeted for this year that council approved at our last meeting, 200,000, actually 230,000 combining sources of funding for eviction prevention. And so we have 30,000 through the CARES Act and 200,000 through our home funds approved. And this is up to two months of rental assistance that individuals in the community can apply for. And the distinction between this program and what we had previously is previously we were using a combination of funding that was restricted to the beach flats and lower ocean area. And so by the new approval of this funding, we now have it citywide available for eviction prevention. And Bonnie, is that both the residential and commercial? That is residential. And do we have a program? Did we do one for commercial, for businesses to give them some boost? We don't have one currently. What we have provided is the micro loan program. Oh, maybe that was it alone. Okay. The PPP program does allow funding through that program to go towards rental assistance. So that's been the mechanism so far. I will say that there's definitely a need for more, but there is some funding sources out there for that. So there is some funding sources for that. We don't need to maybe go there. Well, the funding sources that are available for commercial at this point are largely loans, a portion of the PPP can be forgiven, but the portion that's forgiven is largely for payroll. That's right. Okay. How about rent increases? Do we have any program that the only would be a moratorium and no further rent increases? I don't know whether this has come before the council, before or this the first time. It's all open ended, Jason was on the, and Sandra was is on the agenda, you know, look at all kinds of options. So I'm just raising some of those that maybe we could help out in some way. And of course that is a moratorium on rent increases, both commercial and businesses. The funding that we have for the eviction prevention is community development block grant. So it is federal funding. So we're not using any local sources. I think if we wanted to provide something for local sources, we may have to come up with additional sources of funding just because of some of the restrictions on the federal funds. And that could possibly help people rent. If there's not a moratorium on rent increases, it would help them if they got a rent increase. That's probably money we're gonna come up with. New source. No, I'm sure I'll have more questions. That's it right now. Okay. And also just before I move on to the next Council Member, I wanted to mention too that part of the reason that Council Member Brown mentioned earlier, I was to do this discussion of potential additional options to protect residents and businesses is that at the meeting where we first approved this, there was discussion around, you know, having great periods for people to pay back their rents after the COVID-19. And as Council Member Brown said, we didn't want to bring anything completely constructed and fully baked in terms of foreign languages, but wanted to have an opportunity to discuss other protections such as, you know, freezing rents. Do we want to discuss and find out whether it's legally feasible to have a particular payback for those back rents so that once this is, so that if there are no longer eviction protections, we want two months of back rent immediately. And so these are all, you know, topics and if there's other topics that come up, we could discuss so that if we need to take action that we can put these on a future agenda. And so with that, I'll move on to Council Member Golder. Some of the sides, you know, had some friends over the weekend that told me some stories that are happening around the community. And I think that there's a lot of people around us that are getting support from other places, but I would hate to see people fall through the cracks whether they're business owners or residential tenants. And I also don't want to see the city open to any potential liability. And so with that, like giving people ideas, I'm just curious like what is the liability that you're talking about, Tony? I'm really confused. The two potential avenues of a legal challenge are that it could be challenged on the basis of state preemption in the unlawful detainer statute. And the primary exposure to liability in that instance would be if a plaintiff sued and was successful, they may be able to recover their attorney's season costs in addition to getting a court order and validating the ordinance. The other potential legal challenge is based on a theory of inverse condemnation in which the plaintiff would allege that by essentially prohibiting them from obtaining or benefiting from the economically viable use of their property, the city has essentially taken it in a manner akin to the eminent domain law in which case the city can also be exposed to damages in the form of the rent that landlords should be collecting and are not. And in addition to that potential attorney's season. I think it goes back to what one of the speakers said as a city government or we as individuals should be pushing back on lenders that they could perhaps, you know, let people have different on their mortgages if they need it. But I think like Justin said, we've asked people to stay at home so they're not working the hairdressers that people pay all the time. Whether they're not in terms of they can't pay their rent or whether they're not, and they can't pay their rent where they live, but they can't pay their rent out of their business. I think that we as a government have asked them to shelter in place. And now there's these unforeseen consequences. I think I would, and with the likelihood that schools aren't gonna open normally in the fall in just two days a week or one day a week, I think the likelihood that some of these people are gonna be going back the right way is gonna be unlikely. And I know that the initial protection was given when we thought we had the earlier opening, but things are getting more delayed. I think it's our sensibility that is right now. I understand the first part of this motion is restricted solely to this idea. Adopting an emergency ordinance, amending and extending the emergency ordinance to prevent residential or commercial evictions for non-payment of rent as a result of economic losses related to the coronavirus pandemic. That's all that's going through. What I understand is that the California Judicial Council's order achieved that for 90 days after the end of the governor's emergency declaration. Have I understood that correctly, Sonny? So we bought, and Sandy, you're shaking your head. I mean, I'm trying to get clear on what the facts are here. So we have in existence now a 90 day ban on processing and eviction requests for any reason, not even related to COVID. Is that correct, Sonny? I think I've tried to get it. My understanding, yes. Yeah, and Sonny did prepare a confidential memo for us. For obvious reasons, it says confidential and I'm not gonna read it, but yeah, I took it seriously. Other information has come up and many other requests have been made. I know we have also Catherine asked about what else can the city have done, can we do, have we done to assist people right now who are suffering from economic hardship and my understanding is we did make some large allocations to second artists and other groups that were doing emergency group distributions. This is just as a, for example, not related to housing, but trying to meet emergency needs. I'm certainly willing to discuss other possibilities, but given what was said in the legal memo about the risk to the city, coupled with the fact that there is apparently an existence, a 90-day prohibition on processing any evictions other than those absolutely necessary for protection of health and welfare. I don't think we're going to have right now with this. I think a discussion about what's appropriate at the local level, looking at the totality of all the other entities and partners out there, that's something we should continue doing. Yeah, I just have a couple of thoughts. I co-sponsored the more, the initial moratorium with the mayor and literally, I think we wrote that within the first 24 hours of basically the closure, the county was developing it, there's as well, Tony was looking at what San Mateo was going to do, I believe, or San Jose, city of San Jose was first out of the gate. And I think that language we developed, it obviously has held up, it seems to at least have presented people getting evicted right now, at least from what we can tell, we don't know. I echo former mayor Watkins' comments about city of Watsonville, I think that their approach to really convening folks was a really good idea to have a task force that's made up of landlords, private developers, property managers, commercial landlords, realtors, affordable housing developers and landlords, tenant advocates, tenant services and lenders, and some press of lists, good policy approach to something that none of us can forecast. But what really popped out in their report to me was there is some pending, both federal and state actions that we don't quite know what the outcome's gonna be yet on. Also, I was missing a little bit of the detail about the CARES Act, it would have been kind of good to know a little bit more about how the CARES Act has landed for people, and I know it's irregular in its impact and benefit to people, certainly. I've learned that by talking to a lot of different people about it. There's a couple of things though, the HEROES Act being the most obvious one, which is currently in negotiations, and right now the language in that would provide for 12 months moratorium on evictions, as well as amending the CARES Act with regards to no longer limiting to federally backed mortgage loans. So there's some important language in the HEROES Act that I think it would be really good to know what's gonna happen with that to go a piece of legislation. Also, there's SB 1410, which would make direct rental payments to help tenants who cannot afford to pay their rent, and that payments would cover at least 80% of the unpaid rent attributes to the pandemic, and that's in the Housing Committee, Committee on Housing for the Senate, and similarly, AB 828 has similar benefits. Both of those are in the Committee on Housing right now, and we received information from our lobbyist on Friday that these housing bills are being fast-tracked right now through the legislature, through the state legislature, recognizing that housing is the key ingredient that will keep California successful and not have a huge amount of impact on both or just throughout communities throughout the state. So I could be supportive of like a 30-day extension only because, I mean, obviously I co-sponsored the first moratorium. I believe that there is real risk to our community, but I also, we would have never known that the CARES Act was gonna hit. We didn't know what these different things were gonna hit from federal and state legislation. I think this is unfortunately something that's gonna be around for a long time. I could support a 30-day extension, say through June 30th, and I really think it's important that we as quickly as possible figure out a way to help people with the 230,000 that we do have available for residential rental relief, and especially to undocumented immigrants if possible, so we can get as far extension as we can. Even if we are able to provide $1,000 to those that need it, we could help two or a 30 families. So I don't, I would be very sad to see that at the end of the fiscal year, we had money sitting in that account. And so I think it's really important that we do that outreach and that we as council prioritize that for both our communications of the city as well as the department's responsible for doing that outreach. So I understand that the interest but we could call a special meeting if we needed to to protect people stay in their homes and in their businesses. But at this point, I would very much support a 30-day extension, but then really look to deploying the resources we have right now on hand. They're already sitting with these organizations and making sure that we're using those as quickly as possible to keep people in their homes. And then I'm really interested and I think we should very much stay on top of these pieces of legislation and either join our other cities in the region, writing a regional letter of support for these kinds of investments. But right now I'm not, I feel like extending things to August 15th, again, we're balancing the need of lots of different folks here, people who have the mortgages, people who are the rat payers. I think with COVID, we've learned that slow as you go is a proactive way of trying to manage everyone that's at risk right now. So thank you. Council Member Brown. Hi, thank you. So a couple of points just based on what I'm hearing in the discussion, this is still kind of mostly about part one here of the recommendation. Just a couple of points. One, I would say that I don't know where the housing authority is at with the funding that they receive for rental assistance. But I can tell you that CAB is on track to extend all of that money like in the very near future. I don't have the exact time, but they've had requests that far exceed that what they have available as with the other disaster relief assistance fund that I discussed earlier. So I don't think there's gonna be any problem there. And another question, I guess kind of question, comment. Tony, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that in the case of local actions where there's some ambiguity about our potential liability, we have heard that it's possible to, should we take an action that is subject to a lawsuit that we can then within that rather than going to court. So the idea that we would commit ourselves to expending a lot of money, to sending a lawsuit is not necessarily the case. If we were to follow up with a different decision, should we find ourselves in troubled waters legally? Yes, Council Member Brown, I agree with that statement. Thanks. I just wanna thank my colleagues for the discussion because I think this is, I mean, as we all know and what we heard is this is a critical issue that we wanna try to stay on top of and do the best we can to create good policy to support those vulnerable here. I guess I'm just wondering in terms of trying to move us along here and get something that hopefully provides those protections and also protects the city from legal challenge if we can and I appreciate some of the comments that Vice Mayor Myers mentioned, but maybe just to try to get the conversation moving for the interest of discussion, I'll go ahead and make a motion to direct staff to track sort of the state policy that's ongoing and evolving and mirror those protections as needed locally to extend our temporary ordinance until June 30th and ask that the mayor call a special meeting if need be to extend beyond that and defer to the executive order and judicial order number one and work. And then I think, I guess this is also where I think we, I'll guess I'll pause my motion there for the interest of the minutes in our city clerk. So I wanna acknowledge my narrative going into my motion, but I do wanna then now open up a conversation around what I observed just briefly when looking at the Watsonville item about the outreach and they have a whole robust community marketing campaign that they want to get out to their communities so that those who are the most vulnerable know what the resources are in their community and as well they have a temporary moratorium, eviction moratorium task force comprised of the folks that Vice Mayor Myers referenced to be on hand as needed to help their council address these evolving issues. So I think that I think is the second part of the item, but I just really wanna say that I support that as well, but in the interest of trying to move forward in a way that hopefully balances all the competing challenges is that's my motion. Okay, so we have a motion made by council member Watkins. I know council member Brown had discussed making a motion earlier, so I don't know if there's any reconciliation between the action that was taken and council member Brown, your interest in making a motion, but then wanting to have other council members weigh in. So thank you. Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking at this point would be to, because I have some ideas for a motion for the second part of this agenda report. And so I'd like to maybe keep those separate rather than combining them all because it sounds like we may have some differences about specifically what we would want to consider moving forward. In terms of the, and I appreciate council member Watkins, your, the additions that you've provided to the extension of the eviction moratorium extension. So I want to, I want to say that I support those. I think it's important to think about how it is that we outreach and engage with the community as we move forward in this really rapidly shifting landscape. In terms of the question about June 30th, I mean, if that is the will of the council, I can support that, but I guess I'm just not clear why August 15th would be so much more risky than June 30th. The reason as Mayor Cummings said that we said August 15th was to ensure that we were covered through the month that we're on break. And I don't know, maybe Tony, you could remind us, would we be able to extend an ordinance at a special meeting? My, I think, I feel like I recall that that's, we can't do that. It has to be a regularly scheduled meeting. I believe you can adopt an emergency ordinance at a special meeting, but if you just, if you want to continue with your comments or council wants to continue, I'll confirm that. I know you cannot finally adopt a regular ordinance except at a regular meeting, but let me check the charter on that. Thank you. Yeah, so I guess what I would like to do then is just reserve, I would like to make a motion after we complete this portion of the conversation about moving forward with other discussions that are a future meeting. So I'll just go ahead and leave the motion on the floor, but I will say my preference would be to just extend it through August 15th. I mean, nobody's gonna be all of a sudden flush with money to pay all their back rents and take care of all this on July 1st. So I think it's pretty clear what we're looking at moving forward that it's not gonna get any better for a while. So I'll just leave it there for now and step back in once we finish with this. Just following up on your question, the rule about adopting an ordinance at a special meeting is not applicable to an emergency ordinance. So you would be able to do that. Okay. Thank you. So the motion on the floor, my council member Watkins, I just wanna check with the city clerk, Bonnie, were you able to capture that motion? I got direct staff to track state policy that is ongoing and evolving and mirror that. Extend the moratorium until June 30th and ask the mayor to schedule a special meeting and refer to executive order one. That's all I got. Does that capture the motion that you made council member Watkins? Yeah. Thank you. And to council member Brown's point that I think also there will be a question of how to move forward with the outreach plans and next steps to support our vulnerable community. So I think there will be another motion, but I think I just stopped it for this particular point, but I think that that captures it essentially. And I'll just maybe say to the June 30th, if I may, while I have the floor, it sounds to me that other jurisdictions aren't really extending bears and they're relying on kind of the judicial orders and the other policies. And the only other one we hear from is San Mateo. It seems sort of like also knowing that the mayor can also provide or call a special meeting. It sounds like a nice kind of compromise without as much risk is sort of my thoughts on that. Okay, so we have a motion on the floor. I know council member Byers had her hand raised before, but I'd like to see if we can get a second on the motion. Oh, second the motion. Okay. So we have a motion made by council member Watkins, seconded by Vice Mayor Myers, council member Byers. Thank you. Is Bonnie around? Bonnie Lipscomb? Yes, I'm here. Oh, thanks Bonnie. I still want to follow up how we can help people. Some of those things are going to take months and it really concerns me. What, and the whole idea of maybe a freeze or moratorium and rent increase for commercial. I mean, you know the tenor downtown and what's going on. I wonder if you had some ideas of how we can help both the businesses and our wonderful renters and people that we could give you direction to come back in a few weeks with some ideas. There's got to be other ideas out there. People are doing things and it just kind of hearted. You know, an eight hour meeting coming up with these things when it really takes staff to look at all of this and maybe give you some direction to look at it and see if there's, you've come up or your colleagues in other places have come up with viable ways of helping, whether it's with their rent or moratorium and rent increases for commercial moratorium for businesses. Anyway, I'm turning to you, Bonnie. Well, if you want to provide that direction, I would be happy to come back with some options for you to consider. I think if you could maybe have the discussion and frame it a little more of what type of funding you would like us to look into because I think what's needed and what we're hearing from so many businesses is just the lack of available resources. So from a commercial perspective, it's always been a balance. So our microloan program where we provided the 500,000 that went out to 51 businesses. And there's definitely the need is much greater, but is that balance in that discussion, I think is in the context of our overall budget deficit is where and what funding source we're using for what purpose. So if we're talking commercial businesses, we do have available our economic development trust fund, but at the same time, we're in such an economic uncertainty that I know we've been cautious on how we're utilizing that funding. So we've been offsetting businesses as well as providing the free business kits that we've been doing over the last two weeks. So that's gone out to 200 businesses so far. And that includes everything that businesses need to reopen, including the hard to source sanitizer and all of those things. But if we're talking rental assistance, I just need a little feedback on what funding source you're comfortable with us tapping into. I think when we go on the residential side, that's where we've been pretty successful in getting the federal funding to offset that. And we really were pursuing every opportunity. The other thing that we're in the process of is we're pulling together an application to the Economic Development Administration for an expanded countywide revolving loan that would be broken out proportionately across the jurisdictions within the county. And there's a local match provided, but that's a really good use of our local resources because we can leverage that five times. So those are the types of things that we're working on now. So it would be really good to get some feedback from you on which of those areas you would like us to go a little deeper. And then we can come back to you and present you sort of a menu of opportunities as well as funding sources that are available to do that and those that are both sort of grant funded that we could apply for or in process versus those that we can tap into existing revenue sources. Well, yes. One thing, I certainly have no idea what our possible funding sources are. So we could just outline whom we want to help and you come back with that. I mean, you've already mentioned some funding sources that I don't know anything about. So I just couldn't do that, but yeah. I will say one thing we're doing right now is that we do have a pretty intensive survey of all businesses right now. So we're getting some really good feedback from businesses. So we can take that as well and look at what feedback we're getting. And we have that by industry that they're saying by industry within the city of what their top needs are. And we can sort of bring that together and share that data with you as well. Well, maybe by our next meeting, which is in two weeks, you could come back with, you've heard a lot of discussion. You're down there talking to the businesses and a lot of other people. Come in with some suggestions to how to help both the commercial and our citizens. If that seems okay, I think you understand the parameters or we understand. Yes, I can definitely do that. We'll have to, I assume we'll have to have most on that. But maybe. I'm wondering if what we can do is we can maybe take care of this first item and then after that we can make another motion. We can make a second motion. Or could we just add it to add them to the motion? Either way. Okay. Well, let our city manager chime in real quick. It looks like you. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to add. So a couple of things with respect to the question of a rental freeze or cap. We certainly would be happy to do some additional research there. But from what we're seeing is that at this point in time, there really isn't an incentive to increase rents. I think most landlords are actually trying to keep tenants. And so they're very much focused on how to keep tenants. And since really businesses are struggling with revenues and being able to make rents and landlords many are struggling with mortgages. There really isn't a really familiar theme, a big challenge with rent increases at this point in time. Again, we could do more research. I'm not aware of any cities or anyone doing anything actively on that front. But we can look into it. And then with respect to additional resources as Bonnie pointed out, it would just be a matter of really trying to figure out what resources we can also muster to be able to be responsive to that. And that really is the central challenge we have because we, at this point, really the only source is our own general fund, which is obviously in Jeopardy and or some additional resources from the state and federal, which we're really focusing on trying to provide and get some assistance from them. There's also the stimulus package which is being worked on, which as I understand is intended to include additional resources and assistance to businesses as well as individuals. And so I think a lot of work can be done hopefully to try to get that to move forward. If that does move forward, that can also make a significant difference to businesses, individuals, and cities and counties as well. So that's our dilemma is that we're all limited to with respect to resources. So it's a question of how do we obtain additional resources and assistance to be able to help our businesses and our residents and as well as to be able to keep our essential services operating. So that is our challenge. Mayor Myers, your hand was up. I think it went up a lot of times when Council Member Watkins was making her motion, but I wanted to just see if you had anything. I'm good, thank you. Council Member Mathews. Yeah, I think the whole topic of the appropriate type and level of assistance for Santa Cruz-based businesses that's another whole issue is very interesting, but regarding the motion that's on the floor, I don't fully understand it. So the first one is to track state policy and to mirror that. Now what does that mean? I understand extending the emergency ordinance to June 13th, 30th, I understand that. But the first part of the motion, I think I wrote down, to track state policy and mirror that. What does that mean? If I may, Mayor, I think essentially looking at how it's just so rapidly changing in terms of the state policies and maybe it was sort of a rushed motion. So I'm happy to do some wordsmithing if need be, but looking at what we can do at the local level to enhance our policies that are also being supported at the state level. But I'm happy to have the wordsmithing around that. Well, you know me, I like to know the words before I vote on them. And then the other, I believe the third part of that motion was something about an outreach plan. And that, again, that's people and resources. So I think extending the emergency ordinance, spending residential commercial addiction for nonpayment of rent as a result of COVID emergencies for one more month. I don't personally see the need for it, but I can accept it. The tracking state policies and the outreach plan, I'd want to know more. And then I do support the idea of getting an inventory of resources, both for residential and residents and for our businesses and seeing how we can identify the anticipated emerging resources and particularly leverage our local dollars to make the most out of those. But I don't yet see that in the language. Mayor, one of the things I guess I would say is that we haven't necessarily, I think, had the conversation around the outreach plan at this point. So that at this time is not a part of the motion. But I think in terms of tracking the state policy, it's just sort of recognizing that this is a really fast-paced, like evolving situation, right? So the governor may extend his order or other state policy might come in or a more restrictive shelter in place might be a reconstitute. I think just monitoring, I guess, instead of tracking is a better word, but just recognizing that this is changing so quickly. So how do we remain nimble is the intention behind that statement. I gather that you mean by this, is monitoring the evolving state policies and resources related to good economic stress? Curious, and expand the prediction moratorium till June 30th, are those two good things? Yeah, I mean, I think that captures it. Because whether it's policies or resources, we want to be knowing what they are and responding to them. Yeah, and not only the economic policies and resources, but also just what's happening with our renters and the housing. Yeah. I think that works for the vice mayor as well. I think like monitoring state policies to include possible extension of governor's orders or state legislation focused on rental relief actions that are longer termed and evaluate correction by city council. That might be a way to capture it. Solid motion, just for final clarification before we take this vote to the body and capture it appropriately in the notes. So. Vice mayor, do you want to restate what you just said? Yeah, so the motion would be to extend the existing emergency moratorium until June 30th, 2020, and monitor state policies to include possible extension of governor's orders or state legislation focused on rental relief actions that are longer termed and evaluate for action by city council. I think that's a good start with that. Yeah. And then I think in terms of the outreach, we could direct staff are deployed with nonprofit partners as quickly as possible with the report back to council in August to get a sense of whether the resources are holding up or if they're, as council member Brown mentioned, they might be gone in a week. We don't know. So maybe getting a sense of, getting a sense of how quickly things are going out the door so we can make adjustments. Is that amenable to you, council member Watkins? Yes, absolutely. Is there any further questions on how to help them or map these your hands? I hate to do this, but the language that we just put forward has to do with rental relief actions. What we've really focused on is eviction. Eviction, really good point. That can include people who can't make their mortgages. So whether you want to say residential, I don't know if that's just a question. Do you want to include it to that or do you want to keep it focused on that? Our original emergency moratorium was for both commercial and residential, so I like it to be consistent. I don't believe that governor's order though, the initial order, and Tony, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe that it covered commercial. I believe that that was an anomaly that we had, or not an anomaly, but we had an intent to also extend it to commercial properties if I remember correctly. But I can quickly check that. Council member Matthews, I'm not completely clear on your question, whether or not that's correct. If you have my own question, the moratorium is related only to evictions for non-payment of rent. It doesn't get in for the others at all, so I'm good. Okay, thank you. Did you have any further questions or comments? Council member Matthews? Council member Byers? Real quick, probably not for Martine. Doesn't the staff, excuse me Bonnie, there's a lot of that, pour over what the legislature is doing all the time and seeing what they can't grab some money. I mean, that's a day-to-day exercise, I assume, right? Yes, yes, so we monitor legislation. Moreover, we have our lobbyists, both at state and federal level, and we ask them to particularly pay attention to issues that are particularly important to the council and to the city and to try to enforce, so yes, we'll do that. Just assume that, so this motion is fine, but you're doing it. And just to clarify, responding to Vice Mayor Meyers' question, the governor's March 16th order did reference both residential and commercial addiction. Okay, thank you for the clarification. Great. Vice Mayor Meyers, I saw your hand real quick. Did you have another comment? No, okay, Council member Rao. So I'm actually just have my hand up to kind of talk about the next piece of this, so if I wanna wait till we have a vote on this piece, this motion. Okay. That's my hand up to that. A portion of the motion of the item that's before us, so I'll turn it over to the city clerk so that we can take a little call vote. Council member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Matthew Perkins. I didn't. Watkins. Vice Mayor Meyers. Aye. Vice Mayor Cummings. That passes unanimously. Kind of moving on to the second part of this was a discussion of potential options for protecting residential and commercial tenants impacted by COVID-19 pandemic response and directing staff to return for city council consideration and action at future meetings as appropriate. And so I have Council member Brown. Yeah, so I wanna make a motion here and just as a caveat, just to say this is what's included in this was a brainstorm that some of us did or that I've had in conversation with people in the community as well as with Mayor Cummings about possible angles, things that a city could do as a response to the COVID crisis. And so I'm gonna all state them that I also sent this to Bonnie. So I don't know if you wanna put it up if you got that email. Thank you. So the first part is already done. So what I was hoping we could talk about now is I'll just move that as part of the city's COVID-19 pandemic response that we direct staff to return to the council. Here I have at the June 23rd meeting for starters with options to provide temporary relief to residential and local business tenants, including one, draft ordinance to enact a temporary moratorium on commercial rent increases to the extent we can legally do that. Two, a draft ordinance to enact temporary moratorium on residential rent increases. Three, possibilities for developing a payment plan program for residential and commercial tenants to pay back rents over time. And four, other possibilities for the city to provide additional support to small business and residential tenants. Sorry, I don't know where that went. So that's the motion I'd like to make. And just I think we've number four, we already started talking about some other possibilities maybe we can add some clarity to that piece. There's my motion. Thanks. Motion by council member Brown. Second bill, council member Byers. Well, on number four, I think we're working with Bonnie that, yes, look for pops of money, but not general funds of those that in any way affect our services and come back. If there is such a thing, I'm not using the right words, I'm way overdue to take a break. But for her to come back to us, if she can identify any funding sources in order to provide some relief to businesses or tenants, some financial relief. So I'm just adding to number four, I think. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and second the motion. It's on the floor. So is that language Sandy accepted? Yeah, absolutely. I'd like to, I mean, I think there's some discussion to be had in particular about number four, what we mean when we say other possibilities. Okay. Yeah. Well, this is the case where I would really like to involve what we're learning from the community, as well as just asking staff to the folders right now already, I feel more comfortable leaving this fairly vague, asking the mayor to consult with staff, the way probably the community thought on this. It's not good language, but... He's talking about just four or all of them. Well, that whole number two, a draft ordinance to enact a framework for it. Could we ask Tony to know? Stay on the commercial, just on the commercial rancid, as someone said previously. You know, the commercial landlords are fearful they're gonna be losing tenants. And certainly some number of people think the commercial renters have stabilized to go down so they can keep people in them. So there again, I think a better understanding what's on the ground could be helpful. A temporary moratorium on residential rent increases, is that more important than the moratorium on evictions for non-payment? Certainly maybe talking to community partners in banks. So what are the possibilities for a payback plan? I think it's certainly in some people's mind that this is a moratorium on rent, which it's not. So just better clarity on what our priorities here and certainly involving some people in the discussions who are closer to the financial aspects of this would be a benefit, I think. Just mentioned something, I think that you touched on a number of good points. Commercial side of rent increases. My understanding is that some commercial leases, generally commercial leases are longer durations in time and built into those leases are annual increases in those rents. And so I've spoken with some business owners whose landlords, for example, don't want to budge on the rents of the bank and are expecting to have all that payback. And obviously people are not being released from their leases. And so I think the intention here is that if a rent increase is anticipated to occur within a commercial lease and those businesses aren't operating, that if there's any way that the city could protect those tenants for any price of those increases, it will be good for us to do so when there are situations where property owners don't want to kind of waive that increase. As far as the rent increases, similarly, I think when this first hit, I reached out to a number of property management companies and they, again, said that, you know, they had annual increases built into their leases for the tenants and that they were not interested in eliminating those increases at this time. A number of people when the COVID-19, in March when this first hit and we had these emergency ordinance from before us, there were people who reached out and said that they just got a rent increase and were looking at losing their jobs. And so, and now one of the things that we're faced with is that, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of folks who are either losing their jobs or their face with pay cuts. And some of these people who reached out to me about this had struggled to find housing, they got housing, they got a new job, and now they're seeing a reduction in the pay and they faced a rent increase in March and now the pay has been reduced and that's putting them in a very difficult situation financially as well. So that's kind of the intention around these and I'm happy to, you know, have discussions with people in the community on this, but I think that the whole intention is really trying to protect people and businesses as we're still being impacted by COVID-19. Council member Byers, do you have your hand raised? Well, I have nothing to add or say right now. Okay, council member Brown and then council member Wacken, sorry. Thank you. So I guess, so I am in response to council member Matthew is your point about engaging with various stakeholders. I'm all for that. Right now, what, you know, like Mayor Cummings, what I know is what I've heard kind of anecdotally from friends, acquaintances, people who have communicated with me as a council member, also the folks who are working with Tenant Sanctuary that there is, you know, kind of an ongoing challenge here. So I'd be, you know, I welcome very much welcomed some outreach and engagement around that. I don't know in terms of the challenge of staff resources, what it would take to do something like that. So I would ask, I think Bonnie and or others maybe the city manager's office what, how realistic that is to kind of do that kind of process. I personally don't think it would require a huge investment of resources, but generally when we start talking public engagement, what we get back is like a proposal that is going to take a lot of staff time. And since I don't know kind of all of the ins and outs of what it would entail from your perspective, I'd like to know more about that before kind of directing it, but I would welcome that conversation. I think that the, in response to the point about, you know, rents are not necessarily gonna be increasing. And I think writ large, that's the case. I mean, the market is gonna, will tell us what, you know, where rents are gonna go. And I, you know, as we've seen in some big cities that actually have some data tracking and have been able to provide some data on this. I mean, rents are, you know, 15% decrease in, you know, just two months time in some places. And so I think overall, this is not gonna, you know, doing some kind of moratorium on rent increases, commercial and residential would not be real hardship for, well, I guess it wouldn't effect very many people because they're most likely will be decisions that are made kind of marked based on what's happening in the market. But for those who are not having that experience, we know we have, you know, larger absentee landlords in our community who have the ability, and I mean, for the multi-unit complexes, et cetera, they have the ability to wait and not rent to maintain higher rents. And so I say, and or increase the rent. And, you know, if they don't get it, then, you know, they still have, they have that cushion. They have the ability to weather short downturn. And so I just feel like it would be a protection that while it probably wouldn't affect a huge number of tenants that it could actually be a real benefit to those who, as Mayor Cummings suggested, have a situation where they just don't have, they have landlords who are unable or unwilling to do that. And so I guess I'd just leave it there on the question of rent increases. And again, this was, there's no date on it, but the intention is that this would be during, temporary during this period of extreme crisis. And I think I'll leave it there for now. Thanks. Members, Watkins and Golder, and then Vice Mayor Myers. I have a quick question, because I think for me, I see the first part of the motion as sort of more exploratory, and then I sort of see the second part as more prescriptive. So I'm personally more comfortable with sort of looking at the various options, which could include some of the prescriptive elements, but not necessarily having those come back on the 23rd, I guess, because I just don't, I don't quite know, but I'd like to see if maybe Tony would want to weigh in on what that type of ordinance would look like. I've been part of the same, I mean, I've had some of the same communications as council members with members of the community. I have a lot of questions about a commercial, a moratorium on commercial rent increases. And one of those was already called out, and that has to do with the fact that most commercial leases are for multiple years and have the rent increases built into the lease agreement. And there's a question in my mind about whether or not the city can legislate in a way that impairs a contractual arrangement between an existing commercial tenant and a landlord. The reason why I think it's more of a question with regard to commercial than it is with residential tenants is that both residential leases are not for more than a year or maybe two years at the top. And most residential tenants, when they move in, do not perform a bunch of expensive tenant improvements on their residential rental unit, whereas most commercial, for commercial tenants, it's a big investment to move into a new commercial space. And so they need a long-term lease to ensure that they have an opportunity to recoup the capital investment that they make in entering into a lease agreement. That's a big concern. Secondly, is the fact that I'm not aware of another commercial rent control scheme in the state of California, although I've not done exhaustive research on that. I do not think that the Costa Hopkins law would apply here. So based on what I understand the existing legislative framework for this, I don't believe there's a state law that expressly would prohibit the city from entering into a commercial rent moratorium or a commercial rent increase ordinance. And then again, as with some of the other topics that we've discussed tonight is the fact that it would only be an effect during a declared emergency and the city has additional authorities in a declared emergency than it does in the absence of one. The big question that comes to my mind with respect to the residential moratorium is Costa Hopkins. I am aware of a couple of other cities. I think Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose have all enacted emergency rent freeze or rent increase moratoriums in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. But as I read those, and I did not do exhaustive analysis on it, I read those moratorium provisions would only apply to tenants that were already in rent controlled units and not to residential tenants generally. So there's some potential areas there that would all need to be researched. I don't have a problem with the timing for June 23rd in terms of drafting something, but it would be brought to the council as a work in progress and whether or not we can do all the necessary research in order to give you a confident opinion on its defensibility is something that remains to be seen. But if that's the council direction, I'm certain that we can have something for the council to at least discuss on the 23rd. I conclude your comments or questions. I guess, yes. I think, I feel a little bit more confused but I guess what I ultimately see this going towards is really three and four. And so what are we doing to find ways to support our small businesses and residential tenants? When we get into sort of these difficult kind of legally ordinances, I just don't know if I'm just not understanding Tony correctly as clearly as I could, but I just don't, I don't have enough clarity on what that could be. Other than that, I think what it's intended to do is to sort of get to three and four, which is trying to support these folks. So those are my comments, I guess. Okay. Council Member Golder. Also a little confused on some of the wording. And one of them was the word temporary and one and two is that just designed for during the, I mean, they just seemed to super vague to me. So I didn't know what there was months, years, what that looked like. And then the other one was four. I feel like four is kind of already happening and maybe someone could speak to that. Council Member Brown, that's how you put your hand up. So maybe you want to speak to it. Yeah, so yeah, the intention, and again, I didn't flush this out. So I didn't give a lot of detail on what the intention was, aside from considering this kind of temporary ordinance, but yeah, the intention that I had in drafting this was to have this be in effect temporarily during the, while the emergency order is in effect. So just temporarily during this time. And then number four, yeah, I think we have been talking about this and I guess what I would be interested in having a bit more of a conversation about is kind of in response to Bonnie's sort of question or prompt to the council about further direction on what we might be willing to do or consider in terms of what additional assistance we might provide. And I think that that is sort of up in the air. I mean, the economic development trust fund was mentioned. I know we are looking at massive, massive cuts on so many levels. It's hard to imagine allocating any serious resources to this. And we also know that as a local jurisdiction, we just don't have the resources and capacity to really solve this problem or even temporarily help this problem on the scale that it's needed. So I do think that kind of looking at the mix of what's available. And I know I trust our staff is gonna do that. They're gonna track and find whatever resources we might have the ability to get access to at the state and federal level. And so if there are places, for example, where there might be the potential to match or leverage money if our local, if we were willing to put out something, then I just feel like those are questions that would be worth considering further. But I wanna kind of hear what others have to say. Bonnie asked for a little more clear direction in terms of our intention. And so I think that would be helpful if we're gonna move forward with that piece. And I'll just, I guess, follow up with that by stating, I remember at a previous meeting, we kind of got an update on the emergency loans. I mean, I think this is another area where, you know, it was mentioned that if council wanted to, you know, increase or provide additional funding, for example, another $500,000 towards that loan. I mean, this could be an opportunity where we can have a discussion about some of the different types of areas of funding. And then where would we like to see that funding go? So, you know, a recommendation could be that we have an additional $500,000 to a small loan program, or maybe there's other ways that we can, there's other funds that we could then also apply in creating more opportunities for people to get resources. And again, to talk to, for the, as far as the moratorium on rental increases for both commercial and residential, I think Council Member Brown really spoke to it, that this is for during this emergency time period, and additionally, I mean, as we're moving forward, we don't know, you know, how many people are gonna actually receive federal funds. And so, we could, you know, have something that's temporarily in place and then revisit it in the future, as we have a better sense of how many people are getting resources. And then, you know, maybe more, like another possibility could be to more heavily track how these resources are getting spent. So, but just, I guess, to clarify, but yes, these are the moratoriums on rental increases are met for the state of emergency. And then the other options were to be discussed as well. Vice Mayor Myers and then Council Member Matthews. What I was wondering, I guess, one thought I had was, and the mayor and I have been talking to staff about this is to try to kind of maybe take a little bit of a step back in terms of sort of developing our own recovery plan and really being able to identify the key areas of investment that we need to do for our community. As we're gathering additional information, I know, for example, that economic development is doing a lot of work. They're doing a survey currently with businesses and trying to dig into some of the specifics. The chamber just updated and produced a survey of businesses. That one's county-wide, but I know they also were able to identify which were city businesses and county businesses. So, and then there's the business council that's been put together with the help of the Community Foundation. So there's, again, just a lot of moving parts. And I'm wondering if we could move a more general proposal tonight, identifying some of these as key questions to answer and develop suggested language for it. So I'm gonna take maybe a crack at this to see if we can maybe get something that we could at least wrap up for now knowing that this work will be going ongoing. So I'm just wondering if the council member Brown, if you would consider something to the effect of as part of the city's COVID-19 pandemic response, the mayor and staff will assess impacts to local businesses, residents, families, information and data to the extent possible to inform measures to protect, measures to, against rent increases, the development of a payment plan program for residential and commercial tenants to pay back rents over time and continue with developing and potentially increasing support for local businesses, for local small businesses, something like that. Did anybody write that down? I just sort of winged it there. I'm trying to scribble most of it. Okay. I'm just trying to see if we could put the intent together tonight. And then I'm okay with the June 23rd meeting. I think mayor Cummings, we were thinking about trying to bring sort of the skeletal outline of a recovery program that we would sort of, as a city be enacting. And I'm wondering if this matches up with that. And council member Watkins had discussed some of these, we had discussed some of these things as well through the HIAP program. I just, I'm not sure if this is fitting together. I think mayor, you're probably the one that's been in multiple conversations. I'm just curious to hear if this makes sense to you or if you can potentially nuance some of this with me as well. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Council member Brown, since you're the maker of the motion, maybe you can start and then I can follow up with some comments on that as well. Sure. So I, yeah, council vice mayor Meyers, I appreciate the thinking around kind of stepping back and wanting to have more information before you make some of these decisions. Although I'm not sure that kind of a direction to further assess and gather data to come back at a certain point, which then will lead to another discussion is, I mean, I feel like that's a little bit far off and it also could entail some additional resource time, resources to try to develop an assessment that would actually be useful in making some of those decisions, like what data would need to be gathered, how extensive would it be, how much more would we really know beyond what we're kind of already seeing? And so I'm wondering if perhaps what I could try to do here is, but I recognize the issue about trying to move too fast without more information. So I'm wondering about it for, rather than we're trying to map the coordinates, we said, if you could just scroll back down a little bit, Kibani. Direct, so for number one and two would be including an evaluation of the need and potential for adopting moratorium on commercial and residential rent increases, and then just delete two and then the rest of that. So rather than the draft ordinances. So I think that like just having some evaluation to report back on those things, I don't know if that's way different than what you were suggesting. I'm just trying to kind of parse the, or terms. Yeah, I would be amenable to that. I think the intent is that these things don't take months and months, but that we're nimble enough to get a sense through our relationships with both business owners and hopefully through some of the connections we have through tenants and tenant organizations that we can get a sense of. And again, reflecting back on whether state's gonna do something. But yeah, I think that language looks a little more one step back, which is what I was intending. And if I could just jump in really quickly and then I'll let you move on. So would it be helpful to include something about in conversation with tenants, conversation with local business and I'm sure you mentioned maybe service providers who are involved in rental assistance and tenant protections or tenant legal services or something with that, would you like to see something about that kind of laid out in this first part? Yeah, we could put that detail in there, although I trust the staff has a pretty good sense of the business organizations and some of the things. And to the extent that they can utilize their existing network, but I'm comfortable either way. Either way, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if the intention seemed clear enough and staff is clear on that then I don't wanna be more prescriptive than necessary, like for our staff to very accurate, so yeah. And maybe one way to capture that is after the period, we could maybe put a comma and then just say in consultation with community members and partners. Mayor, which period are you talking about? Right, exactly where you're at, the words of Marshall and the residents were, yeah, in consultation with community members and partners since it's kind of captured in number two. Yeah, just get rid of that all together. This is going in the right direction. I was not so enthusiastic about expecting a fully-cooked ordinance on June 30th. I think the idea that we're seeing a little bit more situation is just better. It's really clear it's related to the COVID pandemic, temporary relief, and here's the temporary relief resident, I hope it is the tenant, so it's just the tenant. I think in the bottom, maybe we should say, I remember number three, we talked about extending some sort of, and I think we all see this with some of the bridge relief, also it's the same as providing additional support to small businesses and residential tenants, but I think we were also seeing some support to the census and the census and the small business. I understand that in the same way. Yes or no? Yes. Yes. Okay, so it might go around to the light there. Okay, or? No, it seems to be in reference only to tenancy and not to the survival of the business. Okay. Other possibilities for the city to provide additional support to small businesses? Can I just say to local residents at small businesses, residents as in either, yeah, P, there you go. I'm just assuming that number two doesn't involve the city being a banker between a tenant and your landmarks. Subjection? That would be it a little much, even for me. Yes. Tom, our team, maybe if you wanted to. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to just quickly reference an item that'll be coming before you that I think the Vice Mayor referenced and netted the discussions around our strategic planning process and our work plan and how they interrelate moving forward with the COVID response in the strategic planning process and how it affects everything else that we're doing. And so that is expected to be before you on June 9th. So you'll get that on June 9th and I just wanted to just give you that information or we'll be bringing that course. You'll see that and how everything interrelates. So I just wanted to just clarify that. Okay, thanks. And to Vice Mayor Myers to your point earlier, I didn't respond, but I think that, yes, part of this is a part of the recovery, I guess, effort, but I think that the intention was just kind of seeing that this is gonna drag on longer and given that we were able to have a conversation about evictions because that was supposed to come back at this meeting. We thought that it might be good to see what other protections we can put in place moving forward, but I think a lot of this is gonna end up overlapping with our recovery since this is gonna probably last for a fairly long time. Thank you. Can I just add, I'm sorry, just on the topic that, yeah, the recommendation before you will involve having the council accept the report on reconciling the traditional strategic planning work and then the reality of the response to the pandemic. And then also establishing a council strategic recovery plan committee. So the ongoing work can be certainly integrated into that. So that'll be an opportunity to cover those issues as well. And it's part of that process. Any further comment on this item? And so if I think we're at a point where we can take a vote, I'll ask Kurt to please call the roll call vote. Who was the second on this first? That was me. Do you have a... I'm wondering if we did public input and I have fallen asleep or something. Yeah. We did. Thank you very much. I really, I truly couldn't remember. Thank you. I'm ready for the vote. I think it's excellent. Excellent. I just can't see the whole motion as there's some stuff going off the top of mind through it. So... That's crossed off. That appears and that there's really no one... We can vote on the item before us. To member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Vice Mayor Meyers. Two more items before us before midnight. It's related to the COVID-19 pandemic. And I'll turn that over to our city attorney. Thank you, Mayor Cummings, members of the city council. I'm going to ask Kathy Bronson to present this item. She's been working very closely with the police department, fire department and the city manager's office and Parks and Rec in implementing the various enforcement tools that we have, but in this case, in particular, with respect to the county health officers, shelter-in-place orders and the statewide orders. And so I will turn it over to Kathy. And I'll just note that both Chief Mills and Chief Hayduke are also here and available to answer any questions or provide their input on this item. Hi. Good evening. We have a thoughtful discussion of the last item. This item is a proposed ordinance and we're proposing it on an emergency basis. And what is pretty simple, the proposed ordinance would be to essentially create an infraction offense under a city law for violation of the various public health orders that had been rolling out related to the COVID-19 pandemic. One major issue that we've sort of come across is that under current law is a misdemeanor to violate these public health orders, whether they be from the county or at the state level. This is a major concern because committing a misdemeanor is a pretty big deal and it requires a district attorney to prosecute you and depending on your income, you may be entitled to a public defender. So the end result of the various citations that are sort of in progress that are on the misdemeanor track is sort of unknown. And just sort of common sense-wise, I think there's a sentiment within the police department and also within our office that some of these violations should really be infractions just because the conduct is more in line with basically like theories of negligence. It's more similar to a traffic ticket versus willful criminal conduct. So what we've drafted is a proposed emergency ordinance to essentially create an infraction offense within the city of Santa Cruz for violating public health orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic. I saw some of the public comments. There was one comment in particular that was interesting that talked about potentially more coordination with the county whether it be the public health officer or sheriff's department, that's an option. If that's the track you guys want to take, we could bring this back to you in another day for coordination with the county. From my perspective, if we went that track, if the county said no, then we would say, well, are we going to rethink this or are we not? In my opinion, I think this seems like a good idea regardless of whether it's regardless of what the county's official position is, but we could certainly reach out to the county and work with them to try to get a uniform approach. Got Chief Mills on the line here. I don't know if you want to add anything. He's here for questions. Yeah, it's good to see if you want to. Good evening, mayor and council members and Kathy's analysis was spot on. And we do think this would help us because it would give more even distribution throughout the entire department as opposed to the sworn members of the agency as well as there's very frequently incidents that take place really don't rise to the level of a misdemeanor where somebody's going to have a record of some kind. This would be more of an infraction. And so we want to be pretty sensitive to sometimes people just don't understand the ever changing environment. And this gives our officers a little bit more opportunity to be judicious and metering out these citations. And just addressing Kathy's last point in terms of coordination, we coordinate very closely with all of the other police agencies in the county. The sheriff's office as well as Capsola, Watsonville, Scotts Valley, we meet regularly on Zoom calls and make sure that we're all coordinating and do the enforcement exactly the same way. And so we're pretty confident that there is really no need to go back to the county or other agencies and have something formal. Our biggest concern obviously is the behavior and the things that take place in the city. And so, and all of us are on the same page and making sure that we're enforcing the same way without completely clogging the courts with hundreds of citations which would be debilitating for the justice system. So this, I do think is the best way to move forward and the city attorney's been very thoughtful about how this has been proposed. So we obviously in strong support of this ordinance. Thank you. I think it's worth adding also. Thank you, Chief. Just emphasizing public comments that the Chief has made that really even issuing a citation seems to be pretty late in the resort, last resort for the police department. They're giving a lot of warnings, a lot of education. But at the end of the day, to ensure compliance, there is sort of a law enforcement element to this. And some citations are going to need to be issued. One thing that I was actually maybe worth clarifying right now, so we have a current process that we're using to sort of achieve this same result, but it's extremely clunky. Basically, we have an executive order that Martine issued that essentially requires all people in the city of Santa Cruz to obey these orders. And then we have the ability to enforce that through the municipal code. And then we have the ability to downgrade that to an infraction through our office. We've been working out this process. It's extremely clunky because the person who's actually cited is cited with a misdemeanor, but then it needs to go back to our office and then we need to work with the court to downgrade it to an infraction. It would be nice if there weren't that even misdemeanor citation to begin with. So that's just a little extra piece of information. And I think that's it for my presentation. I don't know if Tony has any dad. Looks like not. All right, thank you guys. And thanks for the balance. We're trying to get people to shelter in place. And then also, as it's been mentioned, somebody gets an infraction and then that tends to misdemeanor, which then they have a record. That's not what we're intending to do as we're trying to get people to comply with sheltering in place. So thank you all for bringing this forward. And I'll see if there's any further questions from council members. It looks like council member Matthews has her hand raised and your meetings don't look up. I cannot resist the temptation to make a motion to de-clunk our procedures. So once you ask for public comment, I would love to make a motion. And I also wanted to point out, sorry, as I was going through the draft ordinance, I note that in section two, it says as well as any oral testimony on the May 12th meeting, I think that's a typo. I had intended to get this in front of you on May 12th. Today is not May 12th. So hopefully that should be amended to say May 26th. Council members at this time, saying none. If this is an item you want to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Once you have entered the meeting, you'll need to hit star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when you are unmuted, you will hear an announcement that says that you're unmuted and you will have two minutes to comment on this item. This thing to your meeting here, I want to give you a quote from an article that sheds insight into this. This is by Arthur Verstenberg, the evidence mounts is the title of the newsletter an ocean of viruses is the section. And he says, the idea that we can keep from sharing viruses with each other by being a certain distance away from each other and wearing masks is as realistic as pretending that putting a mask on a fish will protect it from getting wet. And he describes how viruses are all over in the hundreds of thousands. And I've heard this from other medical professionals and to give fines for people not wearing masks or following these orders that I consider draconian is very inappropriate for local officials who are to represent the public. This is the viruses I don't see the problematic in cases as the existential problems of the threat of nuclear war and the environmental degradation that's taking place. And I would refer you to Dr. Thomas Cowan as a source of information. Arthur Verstenberg's cell phone task force and a professor, Dolores Cahill. So I think, and also what's going on now as we're sheltering in place, Trump launched his military space force that really threatens the nuclear war. Okay, those are my comments. Thank you. Good evening, this is James Ewing, Whitman, Maryland. I was still working. This comment affects what's going on. So right now in Minneapolis, the police station is surrounded and there's a riot going on. This is very sad. This is what I wrote while I've been listening to you guys. Violence is not the answer, but change must happen. Yet as the greatest form of violence is silence, Albert Einstein, communication, mindful, meaningful and hopeful are critical now as is justice here and on a much larger scale as no one is a worthless eater. So what will justice actually look like here and other issues happen when very large amounts of populations everywhere are starving, that magnetobiologically, words, energy like I am not afraid creates courage with love to triumph over fear. Rudolph Joseph Lorenzo Steiner, 1905. And men like these, Mr. Darryl Davis, why I as a black man attend KKK rallies. So I posted this on my Facebook about an hour ago. I don't really pray for myself. I do and know that magnetobiologically, this anger energy has grown from information I am not aware of. I am aware that we need law enforcement and all military personnel to wake up to the reality that the super elite are using them more than even the average citizen. With that, let's really start talking about our grandchildren's grandchildren's future. It is not that we are alive sentient beings. So don't believe a word I say. Do your own research as the only way the human body can survive even a short time as a controlled slave from the alterations of this already ready RNA and chip vaccine. Mostly still human will now be humanoid. I have one more line. It will not feel pain. How will that affect the feeling of a natural orgasm? Thank you. Actually come to your senses concerning the outrageous assignment of a misdemeanor offense to COVID-19 social distancing as I argued against before to deaf ears. I still don't think it should be anything but at most in the fraction. Nothing has changed there. Again, it is a ticket for what is defined as risky behavior much like speeding. Well, actually less than that because at least for the speeder, the risk is proven and positive witness of the risk taking can be proven. For someone of an unknown health condition there is no way to know if they actually present any risk whatsoever to other people. Many of the social distancing measures have little of any scientific basis and the small number of people actually at risk is unknown, but it is small given the so few testing positive in the county. I would love to see 12 people on a jury try to give someone a misdemeanor condition. For instance, walking on the closed beach at 459. I suspect a great many juries would come back hung. This is not, or this is more about not being able to prosecute in a cost effective manner. Thank you. Some recognition you were wrong before and the penalties outrageous, but you still don't get as an option. It is still outrageous. I might be confused on this, but I think that you are still leaving intact the misdemeanor option using the emergency powers of the law that was there before. I'm not sure this replaces that. Well, you know what? That's all I have to say. Bye. All right, next speaker on the line. I believe I got four minutes. I'll call. Yeah, that's what you wrote me yesterday in a letter. So that's what I should be taking. Oh, yeah, that's correct. I bought that. So the previous speaker's confusion is correct. This can be charged as either a misdemeanor and infraction. Why are you using an emergency procedure to make a supposedly help out people with lesser penalties? But it really is, it's a tool that allows the police to make more use of these penalties. At any time the district attorney of the city, actually it's the city attorney wants whether with a misdemeanor or an infraction, it can be withdrawn. So it's not like they have to pursue it. Misdemeanors require jury trials and a public defender, which in fact gives an additional level of protection to the defendant. Two weeks ago, a measure essentially authorizing infraction and misdemeanor citations by virtually every city employee was passed. City attorney Kandadi assured us then this was merely an administrative measure but provided no specific instances as we are not hearing any specific instance of where such an ordinance is. This clarification as he put it two weeks ago would have been necessary. Many are concerned with the national expansion of police and military power. Others are worried about this operating at a state level. My focus has usually been the local police tenancy hide out or get out strategy against homeless people. This was pioneered by council member Matthews back in the day, which he was already supporter of the council member rotkin support of the unconscionable sleeping ban, which is still apparently at the top of chief mills agenda and Tony Kandadi's as exemplified by mills, numerous public meetings prior to the COVID situation and also a upcoming camping ban. The proposed chapter 6.94 that you're considering is another one of what the police department has traditionally gotten quick passage through insisting it's just another useful tool in the toolbox. This allows police to enforce the edicts of the county health officer, the governor and the state of California public health officer as either infractions or misdemeanors at their discretion. This discretion gives police a kind of power that can be used arbitrarily even with the best intentions. We see in the city and county's defiance the CDC guidelines. We see this problem of the whack-a-mole approach regarding the encampment security for homeless folks as well as individual motel rooms for the vulnerable. That is say the refusal to follow CDC guidelines. The motel rooms are empty when asked for the stats, the mayor ducks. As I mentioned earlier, we've seen attempts to expand the rent a snitch ambassador program. These fancied up patrol security patrols have not sworn off regular harassment of homeless people in city after city and our police department while enforcing the camping ordinance less during the past year or two has ramped up enforcement of other laws with the same effect. We need more positive programs like the police department's recent handing out of sandwiches being concerned about social services helping drug-addicted people get to them but what little services we have. These are the positive motions. We need not more infraction laws at this point. There's already lots of public concern and conflict around enforcement activities while I support the general direction of health officials encouraging caution regarding public gatherings why expand police power at this point. What are the specific police problems that seem to require this? So it was good to hear council member Brown ask the ambassador advertiser for the actual stats that would back her up. Her so-called friend, we're so friendly claims in the future but it's now not in the future that we need this direction before the vote is taken to provide the information of why this measure is really necessary now. What specific problems have the police department had? How many pieces of more but- All right, thank you very much for your comments. And for members of the public who are watching this is item number three on our evening agenda. If you'd like to call in, that was the time and after you have entered the meeting you'll need to press star nine on your phone and you'll be given two minutes to speak. My objection to this is the real cost of each of these infractions. I mean, you have it listed as, you know, 50, 100, $200 or whatever. But each one of those has an administrative cost at the courts which adds hundreds of dollars if not thousands of dollars to each one of these fines. And if you start handing these out to homeless people and people of very little means you're putting an undue burden on people. So if there's some way to lower this, you know, this whole idea of that the police need another tool in their toolbox, their toolbox is overflowing with tools. There's stuff in there about horses and, you know, stuff about shooting off, having a shoot out in the middle of town at high noon and things like that. We ought to go through that toolbox and throw a bunch of this stuff away before we start adding new stuff to it. Look at the real cost of these fines. It's outrageous over and out. Thank you. Those of our public comment on the items and for us. And so I'm wondering if there's any further questions or comments from the council members. I'm prepared to make a motion to move forward. I'm plugging it over there. Can someone help me with the language? I left my, I'm prepared to ordinance adding chapter 6.94 to the Santa Cruz municipal code creating an infraction offense option for violating the county and state orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Okay, so the motion by council member Golder, council member Matthews, let's see you in your hand raised. The motion made by council member Golders, seconded by council member Matthews to adopt the staff recommendation. Council member Brown. Yeah, I just, I'm going to support the motion. I just wanted to comment that, you know, I do understand the concerns expressed by a couple of our public commenters about the potential for unequal burden on members of our unhoused community or unhoused community members. In this case though, I think that I understand correctly we are trying to move away from the more punitive, harsher and lengthier kinds of consequences. So I support the motion and thank you for your work. And I'll just say that I understand the concerns that were raised as well. But I also think that, you know, we also have to understand that if there's nothing in place, you know, our park staff and our police officers and public safety officers just, you know, running around telling people to not do something and they don't have any way of kind of ensuring the overall protection of our community. And so we've been trying to do the best we can, obviously, to balance, you know, giving people access to the outdoors and beaches. And at the same time, we have to protect our community from people who may be coming from other areas where they're higher prevalence of COVID-19. So I think that this is, you know, striking a really good balance between, you know, being able to enforce the court orders or the shelter in place orders, while also trying to not, you know, be too punitive on people. Council Member Matthews. I just have to say, an ordinance like this is always preceded with a warning as a standard operating procedure. Am I not correct on that, Chief? You know, you're not supposed to be closed whatever the current Public Health Directive is. And we're lucky in Santa Cruz. We have avoided some of the worst because our population in general has been really observant of some very tough directions and they're changing and they're loosening. But, you know, getting bounced down to the heart of it, I do believe that in the health emergency, there's a role for Public Health Directions and we have to be able to convey that and enforce it at a reasonable level. And before we take the vote, I just wanted to share some information that came out of our mayor's meeting with the sheriff about a week or so ago. And I was able to ask the sheriff on demographic information of who's been receiving the tickets throughout the county. And so just briefly, when we look at race as a demographic of the people who received infractions, 46% were white, 24.2% were Hispanic, 2.4% were black, 4.7% were African-American, Asian, 0.9% were American Indian, and then 21.8% were other of the infractions were given to men, given to males. 40% were given to females. And in terms of age for people between the ages of zero and 17, 6% received the infractions 18 to 29, 42% of those people received the infractions, of the infractions that were given to people between the ages of 30 and 39, or 19%, 40 to 49, or 20%, 50 to 59 were 7%, 60 to 69 were the 5%, and people above the age of 70 who were receiving infractions, only 1% made up that demographic. So I just wanted to say that, to be clear that, if there's any concerns that people of color being disproportionately ticketed, or that there are any different traffickers receiving more tickets than others, it seems that there's not a disproportionate amount of tickets going to, or infractions going to people of color and people aren't being targeted in that way. So I just thought I'd share that and I'll be sending that over to Calcimum as well. So Bonnie to conduct the roll call vote. Council Member Byers. Hi. Matthews, Vice Mayor Myers. Hi. And Mayor Cummings. That happens unanimously. Thanks for bringing that forward. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. I think I'm actually also the next item, which is related resolution to update the bail schedule. Do you want to start going into that now or? Right ahead. Okay, so as you all know, as part of updating the municipal code, we also need to update the bail schedule, which will define or help to define what the fine is for this type of infraction. The bail schedule that we proposed mirrors sort of like the defaults within our municipal code, which is $100 for the first $200 within the second offense within one year or $500 and $500 for the third offense within one year. So that's what we're recommending. It's sort of the default. I think that's reasonable. One thing to add is the cities you've been over this before, but the city's base fine is actually and the amount that we can control really is actually really low in comparison to the total fine that a person will end up paying for one of these tickets. So we recently received the calculation that the court uses to establish what the fines are. And we believe, based on the calculations that we've received, that if we set our base fine at $100, the total citation will be $480. For the $200 citation for your second offense, that'll be $890. And for the third offense, the base fine would be $500, which adds up to a total of over $2,000. So that's what we're proposing, that's the default within the municipal code and look forward to your discussion on it. All right, thank you. Councilmember Buyer, is this your hand raised? No, thank you for telling me what the actual cost is. And I think that's what some of our speakers were already talking to. How it is in $100, it's this. That's my own, I'm really ready to support the motion when it's ready. Great, Councilmember Brown. Yeah, I just wanna say thank you for finally getting us an answer to that question about how our bail schedule kind of translates into the final fine. So if I understand this correctly, it's somewhere around like four times, it ends up being about four times, whatever our base is. That's what it appears. And this is information received from an attorney at our office who's been doing this, Stephanie Dyck. So thank you to her and public. That she was able to get that information. All right, thanks. Kind of shocking, but here we are, thanks. We're working on it. Councilmember Matthews. If Andy's still on the phone, this is a silly question for him. Does it make any difference with it? If the ticket to the citation being written and the person citing it said, well, I've asked you to do such and such, you're not doing it. I am going to write you a citation, it's $100, but I wanna tell you that when this is a question, it's actually gonna come to X, Y, Z. Would you like to rethink your actions here? Yeah, but when you consider that there's a request and a warning given first. Yeah, Councilmember Matthews, you stated earlier that we often warn people in your 100% right over the weekend. In the last couple of weeks, we've warned literally thousands of people on the weekends and ticketed a handful. And right now we've, we're about 300 citations. And we certainly could write a lot more, but we would rather gain compliance and have people move off the beach on their own. And most often people do once they're educated or directed. You know, you ask, you tell, and then you cite. So only about 300 people have needed citations. And so we're happy about that, but so you're right. We almost always warn first and try to explain to people the consequences that are potential for the citation. Are there any further comments or questions at this time? And if for members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you'd like to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Once you have called into the meeting, you'll need to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. At the time it will be set to two minutes. Members of the public, please call in now and remember to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. For that I believe is the May 22nd, 2021. The health order stay at home. I'm trying to figure out what the small print is and I've been trying to read it. Okay, I'm assuming that's correct. I'm not seeing the similar stuff that I saw in the earlier orders that gave certain people who were involved with critical business the ability to maintain the social distancing and the mask and the proper mask. Cause I did read that at least it explains that some masks are not proper. So I'm just, I know I didn't read through it. So I'm not really prepared to make critical remarks. Another 10 minutes and I would have, I was hoping more citizens would speak before me. So I'm going to do what I can to support everything I can. That's all I can say. Thank you very much. Thank you. So again, if you are a member of the public who'd like to speak to this item, please call it now and press star nine on your phone. We'll be given two minutes to speak. Good evening. I'm just wondering given how so many people have no employment now and on their way to starvation and homelessness, are you planning to establish debtors' prisons? This is a lot of money for people who don't have it. And these are such amazing crying walking on the beach. A friend of a friend got a $1,000 ticket for jogging at the non-designated time at the beach. These are the commons, the public place that we have paid for. And there are others. And I consider this unhealthy policies, the orders supposedly in the interest of health. And it's very unhealthy wearing masks. You can't get the oxygen, you're breathing your own carbon dioxide. Some of the masks have toxic chemicals. This is like a myth of mask safety. I really think all of these tickets for these what are called crimes should be dismissed. I have a list of crimes that I can think of that are real crimes, like being poisoned by pesticides, like Verizon, microwaving, people against their informed consent, fracking. I mean, this is just very anti-democratic, militaristic. Thank you. Seeing no other members of the public who'd like to comment on this item, I'll bring it back to Council for Action and Deliberation. If there's no further questions, I'll be looking for a motion from Councilmembers, Council Member Mathews. I'll move the item before us. A motion by Council Member Mathews, seconded by Council Member Byers. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, we will- Mayor, Council Member Byers, Matthews, Vice Mayor Myers, Mayor Cummings. That's unanimously, and that brings us to the conclusion of our meeting for this evening, or today and this evening. So thank you all for joining us. Have a nice dinner. Thank you. Thank you. Goodnight, everybody. Goodnight. Goodbye.