 Welcome our two newest members to the commission. Shawn Maxwell and Cindy Dawson. Welcome. Do we have any statements of disqualification this evening? Seeing none, we'll move to oral communications. This is a moment for anyone in the audience to come and speak to the commission on items that are not on our agenda tonight. Do we have anyone that would like to speak on items not on our agenda? OK. Good evening, commissioners. I don't know all of you, so I'll introduce myself. And for the record, my name is Greg Pepping. And for the last four years I've served on this planning commission, I really just came tonight to say thank you for the opportunity to serve with some of you. And I really do mean serve. I think this advisory body does really valuable work. Shapes present and the future of Santa Cruz. And I felt like, for me, it was an honor and a privilege to serve the community and to serve city council and giving them my input and us as a body, our collective, my individual input and our collective advice to them. So I enjoyed learning with you. I learned a lot in four years. And I wanted to thank staff for being in partnership in that. And I really just wanted to say thanks and welcome the new commissioners and wish you luck. I hope you learn as much as I did. Thank you all. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Chris Cron, city council. I want to join my remarks of Greg Pepping too. I really want to thank all of you for serving. I just wanted to be here to welcome the new commissioners and really appreciate your service to this community. And I look forward to the coming year. Thank you very much. Thank you. So seeing no more speakers, we'll close oral communication. I have an oral communication. I know it's a little out of order, perhaps. But I don't know what the commission's history is about this, but in other commissions, I've served when commissioners leave the commission. There's usually an item, sort of a resolution of appreciation or something like that that comes before the commission that the commission approves. And I'd like to ask that at our next meeting to get a resolution for the two commissioners that have gone. I think that's a great idea. Typically, this is unusual because we didn't have meetings when people were taken off of the commission. So there was no chance to speak and give some thanks and reflect a little bit on what has happened over the past four years. So yeah, I think that's a great idea. Yeah, we've certainly done that in the past. And we'll probably want to check availability, make sure they're available at the next meeting. But we'll definitely do something at an upcoming meeting. Thank you. Thank you. So seeing no more items for oral communications, we'll close that portion of the meeting. And we have approval of the minutes from December 19, 2019. I've moved the minutes. Approval of the minutes. We have a second. I have a minor correction on that. It's minor. It's just under item number two. There's somebody who was absent, is not Conway. It should be Christian. Somebody who is there second. Is there a second on that one? I'll second. Can I second? OK, I'll second. And I was going to just make that same correction. Right. So then let's take a roll call vote on that, please. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. As amended. As amended, yeah. We have Christian, Sean. I've been 70 abstained since they were not in that meeting. And we'll move to our general business this evening. First item on the agenda is nomination and election of chair and vice chair for this commission. So basically the way this works is the chair opens nominations. We'll do chair first. And then anybody can nominate. And then once the nominations have been completed, there needs to be a motion and a second to close nominations. And then the voting takes place. And then we'll do the same thing for the vice chair. And then those officers assume office at our next meeting. Great, thank you. We start with the chair. Yeah, we'll start with the chair. So is it the nomination? It's not a motion until we're moving on to a vote. Yeah, he just needs to open it up. I would like to nominate Peter Spellman. We have a convention, not a rule, but a convention that the vice chair steps up and serves as chair. And I'd like to nominate Pete as chair. I'll second. I'd like to nominate Andrew Schifrin as chair. There's no need to second nominations. Any other nominations for chair? I hope the nominations be closed. I'll second. Okay, we have two nominations, so we need now a motion. We can vote on that. We'll vote on the nomination, closing the nomination. Vote on closing it. Okay, are we set with closing the nominations? Let's take a roll call vote on that please. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. Now we need to vote. We just take them one by one. Okay, so let's put Andy Schifrin for chair. We just go across and vote. We'll call. Mr. Schifrin? Aye. Conway? No. Dawson? Aye. Spellman? No. Nielsen? No. Greenberg? Aye. Maxwell? Aye. So we have four ayes, that passes four to three. So that settles the chair for next year. Let's move on to the vice chair. I'd like to nominate Christian Nielsen for vice chair. I'd like to nominate Cindy Dawson for vice chair. I would like to nominate Julie Conway. Move the nominations be closed. I'll second that. Can we take a vote please? And closing nominations for vice chair. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. So we have three names. Let's take Cindy Dawson first. Start with Commissioner Schifrin. Aye. Oh, I was waiting, sorry. I was waiting to hear my name. No. Aye. No. No. Aye. So the ayes have it. We have a new vice chair. All right, so that closes item number one on our agenda tonight. Let's move to the next item. Adoption of 2020 Planning Commission meeting calendar. Is there a presentation for that? Wasn't planning on it. Looks like there's no conflicts with any holidays or anything this year, which rarely happens. So it's first and third Thursdays at 7 p.m. Does anybody have any comment on that? Only that. I hope we actually have as many meetings as we have. I don't know how many meetings we had over the last year. I doubt that we even had half of the ones that we could have had, so. 17. With what? 17. We had 17 meetings last year. I have to do the annual count. Okay, out of. Well, two times 12. 24. 24. One in December. 23. Do we need a motion to approve the schedule? I believe we do. Yes. I've moved that we adopt the 2020 Planning Commission meeting calendar as recommended by staff. Give a second. A second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. We'll move on to presentations. We have a health and all policies update. Yes, thank you, commissioners. I'm Tiffany Weisbuss, the Sustainability and Climate Action Manager, and I'm very pleased to be here this evening to share with you this health and all policies framework and the journey that we undertook as a city over this past year to adopt an implementation work plan just a couple of weeks ago, and I would also like to get your feedback on some of the implementation actions. So public, I'm sorry, health and all policies is an international framework that's endorsed by the World Health Organization and utilized by a number of jurisdictions across the United States. It really focuses on the three pillars of equity, public health, and sustainability. And it acknowledges that local governments have a role in public health and community wellbeing outcomes, despite the fact that typically cities do not have health services agencies. So led by Mayor Martín Watkins, there was some direction given to staff to explore this and I will share with you what that looks like. And I should say that I have been to the Arts Commission, the Water Commission, and CPA VAW to talk about this as well. I'm trying to go to all the commission meetings. So a little bit more about health and all policies. It really takes these principles and puts them at the forefront in decision-making and this looks very different in all jurisdictions and we really wanted to understand what was appropriate for the city of Santa Cruz. It really draws on intersectoral collaboration, engaging stakeholders and really looking for the opportunities with structural and process change within organizations to really foreground these three pillars. And in doing so, really can help to create co-benefits for various partners and stakeholders. So just to give you a little bit more about what this framework means. I've already mentioned that this is an international framework and recently the governor adopted in the state budget funding for the Strategic Growth Council in three cabinet level positions to operationalize health and all policies as a framework at the state level. Also, Santa Cruz County's Health Services Agency is very interested in pursuing the framework throughout the county, not just in county operations but extending their reach into their city jurisdictions similar to how Monterey has done. So Monterey for some time has had a specific division within its health services agency that adds capacity for their city jurisdictions to do things like monitoring and surveying and community needs assessments and apply for grants and so forth. And Watsonville is very interested in adopting this framework and they're looking to us as to how we, what steps we took to explore this framework. Also, a question that we got from Council Member Krohn actually during our exploration phase of this process was how do we know it works? And we have been able to point to a very recent study that was published that looked at the efficacy of HIAP in improving community wellbeing outcomes. And it was a longitudinal study that looked at Minneapolis, King County and Richmond and did indeed find that not only does health and all policies operationalized shape decisions but it actually can be utilized to improve community health and wellbeing outcomes. So our timeline for embarking upon this exploration in late 2018, City Council had appointed a subcommittee of three City Council members as well as department heads to explore health and all policies and prepare an evaluation work plan. In April, the Council approved the subcommittees work plan. In June, we had a city council study session where we will really dove into what does health and all policies look like in other jurisdictions, what can it mean for us and to really just lay some groundwork for what it really means. In September or throughout the summer, rather the former mayor embarked upon a listening tour and met with 14 different community groups to discuss things like what are your top priorities with respect to community wellbeing? What is the city doing well? What is the city not doing well? And really asked for what is your vision for what community wellbeing looks like? And so all of that data is summarized and available at our website. One of the things that we really tried to do was to reflect back what we heard from each of these groups and give them the opportunity to either share more or it to correct us just to ensure that we were hearing folks properly. We summarized that and brought that back in September to city council to give them an update. We also performed over the summer several other evaluation pieces that I'll share with you. And in November, we brought the evaluation report and policy and implementation recommendations to city council for approval, which they did so unanimously. And they directed us to bring back an implementation work plan, which we did at the first February meeting that they adopted also unanimously. And so we've begun working on that implementation plan and much of that includes training and monitoring, which I'll share a little bit more with you now. So in our exploration process, we really wanted to do internal and external reflection on these topics. We conducted an employee survey, a community survey, which to be transparent really did not reach as much of the community as we had like. We had some technical issues with that survey. Our employee survey did reach 17% of our employees, which we felt was a good response rate. We can conducted the listening to our sessions and we also completed a gap analysis where we took a look at all the functional areas of the city, all of the policies in the city and saw or noted where these three pillars were utilized and where they weren't. So that really identified for us some opportunities and I'll share that with you later. And then the planning team and the subcommittee met very regularly to discuss the progress and the recommendations that came forward. Just to share with you a few things that came out of the employee survey, some key findings. We did find, despite providing definitions of the terms equity, public health and sustainability, we found there really was a general lack of understanding of what these three pillars actually mean, particularly around equity. We found complication between treating people the same, which we know is not the same as equity. And so that really gave us an indication of where we needed to conduct some training with our staff. There was also great interesting, increasing understanding and integrating these three pillars into employees work. And there was perceived progress that had been made in improving access to services for marginalized people, as well as providing interpretation and translation services, which I think can be credited a good deal to the hire of Peter Bichier, who has been helping us with that work in a part-time capacity. Also, in terms of the gap analysis, we really found these functional areas to be weak in how they address equity, public health and or sustainability. And so these areas we found to be opportunities to increase our focus in those areas. An example would be on taxes, rates and fees. How can we make those more equitable as a city employer? How can we improve our hiring practices with respect to diversity and equity and so on? And so really we see that there is a lot of opportunity as we build on what really is a set of recommendations that were adopted that may seem modest on the surface, but yet we think they're manageable because one of the, or two of the things that we really needed to bear in mind as we were crafting these recommendations is that it was very likely there was not gonna be new staff to help with this effort and there would likely not be an increase in funding. We did have a $20,000 budget this year and $25,000 got adopted for next year. So we really needed to be thoughtful about the actions that we were recommending to ensure that they really could be carried out. And so we see these as opportunities to build from this year one. So the adopted recommendations then consisted, they were contained in both an ordinance and a city council policy and they contain the following recommendations that were adopted. Number one, going forward, city council will require that the inclusion of language on agenda reports for both commissions and for city council to explicitly describe how equity, public health and sustainability were considered in whatever the item is coming forward. And so as part of that, we will be developing a guidance document for staff to recommend. And I wanna be clear here that we are not necessarily saying that there's a right or wrong way to do this. This is the first year we're all learning, but I encourage you as commissioners to be on the lookout for that language. We are setting April 1st as the date that we would begin implementing, although you may have seen already, I know the planning department has already included health and all policies considerations in their agenda reports. So you will be seeing more and more of that. So we're very happy about that outcome because the thought is that if we can be explicit, we can remind you that these are considerations that need to be thought through in every decision that you make with that eye towards community wellbeing and improving community wellbeing outcomes and enabling you to have more robust conversation and ask staff perhaps to come back with more information if you're not satisfied with what you've seen. It also allows you to weigh the trade-offs because oftentimes there are conflicts between equity and sustainability, say, that can happen. And so it really daylights those issues. In terms of the other recommendations, we are going to be conducting additional training for staff, commissioners, and leadership. And that's where my ask of you after this slide comes in with respect to your preferences related to training. As far as staff training is concerned, in addition to the two required trainings on sexual harassment and discrimination as well as diversity, we will be adding a training on how to operationalize health and all policies in agenda reports that is optional for all staff but will be required for the leadership certificate. We did acknowledge that requiring staff to do a training is really a pretty heavy lift. For example, the discrimination training last year required 26 different training sessions to get all staff trained up. So what we're looking for there is HR is gonna be opening up their onboarding process for new employees. And so at that time we're gonna revisit how can we get everyone trained up in this area? But in the meantime, we'll have the voluntary training on agenda reports. And I'm really pleased that through our health and all policies budget, we are going to be able to support HR to bring back the diversity center to conduct a diversity and inclusivity training that also touches on implicit bias which has been a really popular course. I myself took it, it's fantastic. So we're really glad that we can bring that back this year and we're going to encourage that as well. These trainings are also open to commissioners. And as we get into kind of the questions, the prompts, I will also give you kind of the range of options that have been expressed by other commissions as far as training. And you might ask, well, gosh, we're volunteers. Why do we have to go through any kind of training? And really the thought was, you know, some city council members are interested in, for example, biodiversity and climate change commission. And so the subcommittee really weighed, should we have our own commission on health and all policies or these individual topics? But really what the discussion landed on is, no, these three topics are so important, they should be infused throughout all of the commissions. And so that's why the thought about training has come up and we'll talk more about that. Those trainings will also be available to leadership. And then finally, we have committed to facilitating and participating in stakeholder and partner convenings and have just had some really great conversations with the health improvement partnership, the county on what can that look like, potentially around public health and climate change, which I'm really excited about. So more to come on that. And then finally, the monitoring of well-being indicator metrics and preparing a year one evaluation of our efforts. So through all of these different measures, we've identified 19 different process and impact metrics that we'll be tracking. We will also be in the interest of not reinventing the wheel, we will be reporting on oversampling Santa Cruz and reporting on the United Way Community Assessment Project indicators and the core conditions. So that will be our year one. And then from there, we will go every two years along with their cycle in the monitoring and reporting. The last optional measure that was recommended and adopted is pursuing grant opportunities. Everything that we did over the last year and everything we'll be doing in this first year of implementation really sets us up very nicely for many grant opportunities. We know the state will be preparing a budget for grants in the next year. And there are also foundations like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who makes grants to increase capacity, say, or focus on a particular project. For example, there has been a lot of discussion around can we have a community well-being dashboard that lives at our website where we can reflect back to the community what we're doing and what some of these metrics look like. So, and of course the $25,000 budget allocation, 20,000 of which will go towards consultant services. And I have to say the consultant, Shebra Kalantari Johnson has been incredibly helpful. We could not have done this body of work without her. She comes with a public health background. And going forward, she really will focus on the monitoring piece and the grant writing piece. And then the other $5,000 will go towards the inclusivity and diversity training as well as some of the convenings and any other incidentals related to that. So all of these materials, by the way, the evaluation report, the implementation work plan, the policies and so forth are all at our website. And so I can certainly provide a link to Eric to share with you on that. So with that, I do wanna come back to the commission training question. And I'm sorry, I see I have a relic in here, CPVAW. I didn't change that for planning commission. But of course, I wanna answer any questions that you might have on this. And then I really, I wanna express that we're so grateful to you for volunteering your time for this important commission. And what we've learned in the commissions we have been in front of so far is that the training piece needs to be very flexible. Some commissions want to perhaps have this be an item where they dive in on their commission agenda. Some commissions wanna devote an entire meeting to this topic and dive into things like equity screenings and power dynamics analyses. And others want just optional stuff that they can drop in on if they would like. And so really everything we realized that we need to create flexible options for the trainings that suits what your commission would like to do. The one thing that we are asking of commissions, and this would be directed I think to the new chair, Commissioner Schifrin, is that after the year one, at the end of the year, we would love to have a one paragraph of reflection on how health and all policies either did or did not impact your work throughout the year. How did the first year go? And I'm hopeful that you may be amenable to that because that feedback clearly we will take to heart and utilize in year two implementation. And then lastly, is there anything else that you'd like for me to know? So at this point, I'd love to turn it over to you to answer any questions, to hear any thoughts about the training component and whatever else you'd like to share with me on this topic. Thank you. Just wanna clarify one point. So we're gonna open it up for questions from commissioners, but we're also gonna open this topic up to the public for comment. It's on the agenda. Okay, great. So does anybody have questions for staff at this point before we open it up for public comment? Let's have a question about the trainings. So it sounds like you've already invested in the curriculum and the preparation for trainings. So it could be rolled out either as tacked on to an agenda, a regular agenda item. You could do a piece of it. Is it something that has components that you can? We have not developed anything like that yet. We really wanted to visit with all the commissions before we set anything into motion and get their feedback. And so this is a piece in the implementation work plan that we deferred and said, we're gonna come back to this after I've had an opportunity to get to all the commissions. So I think that I could come back and propose that after I've heard from all the commissions what could it look like for each of you? So I don't have anything plug and play at this moment. Yeah, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the integration of the three pillars and how you might envision wrapping that into a training. I know you're collecting information, but that would be a component I would be particularly interested in really focusing on in a training. And you mean the training specific to the commissions? Yeah, the training specifically to the commissions and the integration of the three pillars of equity, public safety and sustainability. Sure, sure. So in terms I can speak, of course, most fluently on the sustainability piece, I think something that commissions don't really benefit from is kind of the primer on what's our climate action plan? What are we working on day to day? What is best practice in this space? That's something that I could readily develop. But I have to admit I'm not an expert in the equity nor the public health space. Now I've learned a lot over the past year and a half that I've been working on this, but I have drawn from a number of different public agencies for Collins, for example, and others who have developed both curriculum and tools that could be utilized. And depending on if you wanted training on a particular topic or all three of them, I could make a proposal to you as to what that could look like. So I don't really have a super clear answer for you, but those are some ideas. Thank you, that was helpful. You're welcome. Gary. In relation to planning commissions in particular, are there any other examples of how health and all policies has been implemented by planning commissions or I don't know if that includes other cases? That's not something I've really encountered. Like I said, every jurisdiction really has done this differently. It's interesting because in Richmond, we tried to find that kind of how have you operationalized this and really some jurisdictions simply reflect on what they're already doing and categorized along these different dimensions or pillars. And we've taken a different approach, which by the way, I just today got an email from the National Association of Cities and County Health Services Agency who have learned about our work and have asked us to present at their conference on this. So I think that will be an opportunity for me to learn even more. Fortunately, there is a lot of guidance on this topic from an outfit called Change Labs. And of course, we've been looking at whatever documentation that's been produced by other jurisdictions and spoke with them, but I don't have a great answer for you on that commission or Greenberg. Any other questions for staff? Okay, do we have members of the public that would like to speak on this topic tonight? I wondered if mental health is included because that's an aspect of health. I believe that's directed to the commission. I don't know. Can I answer that question? I would be interested in hearing. Okay, thank you. Yes, of course, mental health is included. All facets of public health are included in this topic. You know, one thing that I think is important to point out is that the city is not looking necessarily to take on new projects or new work necessarily that involves these topics. It's really, how can we change our processes to foreground these topics? So last night was such a great topic at the commission and it was interesting because I think that that commission actually took this presentation as well, this is our opportunity for new projects and so forth and really I have to remind commissioners that there is no new staff to carry out new projects and work, so we need to bear that in mind. But yes, mental health is certainly part of the equation. And then just the other first thought I had was like 190 West Cliff that came before this body and the city council and the people that lived at Clearview Court, there were a lot of issues with exhaust trucks coming, the noise and how would something like that be then looked at when you have residents really close to something that is going to affect their health, really nothing was done to alleviate. So how would that be handled? It would be considered. Would you like me to answer that question? So I have not been intimately involved in that project but I would recommend as maybe guidance for staff going forward that if they had received those kinds of comments from the public, then in the analysis section of the agenda report where descriptions of how equity, public health and we're considered, I would include that in that section. And again, it really puts it then to the decision makers to weigh that information and decide when there are conflicts, what is the highest priority or what do we want to elevate here in this decision? Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Seeing no more speakers, we'll close that portion of the public hearing and we'll open it back to commissioners for any further questions or comments to staff or deliberations amongst us. Andy? Well, I think the testimony received is sort of goes to my reaction to it. As it's presented, it's at such a high level of generality that it's essentially meaningless to me. I don't know what it's gonna come down to is how it's implemented. And I think as the speaker indicated, depending on your point of view of a particular project, you're gonna think it's healthy or it's unhealthy. And so I'm just not sure since there are no specific metrics that the city has adopted for what the objective is, what are we trying to reduce the number, the amount of homelessness, are we trying to reduce the number of patients who get mental health services? It's all sustainability, equity, sure, who could be opposed to any of that stuff? But what does it really mean? And so I'll, I think it's gonna be interesting to see how members of the public and applicants use it to justify whatever they wanna do. Because I think everybody who gets in front of us believes that they're helping the public health and they're helping to, they're doing sustainable projects. And I'll be interested at the end of the year to provide some, if the commission has, if it's actually played a role in being helpful in the commission and making decisions, that would be great. At this point, I just think it's, from my perspective, it's the information is at such a high level of generality that I don't see how it can be, it's gonna be meaningfully generated in or integrated into the reports that we get. The county has adopted a strategic plan. Every agenda item talks about what? Policy of the strategic plan. It's implementing and everything the county does is consistent with the strategic plan both before and after the strategic plan. So I really question the meaningfulness of these very high level commitments to do what everybody would like to see done, but really just mean something different to everybody everybody who gets involved. So I don't mean to be overly critical, but I just have never, I have just not really been able to understand what this, how this is actually gonna be operationalized on up for our commission anyway, on a project by project basis. So I look forward to any suggestions that would come from staff on this. Well, I'd like to respond to you in terms of the metrics. Of course, what I've given you is a very high level overview of a year and a half body of work and so trying to kind of fit that into the strengths of our time really, force me to go high level, but in terms of the goals and indicators that are related to the community assessment project, there are three related to health and healthcare. There are three related, four related to education, two related to economic stability, five related to social and community context, four related to natural environment, several related to neighborhood and built environment public safety, and one related to stable affordable housing and shelter. So those are the community well-being outcomes that we will be tracking long-term. We already have historical data on those because of the longevity of the United Way Community Assessment Project. And you know what, you're right. This is the first year of implementation. We have very concrete actions that we are taking. The training, I think, will really serve us well to have a common understanding of what these three things actually mean. And we will reflect after year one and refine and revisit, so. If I could follow up, I think it would be useful, at least for me and maybe to the whole commission, to get informational report on what those various metrics are that you've cited. I don't need to hear them tonight, but I think maybe something in writing that was just kind of an information item for us. So that would be some way that we could track in our own, when we get projects before us, if we're gonna be looking at the specific, well, how do they really relate to these specific objectives that the council has adopted to a way of carrying out this. I love that idea in that. That's included in the implementation work plan that I said I would give the links to Eric. They will be forwarded to you. And it's a short document. It's 15 pages. It includes all the implementation actions I mentioned, the 19 process and impact indicators will track as well as those goals I just cited. Great, thank you. I appreciate your presentation. No problem. Thank you. Any other commissioners have comments? Yeah, I guess I feel like it is helpful to acknowledge and that the city and all of these jurisdictions are acknowledging that of all of the work that we do around policy or planning projects, really at the heart of it are human lives in this community. And what I saw in the health and all policies effort is it really insists on reviewing the humanity of the work that we do the impact on all of us. So I'm glad it's going on. I agree that it is, it's up here. But I mean, I've been working with the CAP for all of these years. And I also know that sometimes that's felt so general that it couldn't help guide the way as much as we wanted to. And on the other hand, we have this phenomenal history where we can look back on maybe it wiggles a little bit along the way from year to year, but it really provides us some understanding of the health in our community. So I'm glad that it's working on it. And I think that I could see some opportunities for checking in as the year goes by. And I was thinking as you were speaking, is this something that shows up as a part of a policy proposal or a part of a project proposal I'll be interested to see how you find to play it out for us. And I know that you are very used to doing that and showing us your metrics and your progress in your, could we call it your day job when you come and report to us. So I look forward to hearing more about it. Thank you. I had one other thing on training speaks to my earlier point. I do always worry, however, when it's a ton of work to come up with a training program and especially to disseminate it throughout in all of these different ways. So I would be concerned that it's another layer. So if to the extent that there are training modules or practices that are being developed throughout the city, I'd be interested in seeing what they are. Okay. I can share those as well with Eric, what's already been developed. And then I can circle back once I've been to all the commissions to kind of make a next step proposal. Sure. Without an expectation that you're, you know creating something new. I just wanted to make a quick point, which is that I think this is a really helpful discussion about like what we mean by these concepts and even having that conversation could be generative for us. And there's actually a study that's being undertaken by a colleague of mine in sociology at UC Santa Cruz on the meaning, a different meaning of equity in climate action plans across the state of California. That's done this big kind of content analysis of all the climate action plans and look to see how equity is defined. And so that might be a useful read and they put out an article based on this that I might share just as an example of like how you start thinking about how a concept is defined and operationalized. Yeah, absolutely. I'd be very interested in that particularly as we will be embarking upon our 2030 climate and energy action plan starting in July and I have a commitment that it will be equity centered plan. So I'm already researching and would be happy to add that to my research. Okay, cool. So I'll share that maybe with the commission as well. Yeah, I think, you know, it's a new tool obviously. I mean, the way I see this playing out is it's something that we will start to see regularly if staff is incorporating comments and how we might be aligning with a policy that's trying to be defined and how projects might be incorporating those issues. I think it's a great broader perspective that we can bring sort of a community wide focus on. So I think it's pretty exciting and I think it'd be a good tool for us to hone even further as we go forward. The training part, I think there's maybe a little bit of time needed to figure out where some specifics might be helpful, at least for me. I don't really know what the right training is yet, but maybe the start is reading some of those documents and understanding what's been available already. So thank you for your presentation. Thank you and thank you so much for your valuable comments, I appreciate it. So we're gonna move to informational items. Do we have any informational items this evening? Nope, okay. Seeing none, we're gonna move to subcommittee and advisory body oral reports. Yes, Samantha, Hashard's gonna give a summary of the work that's been done this past year, but before doing so, I'd like to thank and acknowledge the work of commissioners Nielson and Spelman on this. I think it all ended up being a lot more work than we thought it was, but I think we're gonna be better for it. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sam. Thank you. Hi, good evening, planning commissioners. So in June of last year, your commission appointed commissioner Nielson and commissioner Spelman to an ad hoc subcommittee to review our list of materials that we collect with planning applications. And the purpose was to ensure that we're all getting the information that we need upfront to make informed decisions. So yeah, commissioner Spelman and commissioner Nielson really are the technical experts here, they're architects. They've been through this process many, many times with us here at the city, with other jurisdictions as well. So their feedback was extremely helpful and we were able to make a lot of major changes to our materials list. So I provided you with a copy today so you can see the final project or the final product, but as we're using it up at the counter, we're making small tweaks and tightening it up just based on our needs. And I just want to highlight three of the big changes that we made. The first is that you'll see that the check boxes are removed. So we took away the ability for individual planners to decide whether a certain material was required based on the project. So now everything is required for every project, but we did include some notes to allow for discretion if there's extenuating circumstances. Number 11 on that list are contextual requirements. So these are more detailed and comprehensive context requirements. They're comprehensive renderings or photo simulations. And then number 13 is the building and site section. So these are all just to provide a better analysis of impacts on surrounding uses and the surrounding neighborhood. And for these last two, Commissioner Spellman has volunteered to draw up some examples of those so we can put those in the application as well and make it a little bit more user-friendly. So it'll still be up to the planner to review the items against the site plan, the elevations, grading plans, make sure that they're accurately depicting the project before they come before you. So that was it. We found that this was a very productive exercise. The commissioners dedicated a lot of time to it and provided very helpful feedback. We were able to expand this list in a way that provides a lot of certainty to applicants up front and should result in a robust and thorough application for informed decision-making. So this is just a subcommittee report so there's no action on your part required. So I will go ahead and turn it back over to you for any additional discussion. Thank you. The commissioners have comments. Andy? I have a question. First, let me say I appreciate the work that was done. I think it's, it all sounds really good. I haven't had that much experience with the application process in recent years. So, but I know from the few projects that have been before us while I was here that there were problems and it sounds like the proposals are really responding to those problems in a positive way. My question has to do with SB 330 because as I understand that bill, which is now in effect, the developers have the ability to and actually may have to go through something called preliminary applications. And the law is very specific of what the city can ask for in those preliminary applications. And one thing that, when I looked at it, there was nothing about adjacent uses, which was a point that you brought up and I thought was really helpful is like what's going on around it? I think that's useful information that's not in the law, something that the city can ask for. So I'm just wondering how the new application format is going to work with this preliminary application process that the state has sounds like is at least trying to impose on the city. Yeah, so first off, under SB 330, a preliminary application is not an absolute requirement. It's an option. And if a developer does choose to go that route and they follow that very specific prescribed list of requirements, once it's been deemed complete, there's a six month process that they're locked into or I should say a six month timeframe that vests them in everything that's in effect from the date of that complete letter on out. So in other words, they'd have to submit their formal application within that six month period to get that besting benefit. That's different than what we're doing here, but this is important as it relates to SB 330 because this too is a prescribed list of required information that we need to base our completeness letters on. And there's some streamlining provisions in SB 330 along those lines as well. So we have followed the state law. We have the preliminary checklist posted on our website as prescribed by the law. It's different than this one here that we shared with you tonight. And we also have some qualifying language in that preliminary application that basically gives an applicant an option for the vesting benefits or if they just want feedback, you know, and if they want to go the latter route, they don't need to have everything that's specifically prescribed. So we do sort of give them that option. So am I understanding you correctly that while there is this procedure allowed under state law, there are disadvantages to developers in doing it potentially in terms of how quickly they then have to get their final application done. And so not every developer is gonna choose to do that. And if they choose, the benefit of having the preliminary application might be outweighed by having greater flexibility from a time perspective by going through the normal application process in which case they would go through the kind of application procedure that we've outlined here. So it might be less information that they have to provide for a preliminary application under SB 330, but then they have a stricter timeline to get their whole project together. Okay. If they want those vesting rights, yeah. Okay, thank you. I think that's helpful to me. I'm assuming SB 330 is dealing with housing. It's not anybody, any project. Yes, it's housing, streamlining essentially. Right. So other kinds of projects would not be subject to that preliminary application process. What about mixed use? It has to be a housing project and there's a definition of it in the state law. It's straight housing, it's mixed use, and then there's some transitional housing, as I recall. Emergency shelter, also. Emergency shelter, thanks. So it would include mixed use. Yeah, there's probably some limit on how much mix you can have. Two thirds. Yeah, there is, that's two thirds, right. Any other questions for staff on this item? Yes, let me, this SB 330 process, is that limited to five years, like some of the other laws, is that forever? There was so much state legislation that was passed this year. I don't think this has a sunset. It's not a five year. I know a lot of the ADU legislation is five years. ADUs are five years. But I thought some of the SB 330, some of the other requirements were five years and some were, and so I just. I don't think, I have to confess, I don't know the answer to that immediately. I can look it up. Yeah, homework. Yeah, so I'll just say in closing this topic, I'm super excited to see that we've upped the ante and making sure that projects, one, just understand what the requirements are and we're just spelling it out. So we don't get presented projects that are halfway there, don't have quite enough information. We're having to extrapolate for ourselves and make some assumptions. We just shouldn't be put in that position, not just us, the community and everyone else. So I'm happy that we took the time and made that happen. Thanks. Thank you guys so much for doing this work. I want to say thank you for doing this work too. And I think my very first Planning Commission meeting ever, which I don't even remember when it was exactly, but one of the two of you brought up your frustration and so it's been a constant theme. So I'm excited to see better projects that are easier to understand. So thanks for your work. So we have one more item tonight. It's on the update for the inclusionary comment. No. Yes, sure. She said number one, which is that they still get to use discretion in what the staff gets to do. Even though the first part you said, it's very clear they have to follow this, but they can use discretion. So that's a little odd to me. And the case I'm thinking of in particular, and by the way, thank you too, because doing that subcommittee, you both have brought up so many good things at the meetings that weren't presented, that were such good points that I'm happy this is happening, but that's a little scary. Anyway, the project that Derek Van Allstein was the architect on on Sebrite, that you guys all didn't really even take a vote on because it was so bad. That was very disturbing because staff worked with him for so long on it. So that was staff's discretion to pass that on to this body. And this body didn't even take a vote because it was so bad. So I'm concerned about staff discretion a lot of the time. Thank you. I will just say in the big scope of a document like this and putting requirements together for projects, I think one of the positives of dealing with the city of Santa Cruz is there is some flexibility and understanding. It's very hard to write something that applies to a single family home and applies to a 400 unit mixed use project coming to us. So we tried very hard to minimize what discretion there is. And these are things that it would be very obvious that some minor discretion would be allowed for a project. It's not that, oh, somebody would have 20% of that list that they wouldn't have to do, essentially. It's they're very minor points. So I don't think there's really not much discretion per se on anyone's part. And just to your point on, you brought up a specific project. On the face of it, that project met zoning code ordinance. So there's always then a balance between those things. And I think that's why we have bodies and that's why we debate those things. So that doesn't get us a good project per se, right? Even that list with all the stuff in it, there's still something that has to happen in between. So I just follow up on that. Yeah, a checklist is a checklist. I mean, it doesn't really guide the design of a project, but it is a guiding document to help architects come up with to make sure they have the proper materials to show their project. And I think flexibility is extremely important within those checklists because it's, we can't, like Commissioner Spellman was saying, we can't account for every possible scenario in one checklist. Otherwise we'd have a checklist for multiple different types of projects. The other thing I'd say is that I think are, I think the city staff is quite capable of being able to choose, to use the discretion to identify what things are required and not based on the checklist. I think we have a very qualified and capable staff to be able to handle that. So, any more discussion on this item? All right, thank you. Then we have an update for the new subcommittee that's dealing with some council-directed housing items. We have one up and start another one on. So, the Planning Commission Housing Subcommittee was resulted from, through a couple of council actions. The first was on 1210, that was when the city council passed an amendment to the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance to raise the level to 20% of new developments as being restricted as affordable. And at that time, the council also directed the Planning Commission on two key things at that first reading, which was that the Planning Commission work with staff to review the ordinance. Potentially, there's some streamlining items that may be worth taking into consideration. And we had already identified at that reading that there were some definitely some cleanup items. Also at that agenda, the school district was concerned about the 20% inclusionary requirement in terms of making a project that they're considering feasible. So, they've been working, trying to for some time come up with, as many school districts are, certainly throughout the county, are working to find a way to provide housing for their employees. And they've been working on a specific site. They were concerned about the 20% requirement in terms of rendering this workforce housing projects infeasible. And the city council asked that a subcommittee also take that up and try to consider a way to align those, both of those community goals. So that was passed on to the subcommittee. And then on the, what's it, the 4th of January, the 28th it was? Oh, sorry. The, at the second reading, there was some specific direction to pass on to the subcommittee for further consideration. And that was the potential of having that additional inclusionary requirement above 15%, up to 20% to find a way to satisfy that potentially by including section eight, a landlord would have the opportunity to rent to a section eight voucher holder. And that process has begun. So there's three commissioners on the subcommittee, myself, Peter Spellman, Maryam Greenberg. I have been appointed the chair of that commission and we are underway. I expect we'll be reporting out regularly as we go along. What else can I say? It's expected to be a six month appointment. That's generally what an ad hoc committee is. And I understand that it can be extended, but it's not a standing committee in long term. Andy? At the council meeting where the council approved the 20% for a second reading, the staff did recommend that the council add to the, or delay the second reading to add an amendment regarding a section eight option as used to Watsonville ordinance as a model. The council approved it and as commissioner Conway says and sort of sent it to look to the subcommittee to figure out, sort of look at options. I met with the economic development director after the council meeting. I testified at the council meeting in favor of them just approving the ordinance. And I had trouble understanding the language in the Watsonville ordinance. It's pretty general and not really clear. And I subsequently learned that it had been used in some cases to take in inclusionary units out of an inclusionary requirement. And so I talked to the economic development director about a way to have the section eight option in the ordinance, which if it's written in a particular way can help the financing of a market rate project. But it also needs to be written in a way to preserve the affordability in the long term. And it seemed like there was an agreement on how to do that. And the staff was sort of indicating, well, they would support the 20% with that kind of language. And what I guess I'm gonna request to the subcommittee, I've talked to the planning director, the economic development director is supposedly working on specific language. The planning director said that the earliest it can be brought before the commission for consideration is March 5th, due to noticing requirements. And there's still discussions going on between the housing authority and economic development department. But since it has to per council direction go to the subcommittee, I would hope that the subcommittee could meet soon would be able to consider a draft and maybe numerous other amendments that could be considered. That's fine, but I think this amendment could play a very key role in making developments feasible. So I think it would be good to try to get it before the commission expeditiously so it could go to the council as quickly as possible. So just urging the subcommittee to meet with the appropriate staff in a way to assure that we could get a draft ordinance before us on the fifth and at that time make a recommendation. I'd be glad to speak to that. Sure, Julie. So this subcommittee has met twice. So first of all, I really share your concern about the way the Watsonville language was set up. And I am deeply concerned and not in support of the notion that you let a clock tick and then it just converts to market rate. I don't find that feasible myself. I'm also really concerned about what kind of a monitoring and enforcement program would be involved there because as someone who monitors and enforces programs and ordinances, I'm pretty concerned about having it be tightly written. So that is certainly underway and that certainly also the time concern is very much a part of that. There've been, I've been part of three meetings about this including with attorneys that might help us to craft some language that we can move quickly on. And having, treating this separately and quickly is definitely part of the plan. Go ahead. I just wanted to ask the subcommittee to consider a couple points which you can, can you deliberate with this language? One of the things in the Watsonville ordinance that does make sense is the notification to housing authority when units are available. But in our community, we have two programs that administer over 400 section eight vouchers, that would not likely get notified if that notification stopped at the housing authority. Those two programs are the Housing and Urban Development Veterans Affairs Supported Housing. They have I think around 352 section eight vouchers right now. So they have clients with vouchers in hand looking for housing in this community. So I think it would be important to add them to the list of notifications if that's gonna be a component. Housing Matters also has vouchers. I think right now they're at 130 in this community. And they include disabled and medically vulnerable vouchers. So again, really trying to serve that part of our community with this ordinance. And maybe you've discussed this, but in talking to folks, one thing that I was thinking of considering or asking you to consider is this idea that one of the challenges is developers say that, if there's a set aside of 5% and I go for financing, and I have to have a section eight person in there, what if there's no section eight person? Is there a possibility to just pin the rate of that unit to the housing authority section eight rate and then create language that says section eight is first priority. If you cannot find a section eight person, then that unit goes to a non voucher holder at that rate. So there may be issues with that, but I just wanted to throw that out as something to consider in your deliberations. Sure, yep, there's a couple of layers in there to unpack and we will be unpacking it as we move. There's always layers, yeah. So the question of the fair market rate, that would be? Yeah, so that's a published standard, like I think for a single unit in the community right now, for a one veteran, it's like 1844, or it's two different standards, there's the HUD published fair market rent, and then there's the locally generated payment standard that came about as a study that all the jurisdictions participated in, and we will include that in our report, great. Thanks, most definitely. Oh, and I had, oh, sorry. The other thing that we talked about in terms of what happens after this clock ticks and there's no, although it's unlikely there's no sectioned voucher holder, it seemed to me and what we talked about as a way around that was to temporarily allow it to go, that unit to go to a market rate, be rented at a market rate, and what that, and then the next vacant unit in that development would be an inclusionary unit would have to be made available to a section eight voucher holder. So what that would do would be to guarantee the lender that there will always be the ability to rent to either a fair market rent or a market rate, but the 20% requirement doesn't go away. It's still there. It will be there for subsequent units. Definitely part of the discussion also. And let me just respond to what Cindy brought up because my concern with that is that low income people can't afford the fair market rate. Very low income people can't afford the fair market rate. What makes it work is the federal subsidy. So I think that that has to be taken into consideration because to allow a two-bedroom unit to rent for $2,500, which is a fair market rent, that's fine, but there's no low income person who's gonna be able to rent it at that because it's just they can afford or at least a very low income person or a low income person can afford maybe $1,500. So it's good. I think this is a really good preview because I think some of the, this is really the needle that we're trying to thread to establish a policy locally that doesn't hamper the actual creation of housing. And at the same time that we're using all the tools we have available to us to reach affordability. I know that there's layers in terms of the VASH. That's what I've worked with the VASH and the DMV vouchers for many years. And their absorption rate is certainly a big part of making projects work well. And I think that our local housing authority has done a really good job at both working so hard with our service providers that go along with both of those programs, as well as balancing the various federal policies that as you know, because you're on that commission as well, that are required to move it forward. So I look forward to returning and sharing where we go as we move along. And I would expect, I don't have that the first thing that we'd be coming back with is gonna be language on this very item. And I would hope also that some clarification about the additional tasks that this short-lived subcommittee is able to take on during its life. So we'll talk about that next time. Question on this? Okay. And I had actually, I didn't realize until I flipped the page that I had the additional item. There's usually a spot in there at the end for a report out. And I just went to a training sponsored by the city and I feel like I'm not doing my job if I don't report out. However, I mean, specifically, it could be an information item. Information item. Yeah. Call this an information. I think that's really all I intended. Thank you. If that works for the chair. Let's do that. So, first of all, I want to say that I took advantage of recommendation of the planning department and an opportunity for planning commissioners to attend trainings that are specifically targeted for planning commissioners. And I attended a conference that happens at Sonoma State University every year, last Saturday. And it was a little over half a day and it was absolutely the best investment of time on a Saturday that I feel like I could have done. So, I first of all, wanted to thank the city for sponsoring the development and education of planning commissioners. And I also want to really highly recommend the Sonoma State University. This was the 36th annual planning commissioners conference. And there's, there were a number of things, one of the things that I think you would have loved, there was this huge table of planning books of every day. And I thought it was just brilliant. How are we going to do that? I don't know. Some people like to read. But I mean, really, and it was just up for grabs. And so, I came away with just a very strong sense of, for one thing, the commitment of planners. And by that, I mean the community volunteers such as ourselves who give our time to make the very best community we can, as well as elected officials, which there were quite a few of, the state policy, both advocates and policy wonks, and then a lot of technical professionals. And what I really got a sense of is, all of these groups really believing in the community and the importance of community, which is the way Tom Jacobson put it. And I thought, you know, that's why we're all here. It was also inspiring to another takeaway for me is that all of the communities that are represented and certainly everyone I spoke with, which was quite a few, they are trying to solve the same problems that we're trying to solve. And they, you know, such as a shortage of housing, how do we adapt to a changing world and in a way that is both equitable and compassionate. And so I left really inspired. And I'm not sure if I'm still on the commission next year, but if I am, I'm definitely gonna go. And I really encourage everyone else to go. There's also, there's an additional training opportunity. It wasn't impossible for me to go to that one because of planning commitments, but I know there's another shot. So if anybody would like to learn more and take advantage of the offer, I encourage you to think about it. And that's my report. All right, thank you, appreciate that. Well, so that's it for this evening. We are now adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.