 Good afternoon. Welcome to the 12 p.m. session of the September 14th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, video Santa Cruz dot com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, call in at the beginning of the item you're wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note 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. 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 have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member is Watkins here. I want to read here, Brown, here, Cummings, Boulder, is currently absent. Vice Mayor Brunner, good afternoon, I'm present, and Mayor Myers, the president. Thank you. Okay, first off on our agenda today are a few presentations with the first being a 30-year service pin recognition for Jack Sproul, and I will go ahead and turn this over to Isis Ray and Rachel Kauffman from our Parks and Recreation Department. And I'm not sure who's going to start first, but welcome you guys. Thanks for being here. Good afternoon, Mayor Myers and City Council Members. Rachel Kauffman, Recreation Superintendent, and I'll get us started. And I'm honored to join you today to recognize an unbelievably dedicated employee who is celebrating 30 years of distinguished service to the city of Santa Cruz, Jack Sproul. And Jack is on the call. Good, his camera's on, but I also did want to share my screen with some photos of Jack. So Jack was originally hired as a temporary city employee back in 1988 at the Civic Auditorium as a maintenance aide and was then hired into a regular position as facility attendant at the London Nelson Community Center. And the majority of his 30-year career as a center has been in his current position as auditorium coordinator. In his current role, Jack has helped countless youth in our community achieve their dreams of performing on stage. He's worked with numerous youth theater companies throughout the county and beyond to put on performances at the auditorium, including talented performers like Santa Cruz's own James Durbin. His career began as a center and worked with Jack. Over his time at the center, we estimate that Jack has overseen over 1,000 theatrical performances at the London Nelson Auditorium. But Jack's talents go far beyond the world of theater. He has also known and appreciated for his patient and calm demeanor, mind and an emergency. More than a few times, he has calmly evacuated a full theater house during a power outage at the center. He's trained many community center staff on emergency response and evacuation drills. And he's one of the few city staff who worked on the EOC for both the 89 earthquake and the most recent CCU fires. He also recently helped program which helped educate the public on the beach closures during the COVID pandemic, which is a no fun job. I'll tell you with people that are coming to the beach and not happy to be turned away. In addition to his experience on the ESD and various emergency logistics teams, he's been a volunteer with the United States Coast Guard for 13 plus years. So basically if and when the zombie attacks you want on your team. And I've had the personal pleasure of working alongside Jack in my eight years when I worked at the London Nelson Community Center supervisor from 2008 to 2016. And I can just say he's an incredibly supportive work colleague. And another person who's benefited. What is the current London Nelson Community Center supervisor Isis Ray, who would also like to say a few words about Jack so pass on to Isis. Thank you Rachel and thank you Council and Mayor Myers for letting me also sing additional praises of Jack. So upon the first encounter with the man whose daily outfit consists of head to toe black and who oftentimes wears a low focus concentration on its face. One will find themselves pleasantly surprised to learn that Jack Sproul is truly one of the kindest and most generous gentlemen anyone to be so lucky to meet. He provides customer service that goes above and beyond expectations and as a result has built numerous long lasting relationships with patrons of the London Nelson Community Center to become repeat customers collaborators at the center. His how can I help you approach combined with his knowledge and skill and lighting and sound design has made him an invaluable. A member of various theater and production teams that he's worked with at the center. In addition to his interpersonal and tactical skills that Rachel mentioned, Jack is also has a very strong artistic eye, and during his 30 year career with the city, some of his creative roles have included an event photographer for the civic in the 90s. A member of the cultural council of Santa Cruz County, the curator of the hallway art gallery at LNCC, and also an artist of a well known painting that has been displayed at the mall which is referencing the likeness of London Nelson. It's also been in various articles used over the years. You may have seen it before. And most recently as the director and film editor for the Halloween horrors film competition or promotional videos. He carries himself with a quiet confidence that is never both full or arrogant. He knows who he is and how to handle himself in all situations. And it is this self assurance and with the absence of ego that adds to his approach ability and gives others a sense of security and acceptance and his presence. Perhaps most admirable of his qualities is his humility. In a society that often encourages and rewards self promotion, Jack readily operates outside the spotlight. He's shown unwavering dedication to the city of Santa Cruz, the parks creation department, the London Nelson Community Center, its staff and patrons and his friends and family without the expectation of reward or celebration. The examples of Jack's selflessness and generosity are countless, but some notable incidents include the time he contacted HR to see if he could donate some of his vacation hours to help provide additional time off. He's a permanent co-worker, quietly adding another co-worker to the auto insurance policy. When her car was in the shop for a week, so she'd loan her car, his car to her. And volunteering to shop for groceries when another co-worker was home ill and couldn't do so. And he has arrived with favorite treats and hand to share with staff. As you can tell, this is a very special individual that we're very lucky to work with. So please join me in thanking and celebrating Jack Sproul for his 30 years of outstanding commitment, service and support that he has provided to the city of Santa Cruz. Congratulations, Jack, and we celebrate you. Jack, I don't know if you have anything to say today, but congratulations on this achievement. And we'd love to hear from you if you feel like saying a few words. And if not, we will definitely just celebrate your 30 years. Well, to continue my humility, I don't really have that much to say really, but thank you very much, City of Santa Cruz and the council members. It's been an honor to work with the city and for you and for the public for the last 30 years. Thank you, Jack. There's too many more. And thanks for all you do. Next up we have item number six, which is a mayoral proclamation declaring September as childhood cancer awareness month. And I believe, I don't know if we have Brittany Maldonno-Gosline here as the deputy director for Jacob's Heart or if Daniela is the representative today. Okay, Daniela, I was thinking of that when I saw you pop up. So thank you for being here today. This is such an important, I feel proclamation just because knowing families who have been affected by losing their children to cancer. And the fact that, you know, we have one of the nation's most important nonprofits that recognize the need for families to really, you know, need the support and the love during these really difficult times. So I'm very honored to be able to give this proclamation today and to recognize September as childhood cancer awareness month. Whereas the character of our community is building how we treat our most vulnerable and whereas each year, one in every 100 children in our community will be diagnosed with cancer. And whereas cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among children, more than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital anomalies and AIDS combined. And whereas during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services has been keeping medically fragile children and families housed, fed and emotionally supported by steadfastly adhering to the following commitments. One, parents of children with cancer and other serious illnesses will be relieved of financial peers and able to focus their attention on their children. Two, no child undergoing intensive treatment in our community will be homeless. Three, families of seriously ill children will not experience food insecurity during and after the pandemic. And four, no seriously ill child in our community will ever miss a medical appointment because of a lack of transportation. And whereas Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services holds the memories and legacy of hundreds of children from our local community who have been lost to cancer, ensuring that their memories will never be forgotten. And whereas the oncology department at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford has worked closely with Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services for the past 23 years as a trusted community partner in providing family-centered care that addresses the emotional practical struggles of families of children with cancer in the city of Santa Cruz. And whereas it is important for all Santa Cruz residents to recognize the impact of pediatric cancer on families within our community and honor the children in our community whose lives have been cut short by cancer. Now therefore, I, Donna Myers, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the month of September of 2021 through Awareness Month in the City of Santa Cruz and encourage all citizens to join me in honoring Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services for its 23 years about banning support to our community and acknowledging its contributions to childhood cancer awareness month. Daniela, thank you so much for all the work you do and we'd love to hear from you today if you'd like, but I'm very honored for you and recognize Jacob's Heart and all the kids in Santa Cruz who unfortunately have experienced this in their lives. Did you want to say anything, Daniela, or are you just here to receive the proclamation? I wasn't sure. And Bonnie, I wasn't sure if she can unmute her or if there's anything that you would like to see. And look, here you are. I just wanted to thank you, Mayor Myers, for proclaiming September's Childhood Awareness Month. I think it's a huge step in just increasing awareness and it is a true pleasure to serve the children and families in our county. Thank you so much, Daniela. Thank you for being here today. We appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, next is item number seven, which is our library mixed use project update. This is the quarterly update that the council directed be done. And so today is the day for this month. This is the month of that quarterly update and I'll introduce Bonnie Lipscomb, our director of economic development to provide the presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. We'll be giving the quarterly update today and we've made a lot of progress over the summer and I'm really excited to introduce some of our project team members to you today and to just give you an update on some of the activities over the summer. And with me today, and we'll have two parts today, we'll have the quarterly update presentation now and then a little bit later on the agenda, we'll actually go into on the library master architect. But with me today for the project update is Tom Automstein and he is with Griffin structures and he will be presenting a little bit in a little bit later and there he is. A little bit later about in just a few minutes about the project schedule and how we're doing on that. But with that, I will share my screen and get started. So the project of where we are today. Just going to go briefly over the summary of the efforts to date and introduce you to our project team. And then Tom will give you a brief schedule update and then we will talk about next step. So just a few highlights of our efforts to date. We have completed with Griffin structures, the program delivery and schedule analysis on the overall timeline of the project and looking at the measure funding. And so we've done that with Tom and with Griffin structures. We've implemented some of the first steps around the communications and outreach strategy. I'll go over those. Then those in the last quarterly update, we started implementing some of those communication tools during the revisioning process that we did for the current library site, including some of the pop up events and stakeholder meetings that will continue that as that goes forward. We've completed the library as I mentioned, reuse visioning process. We engage through that process and with our partners project for public spaces and group over 700 members of the community. We've gone through an RFP process for affordable housing master developer to develop 100% more low and very low income units than the council direction and just to provide a little background and context. We did have a council direction that we are implementing at this point that dates back to June of 2020. And from that council direction, we are moving forward. Our project team and moving forward on designing some of the conceptual concepts, some of the concepts behind what the library project mixed use project and affordable housing will look like. So that's what we're moving on today is assessing that project team. And then later today, we'll have the recommendation for the master library architect request for proposals and selection. So specifically we've hired our owners rep group and structures and over the summer we've been working with that on both of the RFP process for the library architect as well as affordable housing master developer. And just to refresh since it's been some time since we've come before you group and structures has just a depth of experience in the public sector on affordable housing library experience mixed use development, as well as all the way through construction management. So. Have them be part of our team and it's been a pleasure to work with their full team. And it's just showing the number of projects that they've completed in there in their many years of experience doing public sector projects. And here is their full team and we have had the pleasure to work with all of them so far our day to day is Tom and you'll meet him in a few minutes. He's great to work with very detail oriented. And just on top of the schedule. So it's been great to sort of see. We come forward in the project team really moving really moving forward and staying on schedule. Our communications and outreach strategies. These are the tools that we've been using just because of the level of community engagement and interest in this project. We have implemented just a wide variety of tools and patient outreach, sort of the strategy to make sure that we're reaching different members of the community and engaging them in different ways. So, from our upcoming conceptual and schematic design workshops and focus groups that we'll be having numerous stakeholder meetings and presentations will have pop up events, social media posts. We have regular just blast updates. We'll have a fact sheet that we update regularly that posts on our website and all of our website content is on the city of Santa Cruz dot com slash mixed use library if you can go straight there and get regular updates on the project. We'll have general and we've had a few already press releases quarterly updates to council this is our third this is actually the fourth time we've come to you this year and if we're including the revisioning process presentation but this is officially our third quarterly update. And then once we get to construction will 24 hour hotline during construction. So, just to refresh and for members of the of the community we did complete the revisioning process in June it was a four month process and this was a collaboration with project for public spaces and group four. They did quite extensive outreach reaching over 700 community members through their various events, including pop up a survey where they had 720 responses to their survey. And the outcome of that event and this is consistent with the council direction from the previous from the previous year is that for the existing library site. So revisioning what that library site can be once the library moves to their new home is a third project with mixed use housing with housing really being emphasized and this is the diagram on the far right with a really engage civic and Plaza Park so affordable housing front and center community oriented oriented ground floor uses a civic Plaza Park focused on downtown uses and the potential to host the farmers market engage the farmers market in this process today they're excited for the possibility of this site. We recognize that there still will need to be an interim site just given the timing of when the library would move and when we would need to have access for the new site. So we're we're ongoing communications with them and it's been a really good partnership. So the process I just want to give a little bit of the process for the selection of the affordable housing master developer and that request for proposals process and our selection and how and how we got here. So we posted the proposal. The RFP in April by firm submitted for community housing related John Stewart company. Eden housing and for the future and no been no development. All proposals were evaluated based on an initial sort of checklist and matrix criteria that exists a project team past related experience design and program and the approach to scope including affordability. Based on that we selected Eden that the combined team of Eden and for the future and nation of pretty much every category across the board including just just an incredibly strong team in partnership. You have Eden just you know decades of experience in affordable housing development and expertise in financing combined with for the future that has done some incredible affordable housing projects in our community in the larger region. And so the combination of that team is just really really strong their approach to scope and and their responsiveness to the RFP very detailed. They were the team that not only met our criteria for affordability and deep levels of affordability in the project but they exceeded it and they more than double the number of units that were proposed as a bare minimum requirement and RFP. So over 107 units that they propose all 50% or below of area median income. So I'll talk more about that in just a second but that's pretty exciting. So even housing and for the future housing. As I mentioned they propose over 107 very low and extremely low income housing unit that's the very lowest level of income that's included in our regional housing needs assessment allocation that's important and I'll come back to that. Their proposal and program for the site includes supportive services for residents potential on site childcare commitment to sustainability rooftop solar rainwater catchment systems and all electric low energy building. They have as I mentioned just 64 years decades of combined years of experience with team projects completed or underway in Santa Cruz County. I've already mentioned the last two so I won't go into those but as you can tell we're pretty excited that we have a team of this caliber working on the project. And it's just been our pleasure so far to have some preliminary meetings with them as we start to pull the team together and just be able to tap into their expertise, their creativity, and their their experience in this region. So I wanted to talk Rena, the deputy city manager Lee Lee Butler are also our planning director brought this up in a recent presentation and study session, and I wanted to bring this back up because it relates to this project. So as you see the regional housing needs assessment allocation and you look at the progress that we've made in Santa Cruz towards that you'll see we have actually done. Well, with with saying that there is a need and you can see that in this very low category this is 50% and low and lower right here in the very low category. And as you can see we have 123 units that we still need to complete we've met all of the other benchmarks for this period which is great. However, the hardest units to create are typically done in public private partnerships with done with a public subsidy so done with. During redevelopment days, these are the projects we were doing. This is what has been the struggle since 2012 is being able to create projects at the very lowest level of affordability because they are just so hard to finance. So moving forward with projects like this one where the city is a partnership and we can commit our fund to this we can underwrite the value of the land we can leverage, particularly in a mixed use project just makes so much sense. And we'll be able to address almost all of the remaining need on our on our Rena allocation just through this project alone. So I wanted to highlight that because I think it's really we've been talking about our Rena need for this project. The other exciting thing is to mention is this isn't the only project. And that for our next period as Lee alluded to in our study session. We think that the Rena for the next period maybe three times as large as far as what we need to to achieve. And so our two other that we're working on will be so critical all three of these projects are going to be critical for us addressing our Rena needs in the next nine year period. So here it is highlighted sorry I should have gone to this one first and you can see this project will be creating units entirely within this category this category of most need. This is just to show you a few of their projects. These are projects for for the future. These are in Santa Cruz. The one on the right the Riverwalk apartment was actually created first 21 units. And this is a project that we did actually with redevelopment funding with for the future back in this was the back end we started in 2012 finished in 20 and 2015. The project on the right on the left is the Water Street apartment that was recently completed at 41 units. It's another great project and this is a project of an example of one of the reasons why we're so excited to work with for the future as part of our affordable housing master developer team is because of the community engagement that Jim Rindler and his team really did with the community to create a project that really met with some of the criteria that the community felt both architectically and some of the benefits so that really was integrated into the community and well received. Another project that they're working on is that is our pack station South project in downtown Santa Cruz. This is the project on the left and this will be another 70 units of affordable housing all all in that low income. This is the area that we're targeting for that project as well. And then here's another project that they're working on in three months. And as many projects I'm not going to go into all the details of these but you can see also Mira and Hayward. Honey gardens and senior apartments and El Cerrito projects in Dublin Fremont I mean they're just so well known and respected in the in the Bay Area region and in California at large. So I'm only briefly going to go into the criteria in the background for the master library architect process because we're going to be going into that in a lot of detail a little bit later but I just want to highlight because this has been part of what we've been working on over the summer. We had a very similar process for the selection of the master library architect. Obviously the preliminary review and the matrix was you know heavy emphasis obviously on the design and the program and the experience as related to We did have 14. We're interviewed following that we've received proposals from nine and Jason architecture was selected as a preferred master library architect and that is before you today and that was really based on you know strong team their approach to scope, really the quality and their community engagement, which is just outstanding and the number of projects and currently in the region for the Santa Cruz public library system. It's it's it's pretty exciting. And so with that, I'm a little bit later today you'll be meeting a Jason and Kate Stewart, and they'll be presenting actually their sort of approach to scope and how they do community engagement and how they see the project at large so I'm looking for a presentation. And again, this is sort of part of how they approach their project and how they look at it or take a step back and look at the big picture and how they engage with the community and for all of the projects that they do. There's just some of their projects and this is the recently completed Campbell library. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom. It just take a minute or two and just talk about our project schedule and where we are with that we're still in the team building phase although we're getting to the end of that which is great and within the third quarter which we're in the third quarter of 2021 so we are right on schedule but I'm going to see if Tom wants to add a few words to that. I will thank you, Bonnie, and thank you, Madam Mayor and Council members. So as Bonnie has just highlighted, the most recent efforts of the last year have been to build the team, selecting the affordable housing partner, selecting the master architect, getting into the basis of the communication and planning for community outreach. Starting immediately upon approval of the award of the master architect, we'll be working with both teams to get into the design and permitting phase. That's expected to last about a year. There is, as Bonnie noted, a tremendous amount of community outreach which will take place during that process, iterative in each step, but ultimately ending up in a set of documents that can be set, put out to bid for competing purposes and contract or selection at the end of 2022, which would then lead us into the most fun phase, which is the construction. It's expected to last approximately two years, starting with clearing the site and the grading, building the shell of the building, if you will, fitting out the interiors of the library and then ultimately the final site work and landscape. Expectation that wrapping up the end of 2024. And then beginning the move-in process in 2025 to open the library end of the second quarter. I just want to say thank you and I very much appreciate the opportunity to work on this project with you. Thanks, Tom. So next step, and we'll talk about this a little bit more in the next presentation as well, but we are going to have quite a bit of community outreach on site concepts. In the very early conceptual design, continuing through schematic design is really the time for quite a bit of engagement with the community. So right off the bat, we'll be looking at stakeholder focus groups in October continuing into November on really sort of the big site concepts and how do the pieces fit together and what are the programmatic elements that really need to be very in the look and feel. And we'll continue with some workshops in November and December, as well as coming back to council with some overall site concepts, major design, you know, sort of concepts as well with that for council feedback and direction in December. And then the design team will go back and start working, you know, more intensively on the schematic design moving into the next phases of the project. And then we'll have a series of touchpoints, but quite a bit of community engagement, and I'll go through a little bit more of that in the next presentation. And then we'll also continue with our conversations and some of the work that we're doing with the farmers market. We're staying engaged right now. They were engaged in the revisioning process for the existing library site and are excited about the possibilities that that site has in terms of the farmers market. We're also continuing our conversations on what seven and, you know, what could be there and could that be a good interim site for the farmers market and then what other possibilities might be out there. You know, maybe it's a street closure, maybe it's Pacific Avenue, maybe it's some other combination. So we're going through all of that with the farmers market and just staying engaged. And they, as I mentioned earlier, have been really willing to participate with us and a great partner. And then, as I mentioned, we'll come back to council both with our latest quarterly update in December, as well as a presentation and a request for some direction on the overall site design. And with that, that concludes our presence. Thank you for your time today. If you have any questions, please, please let us know. Thank you very much, Bonnie. That was, you said a lot into that 10 minutes. Well done. A lot of progress. Very exciting. So, I don't know if, you know, if there, Justin, you have a question. Yeah, I just wanted to start by expressing appreciation for this presentation because a number of people have been wondering what's happening and how all the pieces fit together. So just wanted to make that comment that people have been asking and it's good to see how everything's coming together, especially the affordable housing component because a lot of folks have been wondering, is that going to happen? How much of that is actually going to be affordable housing? So it really helps for us to be able to communicate these kinds of updates to the community and really help ease their concerns around whether or not this is going to happen. I have one question. I just want to real quick just make sure that this is just a presentation. So typically we're not get into a lot of back and forth on, but certainly there's time for you to definitely follow up with staff. But I just want to make sure we're clear. This is just a presentation. This is not an item for discussion and deliberation at this point. I had a question about the the reinvisioning portion of this conversation in this presentation. So it seems like that timeline that's been laid out that's really focusing on the downtown library mixed use project. And in addition to that, there's going to be other conversations around the kind of reinvisioning of the current site. And so those are going to be two separate questions, two separate timelines moving forward. That's correct. That's right. I will say that once we get to the part of where we actually have permits and are starting construction, I think we'll we'll we'll keep that going with the construction management. Well, we really will pivot quite a bit to the existing library site and the future that because we can't engage and like we can't put out a new RFP until we know when the timing of when we're going to have site control for that. So at that point, we can pull together, you know, a new RFP, you know, for, you know, interest in doing a mixed use, you know, affordable housing project and the elements that were presented in the in the final presentation for the revisioning process. Thank you. And then one more follow up to because people have been reaching out with questions. You know how the project is coming along in terms of who's responsible for the different pieces and I'll speak to this more when we talk about this item later on but it seems like Griffin structures is really the one who's kind of the umbrella group that's pulling in the different existing developers and where we can meet in terms of the parking and the library and today this afternoon we're really going to be focusing on we have the discussion about the library development piece that's really going to focus on Jason and how they're going to approach kind of building that library because what people have been concerned with is, you know, how do we get all these people together and all this together. And so just wanted to see if there's any comments on that. So that we have some clarification speak to members of the public. Yeah, I mean, that's really why we we put out our initial RFP to and ended up with Griffin structures is that so that we would have an owner's representative that has the depth of experience that Tom and his team has. I mean, he really is and I see Tom's on so I'm going to turn over to him in a second. But I just want to make sure we're watching time. Yeah, we need to keep moving. So, thank you. Yeah, so are, you know, on the ground coordinating all the details coordinating between the library, you know, all the city folks, all the stakeholders, and just making sure the project is running smoothly and that we have all the components necessary and as I showed you earlier, you know, in their experience, they have, you know, so much experience doing exactly this. So with that, I'm just briefly turning it over to Tom. Welcome Tom. Thank you very much. And just to keep it brief, yes, I am the orchestra leader or the ringleader or how we'd like to call it, making sure that the deliverables are provided by all the entities at the city's hiring. And that ultimately we get a successful project out of the entire group. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy or Council Member Brown. I do have some questions that are specifically related to the library components. So I'll save those for later. But a couple that came up, which probably are outside of the scope for that item. So I just wanted to ask them now. You know, a lot of the questions that I'm getting are pretty broad questions around the state of financing. You know, we were working with cost projections based upon, you know, a fund balance for measure as and getting all these pieces together. And I'm just wondering if you could speak just briefly to how that's looking here. Are we sort of in the position to have the extra 5000 square feet that there's going to be a shortfall for that? Are we in air rides in the conversations around with the affordable housing developer? And just kind of what we should expect in terms of the, you know, the money to pay for this, because as we know that we have construction cost escalation and all of the other challenges related to this pot of money, the measure S money, and there are other costs. So just wondering we get an update. Sure. So we're feeling pretty good about it, actually. And we've only at this point, since we've just in the process of assembling our team have had preliminary conversations with our affordable housing master developer. And ultimately, what the actual costs for the project will be able to do that once we have finalized what the overall site design is and what those mixes are and how they're fitting together. Because that's really where some of that leveraging will have where some of the cost savings will happen. And it'll be based on some decisions that we'll bring before you. Most likely in December would be would be would be my approximate timeframe of when we'll be able to really hone in on that of what the costs are, how we're able to leverage financing. But from our primary discussions with the team, we're all feeling pretty good about the bus and where we are with the project. Thank you. And then one other question about where things are out with total fitness and whether that's going to just help where that fits. Yeah, I mean, you know, just in the past, we've just, you know, are reaching out to Christophe total fitness and trying to figure out. Are they in the project or are we going to be working with relocating them somewhere else in the downtown. So we're just keeping that dialogue going. Thanks. Thank you, council member. Any other questions? Good to go. Well, thank you, Bonnie. And nice to meet you, Tom. And we look forward to hearing more as you put this all together. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, we'll move into our. The rest of our meeting here today. I do have a few announcements and then we will move into the regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website. City of San Cruz.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, instructions are provided. We will provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda item that will be open for public comment. Please note public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment today during our meeting are numbers 10 through 25. I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. No hands. We have no statements of disqualification from council members today. I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions or deletions to the to the agenda today. Very nice. With regards to oral communications. This is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that not are not on the agenda today. Oral communications will occur immediately after agenda item number 24. If you wish to make a comment during oral communication, please call in toward the end of item number 24. Disqualification for folks number 24, I believe is the will be the item regarding the downtown downtown mixed use library. So if you have looked at the agenda and you're remembering by topic, that's when that will oral communications will occur after that. Okay, I will ask our city attorney Tony to provide a report on closed session, please. Good afternoon, Mayor Myers members of the city council. This morning at 9am the council met in closed session to discuss the following items. Item one was a conference with legal counsel involving liability claims. The claimants are Kelly D. Gerald LeMau and Noe custom data. Those are also listed on your afternoon agenda as item number 14 this afternoon. A conference with legal counsel concerning existing litigation. The first existing litigation item was the matter of city of Santa Cruz versus Richard L. T at all. Currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. Council received a report from and gave direction to its legal counsel on that matter. Entitled hate to sing versus city of San Diego. He's currently pending in the fourth appellate district. In San Diego County. On that matter, the council authorized the mayor to send an amicus letter in support of the city of San Diego appeal. In that case. That amicus letter will be available publicly once the letter is finalized. In that matter. Item three was an item involving significant exposure to litigation in which council received a report from its legal counsel. There was no reportable action. And item four was real property negotiations involving property owned by the city on front street and designated. As assessors parcel numbers 00515148 and 0515135. Council received a report from its negotiator. Economic development director lips gun concerning negotiations for the potential sale of that property to. CFS hotel venture LLC was no reportable action on that item. And that concludes my report. Thank you, Tony. We'll now move on to item number eight on our agenda and I'd like to call on our interim city manager Rosemary Menard to provide the city manager report. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. I have three brief items for you today from Rob Ody the fire chief will give us. State on the status of coded followed by Lee Butler. Our deputy city manager and planning community development director is going to give you a quick update on homelessness and then we have Kathy Minsk from the economic development department is going to talk to you about some murals and exciting murals that are happening. In our community and then I'm going to give a quick update on the plan Saturday meeting on the California voter rights. District election issue that I want to make sure people know about so with that chief Ody. You're muted. Keep. There we go. Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Just a brief update. I'll try and keep it short and sweet. Of course, answer any questions you may have based on this information. I sat in on a COVID clinician meeting this morning. So I have some slides that unfortunately weren't able to be updated, but I have supporting information and I'll plug it in where appropriate. Basically, right now, the outlook for COVID is relatively optimistic in terms of the Delta search. Gail Newell, the director for this county feels as though we have peace and that we're flattening the curve and that the Delta surge is declining. Cases are trending down and over the last 14 day period has gone from a 14% decrease, 21% decrease and as of today with the 30% decrease from the last 14 days. Transmissibility has gone from high to moderate. On another good note, our vaccine rates are pending in the right direction. They're going up. They've administered 358,000 plus doses that far. We've reached just under the goal that county set of 70% vaccination by July 1st. There's still a lot of work in this area. It seems to have to do with sort of the younger folks in the county in the 30s to 40s range that are still reluctant to get this vaccine. As a result of this surge and just various variants that are out there. We set up the EOC again remotely just so that as we order supplies that we appropriately track our expenditures for FEMA reimbursement as needed. Next slide. So this was one of the new features they actually showed us able to pare down this data from July 1st till today to basically sort of show us that we aren't flattening that curve. That's the graph on the left. The graph on the right actually is somewhat important because we've seen a shift in sort of this latter part of the pandemic. Initially, a lot of the transmission was done person to person within household. And now you can see that almost 62% of it is person to person community acquired. A lot of that they think has to do with the real actually some of their restrictions. People sort of feeling comfortable about having the vaccines and not wearing masks. So again, still something of a concern and of course with the recent holiday and some large events in the county over this weekend. They're definitely keeping an eye on this number. Next slide. The hospitalization rates in Santa Cruz County. Again, they were spiking. They, they are starting to level off. We have five ICU beds available. Overall hospitalizations are two facilities are decreasing. There are currently 12 patients in the hospital currently 11 of them are unvaccinated. So again, lens itself, the vaccination prevents severe illness from COVID-19. So again, the messaging is still working progress. Next slide. Again, in terms of vaccination rates in the county, as I mentioned, we're just below that 70% target. In contrast, the state of California is also about the 70% range with, of course, target and desire of being 80 to 90% to effectively combat the Delta variant and any other variants that we may encounter, such as Lambda or the Mew. For context, the update on the new variant is it's basically comprised is about the 0.1% of the cases. That's nationally, there's 432 in the state of California, none in Santa Cruz. And again, it's keeping in mind that around since January of this year. So it just sort of provides a little bit of context as to the fact that Delta is much more transmissible and sort of the issue that we're trying to deal with right now. And again, they're finding that the new variant itself is less transmissible. Next slide. So again, as I mentioned, the last 14 days, this was updated as of last week, the 8th of September, but this morning. It was that it's down actually 30%. They just had not updated the website for me to use the slide. But again, all good news in terms of the 14 day trend heading downward. Next slide. And again, this slide is a little bit outdated only in the sense that the R number, which is basically the value of transmissibility in our county. As you can see, early on, it was well above almost approaching to we are currently down below one, which is sort of the Mason Dixon line, if you will, and we're actually approaching more towards that 0.75%. So again, all good news in terms of transmissibility in our county. Next slide. Again, just a lot of new information that has been added to the Santa Cruz health. Or in terms of vaccination information for anybody again pass that along the messages to get more people vaccinated so that we can again, get through this Delta search anything else that we may be facing in the future. And that's all I have unless there's any questions on COVID. Any questions for Chief Odie. I see Council Member Contar Johnson. Thank you, Chief Odie for the presentation of just a quick question. Do you know if the county provides a breakdown of the vaccinations by ethnicity or geographic area. Yes, they do. And again, that was part of one of the slides I talked to you about they had a sliding scale where you can look at basically the entire pandemic or short seconds of it. I did from July 1st. So today, since that was specific to the Delta search on that same website, health.org slash COVID-19. They do break down all the specific questions that you have in terms of age, race and location within the county. Thank you so much. Any other questions for Chief Odie. Hey, we'll welcome Chief. We'll look forward to. Thank you. Thank you. So next we have. The Butler. Thank you Rosemary and good afternoon, Mayor and Council members. I'm going to go through a number of quick updates and I will be available for questions at the end as well. So the issue that's coming up, I think you're all aware of and many in the community are aware of is the wind down of various COVID related shelters that the county has been operating. We continue to have conversations with the county about how that wind down will affect our city as well as what we can do to minimize the implications of that. As you know, they have the rehousing wave that they're working on and have many people registered. They have housed about 35 people. So, you know, not as quick a start as we would like to see, but hopefully the recent trend of increasing those numbers can continue. There are three remaining hotels in the city where. The county is providing shelter for about 100 guests in those hotels. And then in other areas of the county, there are hotels that are slated to close as well. At this point, there is at least there is one that is going to remain open through the end of the year and that's a fairly large hotel. It has rooms. So that one would continue to operate for an extended at least through the end of the year. The armory, there are three programs that the county is operating up at the armory right now and there are about 115 people in those. The county is in the process of beginning the demobilization there, which will start and run through October. Their current plan and the city is looking at utilizing that site as a safe sleeping location. We are evaluating the proposals that we have. We did receive another proposal in response to our RFQ for a large safe sleeping operation. And we are targeting a ritual in October with a contract and a recommendation for that operator. The with the hiring that's necessary that would put a operation of the safe sleeping circa early December. So that's kind of the timeline that we're on right now. Simultaneously, we're looking at where we can set up a storage for and that would likely be paired with the pickup locations for transportation to and from the armory. And we're looking at potential grant sources for helping to fund part of the safe sleeping operations. Moving to the the bench lands. There are a number of staff working down there right now. We've got two part time temporary staff who are regularly there as well as a number of folks throughout many of our departments who are there helping with rule compliance and trash collection and service provision like continuing access to drinking water there. Some brief stats on that. There have been 14 counter county shelter placements at this point. A variety of halving placements through things like HUD, HUD's VASH program or people moving in with friends, including homeward bound tickets. There's been direct coordination with the Rebly family shelter to assist a group there. There are also referrals to various service providers and then there were recently installed for additional stations for sharks collection, Narcan and fire extinguishers. The council is likely aware that the project home key notice of funding availability was released last. The application will be available as of September 30th. The State Department of housing and community development is hosting a webinar that same day to walk through the process and applications will be accepted through May 2nd of 2022 or until all funds are expended. We have a number of projects that we're looking at that could potentially qualify and we've been coordinating with the county as well as nonprofit partners who have expressed interest in those. So there will be more info to come on that topic in the future. In addition to coordinating on project home key, we've also been initiating conversations with others with respect to the $14.5 million that's coming in through the state. The mayor has been coordinating with the state representatives in John Laird and Mark Stone's office to get a meeting for a better understanding of what strings will be attached to that and how we can ultimately spend that money. That's all that I have for today and I'm available for any questions that you may have. That's from Council members. Council Member Brown. Thank you Mayor. Thank you Director Butler for the update or Deputy City Manager Butler. I am just wondering, I'm looking at the timing on the siting at the Armory site and I'm just thinking about the move so the county is going to be demobilizing and then if all goes well we can get in there with a potential contractor and that looks like it might leave a window. So have you talked at all about what the displacement of people who would then end up coming back? I mean it's a huge process I know to move people without anywhere to go. I'll just remind us all and then kind of reopen. Is there any possibility for streamlining that transition that you are discussing? Yes, so there is a potential for that. That will enlarge part, it's going to depend on the number of factors with the new response to our RFQ. The particular operator that is selected could influence the exact start time. And so that transition could be for lengthened depending on how much hiring is needed and how quickly that hiring can happen. So that is certainly a concern that we have is that that gap, the November gap between if it's going to take someone a month to get staff hired and on board then there would be that. So we are working to try and minimize that and it's still to be determined whether or not that can be the case but we are certainly cognizant of it and concerned about it as well. It could also save money if there's a way to do it in that way so thinking about the financing too. Thank you. You're welcome. Councilor Cummings and then Councilor Callentary-Johnson. Thank you, Mayor. I had a couple of questions. One to follow up on the Armory conversation. So back when I was on two by two for the past two years, one of the issues with the Armory is that the Army is supposed to be going in and doing renovations at some point. And because of COVID and other issues, we were able to kind of move in and utilize that space, but I'm just wondering if there's many states from the Army on how long we would be anticipated to use that given that they were wanting to kind of get in prior to us utilizing this last time to make renovations. Thank you, Councilor Cummings. That was something that we wanted to look into as well and I've had conversations with the National Guard Armory representatives. And they were looking to get tenant improvements done there and move in relatively quickly. So you're absolutely correct. That was back in March of 2020. And we know a lot of things have changed since then. One of the things that they have said is what they were planning at that point is essentially off the table right now. They do want to do that at some point in the future. They have expressed a willingness to work with us on that timing and they have expressed flexibility in that. But at some point in the future, there would be approximately a two-year period, 18 months at the minimum, but probably two years away construction goes when that site would be unavailable. They do believe that once that is back in operation, they would be able to work with us for a nighttime safe sleeping facility, whereas they occupy it during the day for their operations and we operate it in the evening times for the safe sleeping. So that could remain, but there's certainly a two-year gap when that construction is happening that it wouldn't be available. And we have kicked around some ideas with them about how we could potentially address that scenario, but nothing concrete at this point. Okay, thanks. And then just to follow up to that, I know that we're kind of getting to that time of year where the Benchlands is an area of concern given that it's a floodplain. And so I'm just wondering if that's kind of been identified for what we're going to do as we're approaching the rainy season and knowing that that can be public health safety risks for the people who are in the Benchlands. Thank you. Yes, we've had a number of internal discussions regarding that. And I know Rosemary's former department, the water department has also been looking at some statistics related to that so that we have a good understanding of when individuals could potentially be in harm's way so that as we look at the weather patterns, we can understand better whether or not there is a potential for flooding location. There is certainly that potential. We saw that back in 2017 as you all will recall, but that was obviously a very heavy rain year. And so that is what we are doing with the Benchlands is something that we are talking about on a regular basis to come up with those plans and to hopefully align some of the other resources that we're bringing online. And then real brief last question. Is there any thoughts around 1020 River Street reopening or has there been any discussion around that? Now that the construction, I believe the construction is done over there. Thanks. Yes, at 1220 River Street. Yes, that is something that we've been discussing as well is utilize of that site as a resource and Rosemary and I have had conversations just in the past couple of weeks related to that. And we do see that as an additional potential resource and that that could serve as a number of different functions, whether it's a encampment or storage or some combination of the two. It's still yet to be seen, but we do think that that will be a resource as part of our overall service. Thanks. And then just a quick comment. I know that the end of the month, I believe the eviction protections are going to be ending. COVID-19. And so it might be good if we could get a presentation or just some updates on what's happening there. I recently received a letter from an individual who was They live outside of the city, but they were more or less told by people who they worked with in the county that the county was overwhelmed with their applications at the moment and they didn't, they weren't able to process her. Is dealing with an illegal eviction situation where she got served a notice during the time period when we're not supposed to be landlords aren't supposed to be issuing tenants notices to quit for evictions. So, you know, to the extent we can understand how these resources are getting out and maybe updates to people who might be coming up on that eviction cliff. I think it would be helpful so that we're getting as many resources to people as possible. Thank you. Thank you. We'll work with the city attorney's office on that. And I've heard some anecdotes as well about the resources coming down from the state and the speed at which that's happening. I'm sorry, Council Member Callentary-Jones, do you have a question? I did. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the presentation and all the work, Director Butler. And it's really good to hear about some of the housing, permanent housing placements, even though they're not in high numbers, every placement counts. One question I had for clarification is the funds that are the project home key funds that are being released at the end of September and would be open till May. Will they be will the state be rewarding the proposals as they come in or will they wait until end of May? They are doing a rolling award. So it's not everything waits until May. It's until May or until funds are extended. And I'm going from memory here, but it's a very significant number. I think it's slightly over $2 billion that they're looking at. It was a significant number. So we would be it would be best for us to have our plan and move quickly in terms of submitting a proposal sounds like. That's that's correct. And from what I'm understanding is that we're already in conversation with nonprofits in the county and potentially joint proposal. That is correct. Part of what the home key looks at is service provision over an extended period of time. And so, you know, in exchange for those infrastructure investments, it's looking at a commitment for the support that is provided to the individuals in the housing, for example. And that is something that is typically county role. And so anything that we're doing, we would be looking to partner with a nonprofit or with the county to help provide that that sort of back in service. Okay, great. And then just one last question. And I don't know if you have this information. You mentioned all the hotels that'll be closing and I know that there will be hotels in Watson though, at least one that's closing. What the county or other jurisdictions plans are in terms of supporting those who will be forced to leave the hotels as they close. What's the city of Watsonville doing? I mean, I know we're trying to stand up face sleeping sites. I don't know if you can speak to that. And then those are my questions. I'll meet myself. I don't know specifically what the city of Watsonville is doing. You know, we are in communication with them through on a regular basis, but haven't had those specific conversations about their actions and their responses to this. We've had more conversations with the county and the county is exploring various options, including with potential home key applications. But it is, you know, it's a substantial number of individuals. And at this point, you know, they they've had a big push towards the the rehousing wave and they've got services like a boat services on board trying to connect people who have we've got a substantial number of housing choice section eight vouchers county wide. The challenge has been being those landlords who are willing to accept individuals into the into their homes and use the section eight vouchers and some of those a large number of those vouchers are available for any location throughout the country that has a house. So I think there are 100 different regions or so throughout the country where they could be utilized. So the county is looking at how they might cast a wider net if individuals have connections in other areas that may have a greater amount of housing availability. Thank you. Hey, thanks Lee. That was great. Lots of information and things going on there. So the final brief presentation is from happy man is going to give you the feel good portion of today's program. And so I'm going to turn over to Kathy to talk about mural. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, city manager. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council members Bonnie Bush has my presentation to put up to share the screen. I'm a Kathy men's manager in economic development responsible for city arts programming. And the first update that I was going to give you there best to do is about the Black Lives Matter mural. That's the next slide. There was a short proceeding about two weeks ago. The current the current desire of the Santa Cruz equity club is to work through the public justice system to try and get the court to mandate at some restorative action type of outcome. So the there were two vandals and they've got the charges of vandalism to defend the charges. And hate crimes. And there was a short proceeding about two weeks ago on September 8th. Actually, the court was considering the request from the public defender to do a little test to see if the skid marks on the mural could be washed off either with steam cleaning or with a chemical treatment. And it was explained to the court to just go out and start doing something on the street, particularly with chemicals. So when the judge realized the complications in that and the cities, the city's position that any kind of test would probably further damage the mural. She directed the defendant to do some tests have expert testing done someplace else on some other site if they want. And she directed the city to produce the detailed restoration plan that that we have in mind. So that plan will be developed by the Santa Cruz equity collab basically the cost that it will take to repaint the mural. The next court proceeding is October 7 and that one is my understand the judge will consider all the evidence against the defendants and decide if there's sufficient evidence to move on with the charges that are being presented. So we'll be watching that date. So now for the better news of the next slide. See wall Santa Cruz is upon us right now it's a program of the pan GSE foundation, an international nonprofit organization based in Hawaii, acting at the intersection of culture and environmental change for the ocean conservation. The overall mission of that nonprofit is to empower individuals and communities to create meaningful environmental change for oceans through science, education and art of as they call it see a their motto is a drop of paint can create an ocean of change. They've spoke for over 400 murals and 17 countries around the world including Vietnam, Canada, Estonia. They're in Santa Cruz now from here they go to the Bahamas on their website which I'll show you later on does an interactive map where you can click on the location and you can see the art and so it'll be really cool that Santa Cruz is going to be on that map. And the mission of this festival is to unify and inspire the local Santa Cruz community and visitors to stand up for our coastal resources. So again the intersection of our activism is to provoke conversation and action. So on the next slide, you can see this festival in Santa Cruz was originally planned for 2020, but that basically was sidelined because of COVID but it's no surprise that Santa Cruz would be selected as a site, given our community active climate change in our environment. We also have a special responsibility is the gateway to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to bring attention to the global environmental issues that impact our ecosystem. The festival is being led locally by Taylor Reinhold, Sadie Phillips and the made fresh crew of active of archivists. The base camp for the crew is the tannery art center. A tailor who many of you I'm sure know grew up in Santa Cruz and is responsible for the Mission Street Clean Oceans mural at Bayview Elementary which was groundbreaking in itself. The city arts program through economic development is a major festival sponsor, along with save our seas south swell ventures, the aqua breeze in where the artists are being lodged. A tool shed, which has a right now I think that the Taylor has all of their but now on borrow lost coast plant therapy smog arbor, I'm sorry smog armor and Montana cans paints, how to go in your treehouse. Just there's some of the major ones. Through Taylor's amazing energy and great deal of charm, he's garnered support from so many local businesses to support the festival, including community printers warrant echo tours, and of course restaurants who are stepping up to feed the visiting centers for lunches and dinners, including exactly shanty shack, snap taco, Venus spirits, burlitas, upper crust pizza and that's just for these few days so far. On the next slide, you'll see that I were around on Sunday that already even before the painting started, Santa Cruz was looking dressed up these walls were cleaned and and sometimes patched and primed ready for pain. The next slide is the backside of the city's so health front parking. Sure Louis Lane, we've been trying for some time to activate that space you could see up in the upper left how it looked before and then the bottom how it looked primed even was already better. And then this is a picture of one of the artists in action yesterday. Early afternoon, it looks quite a bit different already this morning. On the next slide, you'll see the metro parking lot side of the restaurant located on front street. The main fresh crew scraped patch that wall you can see on the upper left how it looked before. Again, the lower one already painted ready for dress up and then the shot on the right is from lunchtime yesterday. It was about that same time that Schmiel Baller was there and took his photo that was on the front page of the sample this morning. So, go take a walk. You'll see how it looks now. They're changing as we speak. The next slide is just to give you an idea that the city stretch of this project is from far west side to downtown to River Street and so tell on the east side. These photos are of 619 and 730 so tell and there is a little funny story about the bottom wall at 619 on York Frames. That wall was actually suggested for painting by Paul Martin, who many of you may know is leader of economic development volunteer for freedom removal efforts and has been honored and acclaimed by the city. So, we even have him stepping up to suggest walls that needed painting and then on the final slide. I just want to say that this whole effort is dark groundswell of enthusiasm as a manager of the city arts Facebook page to have a post get to reach 450 people in one day is really gratifying. Last week KSQD talk of the Bay Taylor was interviewed by Rachel Goodman in the Sentinel Rachel Kippen wrote a lovely piece about Taylor Sadie and their work and their work. And then Wallace Bain had a teacher on them in Lookout recently. Each festival, a beautiful video is produced to interviews the artist shows the city shows the murals and is publicly posted on the Pound GSC website and will be available to us as a teaching tool for environmental educators and also as a beacon to attract visitors to Santa Cruz. So we're really looking forward to having that as a final product in addition to all of the murals that we'll have throughout the city. So with that, I'm ready to take any questions you might have. I'll just make a quick comment. I believe working with economic development. We're also hopefully going to have Taylor hopefully going to be available. He's in the Bahamas, but we were hoping to have him come and sort of just be available and celebrate what he's done and what he's doing for Santa Cruz. It's amazing. And so I have invited him. I hope we can get him here via Zoom and just be able to thank him for really putting us on the on the on a global scale with what this what's happening here. So it's really, really cool. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to jump down, but I did convey that that invitation to him in the Pound GSC group. Right. I'm Sonya and then Sandy and then Joseph. Thank you, Kathy. I'm so excited and thrilled with this project. It's been wonderful to see the progress of all the walls around town. Um, for, um, and I think you can also download it from the website that shows all the walls around the city of Santa Cruz and who the artists are. And so it's, um, it's out there. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to also say, um, what an amazing project. Amazing thing to see it happening in our community. Um, and I, I see your point about going and checking it out, you know, watching people in action and seeing how fast this is happening with planning, of course, um, in advance, but it's just amazing. And the artists are, you know, who have brought their work to this are really, really amazing artists and members of our community and just the level of community. Um, kind of involvement and interest and appreciation for this is really, really, um, one of the, you know, most wonderful things I've seen in a long time and I'm so glad that you've been getting to work on this, Kathy, with, with the folks who are organizing. Um, and, uh, so yeah, just, just to say, you know, it's, you know, my dream is to have all of the big, ugly walls in our community, sound walls, other walls, um, have, you know, the beautiful art and, you know, and intention and expression. And so this is just really great to see and I hope we just get to keep on going. Thank you, Sandy. Um, Justin. I won't take too much time to act, but I think this is great and it would be good to know, um, you know, moving forward what the city can do to help with the maintenance of these walls as time goes on. And, you know, they set deteriorating because of weather and whatnot. You know, whether we can, how we can help support either repainting of the murals or if there's something we can do every few years where a new concept is comes up or we can, you know, paint something new on the, on the walls. But it'd be great to know how the city can help continue to support that effort moving forward. Um, and then I did have a question about the, um, the Black Lives Matter mural downtown. I know that, um, there's been a lot of discussion about, you know, just the painting of the repainting of the mural, but then there's also kind of those spaces in between that are actually the, you know, street that also where the burnout also occurred. And so just wondering, or actually maybe it's just a comment that I don't, I don't know how that they can take that into account. But if that's something the city also needs to weigh in on in terms of the areas outside in the mural where the individuals have burned out and the costs associated with that because I don't know if that would be something that the city would want to recoup from those individuals or if that would be the muralist who would be including that in. So just thought about that out because I know that that would need to be cleaned up as well. That will, and that'll be part of the cost plan that will be presented to the court. It's believed that pressure washing will take off the marks, but will also take off the paint. And so really the plan that would be presented to the court will be to repaint the whole mural essentially very expensive. Taylor Reinhold who we just spoke about is one of the muralists and he did that on a volunteer for the Black Lives Matter effort, but there's no reason to expect him to redo it as a volunteer. So the original estimate cost estimates are about $200,000 to when you count everything that was donated that came out of committee for that effort. And that's what the public defender was trying to challenge thinking you could just wash off the marks. And so that's the work I had for the Equity Collab is to just fine tune in those costs and to really come up with the idea of can it really be pressure washed or does there have to be a slurry seal on the street again. And there are communications with the public works about that. One thing about the keeping the murals and will hazard debt for many of those sites. The keeping the murals will be cheaper than getting the graffiti off the walls because it's current even you might have seen on one of the one of the walls there already was a tag when it was nice and clean and white. And then also the Seawalls Festival has a history of being invited back to where they've been or sites where they've been before this year, right before Seawalls Santa Cruz, they were doing a second round in Boston. And so they do have a history of being invited back. Thank you, Kathy. Rosemary. Okay, great. I just wanted to share my screen briefly. This is the public notice that notices the public hearing that is happening on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. zoom meeting. This is a sort of a screenshot of the city's webpage on the transition to district elections. The public hearing is a, not a sort of a brown act really the meeting, but it's really an opportunity to present information about what the process is and what the issues are. And so I wanted to make sure that's out there. And if people want to follow along as this process develops over many months, you could see there's additional hearings that are required probably after the first of the year. This is the website to follow. So with that, I think we can move on in the agenda. Rosemary had just one question for the public, just so that they, I believe this meeting will be there. Translation is correct. Yes, there's a translation is planned and yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Next item is the council will review the meeting calendar attached to the agenda and revise it as necessary. I'll now call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar. There are no updates, but just a friendly reminder about the special meeting that's scheduled for this coming Tuesday beginning at it was originally at four now for 15. So we will have a special council meeting on. Yeah, excuse me, September 21, starting at 415. And it will include both the presentation on from our water department. And this is where we have also put remind me the second item, Bonnie. Yeah, the oversight vehicle. We've also added a couple of consent items that need to be done sooner rather than later. Go on. Okay. Great. Thank you. Now move on to our consent agenda. These are items 10 through 21 are 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 10 through 21 instructions are on your screen. To mute your streaming device, press star nine to raise your hand and listen for the Q saying you've been unmuted. All active actions will be acted upon in one motion, unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who wish to comment or pull any items on consent today. Council member Cummings council member colder and come to Brown. Thank you. I'd like to pull item number 13. Okay. Number Brown. I'd like to pull item 17. Number colder. Do you have a comment on 13. Just a comment. Okay. Great. So for our consent agenda, we have items. 13 and 17 that have been pulled. I'm going to go ahead and so the last call for any comments or questions on items that weren't pulled. And if not, I would like to open this up to public comment. So if there are any members of the mayor. Oh, never mind district guide. Are we good. Yeah, I didn't have the second. I'm the second item, but I got it. 13 and 17. Okay. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak to any item on our. With the exceptions of item 13 and 17. Now is the time to do so please rate. Please press star nine on your phone and raise your hand. When it is your time speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the time it was sent to two minutes. Look at our attendees seeing any attendees in the audience with their hands up. So I will go ahead and bring this back to counsel. And we will go ahead and go for a vote on the remaining items. Again. This will just be for items all the items on the agenda consent, except for 13 and 17. I'm now looking for a motion from one of my colleagues. Martin. I'm happy to move the consent agenda with the exception of items 13 and 17. Okay. And Sandy is my hand still up. Oh, your hand was up. Sorry. I can second it, but it looks like others are ready to get down. Sorry. Okay. Okay, great. Okay, we have a motion by council member walk-in seconded by council member Brown and I to approve the consent agenda with the exception of items 13 and 17 and I'd like to ask the court to please take a roll call though. Thank you, mayor council member Watkins. Hi. Vice mayor Brunner. And Mayor Myers. That motion passes unanimously. We'll now come back to item number 13, which was pulled by council member Cummings. Thank you, mayor. I pulled this item because, well, just so the public is aware, I know that 13 is the resolution related to adult personal use and personal possession and theogenic psychoactive plants and fungi. This is something that I spent considerate on my amount of time working on with decriminalizing Danny. Stay in the broader community and I appreciate because I know that there was some concern from individuals within the group. Around one of the items that they included this related to pay. I would just like to express the appreciation for the council members who brought this forward. I did have a couple questions. Related to resending the resolution and then also I've been in touch with some of the members from the group who have expressed that given that I put a lot of work into this and worked with them and some of the concerns I had wanting to continue this item so that we can have a little bit of discussion over some of the engagement. I have some of the members from the Native American church that have reached out to them and so just wanted to bring that up and when the time is appropriate. I'd be willing to make a motion to continue this item so that I can have a chance and other council members could have a chance to reach out to these individuals and have any questions and concerns. I know that we need to go out to public for public comment but I just wanted to bring that forward and I spoke with the individuals from the group and they agree that if we needed more time that they'd be happy to have a conversation since this isn't urgent. Can you clarify what group you're referring to? One last nature, Santa Cruz. The individuals who brought this forward and who reached out to us to ask for the changes to be made. I have Council Member Collentary Johnson and then Council Member Watkins. Thank you. And if you want to make clear our quest to continue the item I just want to see if we have a response and then I will take it out to public comment. Sorry. Thank you Mayor. Thank you Council Member Cummings for your work on this in the past. It was reached out by members of the community and there was an express a request to move this forward urgently that the tribal community were really challenged with the way the resolution was adopted in the past. And there was a sense of urgency to move this through pretty quickly and I have been engaging with members of the tribal community through the whole country. And Valerie Corral from WAM was the individual who contacted me who connected me to other members of the community. And there was a definitely a sense of urgency of moving this forward. They're aware that this was on the consent agenda. They've provided extensive feedback and we've taken that feedback into what you see before you in terms of the agenda agenda item and the resolution. Council Member Watkins. I was just going to share what my colleague said in that we have been working really intimately with a lot of community members who've been tracking this item and wanting to see these corrections made and feel comfortable with it as it is presented today before you. Council Member Golder. I really just support the item before and I just have to comment that from a different perspective the perspective of a parent and the perspective of an educator and part of super involved in the youth community in town when this did come before the council. It was really opposed by a large majority of parent community and I understand that there's legitimate uses for psychedelics but with the overwhelming mental health and drug crisis we're experiencing here in Santa Cruz. It was really a disappointing move for a lot of parents in our community to see this on the council agenda and brought forward. And I don't support continuing it. I think we need to move forward with this at this time. And Council Member Brown. I'll just say I appreciate my colleagues work on this and the intention here and I am not in any way suggesting that I oppose moving in this direction. I also support continuing the item. I mind my colleagues that from time to time when I bring items similar to this where I've been working with community groups I've been told well we didn't hear anything about it and we need to learn more. And this is a case where that is true for me. We know outreach to the council at least came to me about this. I've kind of done some of my own research I've had conversations. I think the question around cultural resources and conservation that are raised are very critical. And you know and I do want to make amendments that really address those concerns but I think it's fair to ask for a continuation for you know I mean until our next meeting at least so we can have some of those conversations with folks in our community. It is not a given that some of the changes that are listed in the in the proposal we have before us you know are are agreed upon. I mean there's you know and I don't want to go into the details of that but I think it is you know I would I would ask for the same consideration that have been others when the same request have been made of me. Okay is there a motion. You didn't do public comment yet. Oh I'm sorry let's go to public comment. I did have one question that didn't get answered earlier. Okay. Go ahead. I wanted to get the get some info from the city attorney because it's a part of the resolution is to rescind this original resolution. I was just curious if that's kind of a standard practice or if in general it makes sense just to amend the language of the resolution since the bulk of the resolution isn't changing. It's just language within it. So I wasn't sure you can maybe. Bonnie. Comment. Hang on Tony. Bonnie. Tony can answer but that's also an internal city clerk process. But if Tony wants to start and then if I have anything to add. Okay. Thank you Bonnie. Go ahead Tony. Yeah essentially we we we could do a resolution amending the existing resolution. However in doing so in order for a member of the public to be fully informed about the matter they would then need to review both the original resolution and the resolution amending it. So we thought it would be a better approach to merely. Re-adopt with these minor changes. It doesn't change the effect of the prior resolution at all. It just means that this resolution will be. You know the one that is in effect going forward. Did you have any questions or comments yet. No no really it just for further information it that for historical purposes it is better to recent for the exact reason that the city attorney mentioned that somebody. 20 years from now looking back would have to then find the other one that it was amended. So it just cleaner to recent it and make sure all the information is included in the new one as well. Thank you Bonnie. Okay I would look for the council member Watkins and then council member contact John. I don't know Mary you wanted to go out to public comment. Sorry I'm going to go out public comment. Sorry. And I see Pat. Malo's out there. Hi Pat go ahead please. Hi everyone. Can you hear me. Yes we can. Great great always have to check. Well yeah thanks everyone for hearing this. You know and it's just for a bit of back context. Soon after our original resolution passed. We became got put in touch through Valley Corral with folks from the native church and the I CPP group and they just were concerned with something that it happened in Oakland with this peyote. And you know language being included even though they had had discussions with the Oakland groups not to include that language. It was sort of on our radar and a group that when we were originally working towards this but somewhere in the back and forth between drafts we reverted back to the open language which included this reference to peyote. The native church had us was interested in that you know doing a kind of a clarification statement or apology and we did that. But because this all happened when COVID and you know other complications were really gearing up it was it was something that we you know reached out to folks on the council initially but there's just other stuff going on. And then a little while ago Val reached out. Council person Johnson was who responded to that and we went forward and from you know the native church perspective it's something that you know just they want to get done so that it doesn't become a model that others follow and that it doesn't have to be folks going out there and poaching basically the historic peyote gardens that you know are in danger from all sorts of reasons but but this need to be another one of those reasons. So long story short is that this is just a bit of like housekeeping kind of and I don't think it changes the on the ground effect or the historical significance of our thing it just you know provide some context. So we're happy if it happens today or next week or at least our next meeting for my thanks. Thanks Pat. We'll see any other hands up for this item so I'll go ahead and bring it back to Council for motion. Council Member Watkins. Yeah. Thank you Mayor. I'm happy to move the item. I think that I want to one thing councilor counter Johnson for her work I know that she did put in the extra time and effort to really have those conversations with key folks and I think that again as most things we can always come back to further refine in the future but for the purposes of where we're at today and making this correction I feel comfortable moving the item. I'm going to echo councilor Golders comments in regards to really just holistically thinking about how are we addressing mental health issues how are we protecting our youth how are we thinking about brain development and how are we also including some of these alternatives and and recognizing some of their healing properties. So it's sort of a both a both and right but with those comments I'm happy to use the recommendation. Council Member commentary Johnson. Thank you I was going to make the same motion but I'll second and I just want to thank Pat for calling in and for all the work that he did on it. I think this is this is the right move to make it to respectful of the request that was made from us and and I understand there was a lot of work that went into it before and a lot of work that's gone into in the last few months. So thank you. Thank you. So we have a motion on the floor by Council Member walkins. Seconded by Council Member account. And I will go ahead and ask for the clerk to call the roll call call. I have a question and potential family amendments. The question. Procedure with over. And then I'd like to make some family amendments to this item and see if my colleagues will be. And I know that under turn it back to Council Member walkins as the maker of the motion to these amendments are amenable. And I feel comfortable with the motion as is I think that if they're minor I guess we could look at that but we've had this vetted by our key folks that have really spoken to us by the community and our city attorney look at it. So I don't want to stray too far from what I think where we are and how we got here. So if they're not. I'm not you know I'm not quite sure exactly where where you want to take this council to come in but I feel good where we were and where we are because we already kind of did a lot of the labor essentially to have some of the people have eyes on it. Move on to it. And I'll just. My understanding is, do you want to. Are you interested in any friendly amendments or are you ready to move on. Well, I personally feel like this one is a pretty good, a pretty good. It's at a pretty good place because of the work that had gone into it, particularly with the being some of the key key members of the community who wanted to have eyes on this have that completely that isn't brought forward. So I feel like, you know, I don't want to go too far down around around trying to change the wording too much because of the work that we kind of had our community members do at this point. So, if it's anything kind of way off base then I don't think I feel comfortable with that at this time so. Bonnie, did you have a comment on that. And I'm sorry yeah. I, I for the minute, maybe I missed it, but was the friendly amendment made. No, not yet. I'm trying to get clarifications I heard council member walk in state that she was satisfied with the motion so I'm happy to have those put up if you want to consider them the maker of the motion wants to consider them. Do we have those friendly amendments or do you want to look. I mean. I'm happy to take a look at them and I'll ask the seconder as well but like I said I think it's been kind of goes too far off I feel like we've really landed in a good place because of where we have our community input. We're coming if you want to put the friendly amendment up. I'm wondering if, because my hope was that we could have at least allowed a little bit more time given the amount of work that I've put into the community. And my hope was that we could continue this but since we're not going to see the direction we're going in, I would just like to off. Um, amendments to some of the language that's been here because as a, as a biologist and as someone who since the time on this, I think that we need to be explicit and there's a couple of times have been this resolution where we're not in terms of what we're saying is going to be. Criminalized versus what will not be criminalized. So, what I've heard from the members of the community who brought. Is that the emphasis is on peyote and so I'm wondering if we could get the red line language of this put on the screen. Um, yeah, give me a second. I have to go online. Um, I don't know. I'll look through the second year of the motion and my colleagues, but again, I think when we're starting to change the language and not having it go through some of the people that we had to go through. I don't think I'm going to be comfortable with changing the language on the diet at this time. If this wants to be brought that brought back at a future time after having that process go forward. Um, I think I'd feel more comfortable with that, but given the work that we did and the vetting that we did. I can already kind of feel my discomfort with China change this language without kind of going through some of the community members that we spoke with and I looked to the second year of the motion for she has been the person who's been in primary contact with those folks. I was going to make the same comments. Council member coming if you want to let's let's pass this as is and if you want to work together and bring it back in a different iteration and we connect back with the tribal leaders and community members. I'd be happy to do that. Well, then I guess the question for me is it sounds like continuing this and then allowing for. Since this has been brought forward already about three council members, if we vote to continue, we can work together and we can shorten that process. We can engage with the people who've been working on this and bring back the language and it's minor. It's very minor amendments. So that's really, you know, the interest in trying to continue is that we will produce that amount of time. Rather than having it come back again for full reading, we can continue it. Make the minor adjustments and we can bring it forward. So it's what I'm asking for is exactly what you're expressing is that if we want to work on this, like, I would like to work on this a little bit. It more convenient, but we could do that together. And so that's the reason and the basis for asking for continuance of this item. And again, I think we all agree that we'd like to move forward with it at this time. And then if there are future iterations that are going to be forthcoming, those can be brought forward then. But in the interest of the work that's been accomplished and the timeliness of wanting to see this through, I think. It's sort of, it's either past and since there's a motion to already move it forward, I feel comfortable moving forward with it at this time. We have a motion by Council Member Watkins, seconded by Council Member Contari Johnson. This is on item number 13 on our agenda, which is the resolution declaring the investigation arrest of individuals 21 years of age and older involved with adult personal use and personal possession of ethnogenic, psychoactive plants and fungi listed on the federal schedule one list be amongst the lowest priorities for the city of Santa Cruz and rescinding resolution number 29, comma, 623. And Bonnie, I'll go ahead and get around that. Council Member Watkins. Hi. Contari Johnson. Hi. Brown. Hi. Hey, I'm disappointed that not have the same consideration. And I'll, it's not that I oppose this. I'm, I'm just disappointed, but I. So express and be expecting to hold my colleagues and accountable for this and we'll. You're looking forward to working with the community back to make the necessary adjustments. I'm also disappointed we couldn't work together productively. Actually, given the work to bring this forward in the 1st place for over a year working with the community. It just seems like, you know, a week or two of additional work would have been appreciated. So, I'll be supporting this, but I will also be bringing items to the attention of members of the community who will support on this. Holder. Vice Mayor Brunner. Mayor Myers. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, I'm going to item number 17 that was pulled from the council from the consent agenda and this will buy I believe council member Brown. That's correct. Thank you, mayor. I pulled this item. You know, unfortunately, it, I was hoping to move through items like this on consent, but given past experience and recent experience with. Kind of side, you know, questions and recommendation. Learning more after the fact I've decided that I'm going to make this official. So for folks who are listening, this is a proposal to for a contract with Kim Lee Horn and associates to work on traffic improvements in on the front street. Side of the downtown do to a lot of new development happening there. And that's to improve, as I understand it, as I read the item, you know, to make improvements that will help with traffic flow safety for all kinds of transportation users. And I don't see any indication that there is any consultation happening with the transportation and public works commission on this. I mean, this is exactly the kind of thing that we have commissions for. Currently, our TC, the regional transportation commission, this is exactly the kind of thing we would ask our bike advisory, bicycle advisory committee to be involved in. They have a particular, you know, they are nominated and put on that commission because they have a particular interest and some expertise, and they are really ready to get into the weeds on this intersection design and pedestrian and bicycle safety. And I think they should have some official role. And so I'd like to know, I'm happy to hear from I see staff is here and I'd like to hear your thinking on that. Is the transportation and public works commission involved in the, you know, the overall tip program for based upon, you know, the downtown plan modifications that have been made, like what role are they playing and have they played and what role do you anticipate for them. I'll fill this one, David. Hi, Nathan here. It's an increased transportation manager. So this project regards to what we're asking for today is to do asking New Horn to do some additional analysis on the front street corridor as part of the downtown amendments plan. To find the downtown area, we need to accommodate the appropriate transportation along that corridor. And so there was an initial concept plan that was provided during one of the development projects that was submitted. These might have been 100 Laurel Street project. We took a look at that and we like that initial concept plan. And so. The staff report before you today to expand upon that concept and the process will be to absolutely take it back to the keeping WC and later date, once those concept plans are a little further along. I did mention to the chair so that we would be bringing this back front street corridor project. To the commission for review and nation for approval, but this contract is only to bring up the concept plan to a 30% level. And so there will be some room for or dates later in the future, but we will be delivering this and in a public forum about the, about the concepts about the concept itself and then. There will be over time to try and put it at that time. Nathan, I would also just point out, if you look at the attachment to the concept plan. The final bullet in task three is to present the concept plan it up to four public hearings, including the transportation public works commission and downtown commission. So it is worked into the scope of work with this contract. And that would be for to get feedback on a completed plan. And then we will move the progress towards the plan. Well, I'm, I'm prepared to make a motion that I know we need to go to the public if, if other council members don't have any questions. One more thing I might add during that process just to make it clear that we're not designing in a vacuum that that met also has a very important. Perspective and needs that will need to be worked into any feedback we get from a city, you deliver the body of mayor that you're muted. I'm going to bring this out to public comment is item number 17, which is the downtown intersections improvements award contract to Kim Lee Horn and associates. This has been pulled for discussion. If you're interested in making a comment on this item, please press star nine to raise your hand and we will unmute you and for your comment. And I am not seen in the audience. So I'll go ahead and bring this back to council for a motion and come to member Brown. Move the staff recommendation and include with that direction that the that staff bring this item to the transportation and public works public works commission. It's the earliest possible date and to work with the chair of the transportation and public works commission to determine when that is happened when that will happen. And council member coming. Second. Is that direction clear in the motion. I tried to capture that I'm sure Bonnie did too. Okay, we have a motion on motion by council member Brown seconded by council member coming to move the staff recommendation with the with direction to bring this back. Transportation public works commission and to work with the chair of the transportation public works commission. And to schedule that the schedule that meeting. Is that correct. Yes. I think my language included at the earliest. The earliest convenience. Okay. That's what I got. Okay. Thank you, Bonnie. Okay. Did you have a question to clarify question to see if the staff wanted that is like feasible in terms of the whole plan and where that kind of lands in terms of the process. If they wanted to speak to that. Well, as I mentioned, the scope of work already includes that this is just being explicit that we will indeed. Work with the transportation public works or public works and transportation commission. Yeah, it was anticipating that we would take it back to the DC and possibly even have additional public. Hearings of regards to this plan and so it was built into the scope. So thanks for the reminder about that David. And so we will all work with the, you know, so we tell the chair to schedule that. Okay, so just a tiny secret. Thank you. We get a roll call vote, please. Councilmember Watkins. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Brown. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Vice Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up, we have item number 22, which is a public hearing for the second reading and final adoption of ordinance number 2021 dash 17 amending chapter 13.40 and the municipal code related to the parks and recreation department. Program. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Are there any council members or are there any council members who have questions or comments on this item? Not seen any members of the public who are interested in commenting on the second reading and final adoption of ordinance number 2021 dash 17 amending chapter 13.40 of the municipal code related to the parks and recreation department adopt the park program. Star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The time room will then be set to two minutes. I'm not seeing any hands in the audience for the public comment. Okay, I'll bring it back to the council and I'll look for a motion or team walk ins and then Justin Cummings. I'm just happy to move the recommendation and the second reading and final adoption of the ordinance number 2021 17 amending the chapter 13.40 of the municipal code related to the parks and recreation department adopt a park program. Thank you, council member Cummings. We have a motion by council member walk in seconded by council member Cummings and I'd like to ask Burke to please take a roll call. Council member Watkins. Aye. Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Brown. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Boulder. Vice mayor Brunner. Mayor Ma. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. We'll now move on to our general business item and it's possible I'd like to take just about a 15 minute break just use the restroom and stretch our legs and we will reconvene at just make it at 230 and we'll be starting our general business items which will be over time. I have a audio for the mic. Thank you. Next up on our agenda is item number 23 temporary SEIU local 521 employee association memorandum of understanding. For members of the public who are streaming meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the city council. We will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. Okay, I will go ahead and turn this over to Lisa Murphy, our human resources director. The council members. The item before you is the tentative agreement with the FDIU Local 521 temporary employees unit. This tentative agreement is a one year agreement. The terms of the agreement is a three and a half percent cola. And in addition, it is a new salary scheduled for the last three. This is again, a tentative agreement. It's been ratified by the union and the action before you today is to approve the tentative agreement. And then at a future date, I will bring back to you the actual MOU as we need to revise that item as well. And that is the conclusion of my presentation. I'll be happy to take any questions. Is there a question from council members on this? I'm not seeing any hands raised. So I'll go ahead and take it out the public comment. You are interested in commenting on temporary on item number 23, which is the temporary FDIU Local 521 Employee Association Memorandum of Understanding. Please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. But it is your time to speak. You will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The time rule then sets two minutes. I'm not seeing any raised hands in the meeting attendees today. So I will bring it back to council and I would look for a motion. Vice Mayor Brunner and then Councilor Cummings. Oh, you're muted. Vice Mayor. I'm happy to move the resolution adopting a tentative agreement with the temporary FDIU Local 521 Employee Association. Thank you. Council Member Cummings. Second. Do you have a comment or question, Sandy? Council Member Brown. I do have a quick comment. So I, yeah, I'm going to support the motion because this is an agreement that the union members have agreed to. I want to make a statement about this or two statements. One, I'm glad to see that we are able to address some of my concerns about livable wages, at least making some improvement with respect to the lifeguards. So thank you for that. And I also want to just say though that the cost of living adjustment included in this contract at 3.5% does not even meet this year's consumer price index increase for the same. Yeah. And so this means that we have a con, you know, we're going to be signing off on a contract where workers are falling even further behind. And just encourage my colleagues to think about that for future contract negotiations and hopefully other discussions that we'll have about how we address little living wage policies on our books with respect to our own workforce moving forward. So I just wanted to make it clear that this is not a generous contract. And we have a lot of work to do, but I will support the motion today. Thank you. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Bruner, seconded by Council Member Cummings to adopt the tentative agreement, the temporary SEIU Local 521 Employee Association and Bonnie, could we get a roll call vote? Council Member Watkins. Aye. Helen Toya-Johnson. Aye. Brown. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Vice Mayor Bruner. Motion passes unanimously. We'll now move on to our next item, which is item number 24, contract for the mixed-use library master architect for members of the public who are streaming this meeting. If this is an item you want to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and action. So I'll go ahead and turn this over to Bonnie Lipscomb, our Director of Economic Development for staff presentation, and then we'll take questions from the council. Welcome, Bonnie. Thank you, Mayor. Good to be here this afternoon and presenting this item. This has definitely been a few months process and we are so delighted with the outcome and looking forward to sharing with you today just sort of the overview of the process again. We highlighted it a little earlier in our quarterly update but now we're going into a little more detail on the master library architect. And with me today presenting shortly is Abe Jason with Jason Architecture and Katie Stewart also with Jason Architecture. So I'll be kicking off to talk a little bit about the contract and the process and then I'll turn it over to Abe and Katie to present about their process, community engagement and how they approach projects. So really looking forward to their part of the presentation. And with that, I will share my screen. The agenda is really to start off by looking at the background and process for the requests for proposals and the recommended selection before you today. Dig a little into the contract scope and timeline, talk about the community outreach process, touch on the funding sources, the recommendation and then the presentation by Jason and then we're going to wrap it up with some comments and perspective from our interim library director, Eric Howard and then just to go over next step and then take any questions that you have. So first background and process. I did show this earlier today but I know not everyone was tuned into the quarterly update. The process for the request for proposals which was released in April. But we had five and nine firms who submitted proposals and of those nine firms, we looked specifically at the project team, past related experience, design and program, approach to scope. Four teams of those nine were interviewed, Dreyfus and Blackbird, Jason architecture, ABA and group four. And of those teams, after the first interview we had two teams do a second interview and following the second round of interviews, architecture was the unanimous sort of selection by our whole panel as a preferred master library architect. I mentioned this earlier but I'm going to mention again we are just so excited to have Jason on this project. It's so huge for our community, for our downtown to have a new state of the art library in our community. It's been a long time and coming and Jason architecture is the right firm to do this for us. You all are familiar with some of his work. You're going to see more of that in his presentation but it's overall, Jason and Ava and Katie, their approach to scope, the quality and success of their community engagement that many of you have participated in some of their outreach sessions. Of course our library subcommittee has firsthand participated in a year long process of community engagement around the existing library site. So you're very familiar with their work. They have a wide breadth of experience and local projects and really just top notch design. So really excited that they are our team really working with us directly and we'll also be doing and leading our community engagement efforts really for the whole process and this initial part because a lot of the look and feel of what people are going to feel on the street really is the library, the public library how it engages with the pedestrians, how it engages as a user, a library patron how it engages if you're a business across the street if you're a visitor to the downtown that look and feel is really going to be felt by that presence of the library. So they are just really a key component of this project. So just to go a little bit into the contract scope and timeline and I just wanted to just highlight kind of the role of the master library. They will serve as the lead architect of the downtown library and integration with the overall site design. As I said, the library is really going to be what you're going to see as the main sort of element and component of this project. Yes, you'll see the housing but most likely it will be articulated and set back. It's the library that's going to interface with you at that ground level and it's going to be pretty tall as well on that ground level for the library for that engagement. So that's the key of it. Jason will lead the community engagement efforts on library site design and integration as I mentioned with the overall site design. They're going to prepare three key sort of site concepts for council consideration that will come back to you in December. Some of the phases that they'll be doing is this initial sort of kickoff conceptual design which will then move into after you make a decision on the overall site pieces and mixed uses and how those that look like will move into schematic design and ultimately design development drawings. And each of these early phases will have active community engagement. And then finally for sort of the second phase of the project, they'll prepare construction documents, assistance during bidding and construction administration is further outlined in the contract. So the total cost for scope completion is 2.29 million as outlined in the contract which is attached staff report. An important thing to note is that the contract does allow the city to terminate the contract for convenience with 10 days notice. So if at any point in this process there is a project stop or we need to take a pause or regroup, we will not be obligated for the 2.29 million if the project is terminated anytime. We'll only be obligated to pay for the work completed to date and they just build on a monthly basis. So there won't be a decision where we are obligated and we'll be spending more money if the project's not going forward. And I just really felt it was important to mention that just because it's key to getting quality architects to be able to advertise and have a full scope of a project. That's really important. But Jason's been willing to work with us and understanding the complexity of this project, all the mixed pieces and the fact that they're willing to work with us on the contract and understand that community context is really important. So we're really appreciative of their willingness to do that. In the contract we have estimates for each phase that's in one of the exhibits to the contract. You can look at that a little more closely includes the timing for outlines in the contract, pre-design, which is really our conceptual design is estimated to start right after this meeting if this is approved today and it'll conclude in early December and we'll have outreach and community workshops. All of those will be noticed and posted on the city's project website. And that's at cityofsantacruz.com slash mixed youth library. And as I mentioned earlier, staff will look on December for feedback and direction on conceptual project design. Now I just wanted to take a minute to talk about community outreach because this is a really important part of the project and one of the elements that we are so excited to have Jason on board. And so in the early part of the process and this is a bit of a change from what's in the contract and this is just based on back and forth having a initial discussion with the project team about what it was to have community engagement in early. We actually moved the six focus groups, stakeholder focus groups from the schematic design and just move them up to the conceptual design. So I'm gonna change the contract after this meeting. There are a few other things in the contract just edits typically after council approval that we'll make as well. But this is one that I wanted to highlight is that in concept line. I mean, this is really looking at stakeholder focus groups and we have a lot of those in the community particularly on this project. And Abe and Katie will go a little more into kind of who we're thinking of at this point that are really in those stakeholder focus groups. We'll have this really engaged process where core themes for the overall project for the program for the look and feel will be feedback will be incorporated and then we'll really take that back and Abe and Katie will take that back to the drawing board as far as how that really translates into the look and feel of the library and how it interacts with the public. And then during schematic design there'll be two workshops as well. And this will be a variety of small group breakout sessions. We'll have those both in each phase of the project. And then we'll also have presentations to council. We'll have conceptual design to really help the design team focus on one preferred design and then we'll be able to go into the detail schematic design more in depth cost estimates and analysis and be able to really work forward from there. Funding sources. This is highlighted in the fiscal impact section but I did wanna take just a minute to talk about this. Funding for the contract for the current fiscal year is budgeted, the approved fiscal year capital improvement project budget and it includes the following sources breakdown. Measure F Fund, Economic Development Trust Fund and the parking district. This is the master library architect. So a good portion of this will be funded with Measure F Fund but we will be contributing these two other sources as appropriate. And basically we're looking a holistic, we're looking at that this is a mixed use project. So where there's some design overlap with the other elements of the project we'll make sure that we're assigning that appropriately from a cost perspective to our other funding sources. So the recommendation, our recommendation, staff recommendation is to award the contracts, the mixed use library master architect to Jason architecture in an amount F2, 2.29 million and authorize the city manager, the interim city manager to execute an agreement with Jason architecture in a form to be approved by the city attorney. And with that, I would like to turn it over to Abe Jason. I'm going to stop screen sharing and Abe is going to, thanks Abe. Welcome Abe, hi Katie, good to see you both. Very excited to hear from you today. Bonnie and mayor, vice mayor, council members were thrilled to be here today. This is a really exciting moment in what has been sort of an incredible community process that has been built through years and really almost decades in the community of Santa Cruz. So we're incredibly excited to be here. I want to just briefly take a moment to introduce myself. I actually want to speak to kind of how kind of honored I am personally to kind of be a part of this process. We have been working with the Santa Cruz public library since 2017 in the county on the recently the beach branch and the currently under construction Boulder Creek and live oak branches. And we're also incredibly excited to be working on the now under construction Garfield park branch and Brant to 40 branch within the city. It is just a real honor to be able to continue this journey with your community. So I'm incredibly excited to be here today. I'll let Katie introduce herself. Thanks, babe. Hello everyone, I'm Katie Stewart, project manager at Jason architecture. I'm also project manager for a number of your branch libraries. And just like Abe, I really feel like it's a privilege to get to work with Santa Cruz with Santa Cruz public libraries in the city of Santa Cruz and we're really excited to be a part of this project that the city has been working so hard for. So today we're going to talk about kind of three specific things about the project. The first is expertise. And we're going to talk about architectural expertise on libraries through a lens of understanding the components that really make a wonderful library. We're going to show you some of our work but we're going to speak less about the kind of each individual project and more about what components of those projects make for good libraries. We're going to talk about engagement and sort of community is one of the reasons that love doing libraries and we're going to be kind of working collaboratively with the community to promote dialogue and achieve great feedback for this project. And then last, we're going to talk about values and this is kind of the values that we have as architects and designers of community buildings and then the value that the city of Santa Cruz and the community of Santa Cruz have and share and how those values come together to craft a narrative that reflects the city of Santa Cruz and the community. So first we're going to talk about expertise and like I said, I want to talk about this through the lens of different components that make a successful library. The first component is placemaking and so this is the Campbell library and what you can see is really working to a sense of a building settling into its place, a comfortable approach, kind of understanding of its relationship to the surroundings, graceful materials. So placemaking is a critical component of building. Daylight is super important for a public building especially true for a library which is a bigger public facility that tends to have sort of a wide floor area and often in the middle of the building if not designed properly can be dark. So we look very carefully at how we sort of make sure the entire daylight interiors feels welcoming and comfortable to sit down and read a book without the lights on. We think about scale for the Hatham Bay Library thinking about how a building steps down to a residential community that's immediately adjacent and how a civic building is a friendly neighbor how you mass a building, how the components of the exterior of the building sort of break down to create smaller pieces that feel very comfortable from a pedestrian level. And we think about materiality. Again, at the Hatham Bay Library, kind of just a richness of character, of texture. We have patina, weathered copper, quart and steel with a rusted exterior on it, weather wood that kind of has an appearance of driftwood. So we really think about the richness of materiality and how people relate to buildings and how that gives kind of meaning to buildings. And I'm gonna hand it over to Katie and she's actually gonna talk a little bit about our work with the Santa Cruz Public Libraries and some components of those projects. Thanks, Dave. Making sure I wasn't on mute, classic. So you might recognize this building. It's the Garfield Park Library renovation. And the focus on this space is kind of a small space. So we're focused on creating these special moments within this space. You can see here, we've carved out kind of this little reading that sort of inhabits the bookshelves. And we see this as a way to make a really fun memory for the kids as they experience this space. Another sort of focus of the Garfield Park Library is its value as a historic structure. It's a Carnegie Library from the beginning of the 20th century. And so in this renovation, we really wanted to honor that history. And that's applicable for all of our buildings because we really wanna honor the historic context of a library even as it moves into the modern era. This next building is your Branta 40 Branch Library. And looking at this, this is the children's area. Kind of looking at this space, it's the main focus is how do we break a large room down into distinct programmatic zones? So within this children's area, we have a sort of along the back wall there for the older kids. We have kind of middle zone, which is the younger kids, the picture books area. And then we have this really fun, playful furniture zone where kids can run and maybe be a little bit more active along the right hand side of the page here. Also at Branta 40, we're really focused on creating a new space for people to gather. We're introducing a whole new community room into this community rooms tend to be a really important program area for modern libraries. It's one of the sort of big features that the community looks for is a space where they can come and hold events. Not just during sort of typical library hours, but also after hours. So it's something that we absolutely wanna focus on for the new space is thinking about how this can provide a service to your community beyond maybe the traditional role of a library. Then moving on to Boulder Creek, another one of your branch libraries. This one's a little bit more far flung up in the redwoods. Here we're really thinking about different ways that people use the library to read. So creating diverse seating areas. We have kind of a more comfortable lounge seating area that's right by a fireplace for kind of quiet reading. We have a more studious type, sort of typical reading table layout either desktop computers. And then we have kind of a casual laptop bar we could pull up with your laptop and get a little bit of work done either with yourself or with a small group. And then Boulder Creek also includes a really beautiful children's area. We really wanted this space to capture imagination. The Boulder Creek library, like I just said, it's located in the redwoods. And so we really envisioned this space as kind of a treehouse in the trees that's gonna be really evocative and again capture people's imagination. And then we have the Live Oak Library. And this space is really about crafting areas for families to be together. Whether it's checking out books, using the computers, doing a puppet little kids or maybe doing homework with older kids. This is a space where families can come and read and learn and enjoy their time in the library together. And then also in Live Oak, we really like to focus on kind of portals within the library, moving from one space to another. How does that experience change? So in the Live Oak Library, as you enter into the children's area, through this kind of kelp portal, which will really transport you to another world, it's kind of a riff on this idea of imagination that I talked with with the Boulder Creek Library. And then we have the La Salva Beach Library, your most recently completed branch library. And here you can see our value of really creating a welcoming arrival for a library patron, where they get to walk in the door, immediately be greeted, have a really clear understanding of how to use the space, where they need to go and feel kind of that excitement about walking into a new space. And then just a really lovely image of the La Salva Beach Library that really exhibits the warmth that this building has. It feels welcoming, it feels comforting. It feels like a place can really come and sort of relax and be at home. Every good design process for a community building starts with engagement. We sort of have a really sort of robust group of expertise and that's true on the project team side, but I wanna also emphasize how important and true that is on the community side, that there's an immense amount of expertise within the community and the community stakeholders group. And one of the first things we look to do at the outset of a community engagement process is to connect these groups and connect and use synergy to kind of share that expertise and bring the project up collectively. So we have kind of just an immense resource that we look forward to tapping into right at the outset of this project. We also start every project with kind of a certain amount of humbleness. It's important that we come in and we start the process by learning. We are experts in designing libraries but we are not experts in your community. So one of the first things we do is listen to the true experts in your community which is you, the community. And we have an immense amount of learning to do at the outset of this project. Learning about the cultural context and kind of what makes Santa Cruz special, what contributes to kind of success in the downtown, what are the greater cultural values of Santa Cruz. We also need to learn about the natural context and how that should influence the aesthetic of the building, how that influences the way spaces are used but in transitions. It also has to do with designing a building of a high level of sustainability because we start with principles of passive sustainability rather than active sustainability which means we will learn about the element and work with them so that the energy use is minimized before we ever think about things like solar panels and other things like that. Of course, part of this process is a process of communication and presenting design ideas. So we sort of use effective presentation tools where we think of architecture actually is a process of communication more than anything. We as architects don't build buildings. We communicate what buildings are and so part of that process is presenting our ideas in graphic formats and we do that by engaging the community with compelling imagery. So imagery that really allows the community to step inside the building and understand what it's going to feel like and kind of answer some of their questions about what is this building going to be? Now it's really important as a part of the process, we don't just present, we don't just engage, we listen. So this kind of speaks back to learning about your community. Listening is one of the most important skills for an architectural team and we work hard to be active and sort of really careful listeners and in this process, one of the things that we're going to be doing is, many times community presentations are structured where questions for the community if the community has questions for the architectural team at the end, we actually often go into these community meetings with questions that we have for the community. So again, this kind of comes back to our kind of knowledge that the community are experts in themselves and often sort of getting answered about a successful building means reaching out to the community and asking kind of specific things that will help the design team advance the design in a positive way. And so here's some examples of that from the Garfield Park Library. What does that mean in terms of process outcomes? We have a couple of really important outcomes that we strive for. The first is fostering group dialogue. This is a communication process. It's a process of kind of meeting with neighbors and meeting with the different stakeholder groups and understanding what are very complex sort of goals for a project and how they all come together to make it greater than the sum of its parts. And that speaks to promoting stakeholder teamwork. We set that as a goal early in the community process that there's teamwork between the different stakeholders. During that process, we're doing a lot of listening. And one of the things we're listening for is because part of what a library is is something that tells the story of your community. So we'll be listening for those narratives that really reflect Santa Cruz. And then lastly, it's important that we develop community ownership. So that means that we work with the community through this process. So they see the project develop. They see their input and their feet incorporated with each round of the community process. And they really actually develop an incredible sense of ownership over the design because they were a part of that process and they contributed to it. So I wanna end by talking about values because it's really important for architecture, particularly public architecture and civic architecture to be grounded in values. One of the values that we hold very dear we know this is important to the city of Santa Cruz is sustainability. And we are thrilled that the library is targeting zero net energy. And that is something we will kind of be working on early in the process. And that speaks back to kind of learning about nature and thinking about passive design strategies. And then as well as working with a really talented technical team of experts about how we achieve kind of a very ambitious goal. Community is just a critical value for a library. Libraries actually phase are one of the preeminent community centers in America these days. And there's different ways to serve communities. It can be through a storytime event in a children's area. It can be through a makerspace where the teams are kind of showing off their technology skills. Or it could be for an outdoor gathering. Santa Cruz has beautiful weather and we love the opportunity to utilize some of those warm evenings for outdoor events. And it's also important that we have civic pride in these buildings. And these buildings reflect those values and the importance that they represent for the community. A library is an important building for any community and certainly for the community of Santa Cruz. And we design with that in mind that they have a prominence that respects and honors that civic pride. But it's not all about the big moments. It's not all about being on the street. It's also about the little moments. And we work very hard in our designs. We value this very much to create special moments that really are moments of kind of inspiration and wonder for when people walk into these buildings. Libraries are more than just a building. They are community spaces. They're spaces of creativity. They're spaces of learning. And this is an example of this portal to the children's area at the Half Moon Bay Library where you can see some of these early sketches of the idea of undersea bubbles becoming the children's sign and how that becomes a reality. And these special moments, they contribute to the memories of the community. The children are gonna come to this library. They're gonna read their first book there. They're gonna check out their first book there. They're gonna meet friends. They're gonna spend time with family. They're gonna grow the community. Years later, they're gonna have memories about this early experience they had at the Santa Cruz Library. And we are so excited to help create those memories with you. Thank you. Thank you, Abe and Katie. Really appreciate that. We need to see all your work all over. So thank you. Bonnie, do you have a wrap up? Yeah, so I'm going to go over actually to our interim library director, Eric Howard, who'd like to share a few comments. And then I'm going to wrap up with next steps after Eric. Great, thank you. Thanks, Bonnie. Good afternoon, mayor, council members. Welcome, Abe and Katie. One of the things that I really respect and admire in Abe and Katie is their humility and their willingness to learn and listen. I've worked with quite a few architectural firms for. And the three key things that I always look for is how responsive they are. Their experience and how innovative they are. And they knock it out of the park in all three of those categories. As you heard, where this is not an independent library, it's part of a larger system. And they have, even though they are really humble, they have an amazing amount of experience and Bonnie works and its culture. As they pointed out, our most northern branches and is in Boulder Creek and they're working on that now and completing that project. And our most southern branch is La Selva and they completed a beautiful remodel there. Not to mention Live Oak, Branch of Forty and Garfield. Their important piece of that experience is working with my staff. They have a really great understanding of how we work internally. They're really responsive to not just my needs, but to all the needs of the staff. In addition to the funders that we rely on too to enhance these buildings, while we rely on Measure S to make these really beautiful buildings, we rely on private donations to enhance these buildings, every single one of them. And Abe and Katie have been really responsive to their needs as well. When we've had donor meetings and they've given tours of these branches, I can't say enough how important that relationship is as well. So I just wanna thank them for their presentation today and for giving me the time to speak and provide a few words. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Thanks, Eric. So I'm going to share just one last, or actually last two slides, which is on next step. And so just to wrap this up, to approve the contract today is for us to meet as a whole group with the design team and plan out sort of the timing and the stakeholder meetings. We're going to have October stakeholder meetings that we are hoping to kick off as well as workshops in November and December. And then we would be scheduled to come back to December. And I highlighted this a little bit earlier as well for a council presentation on major site design concepts. And then meanwhile, we'll continue working with the farmers market as brought up in our earlier presentation. We also have other stakeholders, including total fitness that we'll be working with as well on the site. And including in those stakeholder meetings, we'll be working with downtown organizations, downtown groups, as well as members of the community and interest groups. So they'll all be part of the outreach process and all of that will be presented and posted and noticed on our website. So with that concludes the presentation and we are happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Great, thank you Bonnie. And again, thank you to Abe and Katie and good to see you Eric. We will go ahead and take questions from the council at this time. I do also just want to make an announcement for our next item, item number 25, because I do know that some folks will be joining for that. And I know four o'clock was sort of a time that had been put out there. I just want to announce we are not in, we will not be taking public comments this evening that item has, it is recommended to be continued to October 12th, 2021. I just want to make sure that that is available for people to consider. We will, the item will be heard, but we aren't anticipating having public comments this evening on that due to the continuation. So I'll flip back down to this though real quick and go ahead and take questions from council. I see council member Cummings, council member Golder and then council member Comtar Johnson. And thank you for that presentation on this item. Good to see you. And Katie, I had a question. I don't know who this should be directed to, but last year we had some extensive work done by group four to kind of come up with the design for the library mix use project on this site and put on different types of designs. And the council recommended one of the designs and that would have parking detached and try to maximize the amount of housing units. And so now with moving forward with Chase and Architect, I'm just wondering because of the fact that there was a lot of community input and there was a lot of work done and money spent on that group, how do we, or what's the plan for incorporating the designs that were brought for us from that group with kind of, you know, moving ahead? So. I'll start council member Cummings. And then, you know, Abe, you may wanna add on to that, but I will say that we took the site design and the specifics from the community outreach and the work that group four did. And that was included as part of the scope for their quest for proposals for all the architect teams. So all of them, when they presented their proposals, they presented it on the basic design that was the recommended design of group four that count proved that was based on the community outreach. With that said, you know, each of the architect teams, you know, did look at the possibilities for the site and there are some other options to consider as well that could result in potentially some more affordability, greater unit count and just some flexibility in the project. So we've encouraged them to make sure, particularly in the initial phase that, you know, pre-design conceptual that we are designing towards that direction that we had from council. But we didn't want to close off the possibility that there could be a configuration on the site that actually nets us more affordable housing and potentially nets us greater space for the library by creating some efficiencies from the integration of the project in a different way. And so we're going to be looking at that closely and but we're very aware of the community input to date and want to make sure that that's being carried through. Since it has been, you know, a multi-year process, there has been many touch points with the community over the years. And of course, the extensive work done with Jason in the past as well is also information on the project that we're carrying forward as far as the values and the input on the project to date. And so with that, if he may have some additional context to add. Thank you, Bonnie. So I don't have too much to add to that. I think Bonnie described it well, but essentially that's correct that our scope is basically defined by the, you know, previous iterations of community process that led up to this point. And we will use that as a start for our process and we'll be working directly with the city and the community to sort of further shape it to be the most successful project. And those are all the comments I had as was hearing some concern around, you know, are we starting again from, you know, step one with the library and just wanted to make sure that that was clear to the community that that previous designs from group four are being taken into account as we move forward. So thank you for that clarification. Council Member Boulder. I didn't have any questions. I just had comments and I just think that the designs that you shared are so beautiful and it was so inspirational and I can't wait to see this project complete. And I think it's going to be such a tremendous asset to our community. So thank you for all your work. I really appreciate it. Council Member Calantara-Johnson. Thank you. Yes, I would like to echo those sentiments. Beautiful job on the other libraries throughout the community. And thank you to the whole team for the presentation. I had a couple of questions about the community engagement process. It sounds like a pretty thorough process. My assumption is that I wanted to the notices of the workshops and focus groups will also be noticed and conducted in Spanish. Is that correct assumption? Yeah, we've been doing that on almost all of our recent outreach. So that's our plan is to continue that. Great, thank you. And how have we done outreach to the Latinx community in the city? What's our approach? Or what will be our approach? I haven't spearheaded that, but I have been engaged just in getting up to speed on some of that. We've been working with the city's liaison as it has been part of the process and the approach. And then we've been working also with some of our community partners that in sort of sharing the notices with them and making sure that they communication. Great. And then my last question is, I imagine that some of the efforts you've done here and elsewhere, the community engagement has been online given the current situation we're still in. Could you either Abe or Katie touch on how you have made these online engaged, accessible and interactive to community members? So I will actually acknowledge that we haven't done a project from the outset online, although we have done community engagement online. So this will be the first one where theoretically we may have kind of a multi event series online. On some level, I don't think the kind of approach changes dramatically. It sort of speaks to, we build the process up from the beginning. So we're not entering this process and then presenting a design to the community. That's not how we approach this. We engage the community in kind of listening and kind of information gathering first. And then we actually kind of take them along on the process of kind of learning about how we kind of think and in structure kind of design development. But similarly, it will be kind of structured regardless of whether it was online or in person. We will generally at the workshops lead with a brief presentation. And then we'll do breakout group. So Zoom has the ability to break out into rooms. So that we kind of try and break down the scale and people have a little bit more ability to dialogue with each other. And we kind of work with the community so that there's notes taken in that small breakout group. And then that small breakout group then can report back to the larger community. So there's kind of that idea of small group dialogue is present whether it's online or in person. And we will obviously adapt like everyone to kind of COVID protocols as we go forward. Thank you. And maybe just a thought or question for, I know that in the past when we've had community engagement efforts, we have, I believe we've opened up the library for those who don't have internet access or the capability to access these things on their own. So maybe that's something we can think about as part of this process. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was just gonna point out that as of today, we opened up reservations for our program and conference room. So we just went to the swing of that at all of our branches that are open right now. And then also just to try to answer your earlier question, we do have, we do outreach all the time, but beyond just, you know, not just to the city. So because this is everybody's library throughout the county. So we'll be doing outreach in Spanish and in English throughout the county to get feedback on this. Great. Thank you so much. I'm also really excited about it. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Abe and Katie for the presentation. It's good to see you. It's good to see your beautiful work. And I just, I wanted to ask a couple of questions about your, how you're thinking about described really, really clearly and, you know, vividly how you think about the experience and placemaking and showed us some beautiful buildings. And I just wanted to, so I have two questions. One is related to your role now being as the architect for a component of a mixed use project where the mass of the building and the height and all of that are gonna be dependent on, you know, broader set of goals. And so I'm just wondering how you think about, you know, that street level, engaging, you know, how people feel about the space of the library given that it's the most likely on the first floor of a much larger building. So just trying to think about like in those images you see the sky and it feels open and that's not gonna be the case in this case. So just how you're thinking about that. And then I think that there are a lot of variables and, you know, things that are gonna depend upon, you know, other pieces coming into place. What square footage do you have in mind at the moment? Are you thinking about that additional 5,000 square feet? I know as a member of the library subcommittee or the library subcommittee, excuse me, that we talked about that being a really big incentive for doing a project in this way is that we were gonna get significant more square footage for additional program space and other spaces. So are you operating on the additional 5,000 square feet assumption or are you trying to just figure out how to factor that in as we go along? First, thank you, Council Member Brown, nice to see you again. So first on the issue of the square footage, I'm very familiar with the kind of the different sort of calculations of square footage and the different studies that have been done over the years. What I'll say is we defer to the city in terms of setting kind of the programmatic targets. We're kind of familiar with the different categories and we're gonna work with the city about kind of where their goals are at. And obviously that'll be sort of a conversation done in tandem with the library as well. So I can't say specifically that we have decided to design to a specific target today, but what I can say is that we'll work with the city and the library and sort of build from that programmatic basis. In regard to kind of the library as a part of kind of this mixed use project, I think it's a really exciting opportunity and it's actually a programmatic pairing that is becoming more and more common, both with libraries and just kind of in general throughout America that these kind of libraries are being developed in tandem with affordable housing in many cases and in larger mixed use projects. So multitude of reasons for that. There's kind of synergistic reasons in terms of kind of the way different uses kind of reinforce each other, the idea that children who live in the building can go to the library. And there's also kind of reasons from a funding standpoint that they're being developed together, there's often an economy of scale of bringing the bigger project. In terms of design, so that's the other piece of it is kind of how does it feel comfortable in terms of the way we think of it is that the library and the housing are going to be friendly neighbors. So they're not the same building per se, even though they technically from a building code standpoint, it is the same building. But when we think about design, we'll think about kind of careful differentiation of the library from the housing in the way that they're having a friendly conversation with each other. So they're not trying to be the same. They're not trying to dress in the same clothes, to repeat each other like a parent. But they're in dialogue in a way that they feel comfortable next to each other. So obviously we haven't designed the building yet, but going in, I can say at the outset that that's how we'll be thinking about it is that the library will be in dialogue with the affordable housing and vice versa. And they will sort of at the kind of areas where the buildings kind of interact with each other, we'll think very carefully about those kind of moments of interaction so that they feel kind of carefully tailored and kind of give the building a sense of scale and friendliness. So hopefully that kind of answers your question about kind of how it will be integrated. And I just wanted to add Council Member Brown about the size of the building. As part of the scope, we're really looking at maximizing the footprint for the library and recognizing that there is a cost associated with that. So part of the direction and the exercise that we'll be doing and looking at the various pieces and programmatically the elements and the direction that we had previously from Council is how to most efficiently and from a design perspective, successfully achieve that. So when we come back to you in early December, we're really hoping to be able to show you a design, hopefully they get to that higher square footage for the library because we know that's a goal for everyone. And if we can do that, a cost effectively as well, we think that there may be a way to do that, you know, all the better. So those are our goals, that's what we're striving to achieve. Thank you. I see Vice Mayor Bruder, please. Thank you, U.A. and Katie. My questions, I also had questions on the outreach and engagement on the different components of the library and your presentation. There were great library examples and so in the timeline that is included in the packet, I don't wanna assume but with the engagement, how the housing parking library all fits in, is that all at once or do you break it down throughout the timeline? What does that process look like? I can speak briefly and then Bonnie, you may wanna ask, well, but I would see the development kind of happening concurrently to kind of Council Member Brown's question, the design of the library and the affordable housing they do need to be thought of together. So this is not two projects in isolation. These are programmatic uses that need to speak to each other and build off each other. We would definitely see that kind of moving forward together and we know that you can't have a community process for this project without talking about both components. It will be difficult to separate them out. So yes, I would see them moving forward together. Bonnie, maybe you can add to that. Yeah, I mean, absolutely, that's right. I mean, when we come back to you, we're not just going to be presenting the library, it's going to be the whole project and we're going to have at least one option that really close, almost exactly close the concept design where we had the council direction from last June based on Group 4's work and then taking those same programmatic elements and looking at ways we might be able to net more affordable units and more library. If there are other creative options to create that in the project, you're going to see that as well, but it's going to be for the entire project. We're really focusing and visually having, Jason's texture be the lead as a master library architect, they're still really engaged overall in the look and feel of the entire project and that's really why we have that forefront is also because it really is the library that is going to be visually what you're experiencing when you come to the project, particularly on the pedestrian level. And so we want to make sure that that's really leading the design, we move forward on this project, but the design elements on the housing, that's key too and because we have such a great team and they're going to be working together, we know that we're going to have a project that meets all of our goals as far as sort of just the overall look and feel on how it's integrated into the surrounding block and the neighbors. Thank you. Great. Thank you, everybody. I'm not seeing any other hands up right now. So I'll go ahead and take this out to the public now. And I see we have one attendee with their hand up. So this is for item number 24 on our agenda today. That's the contract for the mixed-use library master architect. So if you will press star nine on your, excuse me, if you press star six on your phone, we'll unmute you and you can go ahead and speak. This is for phone number ending in five, three, six, two. Go ahead, one more time. Go ahead for phone number ending in five, three, six, two, go ahead and yeah, there you go. You're ready to go. Okay, thanks. Hi, everybody. It's Judy Grenstra. I had thought of just presenting some other thoughts, but now I'll just go ahead. Council might not be aware that the library is embarking on a strategic process in the coming months. Doesn't it seem premature to have Jason design the interior spaces of the library before the strategic plan? An analysis of how much space for each of the library's services and programs would best serve this community. It was done by consultant Penny Hummel during the Nolan Tam process about four years ago. Now that was for a 44,000 square foot building, significantly larger than we'll be able to afford. In short, wouldn't it make more sense to design a building after the library has gone through this strategic planning process? Okay, now I'm switching to my latest reaction to what I've just heard here. So are you saying that the Abe Jason, which I greatly admire Abe Jason and Katie as a team. Now, my concern was about the outreach. Now that Bonnie has noted that the order of the meetings is different with the pre-design meetings now consisting of six focus groups and three workshops, which was originally scheduled for later. So are these two, is all this outreach, three workshops and six focus groups all supposed to happen in the week after Thanksgiving? Because that is really inconvenient timing as far as the ability of the public to participate because it's right around Thanksgiving and it's just too condensed. Okay, that was one point. The other one is, are you saying that this out, conducted by Jason, is going to include design of the housing components? Because I was under the impression it was just gonna be about the library because if you're including, it's gonna be way too much. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Next up, I have Krista. Thank you, council members. So this should be a pretty straightforward question, but I was looking for the answer. So the, an acquaintance of mine pointed this out that in the RFP for the Downtown Library Mixed Use Project, the project proposal must include a minimum of 50 affordable house above a new ground level downtown library. And then she also pointed out that the motion for approving this project was specifically for a minimum of 50 low income housing units. So I know that affordable and low income have different meanings and that those need to be, they have like very specific parameters. So I wanna ask, is it 50 low income housing units that are going into this plan or is it 50 affordable housing units? Thank you. We will try to clarify that as needed with the staff. Excuse me, other comments from the public today on item number 24, please raise your hand if you'd like to speak to this item. You can raise your hand by pressing star nine on your phone. I'm not seeing any other folks in the meeting today that would like to speak to this item. So I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for deliberation and action. Vice Mayor Brunner, I see you and the member Boulder and then council member Watkins. Thank you. I know we received some information earlier. I wanted to just quickly ask Bonnie Lipscomb to clarify that there would be 107 housing units of extremely low and very low on the housing portion of this development. Is that correct? That's right. So it is affordable housing, but the categories of affordability for this particular project are very low. So at 50% or lower of area median income or even extremely low at 30% of area median income. So we're targeting those because that's the hardest to build affordable housing in our community and the least likely housing to be built without a public subsidy. So even affordable housing developers frequently have some challenge getting at that low unless there's a significant public investment. So we're really focusing there and it will also help us meet our regional housing needs allocation or renegals. Great. Great. I'm happy to make a motion to move towards awarding the contract for the mixed use library master architect to Jason architecture in an amount up to 2.289-550 or 2.9 and off 2.29 and authorized the city manager to execute an agreement with Jason architecture in a form to be approved by the city attorney. Thank you vice mayor. Is there a second to that? Council member Golder, I saw you. Okay. This is seconded by council member Golder. We have a motion on the floor then to go with the staff recommendation and is there additional comments from council members regarding? Go ahead, council member Brown. I'll just be very quick. Thank you. I find myself in a difficult position here because I absolutely support the Jason architecture being our architect for and to do the design for our new downtown library. I'm thrilled about the potential to get very low and extremely low income units actually built in our community. And I also am, you know, I have heard so much concern among community members about this particular site and the massing on this site. And, you know, and I just feel like supporting the things that I really want to support. I can't, I can't do that because I'm not going to be able to support that. And just right now it feels like there, you know, there's just given the contentiousness of this issue and, you know, ultimately my concerns about the siting and the, you know, community response. I can't support the, you know, the mixed use project moving forward on this site. So I'll be voting no on the motion but I do just want to say that, you know, I really have a lot of respect for, you know, Dave and Katie your work and I'm, you know, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. And I'm glad you're excited and I'm glad others are excited, but I can't support it today for the bigger context. Thank you, council member. And I'm not seeing any other hands up by my colleagues. So we'll go ahead and call for a roll call vote. We have a motion made by Vice Mayor Bruner seconded by council member Golder to award the contract for the mixed use library master architect to Jason architecture. And Bonnie, can we do a roll call vote please? Council member is Watkins. Hi, and I want to thank you for the presentation. Calentary Johnson. Hi. Brown. No. Cummings. Hi, and I'll just say for the record as well that we really wanted to see how this continues to roll out especially given that there's a lot of potential for affordable housing. And I know we need to really balance all the needs of the community. And I think that we have the potential in this project to really meet the needs of various stakeholder groups. And so, well, I'll be happy with the outcome. I think we're going to get a lot of positive community benefits. Golder. Vice Mayor Bruner. Hi. Mayor Meyers. That motion passes. And we had six in favor and one against. Thank you, everyone. And congratulations, Abe and Katie. We look forward to working with you a lot over the coming months. So, welcome back. Thank you. And we're so excited to do that. It's a privilege to work with you. We're very, very excited. Yeah. Knock my headphones out. Yeah. Whatever Katie said. Thanks, you guys. Okay. We will move on to item number 25 now. And item number 25 is 831 Water Street. And the purpose of this item was to conduct a public oversight meeting as according to SB 35 to assess compliance with objective standards criteria and accompanying density bonus requests for an affordable housing project proposed pursuant to SB 35. I just want to be clear for today, for the public attending today's meeting, this item is recommended for continuation to October 12th, 2021. This continuation is recommended to allow for our staff to complete further review of the revised plan submitted by the applicant on September 9th, 2021. Our staff to date has done an outstanding job on the review of this project to date, and this new information needs the same level of review. The October 12th, 2021 meeting will include a public comment period. And at this time today, we will not be taking public comment today due to this continuation of this item. And I would look for a motion to continue this item to October 12th, 2021 from one of my colleagues. And I do see Council Member Golder's hand up. I will move the recommendation to continue item 25, E3-1 Water Street to September 12th, 2021 for the public oversight meeting. I'd actually, October. Great, what did I say? I said October 12th. Okay, okay. And I will second that motion and we can go ahead. I don't know. My understanding is we are, I'm looking for Mr. Kandadi here a little bit. So we have a motion on the floor. Tony, deliberation by Council is, I believe to not be held today either, correct? That's right. The only issue before you is the continuance that Council Members can comment on the, on the continuance of the item, but substantive comments on the project or that sort of thing would be appropriate when the item is actually presented to you substantively. We have a motion for a second. So we're getting guidance from our attorney that comments on the continuance are appropriate. Other items, other comments should be held to the actual noticed meeting in October, October 12th. I mean, I will just add a few quick comments. Again, letting our community know that this is a very complex project. It's a very complex law. Both of these are complex laws and we, I just want to again recognize our staff. I think they've done a lot of work to try to really understand and look at the, the objective standards that we do have on the books with this project. So we look forward to receiving additional analysis by the staff for this. Council Member Cummings, did you have a comment? Yeah, I just wanted to appreciate the staff's analysis on the July 27th application for this project. And I fully support the initial staff recommendation for the now based on the analysis through the project's numerous inconsistencies with the city's objective standards. The applicant has legally agreed to an extension of the time period for consideration of his application to October 14th and has provided a letter which was circulated to the council to express this in writing. So I just want to make sure that members of the public know that this has been legally documented. And while my preference would be to deny the application based on the staff's analysis and require the applicant to submit a new application, I understand that under SB 35, a developer has the right to revise an application and the agreement to the extension gives the city a reasonable amount of time to analyze the September 9th application. Given the decision has been made to not hold public comment, I'm prepared to... I was prepared to make a motion that has some amendments. So I'd send it to Bonnie and would like to see if either we could vote on the motion with the amendments or if we could vote on them separately. But the motion would be to move the staff's recommendation based on the applicants agreement to continue the 831 Water Street Project, October 12th, 2021 with the additional actions. One, the city council indicates its intention and support of the previous staff recommendation to have denied the July 27th application based on the detailed staff analysis of its inconsistencies with the requirement of SB 35. Two direct staffs to provide as early as possible before the October 12th consideration of September 9th application and analysis of it as detailed as the one that was provided for the July 27th application and three that since it's prohibited from conducting CEQA review under SB 35, the city shall not act as a responsible entity for the purposes of conducting environmental review of Section 8 voucher applications for SB 35 projects. Tony, Council Member Cummings, I don't believe we are accepting another motion. Point of order? I'm sorry, I'm going to load on for a, I'm just getting clarification from our attorney. Yes, that's what I like to say. That's all I'm going to do. I'm not going to present anything. It wasn't clear to me whether this was intended to be a substitute motion or a... Yeah, that was my question as well. A request for a friendly amendment. I would say, however, that I believe that it would be inappropriate for the council to take action on item number three. First of all, because I think in order to make a policy determination about how the city council would handle Section 8 vouchers for an SB 35 project in general, that's a policy issue. That's not before the council. Second of all, I think you would have to have public comment for that. And thirdly, my understanding is that projects that require NEPA review, the responsible agency for that is the agency in whose jurisdiction the project is located. So from a legal perspective, that's probably problematic as well. As to items one and two, I think, I guess I would just ask for clarification if this was intended as a friendly amendment or a substitute motion. I'm just not clear on that. Well, it sounds like that the friendly amendment wasn't going to be accepted. So I'm happy to move it as a substitute motion. So we'll take a vote on this substitute motion. Then Tony, is the substitute motion on second? Second. And can I just ask for clarification? Does the substitute motion also include item three? I would ask that item three be included for consideration on October 12th. If we can't make those changes today, then as these applications are coming forward, we need to understand what role the city has and since we can't discuss it or make any action on it today, then I think that it would be good so that the public understands what role we can play and we can have a determination of that when it comes to these NEPA reviews. I think what I would suggest, if the council wants to consider these items is that we proceed with a vote on the motion to substitute council member Cummings motion for the prior motion and just take an up or down vote on that and then the council could debate the content of the motion if it passes. So we have a substitute motion on the floor. So now I wonder you need to vote whether or not to accept the substitute motion. Exactly. And but I wanna make sure I'm understanding what the substitute motion is. Does it include number three? Cause I didn't get that wasn't a clear answer for that specific question. And what I would recommend is that we clarify that if the substitute motion is accepted. Okay, so we have a substitute motion on the by council member Cummings, seconded by council member Brown. And this would be to accept the substitute motion and correct the roll call vote. Council member Hawkins, did you have a question or comment? Sorry, I just wanted to get a question cause in terms of process, Tony, what I heard you say is that it's really about the continuance of the discussion just to continue the item but going into sort of substantive statements as sort of listed, that feels sort of not necessarily process, but I just am a little concerned also given our earlier conversation in close session. Yeah, I mean, I share those concerns and which is kind of why I'm suggesting that the council move forward sort of forthwith and decide whether or not to accept the substitute motion. So we'll go ahead and have a roll call vote, please, Bonnie. Council member Hawkins. No, and for the record, it's just because of the legal considerations associated. Is that okay? Council member Johnson? No, and I have the same concerns. Brown, Cummings, Boulder? No, and I have the same concerns. Vice Mayor Brunner? No, and Mayor Myers? I'm no also, and I have the same concerns specifically the language and the motion is inaccurate and it's based on our understanding, my understanding of SB 35. Okay, that substitute motion fails. So we will go ahead and take a roll call vote on the motion to continue. Council member Watkins? Helen Terry-Johnson? Cummings? No, and I just want to make sure it's clear for members of the public that I'm very much in support of the recommendations to deny this project based on the detailed staff analysis that came before the city council and it came before the community before it got changed yesterday at the end of the day. Vice Mayor Brunner? And Mayor Myers? Fine. That motion passes with five for the motion and two against the motion. Okay, we are currently with item number 25 and I did go out of order. I'm gonna go ahead and move to oral communications now. 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. Instructions are on your screen. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. If you are interested in addressing the council, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. You will have two minutes to speak. When it is your time to speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. We request that you clearly and slowly, state your name before making your comment so that we can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes. However, it is not required to state your name. Please remember this is the time for council to hear from the public. We are not able to log with each member of the public, but when we are able, we will address the questions raised after oral communications has been completed. You see that we have two folks in the audience regarding oral communications. I have phone number ending in 1810. Please press star six to unmute yourself. Yeah, how about blame shifting of his failed policies? Let's skip the previous judgmental errors of the lockdowns, arbitrary essential workers and businesses, facility science of cloth masks, and the many other ill-conceived mandates causing masks, casualty, economic health, and social chaos damage. I focus here on the continuous 100% policy bet on mRNA vaccines falsely promising a zero utopia in what has become an unfathomable monumental blunder using COVID fear porn at best. At worst, it is pure paid for politics, a big pharma greed, gates greed, authoritarian, political power grabbing, Fauci lies, and now mostly a Biden administration doing a blame shifting to cover up as many continuous and multifaceted policy failures by doubling down over and over with ever bit moral lies, a gag on free speech censoring truth by big tech media and an unwarranted assault on American freedom never before seen in this country putting neighbor against neighbor fomenting civil war. It's go time against Biden and the like, not your neighbor if you ever wanna be a free people again. As to the policy error, it's plainly wrong to force every single person to undergo medical procedures with 100% informed consent for disease with such low mortality rate for so many people while denying treatment and de-prioritizing treatment research. Worse, the long-term risks are still unknown and available data suggests the vaccines aren't as effective, safe or long lasting as they need to be. The latest paper out of UC Davis finds 12 to 17 year old vaccinated boys are over six times quickly to develop a cardiac adverse event heart problem compared to unvaccinated children who required COVID hospitalization. Another finds COVID immunity for the recovered is 13 to 20 times more effective than mRNA vaccine immunity. Forcing something and discriminating inside other bodies is a risk. Your time is up. Next up, I have phone number ending in 3585. If you could press star six to unmute yourself, please. If you press star six, you should be able to unmute yourself. Go ahead, please. Yes, my question is, will there be local hiring requirements on these projects for all the libraries so that taxpayer money stays within the community? Thank you, sir. Next up, we have item, or excuse me, phone number ending in 5362. Go ahead. Hi, again, it's Judy Grunstra. I'm following up on a discussion at a recent meeting about the fate of the River Street sign. Informal polling on Santa Cruz local showed a majority of people in favor of not reinstalling that sign, which is currently out of sight. Thank goodness. I believe Justin said council might discuss the sign with the public work staff. Please scrap the design, scrap the sign, recycle the materials, and get the arts commission and public involved in the design process for welcoming attractive sign or just install some landscaping or trees. Thank you. Thank you. Next, I have Krista. Please press star six to unmute yourself. Yes, thank you, mayor. So I just wanted to say that support, high density housing, bringing high density housing to Santa Cruz, especially low income and extremely low income. I think that's really important. And I think a lot of council members agree. I could support it much more and more vocally if I was confident that our, we had a plan for our water supply. A lot of the conversations I'm having with folks around this issue is mostly just really concerned about low, I don't know much about planning for long-term water supply, but I bet our interim city manager does. And I bet there are a lot of members in the community who have really good ideas about this. I know they sell, there's a lot of history with that. And I don't know if that's the right direction or not, but I would really like to see some really proactive action to concerns around water, especially when we're bringing developments. And I mean, I think housing is wonderful. It's kind of hard to support hotels when I'm considering the water shortage because visitors come in, they'll welcome you as much water as they like. And so I wouldn't support that, I would like to see some strong aggressive action on protecting our water. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, I'm not seeing any other hands up for oral communications this afternoon. And with that, our meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone.