 The hour of 12 o'clock having arrived and a majority of the City Council having arrived I will call this meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council on March 14th 2023 to order and would ask the clerk to call the roll. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Newsom. Present. Council Member Brown is absent. Watkins. Here. Council Member Bruner is currently absent. Mr. Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Cooley. Here. Quorum having been established we will move forward for public comment on any item regarding closed session. We will have a closed litigation personnel session today. If there is anyone with us in chambers today who wishes to make a comment on one or more of those items rather than this would be your opportunity to do so. Seeing and hearing none Ms. Bush do we have anyone online who wishes to comment? We do not. No. We do not. Seeing and hearing no one who wishes to comment on our closed session agenda we will adjourn into closed session and return at 2 o'clock this afternoon or when we finish our regular business whichever occurs second. Pardon me Mayor Cooley. We have a subsequent need item that I would like to ask the council to add to the agenda. The basis for adding the subsequent need item is that the need arose after the agenda was posted and due to some time constraints it is necessary that the council discuss the item before the next regularly scheduled meeting. The item is a matter of pending litigation it is the lawsuit entitled city of Santa Cruz versus the regions of the University of California. Without objection that will be added to our closed session agenda today. We require that it be adopted by motion and it requires. There is a motion by Ms. Watkins and a second by Mr. Newsom to add that to our closed session. Is there any debate or discussion concerning this matter? Concerning the motion. Seeing and hearing none the clerk will call the roll. Councilmember Newsom. Aye. Brown. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Absent. Callentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Cooley. Aye. Motion passes unanimously and so ordered we now stand adjourned into closed session. The hour of 2 o'clock having arrived the Santa Cruz City Council is back in session for our afternoon session the clerk will please call the roll. Thank you Mayor. Councilmember Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Callentary Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Cooley. Here. And I recognize Councilmember Callentary Johnson for some remarks regarding Persian New Year. Thank you Mayor. Persian New Year is called No Roo's and it's the first day of spring and it takes place on or around March 20th every year and this year thank you to our Mayor for the proclamation that you issued we'll be presenting that at an event that the city is co-hosting at the mall on this Thursday March 16th from 6.30 to 8 and all are welcome so we'll describe what Persian New Year means and we'll talk a little bit about the women's freedom movement that's taking place today Ryan. Very good thank you for that. I would also like to invite the good folks from Hope Services who are here with us today. I can see smiles so I think I know who's who from Hope Services. We are so grateful for all the work that Hope Services does in our community every single day. Councilmembers here with more experience and I have sitting on this body know better than I do how much that work is so meaningful in people's lives. I would like to acknowledge the Parking for Hope program where the City of Santa Cruz each year decides to use a portion of the money and parking meters to provide additional support for Hope Services and the very good work that they do. I would like to invite Hope Services Manager Heather Perez, Employment Coordinator Jessica Guzman, Crew Supervisor Héctor Castillo and Literary Batement Crew Member Sara and Cassie to come forward. Hi, how are you? Good, good. So here's a check from the five hundred and sixty-eight dollars and three cents is going to put you over the top with your good work, right? Thank you so much. This will help support our programs for six months out of the year to support the downtown Literary Batement Crew. So thank you. You're certainly welcome. Certainly welcome. All right. Bye. Thank you. We're under presiding officer announcements. There are none. Statements of disqualification. Any member wish to make a notice, Ms. Bruner? Out of an abundance of caution, I will be disqualified from item number seventeen as it relates to my employment. Very good. Thank you for that. Additions and deletions, Ms. Bush? There are none. There are none. Thank you. City Attorney Report from closed session, sir. Thank you, Mayor Keely, members of the City Council. The Council met in closed session this afternoon at twelve o'clock in the Courtyard Conference Room. Council Member Brown was not present for that portion of the meeting. The following items were discussed. First of all, prior to adjourning to closed session, an item of subsequent need was added to the agenda. And that is pending litigation, the matter currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court entitled City of Santa Cruz versus the Regents of the University of California. That item was discussed in closed session. First item on the closed session agenda was real property negotiations. Properties at 333 Locust Street and APNs 0227210708 and 09, located in the City of Scotts Valley. City owned property. Those items were deferred to a subsequent meeting. Item two was a conference with legal counsel concerning liability claims. Those are claims of Laurel Hanna-Baker and DeVita Seliger. Those items are also listed on your consent agenda this afternoon as item number nine. Third item was a conference with legal counsel concerning anticipated litigation. That is, the Council met to consider initiation of litigation on one potential case. As I mentioned, the City versus Regents case was discussed in closed session, but there was no reportable action. Thank you, sir. Ms. Bush, any reports on the Council meeting calendar? No new items, but just a reminder next Monday is a special meeting. Monday is a special meeting. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the consent agenda at this point. These are items which are all clustered together that will be voted upon on one motion. What we will do at this point is I will go around the Council and ask if there are questions, comments, or a desire to move any of these items off of the consent agenda. And then you will be given an opportunity to comment upon and request any item to be moved off the consent agenda for further discussion. These are items six through 14 inclusive on your agenda. Let me see if Council members wish to comment or pull any items. I'll start on my left, Ms. Brunner. Ms. Condard Johnson. Ms. Golder. Ms. Watkins. Ms. Brown. I would like to pull item 10. Item 10. Item 10 will be pulled. And for those of you, this is item 10 is the Santa Cruz Police Officers Association and Santa Cruz Police Management Association tentative agreement for successor memoranda of understanding. There has been a request for extra time on that for Mr. Meisler. That has been granted. So when this item is prepared, Mr. Meisler, I will recognize you for that purpose. And Mr. Newsom. Okay. Let me ask if there is anyone with us today who wishes to comment upon the consent agenda or request that an item on the consent agenda be placed. On the regular agenda. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, sir. I'm not sure it has any real relationship, but I've wondered since the, the August of 2021 Santa Cruz maniac ride out that came to this town with 5,000 bicyclists and calls all kind of havoc. I've been trying to find out if anybody, anybody in the city ever wrote a report on the incidents and that I did a records request for anything that was referred to. 911 calls that were referred to city services. But I would think that given the complete failure of being able to prevent what happened and all the problems that happened that weren't reported that somebody would have taken the time to report. So I'm asking and that's it's a police affair and it has to do with their duties and whatnot. So that's the reason I brought it up right now. Thank you very much. Under all communications were, well, no, I'm sorry. This is not all community. This is a comment on the consent agenda. Thank you. I think what I'll do on that is let me see if, if you would leave your name and phone number. I'll follow through with, with the city manager and chief police, see if we can get an answer to your question. Okay. Well, you've all got my contact information on that yellow hand. Not sure I do. Oh, yes, you did. You got one. Absolutely. Well, I've got it then. Okay. Other people are glad to give it to me. Very good. Thank you, sir. Anyone else who's with us today wish to comment on the consent agenda seen and hearing none. Someone did just raise their hand. Mayor, sorry. Someone did just raise their hand. Somebody did just raise their hand. Let's go to them then. Good afternoon. You are with us online. Good afternoon. I'm going to count to three here. One, two, three. There we go. All right. A motion on the remaining. Mayor, before you go, I'm wondering, I intend to comment on item 10. That'll be the appropriate time when you pull it off the agenda. When we take it off, that's right. We'll be with you then, Mr. Norse. Seeing and hearing no further items, a motion to approve the remaining consent agenda would be in order. I'll move the remaining consent agenda. Motion by Ms. Watkins. Brunner, second. Brunner. Clerk will call the roll. Council member with Newsom. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Callentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Keely. Aye. Thank you. We are on item 10. And this is the item that was requested to be pulled by Ms. Brown. Ms. Brown, would you care to open on this item? Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say I received multiple requests from members of the public to pull this item from the agenda today and agreed to do so. The item is approval of the Santa Cruz Police Officers Association and Police Management Association contracts, labor contracts, and the requests that I received included concerns related to specific, I think it was primarily related to specific positions and the vehicle abatement position in particular in the police budget. And while that is not something that we can necessarily discuss here because it's not within the scope of our labor negotiations, I wanted to give an opportunity for folks who made this request to speak about their concerns before we take a vote. Thank you. Anyone with us today who wishes to make such comments on item 10? Good afternoon. My name is Leanne Sherwood, and my father was the pastor, associate pastor of the Circle Church from 69 to 85, and I know he would approve this message. This is for the Santa Cruz Police Department and Santa Cruz City Council. This is for all backyard meters and burn beaters, bum beaters. Associopaths will stand there and watch you cry over the pain that they have caused you with a glint in their eye, a smirk in their face, no remorse, no apology, and they will keep winding you up and mock you for crying. Same on you. Anyone else on item 10? Good afternoon. Hi. My name is Reggie Meisler. I'm a member of Santa Cruz Cares. I work in a coalition with a large number of other groups to defend the rights of people who live in vehicles and tents. We have a request for you regarding the Santa Cruz Police Labor Contract, namely that you either reject the MOU to make changes to it or you amend the MOU to remove the vehicle abatement officer position and the vehicle abatement hotline from the Santa Cruz Police Force. I'll talk a little bit about why this is a deeply problematic role and speed dial number for our police, but let me first address this in a wider context. People need housing. They need housing they can afford and they need a lot of it at this point. They can't wait 10, 20, or 50 years from now for housing to become available. More people are living in their vehicles and tents every year and so there's a desperate need for people to simply be allowed to exist while our government attempts to address a multi-million unit deficit of affordable housing throughout the state. That is what this is really about. People need a way to exist while they're poor. We need a bottom to this capitalist system that is currently creating a downward spiral of suffering. You lose your job, you lose your apartment, you lose your vehicle, you lose your tent, and then you lose your life. We need a bottom to this system because the way things are working right now, people are led to death. They're led to death by exposure or death by suicide. So with that in mind, let's talk about why the vehicle abatement officer and the abatement hotline are perpetuating that downward spiral. For those who don't know, the vehicle abatement officer is a role in the Santa Cruz Police Department dedicated to handing out 72-hour tow notices, also known as abandoned vehicle notices or green tags to nuisance vehicles. For a wide range of community complaints, including complaints which are purely subjective and aesthetic, like general unsightliness. Complaints by neighbors sent to the SCPD are not investigated before a tow notice is given and reporters are not required to provide personal information, meaning Complaintance cannot even be held accountable for false police reports of an abandoned vehicle. As you might imagine then, unfair reporting and abuse in the system is rampant and normalized. Groups like Santa Cruz neighbors are very public about their intention to use this vehicle abatement hotline liberally. Not simply to address public health and safety concerns, but also to address what they consider to be blight in their respective neighborhoods. The biggest target for this program is our neighbors most vulnerable to tow orders, people living out of their vehicles. I've heard numerous stories of the system being used to unfairly target and harass people for simply having an unsightly vehicle, people getting green tags within hours or minutes of parking, people getting green tags while actively occupying their vehicles, officers cracking someone's windshield when they place a green tag on their vehicle, officers telling people move one mile and aggressively chalking that message onto their tires when the law they're citing only requires they move a short distance which is not actually defined. The ACLU recently sent you a letter which I was supposed to give you a physical copy of. I'll send it to you again via email and that letter details how green tags, what the vehicle abatement officer gives out is neither lawful nor enforceable. So why continue to support a program that is discriminatory, abusive, unlawful and unenforceable, amend the MOU or reject it to erase the shameful role from our city police force and stop the downward spiral while we await for truly affordable housing to be built. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Greg Benson, Richard Voder. I'm a resident up at the Armory right now and I hope we have more room to get people in. Basically, I believe that the politicians need to have their feet held to the fire or just warmed at the fire but the police, you know, I think we're lucky to have the cops that we do have. I've been in Chicago. I've been thrown 40 feet by two cops and these guys do a pretty damn good job of letting us be foolish and I asked them one day, they said, well, this is what we signed up for. And then I chased them down. I said, you signed up to babysit 50 year old drunken men like me that are older, but and that do no better. And they're like, well, and they, you know, they should not do that. But I've been sober for 14, 15 days and I'm still mischievous, but we need to, like I said, at the Benchlands, I was co-chairman of the Benchlands Council, which means I was the only person that did anything or showed up anymore. That's mischief too. Let's keep the focus on the origins of what's causing things, you know. And we could, you know, the 70 outdoor beds do not really count according to Boise versus Wade and we could flip a lot of sleep if we needed to, but there's other ways to get stuff done and the most important thing is let's remember, you know, the multiple people that have died out on the streets, mostly from drugs, it's not easy to get the cleaners over out there. Let's make things good for them. Let's keep us safe. Let's let the cops go home to their families and let the politicians go home to their families and I will and can stay there. No, no, no, we need them to do stuff until I get to office. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Miss Smith, good afternoon. Hello, everybody. I'm happy to be here. I'm glad you're all here receiving and the rain lad up and the horrible rain, I mean the wind, but people from Chicago are used to it and I've lived in Santa Cruz for 53 years, staunch Democrat. Now, I am here. I am concerned when, well, tell public works to get in gear. Waiting as many people are for the fencing around duck, the duck pond to be removed and there are still lights that are out on the walkway and for those of us who love to walk through the park and through the park and downtown to get to TJ's. And as Sandy knows, I told her I wish that I could get a little commission once a year. I live near the river bank and I walk a lot and constantly picking up trash and thought of mentioning it since low and behold, trash to pick up on my way here. And beyond that, Mayor Keely, I left a telephone message for you that I presume you received. If not, about a brilliant book I want to give you. I like to pass on brilliant books. I said, who can I, who really would love and deserve this besides supervisors? Golden Gates, The Housing Crisis and A Reckoning for the American Dream by Connor Darney. And it's historical and sociological and it'll inspire you all, but for the mayor to take it home and eat it up and read it all up and use it for future. It focuses on San Francisco. Here's what I'll do. I have a policy about not receiving gifts. It's not a gift. It's a citizen input. But you can gift that to the city of Santa Cruz and any of us can read it. So if you would give that to the city clerk, that would be great. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you. How are you? Thank you. I'm good. I just wanted to take a quick minute to echo what Reggie Meisler said. As many of you know, I spent four years living in my RV. Those tickets, the green stickers, they do nothing to help individuals get housing. In fact, it hurt my family quite a bit. The resentment is still very much in my heart about that whole situation. The money that's spent on tickets could be saved to help people get housing. I spent a lot of money on tickets that could have been used on food for my family, could have been used on a lot of other things. So I do want to echo what Reggie said as the truth. He said a lot of truths that pertain to the unhoused community and people living in their vehicles. And so I think that, again, I will say the focus needs to be on services and not criminalization. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Good afternoon. I'm not sure whether I used up my time. It was kicked off the agenda that the member of understanding was the police. But this concerns the issue that people have been talking about parking. So it's very, very short. So I've been, I think, pretty liberal in allowing people to speak to number 10 without speaking to number 10. Well, this is exactly about the issue of... I'll tell you what. You use your time as you wish. Your time starts now. Thank you, Mayor Keely. In case anybody has a problem with a Santa Cruz parking ticket, I know a legal way to challenge it and win. I've been doing this for years. I'm not going to reveal the secret here in front of Council and Tony. But it's very effective and I've done all of the illegal research on it. So part of the process of the parking tickets is unconstitutional under a decision by the California Supreme Court. So that's all I'm going to say. If you want to talk to me and get in touch with me, anybody can. If you can find the yellow sheet, that's got all my contact information on it. I'd love to help somebody out. Thank you. Well, thank you, sir. Mr. Norris, good afternoon. And hello to the community and the City Council. In these chambers, we are constrained to wedge our groans of pain and shouts of outrage into a two-minute slot. Adding insult to injury, oral communication has been denied its traditional spot today at a time certain, so most people don't even know when to come and speak, unless I've been misinformed. Any MOU, which is what we're talking about on this period, must, of course, severely cut police funding, if not shifted entirely to real community organizations that provide actual services for Santa Cruz. Ask how many times a police officer has helped you in the last five years. Ask yourself that question. I mean, honestly, not do it with any disrespect to individuals who get their salary that way. Police murders and militarization in other places, lack of accountability here, and police collusion with DAs and business interests plagues us. Should more money be spent on funding these armed goon squads that forced hungry and homeless people to eat in the rain in the past week right outside these chambers that happened on Friday? Should we bolster the weaponry of uniform gunmen who drove community members away from here, the seat of government, because they were setting up food under the eaves so that weep would not be rained on? Do we continue to ignore voices that point to increasing discrimination against black and Latino residents in San Francisco and San Jose, and has also been documented here with dangerous and life-threatening traffic stops? Documentation is shown in San Francisco and San Jose. These stops threaten minority folks two to six times as heavily as us privileged white folks. Is this the truth? And this issue, what does it have to do with memorandum of understanding? Well, this is a pay raise. And when it's hard to oppose a pay raise to our employees of any kind, when you have individuals who are violating people's rights without accountability, one has to put that into a real examination before one raises their salaries and commends them for the good work. I mean no disrespect to any human being here or in the broader, water-soaked community. But as a matter of principle, it's important to preserve our First Amendment rights by not being afraid to show disdain and outrage for a local government and a local mayor, amiable as he may be, who has refused to open broader shelter for this winter, but most outrageously for this series of storms coming up. They may be drenched shivering with the only warming center accessible to all on those few nights to be open clothes. The current depot center is a joke. The other centers are too far from town. A stated capacity of less than 30 at depot, an actual capacity of less than 60. Meanwhile, across the street, the civic auditorium lies empty and guarded by the promise of violent force should anyone attempt to escape the atmospheric flood there. It should not be tolerated. Thank you, Mr. Law. Anyone else who is with us who wishes to comment on item number 10? Seeing and hearing none, the matter is back before the council. A motion is in order, Ms. Brown. I will move the item. The item's been moved. Is there a second? Second by Ms. Calantari-Johnson. Is there a debate or discussion on the item? Ms. Brown. I would like to make a few remarks given that I pulled this item and have been in communication with some of you who are here today. So I just want to say that I share your concerns that have been expressed and I'm going to try to speak just to this item here. But I just want to generally say I share the concerns that you all are expressing. I have consistently expressed concern and opposed efforts that are enforcement-based approaches to addressing our homelessness crisis in our community. What people are going through is obviously, you know, really unconscionable. And I'm not saying that to place blame anywhere in this room. We have some major challenges to try to work through. And I think that trying to work on those changes in the context of a labor contract with the people who do this work go out every day. And, you know, I think that that's important that we support our workers. I'll just kind of leave it there. I guess I could say more, but this is a workforce issue as well. And as a management here, as I am, I think it's really important that we support our workforce. And this is an MOU that was negotiated in good faith. But I do take your concern seriously. And we'll continue to work on them elsewhere, else-wise. Thank you, Ms. Brown. Others on this item. Please call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Consent agenda and additional item 10, or item 10 rather, are approved as submitted. We are on item 15. This is an item that is an appeal of Transportation and Public Works Commission approval of parking removal on Laurel Street as part of the Laurel Street Vision Zero Striping Improvement Plan. Staff presentation. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Matt Starkey. I'm the Transportation Manager here at the City of Santa Cruz. Joined by Transportation Planner Clare Gloglie. And we will hear from Lieutenant West Maury and Director Nathan Wynne is in the audience as well. We're here to talk about Laurel Street and our Vision Zero Striping Plan that we've prepared. So I'll share a little bit of the project background, some of the policy framework that brought us here. Existing conditions that are out there. We'll hear a little bit from the Santa Cruz Police Department on the safety concerns on this area. And then I'll get into the design details to show you what we're proposing. So the project background here, we're taking an opportunity to improve Laurel Street with the Pure Water Soquel Project. This project will be micro surfacing and re-striping the roadway. At a very low cost to the city, we're working on making these improvements. The bigger improvements to this roadway that we've heard from constituents about are not always possible in these projects. Right now we're constrained to just working within the existing curb lines that we have. Clare's going to share with us about the policy that brings us to this project. So the policy framework is really getting to the why of this project. If we wanted to proceed in a status quo manner, what we would do is go out and re-stripe exactly how it was before. And we feel fairly strongly that we have really clear marching orders from mayor, council, and past councils to not do that. To make positive changes in our community that really align with our general plan, active transportation plan, climate action plan, vision zero policy, local roadway safety plan, and health and all policies. And expanding on each of those briefly, our general plan has a plethora of goals, policies, and actions that relate to increasing multimodal transportation, increasing safety, and increasing accessibility for those who walk and bike in our community. Our active transportation plan sets aggressive goals for us to improve not just the number of facilities, but the quality of facilities that we provide. We know there's really clear data that shows when people feel safe walking and biking, they're more likely to walk and bike. And the improvements in front of you today directly relate to that. Our climate action plan calls for aggressive increases in walking and biking and decreasing people driving single occupant automobiles. As you can see from the graphic on the screen, 69% of our emissions in our community come from transportation and mobile sources. That's something that we need to address dramatically if we want to really make an impact on climate. Very recently, we've seen some climate impacts on West Cliff, and we'd like to start turning the tide. With vision zero in 2019, the City Council adopted a vision zero policy. Stated bluntly, this says that no injuries, fatalities, or severe injuries on our roadways are acceptable. So when we look at transportation improvements that we are proposing, we do it through a vision zero lens. What is the safest type of infrastructure that we can put into those facilities to directly address a history of injuries and fatalities that we've seen on our roadways? Our local roadway safety plan did a deep dive into our entire city and pulled out Laurel Street as one of our priority corridors to make changes on to address our history of high collisions. This is direct, indirect alignment with that. And finally, getting into health and all policies and equity. Specific to this corridor, 20% of the trips are made by people walking and people biking, but they represent 67% of fatalities. And that is, for us, an unacceptable rate. Our most vulnerable road users are most exposed to traffic, to vehicles without protection. And so in this context, Matt's going to go through the improvements that we are proposing, but they are all based in the policy framework that Council has directed. And in particular, our primarily safety improvements looking at our multimodal roadway users and thinking about how we can best align our infrastructure with our policies. An important thing to remember with these policies is we're really working on how we move people in our community. And we're going to hear a lot about how people are having trouble parking after they've driven to their homes in this neighborhood. One of the challenges with cars is that they're very inefficient with the space. The graphic on the screen shows you how many people you can move in a 10 foot wide lane. You can see here that it's much easier for us in our city to move people who are biking, walking and using transit, which is luckily the least carbon intensive forms of transportation we have. So think about how we make these changes in our community. It's nice to look at this model on the screen here. We know that there's different groups of people in the community. About 7% of people, this is from a nationwide survey, are in the strong and fearless cycling category. These people will ride their bike no matter what. I'm sure you know some of those people. There's also the enthused and confident folks. These people might be comfortable in a bike lane. And then there's also people who aren't biking yet. They're interested but concerned. And they might not choose the bike now because they don't feel like roadways are safe enough for them. Then there's also a group who I think we'll also hear from that are never going to ride a bike for various reasons. And that's okay. It's interesting to look at these numbers and how they compare to our bicycle mode share currently. We're at about 6% currently, but we really have to grow in our climate action plan. We have to reach 30% biking and walking trips. So what that means is we need to really capture the people who are interested but concerned. And we do that by creating the separated bike lanes that are proposed in this project. So what do we have on Laurel Street currently? Laurel is a major roadway through our community. It carries about 13,000 vehicles per day. Based on the peak hour counts, I believe there's about 300 bikes a day on the roadway. We do see there's a bit of a speeding issue on the road. And I think particularly this is impacted by the curve coming down from California. You can see the speeds are much higher in the eastbound or the direction into the city. Another important piece of this corridor between Walty and Chestnut is 88% of the properties have off street parking. One good piece of good news out here is we've made some improvements in the past that are actually showing that we can make these sort of quick improvements to reduce the crashes on the corridor. So in 2013, the left turn lanes and the medians that were installed actually helped us reduce the two-year crash average from eight crashes a year to two and a half crashes a year. I think that really speaks to how these small improvements actually can make a really big difference for the safety of our roadways. One of the challenges we have as a Vision Zero community, we have to get to zero, not 2.5. So the Laurel Street crash data here in bigger pictures helps us show what's happening out on this roadway. So this is 2011 to 2019, so nine years of data available. I excluded the pandemic years because they're kind of odd travel years. So there's a really high proportion of broadside collisions. That's the major contributor out here, which means people are turning into other people. And we see that in the majority of the violations out there, improper turning or right-of-way violation. Another interesting thing with the data is we see that the majority of the victims are under 24 years old. The demographics actually represent the community. It's about a 50-50 female split. But one thing that really sticks out in this chart is the majority of the people getting hit by cars are people biking and walking, showing an orange on this chart. So here's what we're going to do about it. The thing that we have to change is we need some additional space. And this is what is under appeal this afternoon. And it comes down to the one primary issue here, which is parking. And this is something that we've evaluated very carefully since our transportation and public works commission hearing back in January. When we initially proposed this project, there are 19 stalls proposed to be removed on the corridor presented here. But we heard at the meeting that this was a really big deal for the neighbors. So what we did is we evaluated the site distances or the visibility at all the corners here when you turn in and out of the intersections. And we also looked for an opportunity to increase additional parking. So now what we've done is we've reduced our clear corner site distance areas. And we've also added additional parking stalls on Myrtle Street to change the net parking loss from 19 stalls down to four. And with that change, there's no longer a parking impact on Walty Street. We're now only removing one stall on both Felix and Blackburn. And then we're adding, again, 10 stalls to Myrtle Street by changing it from parallel parking to angled parking. There's another close up version of what we're proposing to do on Myrtle Street. We're looking out here that the roadway has additional width. There's currently angled parking down by the high school and we're carrying that treatment through the corridor here. Another thing that we heard at the council meeting TPWC was that there was a concern about people having to walk in additional distance if we remove their parking in front of their homes on Laurel Street. So Lieutenant Westmore from the police department is going to come talk to us a little bit about the safety of these roadways. Lieutenant, good afternoon. Good afternoon, City Manager, Mayor, Council Members. Just a little bit about myself. I've worked for the city as a police officer for 22 years and I've worked the west side many of those years. And for most of my career I've been involved with traffic and traffic safety. So just a little bit about me when I talk about this. Transportation Manager Matt Starchy did come to me and talk about the project and asked my opinion about it as speaking on behalf of the police department. I was very excited about the project, being involved in several accidents in that area involving bicyclists and skateboarders and pedestrians. I thought, I looked at the project and I thought it was a great idea. Then he asked me, some of the community members had concerns about that area being a high crime area. My immediate thought was that area is a safe neighborhood, it's not a high crime area at all. So instead of just taking my opinion, what I did is I ran some data, talked to officers that worked that area every day and came back with some information from Matt. So basically in a six, I just went back six months. I went back in a six month period in that area on Laurel Street for Myrtle, Walty, Felix, that whole area. And in that six months, we took a total of four reports from that neighborhood. Two of them were auto burglaries where somebody had broken into a vehicle and stolen some stuff. One case, somebody stole a bicycle in that area and I don't know what the other theft was. But they were all low level property crimes, no violent crimes in that area, which is what I figured from that area. I also talked with officers in that area that worked there every day. They do not feel it's a high crime area at all, they think it's a safe neighborhood. I talked with one officer today, so the last time I went out there was for a bicycle accident. So just to kind of give you a perspective of that neighborhood. One thing I did want to bring up is that our city receives an OTS traffic grant every year, $97,000. Because when you look at our data, we are very high in bicycle accidents versus cars, cars versus pedestrians, cars versus skateboarders. So we actually are granted this OTS grant every year so we can go and try to reduce those crashes and reduce those numbers. And then also I wanted to talk about how the accidents went down to 2.5 a year. Now what happened was with our reduction in workforce for traffic accidents, we reduced the number of traffic accidents we actually took and wrote. So for the data basically. So now for us to report an accident, to get the data, somebody would have to be injured and go to the hospital. So there are more accidents in that area just we didn't report them in an actual official police report. Again, my 22 years, I believe that this area is a safe area. I've had friends that lived in that area that would walk to work. I would personally live in that area. It's a nice area. There are a lot of people walking, a lot of people biking, the high schools right there. We have a lot of students walking around. So the police department is on board with this project, especially to keep these bicyclists and pedestrians safe. Lieutenant, thank you very much for being here. I think knowing some of the tradeoffs we have to make to improve our roadway safety, I'd like to just show you what we're getting out of this project to wrap this up. So at the Laurel Curve, we're working on how to reduce the speeds and the issue of cars turning into the bike lane as people going up and down the hill. So what we're doing with that is we will have additional posts on the roadway here shown in these buffered areas. That will help keep cars out of the bike lane. And that additional sort of vertical object there is shown to help show people to slow down more. We're also adding these speed reduction markings on the roadway. Those are often used on curves, maybe in more rural settings actually, where you create an illusion that people are going faster so you actually slow down as a result. At the side streets, this really ties into the crash data that we saw where a lot of people are having angled collisions. So here we have the widened medians here which we know are a safety benefit for the people walking out there. And we also are keeping the left turn lanes because we know those are helping people who are making these turns into their side streets. And we didn't, when we considered the changes on this corridor, we wanted to keep those because we've seen the improvements and we know how important it is for people to get into the neighborhood. And the next piece is the day lighting and this is what we're talking about with the increases in angle of collisions out here. Thinking these changes will help people see cars that are coming in and out of the side streets more effectively and in addition see pedestrians and cyclists that are crossing, shown in that green and yellow bars there on the screen. This is also one of the elements that we adjusted in our design at the Transportation and Public Works Commission meeting. Initially we proposed 20 feet of these day lighting treatments, but we actually went out to each corner to review them and reduce some of them down to 10 feet to help us reserve parking. And here's an example of this treatment on Myrtle Street. Sometimes it's done with planters, but on our project we'll be doing it with striping. When this gets down to the big change for us is the separated bike lanes with protected corners. These treatments are really shown to reduce bike collisions and they're also shown to reduce crashes for pedestrians and all users of the roadway. One primary reason for that is they're shown to reduce speed, which gives more people time to react to unpredictive situations. And we also know that these improvements will help people in that interested but concerned group maybe consider giving bicycling a chance. So with that we're asking to deny the appeal on this project and to have us investigate further the diagonal parking on Myrtle Street with the neighbors to see if that's an improvement they like on their street. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to now call up the appellant, Robin Belkin, and you'll have 17 minutes to speak and present evidence in support of the appeal. Good afternoon. Sorry, can you talk another mic? First of all, I cannot do this in 17 minutes. Unfortunately there's just too much information about the improprieties in handling. Here's my suggestion, get on with it then. It'll help you get through your minutes. Okay, fine. Good, thank you. Okay, briefly I'd like to outline what I'll cover and try to provide some signposts along the way because it's all complicated. I'm deeply concerned about my tenants that live on Laurel Street and others like them in the neighborhood whose voices are not being heard. They're at great risk for their personal safety despite what the officer says about his 22 years of experience mostly with traffic. And it's a great infringement on the lives of those that live on Laurel Street and their lack of equitable accessibility to their homes by taking out all the parking on their street. So first I just want to describe the location which was up on the screen a minute ago. Then some of the circumstances around that striping and parking elimination plan. Then I'd like to talk about the stakeholders that are impacted by this decision and some of the positions on the matter. Then I'd like to elaborate on my view on behalf of my Laurel Street tenants and many neighbors and more as well as my concerns with the positions of some of the other stakeholders that have driven my appeal on which the city council must rule. And finally fourth I'll state the more equitable outcome I hope we will achieve. First of all though I want to just say that I would like to kind of establish the context for the council in this regard. This is called the vision zero striping plan. So removing parking on all of Laurel Street has nothing to do with striping. And vision zero as we've heard has to do with access and equity. It's supposed to be a holistic approach and all these loaded terms that by using vision zero you're supposed to assume are included in this plan. But in fact it doesn't address accessibility and equity of people that live on Laurel Street and park in front of their homes. And I also want to quote transportation manager Starkey at the hearing. He said at the hearing that he does not know how to balance or measure the safety of the bicyclists the 2.5 per year versus the safety of all the women and people that have to walk from remote locations where they're supposed to now park instead of in front of their home back home. So we're looking at 2.5 bicycle accidents or other accidents per year that safety versus the daily safety and accessibility of everyone that lives on Laurel Street between California and Chestnut. So show of hands how many of you would like to have all the parking removed from your street. So when your guests come over anybody when you have to carry groceries in your house. Let me just say we don't respond to that. It doesn't mean we don't want to agree with you. It's just that. OK, OK, I could address it to everyone in the room here. But I would just like everyone to think personally how'd you feel about this. And again show of hands. You can't show them but think about this. How many of you would encourage your daughters, your wives, your sisters, other friends, young people, old people to walk alone in the Laurel nearing neighborhood over by the 7-Eleven on Chestnut and Laurel or anywhere in that neighborhood at night. It's not OK. It's not OK. And these women were not hurt. Here we go. So I sent each of you and I don't know if you looked at it, a map that was up on the screen. It basically was this one. Would you like us to put that up on the screen? Yes. Do we have that? Please. Can you do that? This won't be taken from your time. Wonderful. Thank you. Let us pause for a second while we get this up for you. OK, this is a Google photo. Google Maps photo of Laurel Street. Go ahead. This is a Google Maps photo of Laurel Street. And you can see on the left is the hill. It's called the Laurel Hill, where all the accidents are taking place at Walty Street. OK, after that is where they want to take out all the parking after the fact. After the scene of the accidents, they want to take out all the parking on Laurel Street, the rest of the way down the road, all the way to Chestnut, which is in the end over here. So just the logic of that alone is not right. It's just not right. And one would hope that the Transportation Commission would address the issues where they are happening without infringing on the daily lives of everybody that lives on Laurel Street with this other kind of stubborn insistence on putting in bicycle ballards and removing all the parking. There's already a bike lane there. So I'm just telling you it's kind of bewildering. I just also want to say that I have another map to put up. There's a clock here for a moment. OK, this isn't the perfect map, but I'm going to have to do it anyway. As soon as the map comes up, we'll turn the clock back on. OK, clock's back on. OK, I just want to point out in black, you'll see the streets that are affected all along Laurel at the top right, where the red curbs and bicycle ballards are supposed to be installed beyond the Laurel Hill. And I'm asking you to note, see where the neary lagoon park is? There's a trail there that is designed, their words not mine, to circumvent the Laurel Hill. It says right on their site, to circumvent the steep Laurel Hill, and it's a shortcut walking to town. And I sent it to you in letters, I hope you read it. Also note in the blue and red, that is the, like, $18 million segment seven of the Santa Cruz Rail Trail. It is designed for bicycles and pedestrians. So why are we spending all this money to try to make this steep, dangerous hill safer, and as transportation manager has said in your agenda packets, putting in those ballards and those expanded bike lanes is supposed to increase use on the dangerous hill where all the accidents happen by 21 to 500 percent. His words, not mine. So why are we even doing this? Why don't we just use the trail, any of the two trails? And finally, if there's really a problem, because he's trying to find the simplest solution to this problem, why don't we just have people walk their bikes down that dangerous hill? Put up a sign, walk your bikes down the hill. Rather than inconvenience everybody that lives on the street, not just now, but forever. I will tell you that at the hearing, again in your agenda packets, it says, in quote, a couple of people voiced concerns about safety, walking to their homes from remotely parked cars at night. I counted 41 people being represented, okay? Women called in and they spoke up and they spoke on behalf of their whole households. One of them said, I'm sitting here with all my roommates, I live with seven other girls, and we have been followed, we've been harassed, we've been attacked, we've been touched in the street, and we don't feel safe not having home-adjacent parking to our homes. We don't feel like we can go out anymore. My tenants on Laurel Street, there's six girls in the two-story top levels and three boys right now on the duplex below. The six girls, the first week they moved in, had somebody try to break down their front door, and they had to stand on the other side trying to hold the door, which was cracked by the time we got there. They've had people sleeping on the sidewalk blocking the entrance to their gate to get into their house, camping out on their front porch, and in their backyard. So I don't know if the officers are not there at night. In the day, it has a great walkability score on Zillow, it's like in the high 90s, it has a 99% bike score, it's called Bikers Paradise, and a 45% out of 100 transit score, because people still need cars, that's why. They still need cars because you can't go everywhere people need to go without one yet. And I'm a huge advocate of public transportation, and I hope the day comes when people can take buses and trains and other forms of transportation everywhere, but we're not there yet. Let me see what else here. The stakeholders, we have the Transportation and Public Works Commission. They seem to be working at cross purposes with the Planning and Development Commission. The Planning and Development Commission wants to build high density housing, and they're doing so with skimpy parking. And while they're doing that, they're also encouraging people to build ADUs without requiring parking, because they're just trying to get houses for people. At the same time, transportation and public works is tearing out existing parking. So we're not ready for that yet. We don't have the public safety yet. We don't have street lights, which he said, you know, it's not their domain, or they're not here yet. So we're not ready to impose this plan on all the residents. We don't have the public transportation yet, and we don't have proper lighting and public safety at night. I will read to you, oh, I have a petition that over 100 people signed online. It's only been up for a couple of days. And it's addressed to you all, Mayor Keely and the Santa Cruz City Council. So I gave you all links, and you're addressed on the... If you would be kind enough to give that to a clerk, we'll enter it into the record. Thank you. We'll resume your time now. So thank you. So over 100 people signed in just a few days. There's support of my appeal and there's support of your vote to reject the Laurel Vision Zero Striping Plan components of parking removal, very specifically. And I'll also say that in the spirit of cooperation, all those signers said that by signing, they also approved all the other changes proposed in the Striping Plan and other ones that have been recommended. Those changes would be properly maintained and enhance the existing green pavement bike lane that's there already and crosswalk delineation by refreshing paint, et cetera. Implement high visibility crosswalk markings with reflectors and in-use flashing lights. Add new crosswalks if warranted. Monitor and reduce dangerous bicycle and skateboard speeds on the steep Laurel Hill by rerouting it altogether to the rail trail or other safe streets or with signage or by simply walking bikes and skateboards down the double-wide sidewalks on the steep Laurel Hill. And with regard to the sidewalks, Laurel property owners paid for them. I had to pay $3,750 for a sidewalk that I do not own supposedly to make it more safe. And now the Transportation Commission is telling me I can't use the adjacent parking to the double-wide sidewalk that I paid to rebave because apparently it's not good enough for people to walk their bicycles down or walk on, I don't even know. But that's very concerning. Also, the signers support add and or expand pedestrian medians, add neighborhood street lighting and police presence, particularly at night. Add speed bumps on Laurel Street to reduce automobile speed where warranted. And the undersigned neighbors strongly urged the Santa Cruz City Council to reject the red curbs, bollards, and parking space eradication in the Laurel Street Striping Plan. They further support the appeal submitted by the appellant of record, Robin Belkin, challenging and opposing the Transportation Public Works Commission's recommendation slash approval of the Laurel Street Vision Zero Striping Plan and likewise support and urge Santa Cruz City Council to reject the Laurel Street Striping Plan in its current form, i.e., the plan should be rejected if it contains provisions to add red curbs and bollards and to remove street parking on Laurel and adjacent side streets. So that you can measure your presentation you have about a minute and 40 seconds. Okay. Well, there are a lot of improprieties. All I can say is I submitted appeal in two letters, one written on December 13th, one written on December 15th. Only one of those letters was included in the commission packets. So on the appellant and half of what I wrote wasn't included for them to talk about. I will also say that the transportation manager who's spearheading this and the spokesperson at the hearing, when he said, I don't know how to measure balance of the safety of the cyclist versus the safety and accessibility issues of all the people that live on Laurel Street, when challenged by the one or two only commissioners that were listing actively and not defensively, he said, this is just our recommendation. The City Council can amend it at its will. So rather than discuss it or defend it or address the concerns raised by the other commissioners, he just said, hey, the City Council can change it if they want to. And he's already alerted us that he doesn't know how to balance and measure the issues of safety between bicycles and the people that live there. So it falls on your shoulders to do that balancing and measuring. The daily safety of all the people that live there and the accessibility and equity of access to homes to move your furniture in and out, to carry your groceries in and out, to have guests and send them safely back to their cars in inclement weather. All the reasons why none of you would want all the parking removed from outside your house, especially in that neighborhood. If you need a couple more minutes, take a couple more, but we're going to try to keep it to a couple of minutes. I want to make sure you get through your appeal. Okay. Thank you. I'll jump to my closing. The general residential parking safety concern expressed today at the Transportation Public Works Commission hearing in both my appeal and online petition is an economic and social justice issue, a women's rights issue, and an accessibility and equity issue. Every renter or homeowner is not a young adult single cyclist. Cyclists don't exist in a vacuum, and they are perhaps the most able-bodied among us. So surely they can walk their bikes down the steep Laurel Hill on the double-wide Laurel Street sidewalks, ride a few blocks over to the rail trail, and or the Neary Lagoon trail, rather than gravely impact an entire neighborhood of hundreds if not thousands of paying residents by forcing them to relinquish their essential street parking in front of their own homes. Furthermore, this area lacks adequate public transportation to intentionally target car owners, for whom we have not provided adequate public transportation alternatives to justify trying to eliminate their cars yet. Our city council ought to look out for these women, families disabled, and mostly renters that seem to be viewed with disdain as if low-density homeowners are justified to have their own cars, but high-density renters aren't. This is a high-density area because there aren't enough homes for everyone to own one. The majority of people can afford to own at current rates. They have to share homes. I'd ask you to try to wrap it up now. You've had like 19 minutes of your 17 minutes, so see if you can wrap it up. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll just say that the photographs provided in your exhibits of the properties on Laurel Street that supposedly have parking, that's so ridiculous because a photograph of where people would park a car has nothing to do with how many people live in the house. I have space on my property for four cars, but 10 people live there. Thank you. Appreciate your consideration. Thank you very much. We appreciate it, and pleased to give you the extra time. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. The matter is, let me ask if there are council member questions on this item. Let me see where anybody who wants to raise questions on this item. That's a yes. Ms. Calintari-Johnson. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for a staff for your presentation. Ms. Belkins for your testimonial and the work of the TPWC. I just want to bring out a couple of points Ms. Belkins made and ask if you could speak on them. If you could speak to the striping and parking removal beyond Walty. She spoke about the challenges that hill up to Walty. Why move beyond that? If you could speak to that, that would be great. Yeah. The majority of the parking removal is focused around between the Blackburn and Myrtle Street blocks. There are collisions between bicyclists and cars at all of the intersections on this corridor. And furthermore, we're looking at this two prong approach. It's one, our vision zero goals of reducing crashes, but it's also the goals that the city has to increase by school and walking mode share. And we know how to do that by creating separated bike lanes, which takes the parking up. I would add to that also spot improvements do not build a network. And so only doing this piecemeal does not lend itself to building out the protected network that we've expressed. We want to build out in order to achieve our policy goals. And so doing it piece by piece doesn't make sense. Thank you. A couple more if that's okay. As Belkins also spoke about the strategy of increasing police presence in that area. I know Lieutenant Westmore gave the data that there isn't currently a lot of crime, but can you speak to how much police presence or maybe Lieutenant come up? How much police presence is there currently and are there opportunities to increase police presence in the future? Sure. The Westside officers that work that area go through there all the time. They drive through Chestnut, they go through Jenny. We go to the Neary Lagoon Park all the time. So officers are always going through there. Also Laurel Street's a main roadway. So we're always driving up Laurel Street to get to Mission or the whole Upper Westside. And also we have a lot of activity at the 7-Eleven there at Chestnut and Laurel. And also this whole area is two blocks from the police department. So officers are constantly driving through that area, driving through the neighborhoods, making sure everything is safe. And when I spoke with my officers earlier that worked this area, they drive through there all the time, especially at night too. I drove through there last night, went through the whole neighborhood. Notice that the actual lighting is adequate. It has good lighting there. And it was a very nice, calm, quiet night. Okay, thank you. And one more question. The TPWC had a number of conditions that they put forth that was voted on. Is that included in your recommendation? Yeah, we were able to address the conditions from the TPWC. And we actually want to step further to look at these parking changes. So yeah, we adjusted all of the corners, the daylighting pieces. And then we went and looked at Myrtle Street further to see if we could add the parking there. And those both were able to achieve both of them. Okay, thank you. Those are my questions for now. Council Member Bruder. Thank you. You asked a couple of my questions. I did want to ask about what was brought up as parking equity on Laurel Street. And Ms. Belkins mentioned for parking spaces at her property. However, tenants live there. What can you remind me what the total parking count is for Laurel Street? Not that's being removed, but I know like some of the properties, is there a way to, do you have a number of what you have as parking? I'll try to answer your question. I think to what you're getting to is, is there enough parking for who's there? Is that generally what you're getting to? And it's a really interesting question because many of the homes on Laurel Street were built originally intended for a single family to live there. If you drive down Laurel, you know, a kind of single family or smaller scale multi-family housing. As the appellant said, she has 10 tenants in her home, which is probably not what the original builder of the home thought was going to be there. She has four or five parking spaces. She said many of these homes were built having parking as required by our code, but that doesn't reflect we don't state mandates of how many people can live in those homes. So there is oftentimes a mismatch between maybe a single person that has four parking spaces or a home that has four parking spaces but has 10 people living in it. So 88% of the homes on this stretch do have off-street parking. We didn't go through and do a census of how many people live in each of those homes. What I will say is on the public right of way where we are proposing losing four parking spaces, those four parking spaces are often used for private car storage rather than a public benefit for the entire community, which is what we are proposing today, which is a reallocation of space away from private car storage where many of these homes do have private off-street car storage to a safety improvement for people walking and biking. Thank you. Was there any look at options of maybe a loading zone or kind of the issue and concern brought up about accessibility, moving furniture, groceries, kind of the things that people encounter in their lives and having that option? Yeah, that's definitely a fair question. I think globally we look at those issues, especially when we have commercial businesses on the site. I think if this was a lot of commercial frontage here, we might take a different approach. Small sections of loading would be challenging on Laurel Street itself, just with the width we have and what we're trying to fit in with the bike facilities. If that's something we want to look at more, I would say something on the side streets where maybe we do some time restrictions, maybe two hours, 30 minutes, 15 minutes of loading zones on the side street corners might be an effective way to achieve that goal. For the questions. Not right now. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Watkins. I appreciate the questions that my colleagues already asked. So thank you for getting at some of that. Mine is just in regards to a figure that you mentioned in your presentation with 24 years old and younger, where the fatalities majority. And I'm wondering if that is in the range. I mean, I'm assuming is it the UCSE type students or are you seeing more with the Santa Cruz High students or children like we're within that range? Are you seeing in? Yeah, I'm sure. I wonder if I had it. And what I'm trying to get at essentially is if there's opportunity for conversation around our partners in education, around safe practices, in addition to what is being suggested here today in regards to what we can do environmentally, right? But in terms of how we're communicating with some of the education partners, if that's such a young age range. Yeah, it is really interesting how this group of people really stands out. I think we've heard that there's a lot of UCSE students that live in this area in particular. So they're probably the ones biking up to campus. It's obviously close to Santa Cruz High. And we do programs with other schools, elementary schools in particular about safe biking practices. So yeah, there are other sort of educational encouragement options we could take as a community to help people use the roadways more safely. Great. What I would add to that also is that globally in our city that under 24 is overrepresented in our collision statistics. Getting to equity, one of the things that that does represent is these are populations that oftentimes don't have the means to own a car. And so in thinking about how people have the opportunities to travel in our community, those who have the least means and the least ability are the most exposed to roadway violence. Sure. Yeah, and I think in terms of just learning from these tragedies, how do we inform our prevention and kind of partnerships to support not having these happen in the future? So, okay. Thank you. Ms. Golder. I change my mind. I do have a question that just builds on something that you said. You said there's no way to know how many people could be or there's no requirements. Isn't there a fire code around how many people live per bedroom? Does anybody know? Ricketts? Okay, maybe someone will tell us someday. But that's a question because I feel like there should be some capacity that doesn't seem very safe. And then just correct me if I'm wrong. I was looking on Google Maps or Google Earth and I saw all between this stretch, all but four of the homes are on a corner and the four that aren't on a corner have driveways, have off-street parking. Am I wrong? You're right. That's what I look. So every home is either on a corner or has a driveway. Or access from the alleyway. Or from the other side of another corner, another street parking on their other side of their home. Or the alleyway. Got it. Okay, thank you. Other questions by council members? A couple of quick questions. One is I want to offer another way to look maybe at these older homes. I happen to live in a 135-year-old home, which has, depending upon whether my daughter-in-law is there or not at any given point, two or three of us living there. Many of these older homes that were built actually were built for quite larger families. It is a modern phenomenon to have smaller families in homes. It is not at all unusual back in the 1800s or 1900s when many of these homes were built for there to be much larger families. So I wanted to make sure that we recognized what were these houses built for versus what are they used for now? I don't think it's unusual that a Victorian or an older home has eight or 10 people. That doesn't surprise me at all. I suspect when the original family lived there that might have been multiple generations living in the homes. A thought. On those accidents that occurred to you and maybe you answered this already and I'm sorry if you did because I didn't hear it. Of those accidents that you have recorded here, how many were the fault of the vehicle and how many were the fault of the other party involved? I don't have that available. Lieutenant, from what we know generally speaking, if you don't have the precise data, that's okay, but generally speaking, do we find that auto bicycle accidents or auto pedestrian accidents do split in any particular way in our city? In that area, all the accidents that I have gone to and which speaks to the primary collision factor of a broadside is basically the bicyclist is coming down the hill and the car is going to make a right turn on one of the streets, Walty, Felix, Myrtle, and then the bicyclist crashes into the passenger door or the front passenger side. So the accidents that I've gone to that's usually the primary collision factor and he would say the broadside or unsafe turning movement is the primary collision factor. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, sir. So in that circumstances, from what I've seen and been out there, it's the driver's fault turning, making a right turn in other bicyclists and then most of the accidents that I've been to, I can remember it was two specifically, they were at high school, Santa Cruz High Kids where we had to call the parents out and then specifically college kids. So from the accidents that I've been out there, it's mainly college kids and high school kids. With primarily the cars being at fault or the vehicle, the moving vehicle being at fault, not the bicyclist. I cannot remember a time where we put the bicyclist at fault in that area coming down that hill. Well, thank you for that. That's helpful in understanding this. I do think that the appellant has at least the color of an issue from my perspective and that is the, this issue of not having enough off street parking and the changes in the law as that is developing. I suspect we're going to, I don't think there's a neighborhood in the city of Santa Cruz that doesn't have cars parked one by one by one by one in the evening as people come home and so on. So sort of saying that, well that person can access because they have a driveway or because there's an alley or whatever it might be I think may to some extent ignore or not quite look straight on what this parking problem is that we have. And I think that what the general lady was talking about with regard to, especially women at night, I don't know that there is a neighborhood in Santa Cruz or in most modern American cities where, and I mean cities, not suburban environments but cities where women feel quite comfortable walking around or carrying their groceries from two blocks away over to whatever. So I think there's a colorable case here that the general lady has raised. Now the question is what's the solution to that and I'm going to defer to my colleagues who we now have district representation so I'm going to defer to them on how they want to handle this in their district but I think there's a couple of quite good points that have been made here and I'm wondering in that regard, like I say the council member would do what he's going to do here. If for example you did everything but the removal of the on-street parking, you did striping, you did the ballards up on those coming down from California, whatever it is you're going to do, do you still have a project? Yeah, we still do have a project but we don't have one that would help us achieve the type of goals that we're talking about here. As Claire mentioned earlier, there's a real challenge with creating a cohesive network that people feel comfortable making a choice alternative to cars. I mean that's what people were doing in the 1800s when they had these smaller homes. They weren't driving everywhere, they were walking down down and that's kind of what we're trying to return to in some ways. I think that's, I understand the objective but I think that's good public policy goal. It is one which is certainly complicated by the modern usage of property in the city of Santa Cruz. Understanding that it would be less of a project if you allowed the on-street parking on Laurel. How would you, if I'm trying to probably ask you to do something that's difficult to do but if you think this is an A plus project in terms of obtaining the goals you would like to attain in terms of our public policy pursuit here. If you left the parking, would it become a D? Or would it be a B minus all of a sudden? I'm trying to get some sense of when you say we'd still, I asked, do you still have a project? You said yes, but probably not as good, certainly. Yeah, I think that, yeah I hear you on this concern that's been raised by the appellant and we have listened to the public on this issue and that's why we tried to add parking where we really could which is on Myrtle Street. The real focus of the parking removal is in that corner and so we went out to Myrtle, it's a wider roadway luckily and so we're able to convert the parallel parking to angled parking and that creates a more efficient parking scenario. So we have really, we've done our best to really offset these issues. So with that additional parking on Myrtle, again we're only losing four spaces in the neighborhood. Yes, it's a little further to walk to your front door but I think that's a really nice trade-off for this really great project for our community. And I'm sure that that assessment is in the eye of the boulder, the very last thing you said and I think that's a good comment but I think it's a subjective comment, not that I think it's any less valuable. I think that's in the eye of the boulder, who's having that experience. May I offer a point to that? You certainly should. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting to frame it as the eye of the beholder because some of the things that we heard it's okay to bike out of your way. It's okay to walk out of your way. That's okay but parking a block away is not okay. And so framing it as the eye of your beholder and what policy objectives you're trying to put forward I think is really interesting. Well, good afternoon. Good afternoon, if I may. How are you, Mr. Public Works Director? Yeah, Nathan Nguyen, Public Works Director of City of Sanctuary and Mary Keely, members of the Public Council members. I just wanted to also voice my thoughts as regards to the parking loss on Laurel Street and how critical it is as a component to the plan that's been presented to you guys as we presented to the TPWC as well. While we're not necessarily putting a grade on the current design versus if we had to remove the parking, what would the grade be? It is a critical part to add a removed parking to in order to add these protected bike lanes, these protected intersections. Again, goals that are aligned with our Vision Zero policy. Now, with regards to where we're talking about where the parking removals are at, majority of those parking removals are on Laurel Street between Murrell and Blackburn. The parking that's proposed to be reinstated or what we're seeking direction to to go work with the neighbors on Murrell Street to add parking back on Murrell is within that same block. And so we're talking about parking spaces that are within three to 400 feet of the original parking spaces that are being displaced on Laurel Street but being added back, potentially added back on Murrell. So I just want to make sure that there's a little context. It's not multiple blocks that folks are walking in other locations that does happen. In this case, it is the same block. It's just not on Laurel. It's just on Murrell. It's in that same intersection. So that's where the parking would be re-added. Thank you, sir. And I'd like to respond to that a bit without hopefully being argumentative. I'd like to respond to that. Somebody has to go two to 300 feet further. That's correct. Is I imagine in many cases that would not be considered by folks who have to do that. If you're carrying your groceries, you've got one kid and your child rather than your arm and your, you know, your work computer and a bag of groceries and you're walking two or 300 feet, I get it. But that's not like more or less parking in front of your house and being able to walk that distance. So it changes the hardest thing we do as human beings. I understand that. But thank you for your response, sir. I appreciate it. Let me ask if there are further questions or comments by members of the council. Ms. Brown. Thank you. I do have a question because I think I'm not entirely clear. And we did get some communications about it. Could you talk a little bit about the day lighting and the distance? I did read over the attachments and everything and I thought, well, I'm not sure. I can't really tell what that's telling. I mean, it wasn't telling me what I think it's telling you. So I just like to better understand the distance on, on day lighting for the decisions that have been made here in this plan. Yeah. So day lighting is the treatment we're making on all the side streets as they approach Laurel. Originally what we proposed is just remove 20 feet of parking from the crosswalk back, which would, you know, pretty much just take out one space automatically. We heard that was a problem for everybody. So we went to each side street and we looked at what's called the intersection site distance. And that's where you take a measurement from about 15 feet back from the crosswalk and you look and you make these, these site triangles to investigate how much visibility you actually need through the intersection. So when you do that triangle, it actually can reduce the distance down to about 10 or 11 feet we found. So that was one of the changes we did through extra work is we went back out, we evaluated these site triangles and we reduced our sort of broad blanket day lighting treatment we were proposing to really custom fit it to each intersection to reduce our parking impact. Thank you. That's really helpful. Is there any other comments or further discussion? Questions from the council? Do we go out to the public now? Okay. I'd like to open it up to members of the public that would like to comment on this item. I do have people online also. Okay. My name is Andrew Jarvis. I live at 905 Laurel Street. My house is 120 years old. 1903, bad math. It's been a long day with the trees down. I was going to talk a lot about the day lighting because you've trusted me for the past 25 years to write nuisances about line of sight intersections. But really what disturbed me was Lieutenant's comment that there's no crime in the area. My wife and I were terrorized just a few months ago. I want to... Sure. I don't think he said that. I want to make sure we're clear. He didn't say there's no crime. He said it's a low crime area. There's a lot of crime. I just want to make sure... That's fine. I understand. I take that back. There's a lot of crime in the neighborhood. Matter of fact, I called the lieutenant the other day and didn't get a response back about the increase in crime on Walty Street. We've had our tires slashed, cars broken into, all kinds of items stolen. We've been told by the patrol officers there not to even call or bother calling because they're lack of officers' availability unless it's a violent crime. So there is a lot of crime in the area. The appellate's absolutely right about her tenants. I feel for the older people that live in the neighborhood. I've got a new titanium knee. Yeah, making 300 feet extra makes a big difference to some of us. I can't carry my groceries all the way home from downtown. I'm sorry. I can't even ride a bike right now. I'd love to do so, but I can't. I just want to support what the appellate has said and her arguments about that. And we do support everything else in the project. It all sounds good. But removing all of our parking lowers the value of our homes makes it more difficult for us to get around. We're not all 24-year-olds. And the appellate also had a very good point that the majority of the accidents are on the hill. It has nothing to do with the rest of the street. I'm not sure where we got our statistics from from the traffic thing, but there's a lot more accidents than just 2.5. We see probably 2.5 a week. A lot of people don't respond or report them because they're intoxicated or they're moving too fast or they admit that they've done wrong. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you all for taking the time to hear about the appeal today. I am one of the residents who stand to lose street parking in front of my house if you proceed with the Laurel Street Striping Plan. I'm a father of a 10-year-old son and we are walkers and we are bikers. I will be speaking specifically about the straight and flat stretch of Laurel Street where the existing parking is proposed to be removed, not Laurel Hill between California and Felix. The city does not have the data to justify the removal of the resident parking on Laurel Street in the name of safety. According to the city's own transportation safety reports from 2018 and 2019, there were zero reported incidents involving pedestrians or cyclists in the six-year span, excuse me, between 2014 and 2019. Additionally, using the mapping tools on UC Berkeley's transportation injury mapping system known as TIMS, in a five-year span between 2017 and all the way up to 2021, there were, again, zero incidents along the stretch of Laurel Street where parking is proposed to be removed. This is actually great news. It shows that the existing bike lanes with green striping have already proven their ability to keep bicyclists safe along the stretch of road. Also, removing the resident parking on Laurel Street will not and technically cannot decrease the number of bicycle collisions along the stretch of road. The street parking, on the other hand, is used by my elderly mother, by other parents when they pick up or drop off their kids at their house for play dates, and when they pick up or drop off our child for carpooling. Lastly, please remember that able-bodied cyclists are not the only residents of Santa Cruz who are worthy of your plans and considerations. There are the elderly, the young, the handicapped and disabled, and others who may be vulnerable for a variety of reasons. There is a clear lack of equity mindset in these plans by the TPWC. Thank you. If you want to take 10 more seconds or so, go ahead. It's just a thank you. I sincerely hope that you will listen to your homeowners and residents of the neighborhood. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon. Yes, hello. I'm Narayan Wilder. I've lived in Santa Cruz County for my entire life. I was born here. I've been riding the bus since I was 14 every single day to go to school and back for a variety of other reasons. I'd like to address some of what I've been seeing as what feels like somewhat ableist language because disabled people are not just able-bodied people. I am legally blind without correction, so I cannot operate a car or really safely even a bike. I can ride a bike, but my vision is not good enough that I feel safe in being able to see threats to my life and read road signs. I can't usually read them until I am far too close for it to matter. So, you know, there is a lot more. I am a permanent pedestrian, essentially. I walk everywhere. I walked here. I rode the bus for like an hour to get here because I had to route through Quail Hollow because of the flooding and Felton and the whole thing. And so, yeah, there's a lot more than just bikes when it, you know, not just bikes when we're talking about accessibility and these kind of things. And so, you know, we need to really focus on, you know, like they were saying, a network of transportation because, like, yeah, we, there are people like elderly folks who can't use bikes and those kind of things, so we do need to also strengthen our other forms of public transportation. We need to densify our urban areas so that, you know, you don't have to necessarily be driving everywhere to do everything. You can maybe take a bus that's 100 feet from your front door to the store and then back, like, you know, it's not... The focus upon the able-bodied bike rider feels like it erases many other kinds of pedestrians who are not just pedestrians because we're interested in health or those kind of things. It's a much more diverse and complex issue than just focusing on bikes. And that's something I wanted to say. Also, on the hill issue, I'll be really quick, you know, the focus on, like, the hill, the speed at which people arrive at the hill is enforced by the context of the infrastructure around the hill. That is all. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Chris Tegers. I'm a long-term resident on Felix Street and I encourage the council and the mayor to deny the appeal that there needs to be traffic calming of the ferrule traffic that is on Laurel Street and this project, I believe, will help that. Car ownership, it seems like people are very entitled owning cars. Everything is geared toward the car. If you want to reach climate plan goals, you need to start planning for the future. You know, two households, there's 2.3 cars in each household. And it's just, you don't want to, like, plan for more cars and traffic. I believe the issue is a parking management problem. There is a problem when one household can have potentially 10 parking permits. We don't need to encourage that any more than it already is happening. There's something fundamentally wrong when one house can have 10 parking permits and they want to have parking right in front of their house. If every house behaved that way, there'd be no room for any, where's everybody going to park? The more parking spaces you have, it's going to cause more driving. Traffic calming on Laurel will help protect elderly, less experienced commuters and youth crossing the street and passing through that corridor. I don't know if any of you have been through that corridor or if any of you walk or ride your bikes personally or if you all drive. And so I think that there's a disconnect there with the council not being aware of what it's like to go through that corridor. I encourage you all to get out of your car. If you do drive, get out of your car for a month and see what it's like to go through this corridor. Thank you. Thank you very much. But let me just say for those who are going to testify, when the bell rings, your time's up. Take a few more seconds to finish your thought. It's really okay to do that. Good afternoon. Hi. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Jonathan Gorn. I live right across from the Begoree on Cedar and Maple. I'm also a USC student. Sorry, UCSC student. So I go up Laurel to King and then I go up Bay pretty regularly almost every single school day to get to school. And I want to voice my support for this project. And I want to give an analogy. So they're talking about connected network. And I think that's extremely important because imagine you're driving your car and you're on the interstate, right? And then there's 100 or 200 foot patch of a dirt road. You don't want to... That just doesn't work, right? So the importance of a connected network is super important to encourage cycling. Also going down that hill, although some people are saying there might not be any accents in that stretch of block, there's still the threat that a car door can open and get you on the side. And that's not the bicycle's fault. That's the driver's fault. So this is why I support this restriping. It is not enough. However, it is a step in the right direction. I want the council to consider what's more important for parking spaces or people's lives. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Keely and council members. I was allowed five minutes to speak for a group of citizens in the neighborhood who would like to request that you deny the appeal. State your name on behalf of the others. Please. My name is Susan Monheit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, council members. Newsome Brown, Watkins, Golder, Johnson and Bruner. I know some of you. Okay. Your job is to balance competing and conflicting uses. And you're trying to achieve this for everybody. And that's not an easy task and I don't relish. I would not relish having to do this myself. We have built our cities around the automobile. It is practically making our cities unlivable. This city council has chosen many times to begin to implement policies that are for less cars. You're allowing, as the state does, developments with less cars. It's a reality we might not like. There is not room for all of us and all our cars. Laurel Street corridor starting at the top of the hill at California is, I want to say, a death trap. There have been people killed in crosswalks in the stretch at the bottom of the hill. I understand there was a car that flipped over last week and everybody went to the hospital. The speed is too fast. I represent a neighborhood group. We've gone out there with a radar gun and measured the speed of the traffic, both up and down Laurel Street Hill. And the maximum speed is what's important, not the 85th percentile, because it is the maximum speed that has the maximum ability to injure and kill. And that was clocked at 38 miles per hour in both directions. You've got it going up and yeah, free-wheel it coming down. So I really support the Department of Public Works embracing Vision Zero, its Vision Zero fatalities. And our group has worked to take what the city is doing. They feel constraints. We don't feel constraints to implement a full Vision Zero plan. And we have also developed designs, which if fully implemented, if only by painting all of the elements on the tarmac and on the cement, would reduce speeds and create a safer corridor. I've only got five minutes here. The other lady had 20. Okay, you need continuous paint on the bikeway in order to signal the automobile that they are not the only and entitled vehicle using the roadways. Is it a question of entitlement or privilege or ability? The people on bicycles and crossing the streets are not armored, as the cars are. They need protection. The elements of a Vision Zero plan, and this was drawn up by a certified Vision Zero international designer, is that the elements and the intersections build one upon the other in a synergistic fashion that make the safety achieved by implementing all of the elements at the multiple locations along the corridor, it makes it bigger than the whole. Bigger than any individual piece, right? The sum is greater than the sum of the whole... Anyway, you get what I'm saying. We need to slow traffic. You can do it by your design. I would like to see... We would like to see Vision Zero not look like a permanent construction zone. There are elements like elevated curbs instead of posts that line the bikeway that can achieve the same safety objectives. We're going to build a mega-development downtown expansion plan. There's going to be 1,600 to 1,800 new units, minimum 3,600 people, potentially 3,600 cars, entering the Laurel Street corridor, the main arterial to that new huge downtown city multiple times a day. You're going to have traffic increased. This safety plan will protect everybody. It's to protect the most vulnerable, the pedestrians, the bicycles, and the automobiles, and you cannot make the privilege to park four cars on Laurel Street at the expense of the life of the other people trying to use the corridor. You want them out of their cars. I know I've run over time. If you fix the Laurel Street problem, you are supporting your downtown expansion plan, which is going in. I'm sorry to be emphatic. So much I could say. Thank you for your time and consideration. Please look out for all of us out there. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. This is the first city council meeting I've ever been to. I'm in the first one I've come to that. So this is pretty exciting. We're glad you're here. Thanks for coming. So I'm 19. I'm a young student at Cabrillo, and I've used Laurel Street before. I'm here to ask you kindly to deny the appeal to item 15. The city of Santa Cruz adopted a vision zero policy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries on city streets by 2030. As all of you are aware, we need to rethink how we approach street and road design in Santa Cruz to achieve these results. That is exactly what the Laurel Street restriping plan project does. And adding car parking back makes absolutely no sense. For a street that is already one of the highest in death and injury rates, making it one of the least safe streets in the city. Car parking for these few tenants is already being made available on residential streets of Myrtle and Blackburn, adding back these few carspace to Laurel Street, a convenience only for these residents and nobody else. We'll create new contact points such as being doored or run over when exiting their parking space. I myself have been doored twice and as my mother, one of which was nearly fatal as I fell into the street into oncoming traffic, my head nearly squished by a two ton vehicle because someone opened their door while I was riding my bike. This was not on the hill, mind you, it was next to Myrtle Street. I do not want the same to happen to other mothers, fathers, young and older children who use Laurel Street every day to access upper bike parking for Santa Cruz High School. The same goes for the future young families or any age individuals who move into the new developments on Front Street and Pacific Street, who will certainly use Laurel Street such as existing bicyclists who use cargo bikes or bikes with children bucket seating. This is not counting those who already used the street to get into downtown. Additionally, concerns of crime, I was not expecting the lieutenant to be here so my comments on that are not worth being brought up because he already overruled me and made great points but on that point, where Laurel Street is not crime free, is of cars and the frequent deaths and injuries they bring upon residents. To make our vision zero policy a reality, we need to move forward on projects presented to us that prioritize pedestrian and bike safety rather than housing empty vehicles. Thank you. Before you leave, seriously, thank you for coming to council. Certainly when I was your agent, the last thing on my mind was going to a city council meeting so thank you for doing that and I encourage you to stay engaged and stay involved irrespective of what the outcome is here today. Thank you very much for being here. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Yeah, it's awesome seeing people, young people getting jumping right in. I wish I had it as well at that age. One thing is I haven't driven a car since for 12 years and learned many ways to get around and find very amazing experiences in Santa Cruz and anywhere without a car. But cars are convenient. I lost my license after 2 DUIs and flipping my car going 110 miles an hour on highway 1, flipping it six times. Didn't have a scratch. Could have killed somebody. I think I might start driving now but I'm just never going to drink and drive. Nobody should. Cars are reality. I love cars. I've got a 65 Jaguar sitting, growing mold right now but they're reality. We've got to figure out a way to decrease their impact, negative impact, but learn your own program without getting a DUI or something like that. That's all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'm the elderly mother who my son mentioned. Would you be kind enough for our record? Would you be kind enough to state your name? Oh, sorry. My name is Keiko Taniguchi. I live in Fertin. I came here to attend to this important meeting. First of all, I don't think removing the parking from the rural street will decrease the amount of accident. It's nothing to do with it. You should have limit for the speeding and the limit for the bicyclist. Bicycle is a very dangerous vehicle. You don't think so. You don't think bicyclists are very innocent but it's not. It's very dangerous. Many bicyclists care for many people many times. That's all I want to say. Thank you. Well, thank you for coming down from Feltin to share that with us. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Pauline Seals. I'm appearing today unexpectedly as an elderly cyclist who also drives and also, of course, a climate activist. I have to move to make it safer for people to be without cars. I strongly encourage traffic calming, protected bike lanes, and I don't know the specifics on this exact issue. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Seals. Good afternoon. I haven't signed in yet. My name is Michelle Taniguchi. I'm a 14-year resident on Laurel Street and a daily pedestrian on Laurel Street. If parking is removed, my child will not be able to get safely picked up by carpools in front of our home nor will his friends be able to get safely picked up and dropped off at our home. My elderly disabled mother and my elderly mother-in-law will not be able to park close to our home. Our family and friends will have to circle the neighborhood to look for parking. Friends and family who are disabled will be unable to visit our home due to the parking, lack of parking. As noted in the city's traffic studies, the major traffic issues on Laurel are at the intersections of Felix, California, and Walty. The street parking down the street has zero impact on those intersections and the crashes happening there. Removing parking also creates safety issues for those parking at a distance from their homes, particularly women at night. This issue is brought to the attention of the Transportation Commission by many women only to be totally dismissed by all but one commissioner. This safety issue is not unfounded. Just a couple of days ago, my neighbor had a trespasser in her yard attempting to enter her home. I had someone attempt to break and enter my home just two weeks ago. We have other dangerous situations happening to women in our neighborhood. Removing parking blocks away will not challenge the number of accidents caused by speeding vehicles on Laurel Hill. The city needs to create a way to slow down bikes and cars on the hill and all the way down the street to be... Sorry. Lost, particularly coming down the hill from California and Walty and by putting in blinking lights and our stop signs and crosswalks at Myrtle, Felix, and Blackburn. Please do not misdirect our city funds by needlessly removing our parking on Laurel. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. Good afternoon. Hi. Christine Hawley. I've lived in Santa Cruz since 1966 and I mostly ride a bike. And I don't really... I wasn't expecting to talk, but in terms of safety, it's totally complicated. I don't envy you trying to figure it out, but just one thought I had listening was on King Street, they've made bicycles and cars share the lane. It's really slowed everyone down and made it much safer for everybody, the passengers, the drivers, the bicyclists, and the pedestrians. My thought, since when I go down that hill, I pick up speed probably close to 20 miles an hour. If you just painted those... share the road signs, you might not have to do the more expensive stuff, and it sounds like most of the accidents happen by that hill, not further down. So that's just a thought of a way to slow down the traffic without a lot of expense. The one other thought I have for long-term safety, and I've thought about this for years and never come down or written a letter, which is kind of lame, but oh well. The whole car door opening in the bike lane is so scary when you're on a bike. And when I went to the Netherlands, they had the cars next to the street and the bike lane protected by the parked cars and the sidewalk. And I would just like to ask that maybe we start considering doing that. If we move the bike lane, so it's pedestrian bikes, parked cars, moving cars, it would save a lot of lives in terms of bicyclists. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'd like to suggest that as a compromise, let's start by implementing all the safety measures. Hang on just one second for me. I want to make sure that we're using... I am. Okay. So I want to make sure that I'm from a protocol point of view. Are there others who are going to speak? We're going to take the folks who are online. Then you'll have your opportunity to come back up. Oh, you've already spoken. I see. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Thank you for being understanding. Ms. Bush, we have several folks online. Is that correct? Let's go with the first one. Good afternoon. Hi there. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. I don't mean to disrespect this issue in any way. I support safety for all citizens, housed and unhoused. I just wish that our public works leaders felt the same way. I would like to see public works staff spend the same amount of energy they have here, preventing the deaths of our unhoused neighbors as well. I was quite disturbed to see that city staff quietly tried to repaint parking spaces in Delaware Avenue, Shaffer Road, Natural Bridges Drive, with no public comment, no democratic process, and did not really do any of their magic math to figure out if this was going to be life threatening to them. And so where is the transparency? Where is the care? Where is the interest in reduced parking with the repainting, restriping of hundreds of parking spaces in that area? But we're focused so much on this one strip of road, which I understand this is an issue for people, right? This is an issue of safety. And I want to support the folks who want to make the changes necessary because I think not making the changes is not great. But it's just, you can see the discrepancy here, right? You can see the discrepancy of who we care about and who we don't care about. So let me just say one last thing. Council Member Brown, cops are not labor. Cops break strikes. Cops are the enemy of labor. Police unions are not labor unions. Thank you. Another person online, please. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Ron Goodman. I am your first transportation and public works commission chairperson. I apologize that I wasn't able to be there in person today. This project had a good discussion at the last commission meeting, and many good suggestions were made. In my opinion, the commissioners and staff carefully considered all of the speaker's comments. Staff did, I think a really impressive job of updating the project with respect to those comments, including reducing the impact from 19 to four spaces. To me, the process worked really well, and it feels really good. It's not always the case, and I think this was an impressive example of process working. If we want dense housing downtown, we need to start encouraging alternatives. Yes, not everybody can ride, but if people don't feel comfortable riding, it's not reasonable to expect anyone, but the most intrepid to do so. A big part of increasing cycling in our city is making facilities that feel safer and protected bike lanes are a critical example of that. These types of facilities are especially important on key downtown corridors like Laurel. At the commission, one speaker stated that their household had six cars. It's really not practical for each resident downtown to be able to own and park a car, especially in our denser housing future. So I understand that it's challenging and does create problems. There's no perfect answer here, but this is an important project that begins to address our need to promote alternatives. I hope you'll deny the appeal to this thoughtful Vision Zero project from your public works department. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Ms. Bush, our next person online. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi there. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. My name is Bodhi Shargal. I'm a young person, often a cyclist. And I am a community member. I live just a couple of blocks away from the area that is being discussed. I go to UCSC and I ride my bike up there almost every day. Taking Laurel Street is about equally as fast as taking Bay Street. And I choose to take Bay every time because it's simply a safer place to be on a bike. I don't think I need to explain to the council why bike lanes are beneficial on issues of public safety, mental health, climate, equity, just on and on. We know that this is a goal of the city that goes along with our climate action plan and the goals that we've set out for the year 2030. And there's going to be a lot of smaller decisions like this that come up that are going to be where the real decision making happens that determines whether or not we meet these goals. It's not going to be one vote that's held in 2028 to determine whether or not we fix climate change. It's going to be these kinds of things that happen in unexpected places. I was really interested to hear the language of intersectionality and equity that was brought up by the appellant and I think that it misses the point that transit equity is a hugely intersectional issue. You know, we have to make it possible for people to get around without cars because the people who aren't able to own cars are disproportionately poor, people of color, all of that good stuff. So I think that the original Transportation and Public Works Commission restriping plan is in line with goals and for reasons like those and many, many more encourage the council to deny the appeal and support the original Transportation and Public Works Commission plan. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chagall. Ms. Bush, we have yet another person online, correct? Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I'm going to try once more. Good afternoon. Let's go to the next one. Thank you. Good afternoon, council. Ryan Mechel, current vice chair of the Transportation and Public Works Commission, calling in in support of the staff recommendation and in support of our original decision to deny this appeal. I think the other commenters have put it much better than I could at this point, but I just wanted to reiterate some of what they said. First off, from a policy perspective, council, both present and past, have set goals in the general plan and our climate action plan and a vision zero plan and among other plans. These are really great goals, but they were only goals. And now it's time to implement these goals. And when we go into the implementation phase, we have tough decisions. This is one of them. But if we do want to achieve the goals that we set out in years past and continue to strive for going forward, we must make these tough decisions, even if they are challenging in the moment to make a better future for our city and its residents. Speaking from a personal perspective, I am somebody who does not own a car and I commute solely by bike to work up at UC Santa Cruz. Even when it is more convenient for me, I generally avoid a Laurel Street. It is in its current state, it feels unsafe, even with the striping that is there. But I believe this plan would make it feel much safer for myself and others who either currently ride a bike or hesitant to ride a bike due to safety concerns. If we want to cut down on traffic deaths and traffic violence in the city, removing four parking spaces, seems like a very, very good compromise to me. I'm sure we'll have more difficult decisions in the future, but this seems like a non-brainer to me. Staff has gone above and beyond addressing the concerns of the appellants and other citizens. And I think you should go forth and deny this appeal. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Bush, our next person online. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hello. My name is Nairi. I'm a resident in the west side and I frequent Laurel Street as a way to commute. I do sometimes commute via car there, but I'm also frequent pedestrian and bike rider on that road as well. And I support having the bike lanes on Laurel Street and denying this appeal. I think it's crucial that we take bold steps to create a robust, protected bike network to make vision zero a reality in our city. We all know that that cannot wait. We can't push climate change needs further. My question is why should we be prioritizing people's desire to be able to park their private vehicle on a public road over public safety and climate health just so they can be right in front of their doorstep? Our public roads need to be prioritized for everyone, especially those who are vulnerable to traffic fatalities. That's people biking, walking, rolling, anything along this corridor. Unfortunately, the reality is that we cannot meet everyone's need for door-to-door parking while achieving vision zero. The shift away from car reliance in our city and worldwide is going to be an uncomfortable one. And these little steps like these are going to get us to them, but it's a vital step that we need to take for the health of our communities and our climate. So, yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much. Okay. We have... Yes, hello. Next, good afternoon. This is Garrett Philippin. I'll be brief. I'd like you to add my name of support to the Appalachian's protest as far as parking goes. Ask yourself, are the parking spaces themselves actually what is unsafe? I would add riding a bike is inherently less safe and actually quite dangerous compared to car travel at any speed. I don't believe for a second, bikes don't wildly speed down that hill. I see all the time unsafe bike riders taking wild chances in general, including routinely running stop signs. But I get it that bike lanes are somewhat blind spots for cars turning right, and bike riders need to understand this problem, approaching intersections somehow, and solutions to that that make sense are needed. I see a lot of bikes that flop their right away, I think on some perceived kind of protest principle at their own considerable risk. Maybe that is part of this problem, even if cars are held at technical fault for accidents. I can plainly hear the bike Nazis that don't care for other forms of freedom of travel, and this added discouraging of single-use car travel that's pretty Nazi also as far as I'm concerned. Those anti-car types, and also those citing climate change on this one need to sit down and get a grip on a real issue, which is safe. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. You probably need, there we go. Hello. Hi, good afternoon. Yes, my name is Kershaduram. I've lived 300 feet from Laurel Street for the last 20 years. I am a bike commuter and pedestrian, so I know the street very well. And I have actually, even though I teach bicycle safety, I have been hit and knocked unconscious on my bike by speeding traffic on Laurel. And so I'm encouraging you to deny this appeal. Yes, I'm sorry it's painful for a very few people. My partner and I walked the street after 10 p.m. We met in the pouring rain for an hour with Matt Starkey. Thank you, Matt, for enduring the neighborhood group. We walked the street and we found that there were about, there's a house there, by the way, that has two houses that probably has 10 cars, 10 students. So they would have to walk 30 seconds around the block. Luckily, they're fully physically abled. And there was, every night there was at least 10 spaces. I don't really think you need the parallel parking. I think that would be a waste of time and energy. Because around the corner on North Laurel and North Myrtle and South Myrtle, there is plenty of parking. Now Michelle Taniguchi, I know there's two spaces in front of her house, but when her disabled family members come, she does have two very wide, she has a wide driveway and two cars. So I suggest she do what I do in my 94-year-old father visits, is he gets to pull into my driveway and have the one parking spot. So I support this. I know people are very addicted to their cars, and it's going to be hard to change. But thank you. And thanks for thinking about making our city a safer city and safer so that I was on the Transportation Commission for years, and people are always wanting safer, and it feels safer to get out of their car. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And thank you for your service on the commission. I believe that Mr. Kelly is next. Is that correct? Good afternoon, Mr. Kelly. Thank you so much. Hi, this is Kyle Kelly, also a Transportation Commissioner now in school board, but I'll be speaking in my personal capacity about safe routes to school. This is an essential connection for Santa Cruz High School, Mission Hill Middle, and even Bayview. I've talked to some parents that currently do not have their kids walk from the north end of Laurel over to school on their own because they're worried about Laurel. And the safer we make this route, the more parents like those will be able to walk and bike to school and feel more safe doing so. And then I'll actually take cars off the road. So I really, I just want to see more safe routes to school and then we continue on with the current plan that we have for safe routes to school. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Thank you for your service in so many ways in the community. I believe Ms. Kiroga is next. And I am very sorry if I mispronounce your name, which is likely. Good afternoon. Hi, good afternoon. It's Kiroga, Lola Kiroga. Thank you. This is also my first meeting. I'm a resident in the King Street area and I'm a UCSC student that meets by bike and I live my life car free. I'm encouraging the council to deny the appeal to the proposal. I'm one of those bike riders who rides their bike everywhere, no matter what. I want the freedom to live this lifestyle safely. But it is difficult when your city doesn't prioritize cyclists and have strong bike infrastructure. I avoid biking on Laurel every time I need to bike downtown because it always feels unsafe, even on the flat areas because a painted bike lane isn't enough. I always take a detour through California Street to go through Walnut Street because it's a much smaller street, but it's a lot harder for me to get where I need to go when I need to constantly be taking detours to get on safer routes. If there were protected bike lanes on Laurel, myself and cyclists and Santa Cruz would feel far more encouraged to ride on Laurel and feel a lot safer. It's an insult to say there's already a bike lane on Laurel and that should be enough because having a painted bike lane isn't true safe bike infrastructure and doesn't protect cyclists from cars. It's literally just paint on the ground. We can't expect people to take detours or walk their bikes because realistically people are going to ride on the dangerous road regardless. So why not make it safer to do so? And it's unrealistic to expect cyclists to walk their bikes because it's an inconvenience and it doesn't make our mode of transportation equal with cars like it should. We deserve equal respect and rights as car drivers have. Again, we have to go out of our way constantly when we want proper infrastructure that requires car drivers to make a small compromise. Like what a horror when the cars are inconvenienced, but we're inconvenienced all the time. Bike commuters don't commute because of the infrastructure we have, but we often commute in spite of it. Thank you for your time. Well, thank you very much. Two more folks online. Welcome. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and thank you so much for all the time that you've spent on this issue today. My name is Candice Brown. I'm also on the Transportation Public Works Commission and was the one that entered the motion originally for the bike lanes with the conditions as seen in the minutes, but I also was one of two commissioners that accepted the appeal because I felt like there was a great need to do redesign on that project. I also still feel that that is the case because the whole reason for doing this in the first place is for Vision Zero and one of the other commissioners that was a champion of Vision Zero on the commission also voted for the appeal. The whole goal is to reduce the accidents down to zero and it's really important to reduce the speed of both bicyclists and cars, namely cars going down that hill and this design does not really address that issue in many ways, which I don't have time for today. So there's still an opportunity to do redesign there and by accepting the appeal, you would encourage the staff to do that. As far as removing the parking, if you were to do that, I still think there's a need for some type of loading in certain areas along the street and also there's the opportunity to change the daylighting because the daylighting isn't just removing parking, it's also visual barriers which has not been looked at in some of those streets. By removing two parking spaces does not mean it's necessarily safe and in fact, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation citing that was in the staff report was actually for only 10 feet, whereas in the plan it's 20 feet on many of the intersections. So just by changing that alone, you could add back five parking spaces. So there's still opportunity for changes. We on the Transportation Commission including myself who was an avid bicyclist in my youth, I went to Davis. I stopped biking because of almost two near-death experiences on my bike and I'm certainly looking forward to the opportunity to do it again with some new bikes. So thank you very much for considering this and for your time. Thank you, Ms. Brandt. Thank you for your service on the commission. We have one more. Is that correct, Ms. Bush? One more? Good. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Caley, council members. My name is Phil Boutel. I'm a former transportation public works commissioner and I was chair of commission when this came before us for the appeal. I'm calling in to repeat what most other commissioners said. This was really an illustration of fantastic process by the city. The commission is there to accept the first level of appeal. The appeal was denied, but staff still responded to those concerns as brought up by the appellants and by neighbors. And staff, I just think it's important to highlight that staff did an excellent job of directly responding to those concerns. Through their agenda report attachments, you can see the calculations, geometry regarding how much actual removal is needed for day lighting. There was the interaction with the police department regarding safety in the neighborhood. So as well as photo documentation of the existing off street parking. So I just want to highlight that this is an exemplary version of process that happened. And as such, I think you should support staff. I don't think it does need any redesign. And I will just say in regards to the last call, I guess I consider myself one of the original people advocating for this. When I first joined the commission in 2015, I brought vision zero to city staff and I've been fighting for it and I still I'm fighting for it. And I think vision zero is certainly accepting when projects like this absolutely need to go through. And so for me, as again, I know a couple of commissioners voted against it. It was five to and I really think you should deny this appeal move forward. Let's make Laurel Street the transportation corridor that it nearly can be. Let's make it the safer so it can handle both all the transit that it gets all the cars and all the bags and walkers. Thanks so much. Thank you for your service on that commission. Further testimony. Before the council on this item. One more opportunity if anyone is with us in chambers that would like to do that. Seeing and hearing none. The matter is back. Before the city council. Ms. Collin Tarr Johnson is recognized. I have a motion. Please come up. I apologize. You do have a rebuttal opportunity here. I believe that is five minutes. Is that correct? No problem. Thank you. I'd like to propose a compromise. I don't know why we're racing to implement all these things that are so controversial and affect so many people so drastically. Why not try implementing all the safety measures that have been proposed. And suggested in addition. Minus removal of the parking and installing parking ballards and let's just see how it goes. Also why are we not directing people to the rail trail that is designed for this just a couple blocks away. And the nearly lagoon wildlife refuge trail a couple blocks away that's designed to get people to and from school. It says on their website to circumvent the Laurel Street steep hill. I'd like to read some comment from the online petition. From a resident I live on Laurel and a house with five other women and we have repeatedly been harassed by strangers outside on the street. People have threatened to kill us and rape us screaming that they know that we are helpless girls quote unquote. There have been men that have had the guts to even sleep in our backyard and come through our gate and up on our porch to take things like furniture and bikes. Our cars have been broken into and we have had multiple attempted break ins. We understand the police and city can only do so much but it would be dangerous for us to walk from the side streets to our front door especially at night. We are all college students and often get home late from school and work. Please take into consideration the people affected if this plan goes through. Here's something that I wrote to Lieutenant Morey and he didn't respond though I asked for him to respond. As I'm sure you're aware Santa Cruz has about a D plus crime rating. It is safer than only 3% of U.S. cities and is number 17 on the list of top cities in California with the highest number of thefts per 100,000 residents and the mean numbers of robberies assaults burglaries thefts and auto thefts is not just in quote bigger but quote much bigger than the state average. Further I'm sure you are well aware rape and other sexual assaults are among the most under reported crimes. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics only 30.7% of women who are raped report the crime. So many if not most women do not feel comfortable walking alone in most neighborhoods after dark when streets are mostly abandoned whether lighted or not. Therefore when the concerns of those 41 women who expressed their valid concerns at the hearing and surely there are many more that were not represented at the hearing are dismissed and the plan is pushed through anyway who will be held accountable. Regarding the references to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The greenhouse gas emissions that are going to be reduced by taking out the parking are basically irrelevant in this case. If the Transportation and Public Works Commission wants to reduce greenhouse emissions as I advocate they need to develop public transportation so people won't need cars. If you just do it by taking out parking you can't park your car anywhere that's just a public nuisance. My house is on Laurel Street mid block. There is 48 feet of red curb between my house and Myrtle Street and on Myrtle Street the intersection has pop outs that are red for 48 feet. So my house is in the middle of the block. There's 48 feet. Only need 20 for sightlines but 48 feet already of red curb and they're proposing to paint the entire curb red. Oh by the way on the other side is the Salvation Army which is already completely red curb. I don't know why because that would be really great parking. But in the middle of the block so all the reasoning and explanation about sightlines and 20 feet from the intersection and a new thing in your packet about zero I don't even know what it was called does not apply in this case and perhaps some other cases. Finally I will note that when I called the transportation manager to ask him if there are any other residential streets in Santa Cruz that have parking ballards and red curbs lining the streets he couldn't think of any. But then he said oh but on Bay Street it's red on one side so I drove up there because I'm a UCSC graduate I don't remember whether people live there or not. So I went up there there are no red curbs there are signs that limit parking weekdays in during the day and you can park at night when not many people are riding bikes and on weekends so that's a suggestion to I don't advocate it but it's better than painting the entire curbs red from now on for everyone that needs to live on Laurel Street and finally we're not talking as many people have referenced about four cars versus 2.5 lives the cars are driven by drivers and I am trying to explain that all 12 spaces on Laurel Street are being removed we're talking about 12 people every day that can't park there and there are spaces that are supposed to accommodate them around the corner that's not safe to walk from at night it's just not. So it's not four cars versus 2.5 people a year it's 12 people every single solitary day that are going to be exposed to an unsafe situation if you take out their parking thank you very much. Thank you very much. With that the matter is back before the council and I will recognize council member Colin Tari Johnson for a motion. I sent the language to Bonnie and I'll read it. Please do. Will you have that up on the screen? Good. Motion to adopt resolution number NS-30 119 denying the appeal and upholding the transportation of public works commissions approval of the design and installation of the proposed striping on Laurel Street between Mission Street and Chestnut Street including mitigation conditions set forth by the commission and to the extent possible ensure the commission's mitigation conditions are implemented prior to or simultaneous distriping and removing of parking. Part two direct staff to continue to pursue grant funding to increase lighting on Laurel Street and also to pursue additional diagonal parking on Laurel Street with neighbors. There is a motion. Is there a second? Second. There's a second by Mr. Newsom, Ms. Colin Tari Johnson you may open on your motion. Thank you. I want to thank the appellant. I want to thank all of the neighbors and all the community members who came out and spoke. This does not have to be a cyclist versus car drivers or cyclists versus them. It's all of our community and as we evolve as a community we'll have to make incremental changes. If we look at pictures of Santa Cruz 100 years ago or 50 years ago or 20 years ago it didn't look like it did today. And these changes can be really difficult. I'm in the green bar area that you all showed. I like riding my bike but I'm not comfortable riding my bike so I am car reliant. My kids 13 and 15 are in an area where they think they're confident. I'm not so confident that they should be riding some of the corridors. I'm not. And they ride Laurel Hill every day to go to Santa Cruz high. So I understand the challenges that are before us and I do think that what has been brought before us that was altered based on the discussion at TPWC is that incremental change to help us get there to help me get there and to help me get there. I appreciate specifically that we moved from 19 spaces removed to four spaces removed and I understand that it is not just four spaces. It's other individuals that are reliant on those parking on Laurel. We reduce the length of daylighting. There's a number of other conditions so I know that's part of what you're recommending but I wanted to explicitly name it in my opinion. I think it's a really important issue and I appreciate that it's being brought up and as Mayor Keeley said earlier, it's a broader issue that we really need to focus on as a city. I'm going to directly speak to the commissioners on the commission for the prevention of violence against women and I know that some of my colleagues sit on the public safety task force but I want to take this specific issue about safety of women. I think it's important to make sure that there are other ways that we can address this because that's something that is important to me and I believe is important to the rest of the council. I'll leave my comments there and allow my colleagues to weigh in here. Further on this motion? Ms. Brunner. Thank you. A lot of reading. A lot of talking and listening and this was an interesting project and there was a lot of components to it and listening to everyone who spoke today and everyone having their valid reality and experiences and while, you know, safety was brought up as a major concern, I think this project addresses all of the safety that we have to consider on our roads and I appreciate the mitigation results from the commission and staff directly influenced by the input from the community and so thank you for calling that out explicitly. I do support the motion. I was going to recommend that our public safety committee explore further concerns of safety for this neighborhood. I know that a white male police officer may feel safe but someone else may not feel safe. The data that was presented is someone's experience and, you know, I'm happy I have gone out after getting this agenda report and gone to these streets and this area and I went at night, I got out and walked and drove Myrtle Street to see where the diagonal parking would be and, you know, I'm also someone who's comfortable walking alone at night downtown as a woman and so I understand that doesn't make it right or safe to someone else who does not feel safe. So there's a larger issue here that was the primary concern that I was concerned about with this but I don't think it's in place of this very great project and so I think it's both and and I'm happy to suggest that we explore other ways we can continue to have safety be a priority in this neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. I recognize Council Member Newsom. Thank you. You know, I want to thank everyone who came and spoke today and shared their thoughts on this agenda item. I agree with the notion or what Council Member College Ari Johnson said about how this is incremental change but I think it's positive incremental change within our community. I do take seriously as I'm sure everyone on this Council does of the safety of those who live within our district and within the city and I support efforts to go to the Public Safety Commission and to the Commission on the Prevention of Violence Against Women to look for any possible solutions to make the neighborhood safer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate all the comments of my colleagues. Thank you to staff and to the appellant and to everyone that came to speak to this issue. I think in terms of this decision, I'm really taking into account the kids that bike or walk to our neighborhood schools, Bayview and Mision Hill. From that neighborhood down And in addition, there's parking signs up that don't allow parking from midnight to 6 a.m. from what I can see and two hour parking restrictions and other parts of that, those blocks. And I think in this case, no, you're right. I would not want no parking in front of my house. It would be really inconvenient. But I think in this case, even if it was my street, I would have to outweigh the greater good for the community and especially the number of kids that we partner with Ecology Action. We have a whole safe routes to school program that we're encouraging to try and raise the next generation not to be as lazy as me and to get out on their bikes. I do like to walk, but biking is not my favorite. And so to move to those goals, I think in this case, I'm gonna support the staff's recommendation. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Council Member Watkins is recognized. Hi, I'll just be really brief. Thank you, Mayor. I wanna thank our staff. I wanna thank all those who came and spoke. I know these, one of the community members who spoke mentioned these decisions are always tough because you are trying to balance all kinds of components. And I appreciate the motion before us. I think there has been work that's been put in to get us to this place and the balance of the broader community with those of the neighbors and trying to do our best to really move forward in a direction that's gonna be good for everybody, I think is what ultimately we're seeking to achieve in regards to the public safety as the chair of the Public Safety Task Force, I just wanna commit that I'm happy to have that agendized and I can work with staff to do that. And I do think though it is a broader issue. It's a community and a neighborhood issue, but it's a city issue. And I think as a task force or as a committee dedicated to this purpose, that's a really applicable and important component for us to discuss. So just wanted to commit to that as part of the motion and a next step. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Council Member Brown is recognized. Thank you. I'll just quickly say I wanna thank the public works, the city staff who've worked on this first and foremost because you really have incorporated a lot of the recommendations that came out and addressed the concerns. Not all of them can be addressed through this project and those concerns extend well beyond whether or not we do this project or we don't. So I really appreciate the concern and the interest in exploring this through our commissions and hopefully through the city council at some point, we can be proactive about how to address those challenges. And really, I mean, concerns, challenges just doesn't seem like an appropriate word, when people are afraid and they feel traumatized. I wanna take that very seriously. And I also wanna add that we're hearing a lot about safety on the Laurel Street Hill. I lived at the bottom of it, I've ridden on it. I mean, I'm very familiar with it, as many of you are. So I have my own personal feelings about wanting that to feel safer for people who are navigating those streets. But I did wanna ask because the point has been made and we all know that simply adding the bike lanes is not gonna address the hazards of high speeds on the road. And so I just would be, I'm concerned about that and I'd like to continue to talk about that. And so I don't have really a question here, but I just wanna make sure that that stays in the mix and I know that you're aware of it and I think it is really important that we acknowledge it here as well. So thank you. Okay, everybody good? Everybody good? Okay. Thank you. A couple of comments. One, as I said earlier, I think that Appellant did a very good job of raising a set of legitimate concerns. I think that the council member, Kyle and Tari Johnson's amendments to the recommendation are helpful in that regard. I wonder if I might offer something as an additional direction. See if this works for you. Add additional direction that the city manager return at budget hearings with a plan for installing safety devices that prohibit remaining on traffic islands or medians at the city's 10 most busy intersections. Does not, let me see if that's okay with you. If okay with the second? Okay, so if I might engage the city manager for just a moment on this, the thought here is that much of what I heard this afternoon can be the same critiques and criticism of many of our other intersections in the city. I think that it's at least from my perspective, having folks, the only reason you should be on a median at an intersection is because you didn't walk fast enough when the light said green. And so if you're still there, I understand that. But people essentially setting up shop on a city median is I think dangerous for that person or that person for the general public, for other folks who are trying to get through the intersection for motorists and everybody else. So if you would be, if that motion makes sense, I would like to include it in the direction. And I see that the public works director is inching his way to the microphone. Mayor Keely, if I may, before Nathan weighs in, our city attorney was whispering some concerns in my ear. I'd like to give him an opportunity to speak to it first. I think that the direction is fine, but we will need to do some legal analysis about potential first amendment issues associated with what is essentially tan amount to an anti-loitering. What is essentially a tan amount to a prohibition on loitering on traffic medians. There's a legal analysis that needs to accompany that discussion, so. Well, thank you. Just to make the council aware of that. I'm glad you received that, thank you. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon again, council members, mayor. If I may, just get some clarification with regards to safety devices on islands. As I heard the friendly amendment to the motion, if we're referring to rectangular rapid flashing beacons, pedestrian activated devices that help pedestrians cross those type of intersections, we usually put them in medians. We actually have a grant funded project that we're working on. We've applied for grant funding to install these RRFBs actually at this location on. I'm sorry, I don't know, I lost the thread here. Sorry, I was referring to the traffic, kind of traffic devices that you're referring to, and I wasn't sure if it was a rectangular rapid flashing beacon. I have no idea, I'm not sure, but let me make it clear from my perspective, if it wasn't clear, I think it's very unsafe for anybody to remain in the middle of a street on a median or a traffic island, except when you are crossing the street and the light didn't give you sufficient time to get across and you can only make it to the median, that should be the only reason that you are there, that there is no other reason that makes any kind of public safety sense. That's what I'm trying to get to. Gotcha. One other thing that we can do to help address that, actually we do in some of our medians, we do install a river rock in our medians, some of them where it's basically four to six inch boulders that help deter people from standing on those medians. Yeah, I don't think that works well, I think that we all observe that that doesn't work well, so rather than negotiate it here, that's the direction return of budgetarians with a way to do that at the 10 busiest intersections and understanding that there are legal issues that council would like to draw to our attention. Sir. Thank you, Mayor. So with some of the feedback initially from our public works director and our city attorney, we understand the spirit of the request, so what we can do is bring back some options at a later date as we move through budget hearings. Thank you so much. Further debate or discussion? Yes, Ms. Brunner. I'm just trying to understand how this connects with this item. This is about safety in our roadways and desires to reduce the conflict between vehicles and individuals not in vehicles. I think that's the nexus or at least the one I'm trying to draw. Okay, I was just trying to understand the median question and what median exists here and I understand your intention, but I was trying to understand the connection to this item. That is my connection to the item. I can weigh in here. Excuse me. Pardon me, Mayor. If I could just weigh in on that point. Certainly. That council member Brunner made. I do think that this discussion needs to be circumscribed because this is not an item on your agenda. What I understood the requested direction was to bring it back for council consideration, which is appropriate under the product. Thank you. Good. Any other questions or comments? Seeing and hearing none, clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. Thank you all for your participation. Thank you for being here this afternoon. We are going to stand in recess for 15 minutes time. We will be back here at five, 10. We stand in recess until that time. An urban development with regard to a consolidation plan and how we would spend such funds. We are going to have a presentation by both Jessica Mellor and Jessica Dewitt. And that will be followed by the normal course of things. Good afternoon. Welcome to Chambers. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Member. I'm Jessica Dewitt, the city's housing manager. And next to me is Jessica Mellor, the city housing team's principal management analyst. So every year the federal department of housing and urban development allocates community development block grant funding and home funding to designated jurisdictions. Now the city of Santa Cruz is one of those designated jurisdictions and recently has received its notification of its annual allotment. So now Jess Mellor is gonna walk us through our staff funding recommendations and the proposed budget based off of the RFP process. Yes, thank you Mayor Keely and Council Members for having us here today to discuss the HUD annual action plan budget. As Jessica mentioned, we do receive federal funding every year from the Housing and Urban Development Department. And the annual action plan is a city proposal on how to spend those awarded funds. So before you today, the council needs to make initial funding recommendations for the 2023-2024 annual action plan. We also need you to amend or approve the amendment to the 2019-2020 annual action plan to reallocate $100,000 in CDBG funds. We also would like you to direct staff to publish the 2023 NRSA plan, which will be posted for review next month for public review. And then we also need you to support us amending the citizen participation plan as well today. So jumping right in, here's the CDBG funding for program year 23 at a glance. HUD has awarded us $568,725 for this program year. We estimate that the city will receive $50,000 in program income. And program income is just income that's earned on loans that have been funded from prior year CDBG funds. There's also $100,000, which we mentioned on the prior slide in prior year funding available to reallocate. And so prior year funding can be a combination of underestimated program income, canceled projects and projects that have not used their entire funding award. And then those amounts are returned back to the overall CDBG pot each year. So in total, we're looking at $718,725 in CDBG funding. So HUD has a formula that sets aside 20% of that grant and program income for administration. And what this covers is the city's administration costs to administer the CDBG program. We do also have some administrative costs associated with two other city programs, the rehab program and the home security deposit program that we need to cover with these funds. So that leaves us with $583,080 to split between the public services and projects. So for our programs this year, we received three applications, one from the teen center, which is run by our Parks and Recreation Department and provides teen focused programming to the community. We also have an application from Second Harvest Food Bank for their food distribution program, which reduces food insecurity to our lower income residents. And we also have an application from Nueva Vista Community Resources, which provides programming to lower income residents at both their Beach Flats Community Center and La Familia Center. So HUD does cap funding for their public service programs at 15%, which would be about $84,000 this year. But HUD does also allow certain organizations which are community based development organizations or CBDOs, which operate in a neighborhood revitalization strategy area or NRSA to receive funding above that 15% cap. So the city currently has one CBDO and that's Nueva Vista. We've marked it with a gold star on the slide so that you can easily pick it out. Therefore, the total amount that we can award to public service programs can exceed that 15% cap when we work with CBDOs. So we're recommending that we fund all the programs at an increased funding level when you compare it to last year. And it's worth noting that this would be a one-time increase in funding and next year's funding recommendations will have to depend on what applications we receive and how much money we receive from HUD. So we're recommending this increase in funding this year to maximize our allowed spending on public services. And so the total recommendation for programs is $205,000 this year. Moving on to our project applications, we received two of them. The first from Monarch Services for renovations to the Mariposa House. This project will fund improvements that will benefit the health, safety, and sustainability of the project and its participants. Some of the improvements will include touchless hygiene and lighting systems, installation of an HVAC system, as well as other improvements to reduce water and energy consumption. The other application we received is for the Civic Auditorium AD improvements, which will benefit users with lots of safety features. And it will be beneficial not only for public events, but also for emergency events as well. And the total requests we received this year for projects was a little over $375,000. Thankfully, we have enough funding to be able to recommend funding both of these projects fully. So the total amount we're proposing for projects is $378,080. So in summary, our CDBG recommendations are to fund our community programs at $205,000, fund capital projects at $378,080, and fund administration for city and city programs at $135,645. And that completely spends out our estimated $718,725 for CDBG. Moving on to our home funding category, HUD has allocated us $499,440. And we're also estimating we'll receive about $100,000 in program income, and we do have $226,972 in prior year funding available for reallocation. So in total, we're looking at $826,412 for our home program this year. And just like with CDBG, HUD has a formula set aside of 10% for administration. And again, that covers the city's costs to administer the home program. And that's $59,944 this year, or program year. HUD formula also has a set aside of 15% for CHODOs. And what a CHODO is is a community housing development organization. They're a private nonprofit that creates affordable housing for the community they serve. And CHODO set asides for this program year would be $74,916. So that would leave us with $691,522 to split between programs and projects in our home budget. And this year we had two applications for our home funds. One is for the security deposit program that we operate in partnership with the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Cruz. And we also received a application for affordable housing for Pacific Station North project. So a little bit about these two projects and programs. The security deposit program has been funded by alternate sources for the past two years, but we've completely exhausted those funds. So we're looking to fund it with home funding again. This security deposit assistance is primarily limited to low-income households. So those would be households at or under 60% of the area median income. And this program provides households with one month's rent as a security deposit. So that's how the main focus of that program. We have been communicating with the Housing Authority and they've said they anticipate a 42% increase in the need for this program, just for this current program year that ends it at the end of June. But they also think there's gonna be an increased need for assistance next program year as well. And a little bit about Metro Pacific Station North. It's a 128-unit family project with a majority two-in-three bedroom rentals. It will be 100% affordable and this allocation will target filling that gap in funding needed for this project to help it go forward. So all that said, we're recommending the Home Security Deposit Program be funded at $80,000 and the Pacific Station North project at $626,524. And I just wanna point out, like I put on the slide, that does include that Chodo set aside. So if you're looking at that total number and the total number from the previous slide, that's why it looks different because we've rolled the Chodo set aside in there. All right, next steps. After we get your budget recommendations today, we're gonna draft the 2023-24 annual action plan, make that available for public review and comment, and then we'll have a second public hearing on April 25th for the action plan and funding recommendations to be finalized by council. And then after another review and comment period, we will submit the action plan to HUD in May. Funding for our programs will be available as early as July 1st and project funding will likely be available in fall or winter. Just a little bit more. So this is item three on that list of items I need you to approve today. We have prepared a two-year 2023 NRSA plan to link our NRSA time period with our five-year consolidated plan cycle. And that's so that future consolidated plans and NRSA plans will cover the same time period. That's a goal that HUD has. They like to see those two plans match up. So once again, NRSA, it means neighborhood revitalization strategy area. So mouthful. And it allows jurisdictions like the city to coordinate our resources and engage in community revitalization strategies for designated low-income areas while encouraging reinvestment of human and economic capital while empowering low-income residents. And in order to achieve this, HUD does require grantees like the city to have a realistic strategy and implementation plan. And that's what that NRSA plan is. We do get multiple incentives from HUD, which encourage the development of NRSA. And the 2023 plan is gonna focus on two strategy areas. The first being CBDO, Community Services Aspect. And that's when we talked about that 15% cap. That's that perk that we're looking for to go over that 15%. And then we also have Housing and Economic Development, which has the potential to provide job opportunities and increase access to housing to help improve economic stability and household self-sufficiency. So it's an important note here that having an NRSA doesn't give us any extra funding, unfortunately, but it is a way for us to target our CDBG funds in the city. And also the two strategies that I just mentioned, it's not anything new. We don't have to launch any new programs or projects or anything. We're just focusing on activities that are already happening and making sure that we're getting credit for them with HUD. So the draft NRSA plan will be posted online next month for everyone to review and to be able to comment. And if you have any specific comments or questions, please feel free to email me at the email on the slide. One last part here, because we've had some changes to community or council committees, we need to update our citizen participation plan to reflect that. So with the community programs committee being incorporated into the Health and All Policies Committee, we're gonna make that change in our participation plan. We're gonna change the name of the committee. And then in order to accommodate the Health and All Policies Committee regular meeting schedule, we're gonna change a couple of our action plan release schedule items. So every year, our notice of funding available for these CDBG and home funds will be released in October instead of November. Our applications are gonna be due in December instead of January, which I'm sure a lot of our grantees will be excited about. And then we'll be meeting with the city council committee Health and All Policies Committee in January. And a copy and red line of this plan will be available for review prior to the next public hearing. And again, any questions, comments, concerns, please feel free to email me at the email on the slide. Thank you very much. And please let Jessica know if we can answer any questions for you. Well, thank you both very much. Let me ask if there are council member clarifying questions at this point. Okay, this would be the opportunity for public comment. We'll recognize you for up to three minutes time. And if we have folks who are calling in online, what I'll do is I'll start with Mr. Reese, then I'll go online, then I'll go to a person here, then we'll go online. We'll alternate back and forth. Good afternoon, Mr. Reese. Mr. Mayor and fellow council members, my name is Gary Reese. I'm the executive director for the Santa Cruz County Symphony and we've been across the street for 65 years in the Civic Auditorium. One of the things, the thing that I am here tonight for is to wholeheartedly support the staff recommendation for the $320,000 ADA improvements for the Civic. This primarily revolves around providing handrails for the Civic Auditorium. We have been calling for this for dozens of years. Most of our patrons are like me, they're old people, they can't do stairs. And every year I lose more and more subscribers because people are unable. We try to, we do our best to accommodate them by moving their seats to better locations. But if there comes a time when people just say they're not coming back. And as much as I don't like the lost revenue, what I am more fearful is when that actually there is an accident that involves some severe injury. These are concrete stairs, they're wooden backs on the chairs. I personally have fallen on them during rehearsals. I don't intend to sue the city but I don't know if the next person won't. And I think that none of us, I sat through the item preceding here where we talked a lot about safety and I think that the city needs to consider this if nothing else as a risk management issue because I think it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. And I know that there is great talk and we've had talks with the Santa Cruz Warriors about a new auditorium. And that hopefully will happen. But in the meantime, and that's several if not five years away, this could provide an opportunity to continue to service our organization. We are the largest revenue producers for the Civic Auditorium, followed closely by the Cabrillo Music Festival and if Ellen Primac had known about this and I'm not blaming anybody because it sort of came up late, she would have been here as well. I probably if I'd known a little bit in advance I would have had the auditorium filled and I will intend to have it filled on April 25th. But so that's my pitch. Please approve the staff recommendation. And this council may have heard many people come up to here and talk about how city employees aren't any good, they don't have good service. Let me tell you that your Civic staff is one of the best staffs that I have ever worked with. They are accommodating, they do everything they can to provide revenue for the city, for us, and any organization that goes in to perform at the Civic. So thank you for having wonderful people at the Civic. Mr. Reese, thank you very much. We have someone online, let's go to them. This would be Mr. Phillip, is that correct? Yes, hi. Mr. Phillip, good afternoon. I found it disturbing in item 16 that the poverty rate of targeted areas is 36% and the citywide is 18%. Poverty is calculated in various ways, usually understated by including handouts as income and CPM poverty. So not only show what your figures mean, but the poverty rate for California CPM poverty is only 12% because CPM discounts the handouts. The point is poverty in San Cruz sounds wildly high similar to the homeless situation. There must be factors here that import or sustain poverty at above average levels. Maybe city sanctuary status plays a role. Maybe people becoming dependent on subsidy does. Government dependence is an undesirable condition that some of this grants money should, as a priority, seek to reduce. However, I suspect that the effective equity narrative exists here that assumes under average, no tax payers have some sort of an unearned privilege right to endless benefit instead of a generosity combined with a mutual moral duty to improve their self reliance. Perhaps that explains the missing element here best described as teach a person to fish, then insist that they fish. That is not represented by most of these perfunctory handouts to the same organizations without much in the way of real metric performance demands beyond stating their handout methods that would permanently improve to self reliance lives or like tenant sanctuary could be replaced with individual spending 15 minutes on the internet, getting tenant advice. For example, an idea would be tying extra money to organizations for each graduation of an approved English second language improvement class that then qualifies individuals of such achievement to paid admission to more costly others, extra skill building adult ed class fees. Now back to these grants and in general, which are part of the big outside money that has its own interests. I wonder about the accounting of administrative costs as these are a fixed percentage of total amounts of outside money interest, local, which are willing to pay for and whether that actually pays the total administrative fate such as great, such as pensions or even the actual real time operational administrative costs. I doubt anyone here even knows you just assigned the max to yourselves. It matters either way, what it really is. We hear city accountants lament systemic financial problems that will only get worse in the city but no one ever says what those are. Gotta be something. I've always wondered what the percentage of overall administrative costs of the city is for comparison. You should be concerned with the importation of poverty as well as homelessness. In so far it is not a stretch to say if poor people find it extremely extra doable to just stay poor homeless here, they will survive that way but their numbers will accumulate again, indicating the need for some skill building for self-reliance demands instead of just handout. Anyway, I'm glad you're spending money on the civic. I'm sure many of these organizations do good work. I just don't know if all the accounting adds up to all the structure of poverty. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. Uh-huh. It is the honorable clam chowder cook-off judge. Yes, sir. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good, thank you. Hello, mayor and council members. Thank you for giving us a moment to speak today. My name is Jessie Bond. I'm the recreation supervisor at the Civic Auditorium. As you know, the Civic was built in 1939 and just doesn't have adequate ADA accommodations. This is our number one complaint from our patrons and producers, like you heard from Gary today. We hear from many patrons that they just can't buy tickets anymore due to our steep stairs and lack of handrails. The Santa Cruz Symphony issued a survey to their patrons based on COVID, what patrons would like to see from that. We overwhelmingly heard that people were more afraid of our stairs than COVID. This will begin to affect our business and who can use the venue. Aligned with the health and all policies, we should be providing a performing art center that is accessible to everyone to enjoy. I ask you to vote in favor of the staff recommendation. Thank you for your time and thank you to my fellow Jessica's for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Bush, do we have Mr. Snyder? Is that correct? No? Oh, yeah. We do, okay. Mr. Snyder, good afternoon. Hello. Actually, I think I'm speaking on the wrong topic, but I'm fully in support of them in bringing actions to the session. That's fine. We'll get back to you on the item you called in about, is that all right with you, sir? Okay, good. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon again. Yeah, this is HUD stuff as well as, I mean, CDBG that's, I had the pleasure of chatting with HUD's Inspector General staff for about 12 hours one week because I'd had a voucher for 15 months and just couldn't market rates for other than what we were being funded for. And my only point is that I am highly motivated to help some of my friends that are ready to get housing and finding creative solutions you know, I read 800 and some pages of the section eight thing found some, because we were creating some marketing or marketing collateral package to show to landlords about, this is how cool it is to rent to us, but I found some loopholes that I'm not gonna mention, but on page 800 and such and such. My point, anything, I know they've had some little sitting just chat committees, whatever, back when four years ago, and Martina maybe, I can't remember who's there, Chris Cronin and Drew Glover were still around and sat in on things. Anything that needs to be done, I'm looking for a job, but I'm happy to do things for free that results in some creative solution finding and I'm highly motivated. And I'll be up next for the final chat, if I can stay awake, thank you. Thank you so much. And is Peter next? Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, city council. This is Peter Bichier, community liaison for the city of Santa Cruz. Some of you council members know me and know some of my work that I do with the city, but some of them are new. So I just wanna share with you that the Nueva Vista Center is very crucial into our work in doing outreach in beach flat area and beach flat community. In that center, most of the time we host a lot of our workshops. For example, in the last month, we've had two workshops, one with Tiffany Wise-West on erosion and sea level rise and that was actually five different sessions starting from the end of the year to now. And then also we had a meeting a couple of weeks ago on the San Lorenzo Parks and Rec meeting as well, just to share and have input from the community. And many times that those people just don't have access to really computers and they usually at the time of the city council, they're still barely coming back to work or also busy. So they don't have much of the inputs and the community center usually is a very good place and area where we can reach out and hear a little bit the underserved. So they're really crucial and I encourage you to fund them. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Hi, Darius Mohsending here. Excuse me, I guess I accidentally walked in on the last presentation. I'm here for the other ones, but I noticed a deposit program, the city's deposit program administered by the housing authority, he was covered. And as a landlord, I'll be honest with you. I kind of have to hold my nose when I'm taking those deposits and I've taken a lot of them. The reason is the folks that are on section eight, getting vouchers, they've had 10 years if they're on the waiting list, 10 years to save for a deposit, they will know they have to pay. Say the average deposit is $2,500, anybody could save 68 cents a day towards that deposit. I would suggest maybe doing a matching program. The city matches dollar for dollar, the deposit. So A, you could then help twice as many folks to get the deposit and have them put some skin in the game. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Ms. Bush, next person online. No more. That's all the folks online. Anyone else who's with us wish to provide comment to the council on this item. All right. The matter is back before the council. And let me ask if there is a motion that. I'll make the motion. Excuse me. I'll make a motion. Sir. Motion. A second. And your motion is moving the staff recommendation. Okay. And there's a motion and a second. Under discussion, would you like to open on your motion? Yes. I'm very excited to see this agenda item. You know, it provides funds for community programs that serve the vulnerable members of our community. It also helps provide funds for an affordable housing project that is needed in our community. And it helps promote community revitalization in lower income areas of our community that desperately need it. So I support this recommended agenda item. For the debate or discussion on this item. Ms. Collin Tar-Johnson. Just a brief comment. I want to thank the work of staff on this and the organizations and the city departments that are providing the services to the community. And I just want to acknowledge and thank council member Brown for her years of work on the community programs committee. Thank you. Further question or comment? Ms. Brunner. Thank you. There we go. Thank you. I'm glad with that. The possibility to assist with these programs and funding exists. Thank you. If I might for a moment. Thank you for your very fine report. I think that every element of what you have suggested is worthy and important. And I support it, comma, but one. The idea that we would put a third of a million dollars into a facility, the civic auditorium, which is far past its useful life. And I don't think is going to have a bright future in front of it, especially when, as opposed to if, when a new facility, multi-use facility is going to be constructed in our downtown in the very new future. It does seem to me that it is likely anyway that the parks department, which made the application for this item, I would imagine they also have other ADA related unmet needs such as on the municipal wharf, which in my judgment might be more worthy of our investment of a third of a million dollars than investing a third of a million dollars in a facility. Again, that is I think way beyond its useful life. And there is no plan by this city to try to in effect rehab this thing so that going forward it's where we're putting all of our eggs in terms of an auditorium in the city of Santa Cruz. So my question is, if Mr. Elliott is available, Mr. Elliott, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor. So let me do in public what we did in private earlier today and that is me ask you if there are other capital outlay parks needs in terms of ADA deficiencies, for example, on the municipal wharf that would fit into this category of funding instead of the civic auditorium. Yeah, thank you, mayor and thank you council members. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity and yeah, happy to speak to that. So across the city's park system, we've got a number of deficiencies from an ADA perspective. The city adopted its ADA transition plan pretty progressively after ADA was adopted in 1990. The city adopted its first transition plan in 1993, which is pretty good. Since then we've continued to assess ADA conditions throughout our park system and as things have sort of fallen into disrepair or as ADA code has changed over time, we've continued to assess the needs across the system. So we do have a lot of needs. What I would say is that a lot of those needs are have been identified and reported sort of a compliance and condition report that we did a few years ago. So that includes the wharf, that includes the civic auditorium as well as parks or most of our projects, we don't at this time have specifics in terms of what a project scope might be. So mayor to your question on the wharf in terms of a specific project, we know what the deficiencies are. We don't have a project identified at the wharf right now. And with some of the questions around the wharf master plan and the future of the wharf, similar questions, do we invest in the wharf and some of these ADA improvements in the immediate term? Do we wait to do those in a more holistic strategic way as part of the wharf master plan? So for the council and just for the council's consideration, I would say that at the wharf in particular as well as other parks, we don't have a fully fleshed out and specified project as it relates to ADA that would be a great replacement in this case for the civic. The civic, this is a project from an accessibility standpoint a liability standpoint and safety as executive director Reese spoke to. This is something that's been out there in terms of a concept and more specifics for a number of years, but it's proven to be a difficult one to fund through the city's general fund. So we've asked for a number of years it's been hard to fund through the city's general fund. So this opportunity through CDBG to fund not just hand railing but some of the less glamorous things at the civic like our toilets and strobe lights for individuals who might be hearing impaired. There are a lot of improvements we need to make to reach compliance at the civic auditorium to make it both compliant but safer. And just to be clear, we were not looking toward at this time a huge investment in the civic auditorium but really a very modest and we hope strategic investment and what I mean mayor by that is we're not looking for a $20 million investment in the civic right now but looking for strategic investments to keep the facility safe, accessible for the public. So it can continue to be successful over the next say five years or more in a sort of a transition period looking ahead to the potential warriors facility. So, and I'll just mention that the safety is important for both the public as executive director resoluted to but important for staff as well. And we've had some staff incidents at the civic coming down those stairs that can be treacherous. It's been flagged in the local media as well. And so that's why that's really where this comes from as far as a proposal to address a funding need that we've struggled with a safety need, a liability need but to invest in the civic in a strategic way really kind of looking over the next five to seven year horizon. So I hope that answers some of that question and happy to answer any more questions that council may have. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Elliot. I do have a follow up question if I could without reference to the war does your department have other unmet ADA capital improvement needs that might be eligible for this category of funding? I'd say we do generally, but again, they're not packaged in a specific way as far as a project. I'm sorry, say that again, I just didn't hear you. Yeah, so yes, we have many ADA needs throughout parks and recreation but they're not packaged in a sort of project specific way. In other words, we don't have them specified to the extent that they're ready to bring to this CDBG discussion today or funding. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Further debate or discussion? Seeing and hearing none clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsome. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Council Member Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Keely. Aye. Mushroom carries and so ordered. What we'd like to do at this point is we will take a brief break. We will come back from that break. We're going to have oral communication. We're also going to have obviously the item that many of you are probably here on this evening and the mixed use project. We will take those up in due course as we move along. We will see you again at, let's make this 27 minute break. We'll be back here at 6.20. This session of the Santa Cruz City Council is back in order following an early evening break. We are on item number 17. This is an item with many component parts to it but essentially relate in total to the downtown mixed use project proposal. We will receive a staff report. We will then take public comment on all aspects. We will then, the matter will come back before the council for action. We have a couple of issues that are combined in here and that is all of those items that relate to the mixed use project and the item that relates to the appeal of the Parks and Recreation Commission decision that council member Newsom and I have brought forward to the council as essentially an appeal. Let me welcome staff here. Good evening. Nice to see you, sir. The floor is yours. Good evening, Mayor Keely and members of the city council. My name is Tim Mayer, senior planner with the city. This evening's next agenda item is review of the proposed development of the downtown library affordable housing project located at 113 and 119 Lincoln Street. Just ensure that my presentation is visible to members of the audience. We'll take a second and get this all organized correctly. Ms. Bush will undoubtedly make this happen. So as I was mentioning, the project requests approval of a number of entitlements including a non-residential demolition authorization permit, special use permit, design permit, a lot line adjustment and heritage tree removal permit. Proposal includes several actions including combination of two adjacent lots, demolition of the existing commercial building and city surface parking lot and construction of the downtown library affordable housing project. Project site is shown here, bordered in red. The site is an approximately 66,921 square foot, which is approximately 1.55 acre, roughly rectangular area consisting of two adjacent lots located in the city's central business district. The two parcels composing the project site are bordered by Lincoln Street to the north, Cedar Street to the west, Cathcart Street to the south and an alley to the east. Surrounding land uses include parking lots, quasi-public uses and commercial establishments including businesses along Pacific Avenue to the east. Here's a view of the existing lot as seen from the corner of Cedar Street and Cathcart Street from the southwest corner of the project area. The existing city surface parking lot number four appears in the middle of the site along with existing streets and sidewalks of the site's perimeter. Here's another view of the project site from this time for its northwest corner at the intersection of Cedar Street and Lincoln Street. The existing total fitness building at 113 Lincoln Street. One of the two addresses making up the project area is visible here in the background. As proposed, the project includes a new 273,194 square foot eight-story building encompassing several components as listed on this slide. In addition to the project components listed on the slide here, right-of-way improvements will include construction of new curb and gutter and expansion of sidewalks, which will be built at 10 to 12 feet wide as directed by the downtown plan. The pedestrian access to the residences will be provided on both Cathcart Street and Lincoln Street. Emergency vehicle access and service access will be provided via one-way alley leading north from Cathcart to Lincoln Street and aligned with the city's, excuse me, the site's easterly property line. This slide illustrates the proposed site plan. The building envelope shown here in gray would occupy most of the subject site in order to achieve project programming goals as directed by the city council. The library, childcare, and commercial uses will be located adjacent to the Cedar Street frontage, which is on the bottom here. The north is pointing to the kind of the upper left. While the parking structure would be placed further away back over here at the east side of the site with housing units positioned above this portion of the building area. Four loading and unloading parking spaces are included along Cedar Street as shown over here, split into two different groups of two each, and five on-street parking spaces along Lincoln Street over here on the left-hand side of the slide with the relocated bus stop provided on Cedar Street just north of its intersection with Cathcart Street as shown here. This slide shows the building's west elevation near the top of the slide. You can hear me okay. Thank you. The primary pedestrian entry to the project is located approximately mid-block along Cedar Street near the middle, shown over here. The bottom three stories include extensive glazing to provide visibility to the building's interior, creating a sense of activity and vitality. The structure incorporates numerous offset planes formed by a variety of curves, projections, and recesses, and the residential component is set back significantly from the primary frontage along Cedar Street. Distinct from the library, commercial tenant space, and childcare components for ready access while providing both privacy and separation. So the residential component is shown here in the background. The east elevation of the building, seen at the bottom of the slide, shows the five-story residential component placed above the parking garage, featuring four-form concrete base and three-tone stucco with metal trim exterior. The building's north and south elevations are shown on the slide here. The parking structure would step down to a height of less than 35 feet as required by the downtown plan and would be placed adjacent to the street access from Cathcart. The design conforms to the Cedar Street Village Corridor design criteria as included in the downtown plan, which advances the informal village qualities of the Cedar Street Village Corridor, promotes the vision of the city's downtown plan and provides a visually interesting and durable structure that fulfills the directives of the city council while enhancing the aesthetic environment and integrating a multi-use facility in the city's downtown urban core. State's Density Bonus Law allows any residential project within a half mile of a major transit stop to request exemptions for maximum density controls which are unlimited in the case of this project due to the project's affordability levels and its location within a half mile of a major transit stop. The base density plans shown here in the upper left present a fully conforming project with two stories of underground parking, again shown in the upper left corner of the slide. The applicant has requested approval of a Density Bonus Variation, proposes both an incentive concession and a waiver to allow for the additional height beyond the 50 foot, 50 foot limitation as specified in the downtown plan. The cost of subterranean construction make underground parking an option not feasible for the project and therefore an incentive concession as requested for placement of parking at surface level provide actual and identifiable cost reductions. Placement of the residential component of the project above the structure parking facility provide for the number of residential units included in the project. Requests for a density bonus waiver because the project would otherwise be physically precluded from construction of the number of residential units allowable under density bonus. Without the requested incentive concession, the project's parking component would be prohibitively expensive and without granting of the waiver, the proposed development would be physically precluded from development of the number of residential units allowable for consistency with state density bonus law and the city's general plan which residential density is indirectly regulated by FAAR or floor area ratio. This slide shows a multi-tiered architecture of the building including the three-story library with commercial tenant space over on the upper left here including as well as the commercial tenant space and childcare facility. The housing component includes 124, 100% affordable units including 13 studio units, 48 one bedroom units, 32 two bedroom units and 31 three bedroom units distributed over five floors. The project provides 100% of the residential units as affordable units exclusive managers unit consistent with city regulations which require minimally 20% of the residential units as affordable. The building's fourth floor including new green roof appears at the bottom left hand corner of the slide. The fifth and sixth floors are shown here in the upper right with offsets and planes fitting units of a range of sizes while providing for interesting besides. The building seventh and eighth floor again or occupied here is shown in the lower right hand corner by residential units. One thing to note is that the design of the project has undergone significant modifications from its initial scope and original concept. Early considerations for parking capacity for example let staff to consider designs of up to 400 parking spaces which have been reduced to the present scale with capacity. Okay I think what we're going to do let's see if we can figure out what's going on here for a second rather than repeating it. We got to figure out what's going on here. That particular mic you have to talk right on the microphone. Okay I'll try that is it? There we go. Thank you so much. Thank you Ms. Bush. Thank you. As I was mentioning the project is further undergone design modifications to include 258 parking spaces strategically placed throughout the site far exceeding the minimum number of bicycle parking spaces as required by the city's municipal code. Over the past several years through public engagement the project has evolved from a combined library and garage project to a flagship downtown destination facility incorporating library, commercial childcare, parking and significant number of affordable housing units and as well as amenities such as a green roof and outdoor rooftop patio terrace as envisioned through public outreach efforts and as directed by the city council. A heritage tree removal permit is required for removal of any trees of heritage size as established by the city's municipal code. An application for heritage tree removal permit was submitted in October of 2022 which proposed removal of all 12 trees at the project site. The tree removal permit was supported by an arborist report which identifies nine of the existing 12 trees as heritage size trees. All 12 trees are exotic non-native varieties with each tree exhibiting a range of adverse health and or other conditions. In September of 2022 an addendum was submitted prepared by the same arborist which clarifies the viability for retention and relocation of existing trees. The addendum describes a low likelihood for long-term health of any relocated tree at the project site. A subsequent addendum for a second addendum included detail of the condition of the existing magnolia tree near the center of the project site whose health had declined appreciably since the preparation of the original arborist report. The landscape plan is shown here on the right-hand side of the slide. Integrates 14 city street trees exceeding the code requirement for both the size and number of replacement trees required. The building's green roof, as shown in the lower left-hand corner, would further add to foliage and carbon sequestration capacity of the project site as modified. One item to note as well is that a recommended condition of approval related to planting of replacement trees is relevant. Ordinarily, tree replacement in a one-to-one ratio is required with one tree planted on site for each tree removed. In the case of the proposed project, given the community concern related to impacts of tree removal, the recommended condition of approval includes planting of nine trees, one for each heritage tree proposed to be removed in addition to 12 new trees, planted offsite in the downtown area for a total of 21 trees planted to replace the nine heritage trees removed. Potential locations for offsite planting of replacement trees have already been identified. This slide shows recommended conditions of approval which have been modified since the time of preparation of the staff report for today's hearing. At the March 2nd Planning Commission meeting, the Planning Commission introduced several recommended conditions of approval. The first, as shown here, the first condition relates to the provision of electric vehicle charging stations. And the second relates to the provision of building features accommodating a future potential food service use within the commercial tenant space included. Staff have requested minor modifications to the conditions of approval as suggested by the Planning Commission as shown in the strikeouts and as underlined here. The project is subject to the review under the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA. Following a thorough analysis, the project has been found eligible for a statutory exemption under Public Resources Code 21083.3 and a categorical infill exemption under section 15332 of the CEQA guidelines. The light line adjustment for the project has also been deemed eligible for a minor land division categorical exemption which is section 15305 of CEQA. The full environmental analysis is attached to the staff report for the project and has been available on the city's website for some time. Staff have made findings to support the proposed project. Staff recommends that the city council acknowledge the environmental determination and approve the project entitlements including the non-residential demolition authorization permit, the use permit, design permit, light line adjustment, inheritance tree removal permit based upon the findings included in conditions of approval attached to the staff report with modifications as noted. Staff and the applicant are available to answer questions. Thank you very much for your time. This concludes staff's presentation. Thank you very much. Let me ask first if council members have questions, clarifying questions on this item. Okay, we will now go to public comment on this. This is your- Mayor, sorry. Yes, I'm sorry. You had authorized 15 minutes for the group that originally provided the appeal. I didn't know if you wanted to include that as public comment or no. Oh, good. I want to be real clear about that point. The appeal was actually brought forward by council member Newsom and myself. So I believe we are essentially the appellants. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay, now the folks on whose behalf I will be glad to cede my time to folks who asked us to do that in terms of rather than Mr. Newsom and myself providing our argument. Frankly, what we were interested in is making sure that the matter of the trees got before the council so that we could have a robust discussion about it. So any of you who want to speak to the tree issue, why don't we go with you first? And when we've exhausted that, then we'll go to folks who wish to speak to the project more generally or about some other aspect of it. Are you here to comment on the tree appeal? Come on forward. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Jane Doyle. I'm going to have to read this. The following is a quote from Oswan of the Abenaki Nation. Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money. I'm here to request your compassion for some so-called last trees that are scheduled to die by your vote, if not by your hand. There are five, as I understand it, that the Arborist Company has declared healthy. Any architect worth her or his salt could easily design around them. It's done all the time. If you will permit these trees to stay, they will continue to take carbon from the atmosphere. They will soften the hard-aged look of the cement block scheduled for the lot, and they will give some shade on a hot day, in addition to any trees that new ones that are planted. I would like to assume that Mayor Keely will support keeping the healthy trees based on his support for Arbor Day found under mayor proclamations on this meeting agenda. It reads in part, urging students and citizens to plant trees, to offset climate change and enhance our local environment and natural world for our present and future generations. So thank you, Mayor Keely, for that. In closing, I just wanna repeat the wise reminder from the Abenaki elder, only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, will we realize that we cannot eat money? Well-timed. Thank you very much. Ms. Bush, let me... So let me advise you, what we're going to do is we have several folks joining us online, so I will simply alternate someone who's with us in chambers, someone online, someone in chambers, someone online. So now we will go to, I believe, Ms. Marcus. Would that be correct? Ms. Marcus, good evening. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor Keely and council members. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Great, great. So yes, my name is Laura Marcus and I am the CEO of Dientha's Community Dental Care. Over my almost 20 year tenure at Dientha's, we have partnered with the city in many ways from providing dental care to thousands of city residents at our various clinics, to establishing a clinic for people experiencing homelessness at Housing Matters with CDBG funds, to our most recent plans of establishing a new clinic downtown on Front Street at Pacific Station South in partnership with Santa Cruz Community Health, which we expect to open in a few years. The new clinic will help us better serve up to 3,000 of the 18,000 medical enrollees located in the city of Santa Cruz who need access to high quality dental care. Although some of our patients use public transportation, many, as well as the majority of our staff, need a place to park if this new clinic is going to be accessible. The downtown library project, including the parking garage, is something that our plans have been dependent on. Not only will it provide accessible parking a few blocks away, but it will also offer much needed and 100% affordable housing, which may directly support our patients. And it offers an incredible, beautiful and modern library and spaces for other commercial tenants. With Diantha's recent multi-use project on Capitol Road with Santa Cruz Community Health and Mid-Pen Housing, we have shown success in putting affordable housing on the same campus as other publicly accessible services. Projects like this allow for a maximum use of our limited available land in Santa Cruz, and the library project will make for a revitalized downtown and create a vibrant space for the community as well as affordable homes for so many people in need. Diantha's absolutely supports this project and we urge you to support it as well. Thank you for your testimony. Good evening, good evening. Hi, I'm Nettie Calvin. I'm here representing the Beach Flats area. And I'm just really want to emphasize how valuable the trees are to me as a citizen because in the Beach Flats area, we do not have yards. Everything is very paved over. And so I do appreciate the efforts that there would be replacement trees along with the building project. But I've noticed that the building projects in my area have trees that do not provide any shade. And so it doesn't make those trees unvaluable, but they simply are not the equivalent even if you plant multiple trees of a heritage tree that provides shade. I would also like to emphasize that the trees growing in a parking lot are ill because they don't have proper land to grow on. And so I don't think that that constitutes removing them simply because they aren't doing well because they're growing in hospitable conditions. So that said, I would also like to ask everyone to consider that the trees that are 70 years old and provide a certain value in beauty cannot be replaced for any value. No dollar amount could bring back those trees even with the science and technology we have today. So I would ask that we please, as a community, really even though we need housing desperately, and I agree with that, we need to consider keeping the trees as well because think of the beauty that they could add along with that project so that people who go in and out of there could see beautiful natural objects in this very cemented area because we need to consider the high-density aspect of our neighborhoods. So, and please consider that if we plant trees now, that is important, and people 70 years from now will be able to appreciate them the way that I can appreciate these trees today that we all can. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. It seems that we are to Ms. Baez. Would that be correct? Ms. Baez, good afternoon. Mr. Baez, thank you, mayor. Excuse me, I'm sorry, sir. My apologies. Good evening. No worries, no worries at all. I wanna say good evening, mayor Keely and city council. I wanna thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. My name is Renee Baez. I'm a field representative for Carpenter's Local 505. And I'm here today to just speak about three simple things which will benefit the great city of Santa Cruz. And I believe these three things should also be basic labor standards. One, that's the use of apprenticeship programs. Two, that's healthcare for workers and their families and three is a local hire. You see projects that invest in apprenticeships, healthcare and local hire is the right choice for the construction workers and the community. This allows the workers and their families to live in the communities that they work in. This also means those wages that are earned will be reinvested back into the local community as they spend their earnings. We need affordable housing. We need housing, I agree. And the construction workers who are working on these projects also deserve and need respect, dignity and a livable wage. And to be upfront, the majority of the projects being built in the area do not have any labor requirements and could be considered a crime scene just by how much these workers are being exploited and robbed of their wages and benefits. But projects like this have the ability to change lives for those who live right here in this community. So my question is this, being that it's a public works and prevailing wage, will this project utilize apprenticeships? Will carpenters from local 505 right here in this community be able to work in this community and work on this project? Why wouldn't we have local hire? Public works projects should have labor standards in place that generate opportunities for the residents. And because it's a prevailing wage project, it's also vulnerable for wage theft. So I just wanna know what the city is doing to prevent and protect the men and women who will be working on this project. What are we doing to protect them from being exploited by non-responsible developers and the non-responsible contractors that they hire? I just want you guys to consider the labor standards we're planning. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Bias. Good evening. Hi there, honorable, hopefully tree heroes. My name's Kersha Durham. I'm here talking for the trees and my students. Number one, I think until funding happens, it doesn't make sense to touch our beloved trees, especially the healthy ones. Leslie Keely has said some of my trees around my house weren't healthy, but they're there 20 years later. So until there's funding, let's not cut them and have a painful eyesore like the holes we had before by the Rittenhouse building, remember that? People are drawn to Santa Cruz because of the natural beauty. Not for the big buildings, not for the libraries, especially not for parking garages. We are drawn here, why? Because of large trees. Over 1,000 people in the last day have signed and sent letters, 1,300 people in less than 24 hours. That shows Santa Cruz people love trees, not tiny ornamentals that you've planted on Pacific after the earthquake, but large trees. Look at those liquid ambers. Please direct architects to design around our beloved trees. No one yet, not in the Parks and Rec meeting I was in, not in the Planning Commission meeting, no one yet has asked them to look at a design that has our heritage trees in them. So let's fast forward into the future. The Torgrad leads you down to the large plaza by the beautiful big library. And there, instead of a flat plaza with tree lists or tiny ornamentals, instead of having a tiny square foot childcare patio, which imagine Renee, the size of this, a childcare patio that small, they will have a beautiful, huge outdoor area. Here we are. Maybe we can call it the Fred Keely Commons. It's full of magnificent big trees, ooh la la. Santa Cruz visionaries voted long ago to keep the precious trees. Look around at us. When I walk into town, I see canopies. It's the most beautiful thing. Please do the right thing. Large trees capture carbon, you know that. And you don't have the funding. So don't clear cut for a sad whole. Thank you. We will go to someone online now. That would be Ms. Greenside. Good evening, Ms. Greenside. Ms. Greenside, I'll let you know that apparently you are still muted. Okay, I'm going to go to someone here and then we'll go back to Ms. Greenside. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, council persons in Mayor Keely and Vice Mayor Golder. I grew up in a 5,000 acre ranch in Rancho Vistoso in Tucson, Arizona. And our Hacienda was a final house built in the 30s. And it was surrounded by a very lush oasis about an acre of really intense planting. My grandmother was a landscape architecture architect. And one of my chief loves as a child was going up and I built my first construction project was a tree house and a giant mulberry tree. It had walls, window, door, a roof and running water with steel pipe. And I did that when I was in middle school. And I used to go up there and get up there on a hot summer day and get way up in that mulberry tree where I had a hammock and hide up there because there was no ladder up to my tree house. And I could hear my dad and my mom down there, where's Johnny? You know, he's supposed to be doing his chores and I'm not going up and getting him. Well, I'm not either. And so that was my connection to nature and then when the mulberries were up that was easy eating too. So that was, I had that tree house all the way through high school. And it was just, it was a refuge for me because my brothers, I didn't get along with my brothers sometimes. But what I want to say, I want you to consider this next comment to be a California Public Records Act request in Oral 1 under California Government Code 6254 at SQL. You all know how well I've handled that over the years. And I want to see any records of tree maintenance made on those trees inside the last 10 years. Now, I don't know how far back the maintenance records go. But there's no excuse for those trees being in the condition that the arborist was described. There's no excuse whatsoever. They all they need was good care. No excuse whatsoever. All these other trees are taken care of. So that records request is on the record. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We'll now go back to Ms. Greensight online. Good evening, Ms. Greensight. Is that better? Can you hear me? There we go. Oh, thank you very much. I'll just get rid of the phone. And I thank you, Mayor Keely and Council members. I'm sorry not to join you. I tested positive for COVID this morning. So I'm working a bit hard to be here this evening, but thank you, et cetera. I'm representing Save Our Big Trees, which was a group that was formed in 2012 to 2015 when the city was weakening, changing and weakening its heritage tree ordinance without any environmental review. And none of you was on the council at that time. There's a bit of a myth that Santa Cruz people will sue at the drop of a hat. I can assure you that is not the case. We went to every meeting during that period and we submitted documents, we gave testimony and we were ignored. So at the last desperation, we sought legal help. The three judges at the appellate court ruled in our favor and they upheld the resolution that forms the basis for your decision about the heritage tree ordinance. Namely, a construction project, you can only remove it if a construction project design cannot be altered to accommodate existing heritage trees. During like 2021 and 2022, letters were submitted to Ms. Lipscomb from the Sierra Club, from Save Our Big Trees and others reminding her of this resolution. And we got assurances that that was just fine, that they were aware of that. However, the public record shows that there was no discussion on trying to alter the design to accommodate any of the heritage trees as is required in that resolution. Although as you heard from staff, there have been quite a few alterations in the design but not one discussion on accommodating any of these trees. This was despite a letter from Ms. Keady in June of 2022 where she wrote to Ms. Lipscomb and quote, she says, have any design changes been asserted that would save any trees further resolution requirement? She received no response and the only time this issue was ever discussed was after the permit to remove the heritage trees was granted by the Parks and Rec Department. That is the only time the architect weighed in and said, well, we can't do that because you want to save all the trees, that was inaccurate. Or we can't do that because counselors directed us to use the whole lot. Well, that is not, that's despite the consulting arbor saying that five trees were worth preserving and he only added an addendum to that after he was advised that, no, our design is covering the whole lot. Planning commission had an inquiry of strategies for the reduction in the heat gain of buildings with the facade. Well, the trees would achieve that. We are not about in any sense stopping this project at all. We just want you to do the right thing and follow your own codes and procedures and save a couple of trees. We think it's a small ask, it will improve the project and I'll finish by quoting from the letter submitted on our behalf by attorney Bill Parkham who says, if a public project cannot be slightly modified to accommodate the trees on the periphery of a project site, then any project can simply propose development throughout the four corners of a project site and not have to make alternatives to retain heritage trees on the periphery. This is absurd. The city is attempting to circumvent its own standards and impliedly graft onto the resolution the less onerous criteria that were rejected in save our big trees versus city of Santa Cruz in 2015. In fact, the decision by the Parks and Recreation Commission, the four who voted to deny the appeal was based on unsupported statements that the project cannot be altered in any manner to accommodate the trees on the periphery of the site. And he just asks that you should direct the project architect to review the matter. If this was honest and above board, we would have documents that said, well, we tried to do designs and here's our five, 10, 20 pages of why it wouldn't work. So I hope you will do the right thing by the trees and by the people who are urging you to follow your own rules. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Greensight. Good evening. My name is Joanne Katzen and I wanna thank the council, mayor and the public for being here especially. Anyhow, and I wanna also mention that I have four family members who can't be here to work in San Jose and two are college students and none in the area anymore. So they would be here and agree with me on what I have to say. My association goes back and with Santa Cruz goes back to 1979 when I was a student at the university. Like a lot of people, I spent many, many days going down the Pacific Garden Mall and when I wasn't in class, walking in and out of shops and especially bookshop Santa Cruz and logos, I must admit, and then occasionally spending some money especially in those stores. I did not have much money then but I didn't even know little that I know. A few years later that I would come back, become a teacher in Watsonville as I was a bilingual teacher. Hello Renee, we worked at the same school together and then I was for over 25 years until I retired, I taught in Watsonville and I actually did spend a lot of time in Santa Cruz and still on the Mall. Now I've seen many changes over those years, none for the better, none at all. As a matter of fact, for the worse, I've noticed the buildings going up and they have never seen such monstrosities except in San Jose and Los Angeles and that's the truth. I have, I don't know who would approve such monstrosities going right to the curves without greenery around. But anyhow, to get to the point here, it's now I have a desire to avoid the downtown altogether but one of the reasons I'm here is because I also couldn't be silent in the face of yet another drastic decision which will reverberate into the future long after all of us gone and at least I think we should spare the trees and let those trees live. And if not us, who will speak for the trees? Thank you. Thank you very much. I think our next participant is online and that would be Ms. Avalise. Good evening. I am sitting. Good evening. Good afternoon, City Councilman. My name is Suspecta Vales. I am a housing coordinator, advocated the housing choices and not- If I could just pause you for a second. Your voice is very soft. So if you would speak up that, we could hear you a bit better. Thank you. Good afternoon, City Councilman. My name is Suspecta Vales. I am a housing coordinator, advocated housing choices and non-profit service provider helping people with developmental and other disabilities find and retain affordable housing throughout Santa Cruz County. I am calling in support of the development at Eden Housing that will include 104 apartments with 11 houses set aside for people with disabilities. The site is ideal, situated near transition and downtown making it perfect location for development of a walkable, bikeable and more sustainable community. We strongly support the planning committees recommended that the support can be used for the affordable housing development who can use the space to develop more affordable housing and deeper levels of affordable housing. Then that would be achieved under the inclusion of housing or deans. This is especially important for meeting housing needs for Santa Cruz special needs population, including people with developmental disabilities who require deeply affordable rents paired with coordinator support services funded by San Andreas Regional Center. By having affordable housings available for special needs population, they will be provided with support, service to live in the community and have an onsite resident coordinator to check in with them regularly, contact their circle support, create an additional safety net for our clients. We hope to see the city commit to that creating housing opportunities which increase housing accessibility for people with developmental disabilities so they can remain in the community where they live or work. Where a person with development disability which can affect cognitive functioning, living without support for family or service providers can put them in an extremely vulnerable position and we can only hope that this client was able to find some safety and sustainability. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Until you get to the microphone, I can't hear a word you're saying. I'm sorry. Okay, sorry. I want to thank you for letting me speak. I am only briefly giving you information about. Would you be kind enough to state your name for the record? Susan Cavallieri. Thank you so much. Okay. I have a paper which talks about carbon sequestration by lot four trees. It was done using the information given by Dryad Arborist and is using my tree, I tree tools. So with the loss of 12 large trees at lot four, if the calculations indicate that 49 trees would be needed in order to match those trees which have been removed from lot four and this would be 10 years after planting. So if you could look at that, it will take years to get the carbon sequestration that we need. So thank you. Thank you very much. Let's next go to Mr. Golden Kranz who is online. Good evening, sir. Thank you, mayor and council members. Appreciate the opportunity. I'm here as the chair of the county democratic party. We took a strong stand in favor of this mixed use project and in opposition to the ballot initiative that was on last November's ballot. With respect to the ballot initiative, the people have spoken decisively. People of the city have declared that they want to move forward with this. I also have been watching this project through prior city councils and most recently the planning commission meeting and I've seen the project improve every time it goes under consideration. Most recently, I think your planning commission did a commendable job in asking questions about sustainable materials, about the green roof, about the open space for the childcare center and I thought overall they really had their eye on positive aspects of the program in terms of the versatility of it moving forward. I would like to say as a practitioner and teacher of environmental science that when the prior speaker did an analysis of the carbon sequestration of the trees that in addition to the replacement trees, you got to think about the people's ability to live there and walk to work. I'm on the board of Santa Cruz Community Health. You heard our friend Laura Marcus describe a growing downtown. We have a hundred employees who are commuting up from Watsonville and Salinas to work downtown. And if they had a chance to live there and walk to work, that's where the carbon gets removed. So I think the council's done a great job. Planning commission's done a great job and I hope you will move forward and approve this project as is. Thank you kindly. Thank you, Mr. Goldencrantz. Good evening. Greetings mayor and council members. My name is Kyle Kelly and I come to yet again support the library housing project. I think one important part to recognize is the other, everyone who's not in the room with us now, the people who have already been displaced or who even right now live in San Lorenzo Valley or Watsonville or Salinas that could be living downtown. And this is about looking at the forest instead of the trees right inside. This comes back to instead of worrying about carbon capture, let's just not emit the carbon. Let's allow more people to live downtown. Let's allow childcare to be right near like where a lot of people are working. Let's bring all of that together, library, housing, childcare. So I'm hopeful that we can continue on with this project. And I think importantly, I hope that everyone is able to look and think about like, am I a parent? How many children do I have? Do we create enough housing for our own children or our grandchildren? Are we making sure that we're leaving room and leaving a powerful legacy for the future? So that's all I bring for you tonight. Thank you. Mr. Kelly, thank you. Thank you for your service on the school board. Let's go to Mr. Snyder online. Good evening, sir. Good evening. So I have a lot of thoughts about this project. You know, there's definitely something to be said for, you know, renewal of the library. But I think you're funding this entire project. You're kind of threading the needle by combining the library funding, the transportation funding and the housing, the low income housing development funding. So it's all getting sort of lashed together in one chimera project. And it's kind of a real huge, you know, it needs to be, I think it needs to be sort of shrunken down. I mean, why I feel that way is, you know, our architectural renderings of the finished project are usually, you know, basically optical illusions. The finished project almost never looks like the depictions. One thing that I know, you know, it's just really evident is that the central library is gonna take a huge hit in terms of how much floor space it has. If you compare the current library to this new two-story floor space you have allotted, it's actually a reduction of, I would estimate, over 35, maybe 40% in floor space. So the new library is actually gonna be, and the alley off to the side is just sounds like a really treacherous dark kind of a wild entrance for the UTC. University Town Center has a beautiful view of the sunset and the Magnolia Tree and the church and the horizon. And, you know, that's definitely gonna get blotted out much like Lincoln Street. And I'm just not in support of it, but, you know, it seems like it's moving forward. If you'd like to finish your thought, that will be okay. I don't have anything else to punctuate what I've already said. I guess that's how I feel about it. I think... Well, thank you very much for calling in. I very much appreciate that. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Thanks for your time and consideration. This is really a crucial issue for the future of Santa Cruz. We all realize that. I wanna push away a false premise at the beginning, and that is that... Would you just follow record to state your name? I'm John Hall. Yes, you are. We're gonna speak to some extent as a sociologist here, so I won't lecture. So I wanna say, you know, there's a false premise that we have to choose between affordable housing and saving the trees, or between the library and saving the trees. We need to dismiss that idea. We want to see badly. The people who wanna save some trees want badly to see housing built in Santa Cruz. And we believe that we can, in this project, have both the housing, the library, and save two heritage trees. Sociologically, in the sociology of law, you have a problem if a city government does not honor its own ordinances and its own resolutions. Gillian Greensight has gone through the details, the Arborist Report, that says five trees that are heritage trees are worthy of preservation. She's shown you that there is no documentation that any effort was made to design an alternative plan that would accommodate the trees, two trees, even just two trees at the perimeter, and include the library, the housing, the parking garage, et cetera. So there's an issue of legitimacy of government if the city doesn't follow its own ordinances. I think that's something that you need to consider. The second thing, sociologically, is there's a great deal of social research, starting with the life and death, Jane Jacob's life and death of American cities, that shows that cities are for people who are on the streets, moving around, circulating, being with one another. I have never seen a public building. What I'm going to do, because I interrupted you once, I'm gonna give you another 15 seconds if you beef. I've never seen a civic building that didn't have an entrance other than being just a storefront-style entrance. We can do better here. I urge you to accommodate, to simply consider accommodating two trees. Thank you very much. Mr. Hall, thank you. Thank you for your good work on this. We will go to Ms. Loijos, who is online. Good evening. Hi, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Oh, great. Good evening, Mayor Keely and City Council members. My name is Dina Lojos, and I'm the Chief Strategy and Impact Officer at Santa Cruz Community Health. On behalf of our Board of Directors and the thousands of Santa Cruz City patients we serve, I'm here to express our support of the Downtown Library Affordable Housing Project. For nearly 50 years, Santa Cruz Community Health has provided high quality care to all people, regardless of their ability to pay. As a federally qualified health center, we're also a designated healthcare for the homeless site, dedicated to improving the health of the unhoused members of our community. In all, we serve the physical, emotional, and social needs of over 11,000 people, including over 2,000 of whom are unhoused. The housing crisis in our community continues to worsen with no end in sight. The need for affordable housing is the number one social issue facing our patients. If we could write prescriptions for affordable housing, we would do so without hesitation, as that is surely the fundamental treatment that so many of our patients' lives depend on. As a community, we do not have the luxury of shutting down affordable housing proposals. We have waited too long to build new housing stock. The fear of change can no longer be an excuse to prevent people, young and old, from accessing a safe and secure roof over their heads. The library housing project is one important step in the right direction. The Santa Cruz Community Health urges you to support the library affordable housing project, as is, thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Barbara Riverwoman. I found myself longing today as I thought about this meeting for a fairy tale. So being a preschool teacher and telling stories, I thought I would write one. So I just wrote this, it's a little rough. Once upon a time, there was a perfect little town nestled between a flowing river and a great ocean. The people in this town especially loved their trees and the trees loved them back. The breath of the trees filled the people's lungs with healthy air and the huge and beautiful white flowers on the magnolias and the flaming reds of the liquid ambers brought joy to everyone, but then two bad things happened. The little town became filled with monsters with strange names like Chevrolet and Ford and Tesla. And some people in the town made friends with the monsters and wanted to build more roads and houses for the monsters, even though the monsters breathed out poison and they were not beautiful. So then there was a fight. Three wise women made a very good law that the city could not cut down any special trees until they tried, as Jillian said, very, very hard to make room for them. Three wise men told the city it shouldn't build a house for monsters in the first place. So once again, this time the leaders of the little town paid a lot of money to some wise people, Nelson Newgard, to tell them what to do. They said the wise people said don't build houses for cars that will just make the monsters want to stay here, you should build parks for the future. So the leaders took a vote and it wasn't a fair vote, they voted to cut down the trees. The same people said maybe just a few trees. So the city leaders took another vote. And I will tell you my little granddaughter, as I told her I would tell her later what happens tonight, I will tell you later tonight what happened at the end of the story. Thank you. I'll say this, whether or not I agree with you on that, that was adorable. Our next caller online, welcome. Good evening council, my name is Eric Rodberg and I just wanted to clear up some errors that I've heard. The arborist definitely does not recommend retaining any of the trees. You found that they were all either unhealthy or in very poor growing conditions. And instead of just telling you what he said, I'm going to quote him because you've heard a lot of people telling you what he said and they weren't telling the truth. So this is a quotation. Quote, these trees will continue to increase in size, exacerbating current conditions. Many of the conditions observed can be expected to worsen over time. In my opinion, it is ill advised to retain these trees on site unless extensive design accommodation can be undertaken to enhance their growing condition and reduce risk. Consider removing and replacing all 12 trees with sound specimens that will not achieve large size and provide sufficient growing spaces. I would urge you to just go ahead with the planning commission's recommendation. The mesero people lost and they just won't accept the will of the people. Also, I would say the two trees that seem to be at the center of their efforts are liquid ambers and liquid ambers are considered a nuisance tree and prohibited to be planted as landscape trees in many communities for a whole bunch of reasons. So that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good evening. I'm Laurel Brune, Mayor Keely and City Council. I'm here to speak for trees and birds. Trees are so welcoming in a city such as ours. Why has Santa Cruz become popular? It's for its nature and not large tall buildings. Large buildings are unuseful and electricity or generator powers is out off the grid. Trees can bring us hope and compassion. Trees are alive. Trees can coexist with buildings, however. And a young person definitely needs and wants a tree. It is a relationship when we let it support us that way. People love them as part of the community now for many years. The community loves the trees. The trees have many benefits. One, shade, two, pollution filtering, three, carbon absorption, four, beauty, five, emotional and six, mental well-being. I'll explore how this actually works. When small saplings are planted, it takes years for their maturity. Replacement saplings do not equal heritage trees. It is estimated that a cubic meter of wood absorbs just under a ton of CO2 in a year. These trees will out give any building when the sun is too hot. The rain is too intense and winds are beyond duration. Smaller trees would be uprooted in the severe storm. Large trees endure. Modern buildings are useful under useful for heat or cooling when the power grid is out. Again, I say trees can bring back hope and compassion. They're a solid part of our early memories, DNA and spirit. Please thank you for considering keeping at least two or three trees. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ms. Filipini is next online. Good evening. Good evening, Lyra Filipini here. So over the- Ms. Filipini? Ms. Filipini, at least I'm having a hard time hearing you. I don't know if you need to get closer to your phone or whatever it might be, but see if you can step that up a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, is this better? That is better. Okay, great, thank you. Over the years, the lot for project concept has changed and improved a great deal. And many of you have played big roles in those improvements. Now that the majority of city voters chose this project as the path to affordable housing and a new library, let's move forward with one final improvement, one that would bring a meaningful remnant from decades of community events and markets to the parcels in new life and new purpose. Incorporating the two perimeter liquid ambers on the exterior would not only be beautiful, but also a step toward community healing, something I think we would all agree would be good. No pro-programmatic goals would need to be changed for this to happen. Clearly, the other protected heritage trees that the Arborist report did deem as, quote, worthy of preservation, end quote, would be less feasible to include because they're in the middle of the parcel. So no one's asking for that. But as has been demonstrated in the public record, there is plenty of space for all pro-grammatic goals to be fully achieved and also include just these two particular beautiful heritage trees on the perimeter. This would enhance the project both physically and equitably. People really love these particular large trees. After all, they are our heritage. But beyond that, following the associated ordinance and resolution is the right thing to do. And from what I can tell, it's pretty clear the ordinance has not yet been properly adhered to. I find this understandable when looking at the complexity of the project and the politics that have swirled around it. Yet I have full faith that if you direct them to, these talented architects can do modest design alterations to include just those two trees and relatively quickly too. I understand you need permits imminently so project funding applications can be submitted in a tight timeline. The original tree removal permits stated that they were conditional on project funding. Perhaps that could be tweaked to also include consideration of the implementation. That way you still have the permits and be able to apply for funding right away. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Mr. Filipini. Good evening. My name is Darius Mosni. First, I want to say at the outset, I'm not a climate denier. In fact, I'm a climate realist, maybe a climate fatalist. I've heard a lot of discussion tonight about the trees and climate change and carbon sequestration. I brought my shop vac and this is 10 gallons. This is the entire, if this were a water, water, it would be the entire greenhouse gas output of China and that's 100 and the equivalent in drops of water is 151,000. I'm an engineer, I'm kind of a numbers guy. Santa Cruz, the entire Santa Cruz County carbon output is 345,000 tons as of 2018 numbers. It's one drop in this bucket, this 10 gallon bucket to make decisions about climate mitigation and our little community based on greenhouse gas output or trees capturing it. It's pretty irresponsible and I think it kind of demonstrates. And this is just China, not India, not Western Europe, not South America, just China. We are one drop in this 10 gallon bucket. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Let's go to the next person online. I have a phone number but I don't have a name but let me ask the person whose phone number ends in 6766, it's your opportunity to speak. Hello. Hi, good evening. You got me. Hi, it's somewhat commonly known as the other Fred these days. I'm, excuse me, I do mean to interrupt you. We can barely hear you so please do your best to speak loudly. Thank you, sir. Okay, Fred Geiger, Santa Cruz, sometimes the other Fred. But this is about to me, it's about the city following a law and you know, I'm tired as a taxpayer of seeing the city have to go to court so many times to defend things they've done that do not comply with the law, usually environmental laws. And then in the end, having to pay the legal fees for both sides when they lose and then complying in the end when they're forced to. The last three cases I'm aware of, this is class of city, over a million dollars in legal fees. Don't believe me, ask your city attorney. So you have some people here asking you not even comply with the full law about these heritage trees, nearly to save two out of something like seven or nine trees. I think it would be pitiful if this has to go to court and the project is lost, the library bond funding timeline is exceeded, all that nice affordable housing is jeopardized. I mean, how hard is it to say, cut a little space in this building, couple square feet here and there. These people want two trees, that's all they're asking for. What's the question? How hard is it? And it's the law anyway. So I mean, what's the hangup? Let the two trees be there, everybody's happy. I mean, I just don't get it, is it just arrogance or does the city doesn't feel like they ever have to comply with the law? I think it's disturbing and the amount of cost to the taxpayers and wasted legal fees, it's completely unjustifiable. So comply with the law, it's clear that it's there, excuses, the trees are this or that. The law is clear, it says you got to design the building around the trees and here people are only asking for two out of like seven or nine trees. So how else can you possibly go ahead intelligently? Thank you. Thank you so much. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Mary Odegaard and I would like to see housing and trees on lot four and I'm here to ask you to follow the city heritage trees code and request that the architects design a plan for that project that incorporates the trees. It's a simple request, it's a very sincere request. Those trees have beauty and they need to continue to stand and we can have housing and we can have trees. We don't have to choose between one or the other and we have a lot to be grateful for and I hope that you hear our sincere request for the trees all the best. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Sonnenfeld, good evening online. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to express my support for the library project. This has been a very multi years long saga and I hope that we're finally coming to some closure and be able to move on with the discourse around this. As was mentioned earlier, measure O was put to the voters and we soundly defeated it at a, I think close to 60 to 40. So nearly two thirds of the voters of Santa Cruz support this project and we like to see it move forward. I think we're all getting tired of debating every little single thing about this project. It's been getting better and better and better and as everyone who has spoken in support of this project this evening has mentioned so far, we need the affordable housing. It's a great library project. It'll include so many awesome features for our downtown community. So thank you for all your hard work and just appreciate everyone who's put so much soul into making this place for really the center of our downtown community. Thank you for your testimony. Good evening. Thank you so much. Of course. My name is Lisa Ekstrom. I think all of us care deeply for the future of the community. That's why we're here. I think we also all share concern for the climate emergency that we're all facing. I recently heard someone say that if you want to accomplish nothing, convince people that they're on opposite sides of each other and I believe we've all known the frustrations of that experience. For example, it could appear that one person's passionate protection of our heritage trees could be at cross purposes with another person's equally passionate push to get more affordable housing built as soon as possible. But what if we're not at cross purposes? What if it's not? Yes or no? What if it's, what if, what is, sorry, what if trees or this project is actually a false choice? In fact, as we work hard to create more much needed affordable housing downtown, these big trees will be even more of a crucial protection against rising levels of CO2, working hard to support environmental health, human health, even community health. It will take a very long time, as other people have said, for new sapling trees to protect us as the heritage trees already do. So what can we do together, honoring our need to affordably house more of our community and honor our ordinance and honor the trees that have been protecting us and continue to protect us? I come from a family of architects. I've seen many large projects change remarkably in their scope and if it weren't for the robust public engagement on this project, as many people have mentioned, we could still be here today, talking about a huge new parking garage with no affordable housing in sight. So please direct the architects of this project to create a design alteration to honor, accommodate, and save as many of our heritage trees on this site as possible. Thanks very much mayor and council members for your time and consideration. Thank you very much. We'll now go to Ms. Webster online. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great. Good afternoon, good evening actually. Sorry, Mayor Keely and council members, my name is Kalisha Webster and I'm the senior housing advocate housing places, the nonprofit service provider will provide on-site supportive services to residents with development and other disabilities and future affordable housing project proposed at the site like eating housing and for the future housing. I'm calling in support of the redevelopment of 113 and 119 industry into a vibrant new mixed use projects including a library and deeply affordable housing to do with a new transit in downtown may be the perfect location for creating a more sustainable and inclusive community. On behalf of the city's nearly 400 residents with development disabilities applauded the developer for including people with development of disabilities in their project plans. Today is currently home to nearly 300 adults with development disabilities only a third of whom have been able to transition from living independently with the supportive services they need to integrate into the community. Instead, most adults with developmental disabilities are living at home with age and parents due to the lack of deeply affordable housing available in the city increasing their risk of homelessness or displacement as they age in place. This is because many adults with developmental disabilities on fixed incomes from disability benefits are working part-time in low wage jobs and struggle to qualify for most of the affordable units currently available in the city. By collaborating with housing places who provide onsite supportive services for the 11 households living in the home set aside for people with developmental disabilities and offer units of the deepest levels of affordability. This project will address the housing needs of these adults wanting to live independently by meeting federal and state priorities to provide inclusive housing opportunities where people with and without disabilities will live side by side and helps to meet the city's legal mandate to affirmatively further their housing for a special needs population or to be committed a little further than for community housing options. We look forward to be able to support future residents of this project and strongly urge you to approve this project. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Webster. Good evening. I have a point of clarification I'm just wondering. I represent Save Some Trees. We are the appeal. Ms. Marin, right? Yes. Yes. And you... And I've been waiting because I thought it would be better for everybody to be able to make their comments. And I'm wondering, is that really true? Well, you can do it however you want. You do have extra time. Right. So you can do that now. You can do it as the last person to testify. However you wish to do it as fine. Okay, I think I'll wait just because it seems to interrupt the flow. Okay. Good, good. Thank you very much. Chairman Goldencrantz, welcome back. My mistake, sorry. Do you wish to testify on this, sir? Okay. I thought so. There we go. All right, good evening. Hi, good evening. My name is Eileen Ballian. I'm a longtime Dominican hospital employee. And I recognize the need for community projects which prioritize new housing. Most Santa Cruz residents face increasing difficulty accessing affordable housing. Many of my colleagues at Dominican struggle to find homes within their budget. And certainly the vulnerable population we treat at Dominican struggles in this current environment. The new library project allows for more housing along with giving us a much needed new library which I believe many of the library employees are in support of. I hope the council will support this important civic development. Thank you. Well, thank you. Ms. Duncan Merrill online. Good evening. Hi, can you hear me? Okay. Yes, we can. Great, thanks. Calling in to support the mixed use library project. I would like to applaud everyone involved for designing such an extraordinary project. The landscaping in particular which is my passion as a landscape designer is really quite beautiful. We are adding a rooftop garden to what is an existing surface lot that's just asphalt and 12 trees that are in a permanent state of decline. I am excited about a modernized library. I think it's incredible that we're adding 124, 100% affordable housing units. I am grateful for all the hard work from so many of my local Santa Cruz city residents for working so hard on this project. And I applaud the city council for finally taking it up after years of obstruction from the same exact people who promised us that once the voters had to say, they would knock it off. They would stop appealing this mixed use project. They would stop lying to the public. They would stop standing up for 12 trees in decline. They continue to call it 12 trees even though one of the ginkgos is barely a tree. It's barely hanging on, yet they include it in their account. I hope that this group has had enough that they have learned from the fact that 60% of our local electorate voted in favor of this extraordinary project. I thought they would stop, they haven't. They continue to mislead the public with untruths and questionable facts. But I personally would like to ask that our Santa Cruz city council adopt to this project without any changes. It is an important project and it is also important to set a standard for our city that a small group who are highly litigious will stop the constant battle with our locals and at least allow this project to move forward. Thank you guys for your time. Thanks for everything. Have a good night. Thank you, Maggie. Is there anybody that's in chambers wishes to speak still? Okay. Good evening. My name is Gianna Sodrisco. I'm the current president of the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries. I was on library staff for 33 years and I retired in 2019 as assistant library director. Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries and its chapters are the fundraising arm that supports all the branches in the library. We have raised over almost $3 million to support the nine branches that have either reopened or about to reopen this year. So we have one more branch, the downtown branch. The downtown branch is very important because it is not only the branch, the local branch for the citizens, the residents of the city of Santa Cruz, but it is the hub of a library system. It offers collections, programs and staff support to all the branches. We, I'm sorry. You're doing great. I lost my place. We're not gonna count it against you, you're doing fine. Thank you very much, I'm very sorry. But it's really important for the library is that we have heard from citizens for the last seven years through numerous public meetings, through the media and through the ballot box that they support of a library. Go ahead. It's time to build it. Let's get this done. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Stetson online. Good evening. Hi everyone, it's Grace Stoutman. I have had a lot of relationships with this mixed use project over the last year and a half, two years. First as the affordability and equity correspondent at Lookout Santa Cruz, then as the campaign coordinator for NOAA Measure O. Now as the communications manager at Housing Matters and also and potentially most importantly as a renter in this community trying to find affordable housing. It is very difficult to find affordable housing in Santa Cruz. If you have not looked recently, it's become even more difficult since I first moved here. This project has been in development for years as Janice and Maggie and Kyle and various other people have said and was approved by over 14,000 city voters. That's almost 60% of voters when it was put on the ballot last November. This project has been decided and we need to move forward with it to move forward as a community. One of the critics of the project earlier mentioned that she considers projects like this to be monstrosities. I think it's monstrosity that we are not prioritizing housing for all of our residents. We may be losing 12 non-native trees here in Lot 4 but we are gaining 124 units of affordable housing, a new library, healthcare facility, and outdoor green space. I hope that we can move forward with this project sooner rather than later. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good evening. Mayor Keely, I want to just clarification because I just spoke on the trees before and you said we would get an opportunity to speak on the rest of the project and another opportunity but the way things are going. Okay, let me... I'm not sure. Yeah, let me make sure. What I was trying to say is those folks who came here to speak on the tree portion of this issue, I was trying to get them sort of together. Okay, and I'll step aside if there's any left, okay? There we go. Everybody can testify one time, okay? One time. You don't get to come up on the appeal on the trees and then separate. So whatever you have to say, say it. That's the opportunity. Who has read their bright yellow packet that I included and everybody here got one? Yeah, why don't you say who it is you want to say? Okay. Well, what I want to say is the loss of the space, the common public space, as I see is the biggest tragedy. Okay, hang on just a second. Certainly. Mr. Golder. Just hold for a second. Yes, I just want to clarify who I am for the record. Hold on. Okay. Tell you what I'm going to do. Tell you what I'm going to do. I can see where it might have been somewhat confusing when I made my earlier comment. You testified earlier on this, but what I'm going to do out of an abundance of comment to you is give you 30 seconds. Okay. Well dig your yellow packet out and follow along with me because I think the most important point is the loss of the public space. We haven't, this city has not had an open space since 1910 when the streets were wide enough to turn a wagon with a four house team around. And the last opportunity we got was the earthquake. And we tried to pick it up there, but this is a public space that's mostly empty right now. And is a great location for what the folks that wanted to have it as a basically as a public plaza. It could be used for many different things. And I put together a list of spaces all over the world here that I use family and a video that you, I hope you had the time to look at, but I was going to make some comments about, for the lady who wrote the death and life of the great American cities, public spaces are extremely important and what you're losing, what you're going to murder here. You're losing opportunity that would cost at least $5 million to replace that land because that's the price of land for acre $2.4 million for acre. That's what the city paid for the front street. So I'm done. All right, read this before you vote. All right, please. Thank you very much. You got it in plenty of time. Excuse me. All right. Thank you. Would you also hand that to the clerk so we could have it for the record? They had actually all the copies, but I got plenty of copies out here. And it to the clerk, we'll be glad to include it in the record as well. Thank you, sir. All right. And tell us how we got to this point. Understood. Ms. Aguado, I hope that I have pronounced your name correctly. You are on. Good evening. Good evening. Anna Aguado from Head Start Under Encompass Community Services. Our program provides services, early child care services to families across our county. And in my experience, I do oversee the social services part of our program. And one of the major needs that families have mentioned is housing. And in addition to that, our staff struggle when families ask them for support in finding affordable housing, and it's very limited. So I do want to advocate for supporting additional housing in the community. In addition, I want to add that our program is on board to collaborate in the project to provide child care services as part of the project. We do want to make this in an effort to interrupt the cycles of poverty. And I ask that you consider approval of this project to support families and future generations. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your testimony. Good evening. I'm Narayan Wilder, local activist and independent journalist. And I come to speak because I think one of the only people in this room, under the age of like 25, so I have a pretty important perspective on this. And I'm feeling quite conflicted, to be honest, because I see I am somebody who is in need of affordable housing here in Santa Cruz. I currently live in Boulder Creek at the house where I've lived for my whole life because I can't find anywhere to move out. I just can't. I can't find anywhere to move into Santa Cruz. Around Santa Cruz, I can't find anything. But also, I do see the tree advocates things, particularly the it takes trees a long time to grow, takes many, many, many years for such large trees to grow, but also I see the not wanting to delay such a deeply important project for further and further pushing it back. Just one of the other things that I kind of thought about was the large-ish parking garage that is still there and those ideas of just like, there's this concept in urban design called induced demand. If you build it, they will come. So producing more car-centric infrastructure leads to more demand for cars and in this particularly very downtown area, very closely proximity to the transit center and walkability, I could also see not needing so much space developed to car parking and those kind of things. So I really don't know if I'm advocating for or against the program. I kind of just, I'm feeling very conflicted on it. And just as a youth who has a vested interest in this community, I was born in Felton. I've lived in Boulder Creek my entire life. I've been a citizen here my whole life. I'm also a permanent pedestrian. So I just, a lot of prevalent perspectives. I don't know how I feel. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing your ambiguous feelings with us. That's good. We appreciate it. Mr. Phillip, you're online and you're on. Hi. Hey, before commenting on the library, could you clarify what happened to oral communications as you must have blown through that in a hot man a second? That was boned? Hi. I am very sorry. He's saying that oral communications was, he's saying that oral communications on the agenda was to happen before this item, but we could do it after. Oral communications going to happen as soon as we finish this item. Okay, thank you, sir. You're welcome, sir. Okay, I will comment on the library. The library is a hugely controversial project that with no doubt indicates that a pervasive consensus never did, doesn't and won't ever exist and measure O wasn't a straight up and down vote on it being junked up with other considerations. So it wasn't really a valid vote, although measure S was that had a very different idea about the use of library funds. My objections are that it is clear you want to repeatedly permanently sacrifice public property airspace that is really owned by everyone used by the many to the housing benefit of really very few housing crisis or not. I don't know if you intend to insist residents be screened for some kind of a need basis. I hope not. We don't live in Russia, not yet. And I suspect nothing prevents people of means just snapping up a good deal. The real problem is inflation and today's affordable housing is tomorrow's unaffordable housing. I hope in the future you get better consensus before embarking on the most expensive project ever undertaken here and put some limits on your ideas about giving away public property for the benefit of the few before it's all gone. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Keely and council. My name is Jim Mechus, resident past water commissioner. I grew up in Santa Cruz using the old Carnegie library through high school. By the mid sixties, it was too small for a town of 30,000. So we built a current library. Our population has more than doubled again, 65,000. It's time. Please approve the project as proposed. Twice now the public has voted support for a library that will address current and future needs of our growing city. We also need affordable housing and this mixed development delivers 124 units all affordable. Reducing the project size to retain existing trees reduces the ability to provide either sufficient library or affordable housing. The only obstacle is the claim of heritage trees. If council were to pass a law declaring trees to be elephants, those trees wouldn't become elephants, only misnamed trees. And when compared to mature redwoods, some locally are up to 2,000 years old. There's not much heritage to the trees that were planted as parking lot decorations behind the local JC penny store 60 years ago. They're younger than I am. I don't consider myself heritage. The Arborist report says the current trees are in bad shape. They've had roots and tops aggressively pruned. Over the years, the root crowns are partially buried. There's disease and they do drop limbs. The mixed use project will replace them with 21 new trees, plus a living turf roof on the buildings. Within a few years, this project will provide more foliage and much less heat island effect than the sickly trees and expansive black ass fault a lot for today. That's combined with a beautiful, airy, functional design and affordable housing. I ask you to please approve this project. Thank you very much. Ms. Kuhl, I'm sorry, Ms. Kuhl, hold for just a second. The person whose phone number ends in 5652, you are on. Hi, my name is Candice Brown and as I'm listening to this, I was not involved in the great battle over measure O because I was dealing with the loss of a loved one. But one thing that is always concerned me about this project is that it is in the 100 year flood plain. And if you are going to consider the modifications to the project for a handful or a few trees, it would be a rare opportunity to rethink what would happen to the library in 100 year flood. It is a three story building, but there might be an opportunity to add another floor to put the community space at the bottom and the library collection up at the top because it's never been something that's been adequately discussed in my view. So we're talking about trees today, but we're also talking about a development that will be lasting for another 100 years. And it will live to see 100 year flood. So I hope you will consider that and it may be a rare opportunity to deal with it. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony. Good evening, Ms. Matthews. Welcome back to chambers. Thanks. You are faced with a very exciting opportunity this evening to make a major investment in the future of our community. And I don't want you to lose track of that. This is, you have a wonderful staff report, not to repeat it. The staff report touches on so many aspects of our city's general plan. And this project not only fulfills but realizes so many of the goals in our general plan for affordable housing, for sustainability, for a vibrant downtown, for social equity, goes on and on and on. They're all contained in this community vision. And this project realizes them. This project also realizes hard work done on the library facilities master plan 10 years ago to look at our whole system, as was talked about. And we've seen in the intervening years almost all of the branches either completed or in the process of renovation. And we have seen, I hope you visited the branches, the excitement that those wonderful, renovated or new libraries bring to those communities. It's happening nationwide. And that's what we deserve for our downtown. We've seen the evolution of our downtown plan. I participated in the vision Santa Cruz after the earthquake and the downtown plan has evolved since then. Certainly now with COVID, the changes in work, work patterns, we're facing more changes for our downtown. And we need to accommodate that. We also have community imperatives for affordable housing that become only more severe every year. I particularly wanna call out the work that was done, the evolution of this plan and the change of the design to be considerate to the Cedar Corridor plan stepping down as it reaches out into the less dense neighborhood. I want to just show a couple of pictures if I could ask one to be put. I wanna show you my liquid amber chops. We're gonna freeze your time here for a second. Make sure you get the time. They told me they could do this. Maybe not. We'll know. I'll just say I moved to Santa Cruz in 1970. Shortly after that, I live on Walnut downtown. Man, this street is bleak. It's hot. So I organized tree planting along Walnut Avenue. And the first block, my block was liquid ambers. There I am. Look, an African print thing here. That's 1971. Trees for Walnut. Next to that, added the trees, 1971. That's my little babe there. He is now 50-something. The trees grew up. He grew up. Let's take a look at the next picture. Liquid ambers are not a great street tree. Those are those trees. They're brittle. They break. They have invasive roots. Virtually all the liquid ambers on Walnut are gone. They're not a good urban landscape tree. I also planted the sycamores along the 200 block of Walnut. And those are thriving. So I just want to put street trees in perspective. Finally, that third image that I showed you, just want to emphasize the map. Yeah. You're not going to be able to read this, but you'll see it. This is a sandborne map. It's an old insurance map from 1880-something. Of this block of downtown, Cathcart didn't go through. Cedar didn't go through. There was a shooting gallery. There were stables. We refused single-family houses without houses. My point being, downtown's evolved. And what we see before us now is a plan that's been so well thought out. It combines so many of the needs and good resources of our community to really meet the needs of this community now and for the future. So I urge you to support it. As presented, trying to save true, two non-healthy trees that aren't suitable is just a fool's air and it compromises the project beyond reproach. So let's realize the vision of the library housing project. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Matthews. Ms. Kuhl, you are online. Good evening. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. So I'm actually calling because my daughter would like to say something on this issue. And then if there's any time left, I'll say something as well. Sounds fine. Hello, my name is Alison Kuhl. I am asking you to save the trees because I care about the environment and animals. You should respect things that have been here longer than you. Thank you. So that was my daughter and she's actually raising her voice on something that she cares about. Many of you know I'm the president of the Santa Cruz chapter of the California Homeless Union and I also work for a local nonprofit. I can definitely say we need housing. Housing is the number one thing that individuals who are unhoused need. With that being said, I also love trees and my daughter cries for the environment. So I just would like to say that if there's any way to save a couple of the trees and incorporate that in the design, I don't see any reason why you can't go back to the developer and say, you know, these trees are viable. We want you to save a couple of them. You know, we're hearing the community when it comes to that. So that's our two cents regarding this issue. Thank you. Ms. Keele, thank you and your daughter very much. Mr. Farrell, good evening. Good evening, Mayor Keeley and council members. I'm here today just to urge you to support staff recommendation and the public process that included review by the planning commission, which voted unanimously to support this project. And it included members on that commission who had opposed the project in the November election. So if the planning commission can see the path to approving this unanimously, I'm hoping the same thing could happen today at council. Secondly, the Parks and Recreation Commission considered the heritage tree appeal. They denied it. I think the commission serve at the pleasure and authority of the council. And I urge you to support the Parks and Recreation Commission in their finding. Thank you. Mr. Farrell, thank you very much. First name Chris online. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council. Good evening. Hi. So I would just encourage the council to follow city ordinance. You know, if this is somebody else, they would be red tagged probably for not following city ordinance. And it's your ordinance and you should follow it. How do you expect citizens to be lawful if their representatives are not following the law? It just kind of reeks of got candid shady deals and no transparency whatsoever. Additionally, the problem with this program for me is cities throughout the world are not allowing cars into the center city of town to make it more livable and by providing 200 plus parking spaces in downtown, you're just asking for more noise, pollution and parking issues that you already had said in a previous item number 15 that you want to encourage vision zero and climate action plan support. This does not support that whatsoever by inviting 200 and some odd cars into the heart of downtown. It's not gonna be, it's not gonna make for a livable city whatsoever. So I think the architect should go back, try to incorporate the trees per city of Santa Cruz city ordinance and breathe think about building a parking garage. Essentially it has a library attached to it. And I would also like to say that when I voted for measure as a dollars for renovation of a library, I voted for renovation of a library. I did not vote for a parking garage. So that's all I have to say. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much. This seals. Good evening. I'll be brief. We love the library. We love affordable housing. People love trees. And these pictures, you should have had 60 of them, I believe in the last few weeks coming into your email. And these were taken by people along the periphery, not in the inside. So there's tree five, which is quite healthy. You go look, it's obviously healthy. And also, I think one of these is on a liquid amber. But anyway, just to remind you, a lot of people in the city really love the trees. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Seals. Good evening, sir. We got word that there is someone online who is not able to raise their hand or we're not seeing their hand raised. So I'm gonna try to unmute them. Very good. So just hold for us for just a moment here. Good evening. My name is Elaine Johnson. Good evening. We can hear you. Can you hear me? Oh yes, we can. Please proceed. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council Member, for the opportunity to speak this evening. I'm going in to talk about the downtown library and affordable housing project that I think is absolutely amazing and will continue and help to bring, you know, the much needed housing that is needed here through our Sanctus County. I couldn't think of a better place to build 124 affordable housing and rebuild the library. We'll have the childcare facility. I grew up in a place in New York where we had childcare facility and it was so impactful when parents stopped their kids off and knew that their kids were safe and they can come back home and pick up their children. So I'm here this evening to urge each and every one of you to support this project, allow this project to move forward as we can continue to allow Sanctus County and the city of Sanctus for this project to continue to be its vibrant community that it is. Thank you so very much. Have a good evening. Thank you. Now, let me see the gentle lady who wanted to go last. This is your opportunity. Here we go. Let's hold for us for just a second here. Just one second. You're on. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Linda Marin and I am presenting for Give Our Trees a Chance Save Some Trees Coalition. Slightly, please. There are 12 groups and 890 individual people who signed on to our appeal of the tree cutting permit that Parks and Rec issued in October. Slightly, please. I feel as though a lot of this presentation has already been made by the general public and I'm gonna try and zoom past some of it. But I'll say disappointed of course that on December 12th, the Parks and Rec Commission denied our appeal and upheld the tree removal permit with a four to three vote. However, we still appeal to you to incorporate at least two of those perimeter trees as you've heard many times tonight and fulfill the programmatic goals of the project on lot four. We're certainly not in opposition to that project. We want it to be as good as it can be. Slightly, please. How we got here. This is a thick slide and I'll try to make it easier. We based our appeal on the absence of any information from the city following our records request, indicating that the staff had given information or direction regarding the heritage trees on lot four when it communicated specifications for the multi-use project to the architects. But they did ask for information about the trees. They contracted with an arborist at Dryad and got a report in January that the trees were indeed some were heritage trees and that five of them were deemed worthy of preservation. And if you look at the management codes for 10 and 11, which are the sweet gum trees, liquid embers, they get a grade of B, which means preserve specific maintenance recommended. So these are not all failing trees. Five of them are worthy of preservation slide. One of the things that allows a heritage tree to be cut down is that a construction project design cannot be altered to accommodate existing heritage trees. Now, that assumes that the designer of the construction is informed about the heritage tree resolution and takes that into account in the initial design of the tree, of the construction. In June of 2022, Michael Gooth, who's the head of the Santa Cruz Sierra Club, was concerned when he attended a presentation to the city council on the first go-around, I guess, about the project and heard nothing about heritage trees or the tree ordinance. And he wrote to the city staff asking the developer to alter the current design to comply with the city's legal obligation with respect to its heritage trees. And Bonnie Lipskin wrote back, acknowledging the receipt of his letter and in the highlighted part, you'll see the designs and presentations to council have been project updates on the library component of the project specifically and have been conceptual in nature, which one would infer means, oh, maybe there's still time. They're going to include the trees at some later point. Next slide, please. In September of that year, though, the same arborist was asked to submit an addendum to his original evaluation of the trees. He confirmed his prior evaluation of the trees with the five worthy of preservation, but he responds to what were called conceptual plans in June as the reason now why all 12 trees would have to be removed. And I quote, the building footprint encompasses an area including all 12 trees. He understood that, he knew that, but what happened to considering the trees in the initial plans? It looks to us like the trees were never considered for the design and project program. They were an afterthought and that's not how the heritage tree ordinance and resolution really work and were intended. So the question is, can they be incorporated without changing the project's goals? Slide, please. The space is there. Jim Rendler for For the Future says that it would take about 3,000 square feet to include the trees and you can see the schematic there of trees 11 and 12 reaching into the building that much and reaching over the sidewalk that much. And it all comes, when you add it all up, it all comes to the heritage trees taking 2,974 square feet of space, slide. As we've mentioned much today, the program, the programmatic goals change for this project a lot over time. It didn't used to have commercial and daycare and now it does and that's a great thing. And the council approved 7,000 to 9,000 square feet for that commercial and daycare space. Slide, please, slide. And what you can see here, when you look at the highlighted portion to add up the commercial space, now it currently comes to 11,950 square feet. So that's 3,000 to 5,000 more than was even approved. And that, everyone knows that you can't just transfer that space to where the trees are. I don't mean to imply that it's so simple, but that there is space to be renegotiated in an altered plan. Slide, please. So here we are, the heritage tree appears to have been largely disregarded until the appeal, but we are asking that a few trees be included in the project and it would enhance the project and their space for it. And a benefit would be to everyone, the library, the affordable housing complex, the environment, the streetscape, and the community. Slide, please. The city council in 1998 was very foresightful in developing the heritage tree ordinance and resolution. We didn't have that much information then about global warming and maybe that wasn't even a big consideration at that time, but what they knew and codified is that these trees, these big trees of ours are extraordinarily valuable and the health and all policies framework that the present city council has adopted is another one of those forward-thinking acts on the part of your city council. All kinds of cities, of course, are doing heritage tree and just tree replanting, tree planting, tree transplanting in San Francisco. That's happening so that even big trees are being moved around to make more tree equity. 50,000 trees in San Francisco are being planted and I think 75,000 in Chicago in the next five years. Slide, please. If we closed our eyes and all just tried to guess what are the health benefits of big urban trees, we could probably come up with quite a few of these categories, but I think some of them would surprise us, some of them surprise me anyway. And what Yale Climate Connections has done is gathered all information about health benefits of large, mature, urban trees. And I think what's particularly interesting is the fact that there is so much positive impact on so many different aspects of our health, including immune system, which is surprising since there are pollens coming from trees, but social cohesion has an entirely positive impact from the research done. And then the most surprising one I thought was weight status, like who would have guessed that? And I think the bottom line here is that there's constant development of information and materials coming to us about trees and the relationship we have with them and the relationship they have to our health and our well-being, next slide. And besides health, of course, there's the whole issue of tree equity, and we've been talking a lot about affordable housing. We know that there are gonna be people living in these units that are maybe not having to drive anymore from Watsonville, as someone mentioned, and saving carbon that way, but why not let them have some big trees too for their streetscape? If the trees are already there, and they're not falling down, and yes, they have some acute angles, but they are still viable, they are deemed worthy of preserving, and I live with a liquid amber, yeah, sometimes some branches fall, but we haven't had that experience with these heritage trees, actually, they're pretty darn robust. Next slide. The urban heat island phenomenon is something I think we all know about, and as we build more and more dense urban structure and development to meet our arena requirements, this is going to become more and more of an issue for us, and in a heat wave, an added seven degrees, which is what this graph shows, in the daytime and at 22 degree heat elevation at night because of the radiation coming back out of all the concrete. Well, that makes a big difference for health and for survivability, and we're lucky in Santa Cruz, we don't have too many really big heat waves, but we're also still traveling into climate disruption that doesn't promise us to have the kind of climate and temperatures that we have always been used to. Slide please. Size matters, it really matters with trees. I know that many people have mentioned that there's gonna be so much replanting or sapling planting to replace these trees, and that's good, all of that is good, but the amount of trees really that it would take to replace just even one heritage tree like one of the liquid ambers is about 29, and the impact won't really be beneficial to us in the same way at all as the liquid ambers ever will be because we won't plant trees that big, they'll never get that big, and we will have less benefit than we can have with the trees we've got right now. Thanks. Santa Cruz values our large trees, we all know that, and Santa Cruzans especially value the trees a lot for. They're sacred to some people, they're welcoming and protective to others, they're challenging and uplifting to the climbers, and overall they provide a sense of place that runs deep like roots in the collective psyche and culture of this town, and I'm sure you felt that at a farmer's market or queuing up for a Martin Luther King march or meeting a friend at the food trucks or listening to musicians under one of the trees or attending a rally or just finding a shady spot to park your car, the trees have accompanied us so consistently through all the seasons and chapters of our lives here in this city, we love them and what we love connects us, it will be painful and hard to lose them, and our children love these trees too, they are heritage trees after all, they are meant to be inherited by those children who grew up loving them. Imagine the addition of a magnolia to the children who will spend every weekday in the childcare center. We know this project will require the removal of all the trees inside the perimeter of the project, and we know there's a timeline for getting funding and moving forward and that's important. Although it is very hard for the tree lovers to let so many precious friends go, we know this project needs to go forward, so we're saying goodbye to those trees. My own timer, slide please, two more slides. So we ask that you please consider asking for a design alteration to incorporate some trees. A real question, how long could that take? Would it be worth actually just asking even how long could that take? We hope you'll set a date to consider both options and choose between alternatives and move forward. Slide please. And we thank you, and I know we're all exhausted, I can't imagine that you wanna ask any questions, but if you do, please do. And we look forward to this project being the very, very best it can. Thank you. Thank you very much. The way we operate here, that should have been the last presentation. So I am out of an abundance of interest in making sure no one's opportunity is shut off here. Does anyone who's with us in chambers wish to make additional comment? I see we have two online, but let me see if there's anyone with us. Seeing none, that's the last opportunity for folks who are with us in chambers. Let's go to Mr. Mechel. Good evening, Council. I wasn't planning on being one of the last comments, but I appreciate you taking mine. I just wanted to say as we consider health and equity in this project and with these trees that we also consider the people not with us tonight who are not able to comment because they're either working or they live too far away, they don't know about this project. There were any other reasons that they couldn't be here with us tonight. The people who are gonna live in this project are low and very low income individuals in the county. As we know, there are about 12,000 people on the waitlist for affordable housing. Those are the people that will be living in this project. Right now, those people may be spending upwards of 30% of the rent on housing, maybe they're rent burdened, maybe even higher than 30%, 30, 40, 50%. These people will have a place to live that is truly within their budget and not causing their family to choose between groceries or paying rent this month. Just something to consider as you think about this, I hope you'll go forward and approve this project, get it moving so we can get more affordable housing in the city, thank you. Thank you very much. Next with us, and I think the last person who's going to provide testimony, Casey Beyer. Good evening, sir. Welcome. Mayor Keighley. And Councilman. Good evening. I wanna congratulate you for running a really well run meeting tonight. It's important that the public has an opportunity to comment on an important issue like this. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce has been instrumental in supporting this project since 2015 before it even went to the ballot with measure S. It's important to notice that over the years, we have been engaged in the opportunity to watch the city council, a number of committees work through the public process to come up with a great project. And really, this boils down to two things. One, people and the economic vitality of Santa Cruz County. We are at a crossroads where we're talking about two trees versus children. And I wanna emphasize we're children again. The next generation of educated people are our children. They will use a library, educate themselves to read, to learn, and be part of the community. This project has done instrumental things to make sure that we make that a reality. We can talk about native trees, we can talk about moving a farmer's market, we can talk about a garage, but we're talking about the future of Santa Cruz. I urge you to support the staff's recommendation. It's imperative that we do this and move forward. We've been through this for eight years and now is the time to build a beautiful project. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Byer. We appreciate your testimony. All right, it seems now as if all testimony has been provided, the matter is back before the council. I want to make sure, Mr. Kandadi, I wanna make sure that I handle this correctly. As I understand it, we have an appeal. Should we act on that first and then act on the project in chief? I think that council can take action on the entire. Entire facts. Body of issues that are before you as indicated in the recommendation section of the agenda report. Okay, very good. Thank you. I will recognize council member Newsom for a motion. Oh, excuse me, I am sorry. I'm going to recognize Ms. Brown for a motion first. You have a question first? Okay, let's go. I have a question for the city staff. Can the heritage trees on site be accommodated without reducing the current programmatic features of the project? Thank you for that question council member. There is a memorandum from Jason architecture that has a tree by tree kind of breakdown of the impacts of retaining those individual trees to the project. And so I think that's probably the most instructive. And for that, I believe Abe Jason with Jason architecture may be available on the line and perhaps he can speak a little bit further to the precise impacts to retaining any trees, particularly trees 10 and 11 if Abe is available. Yeah, happy to speak to that. Mayor, council members, thank you for your time tonight on this important issue at hand for the city of Santa Cruz. I'm going to share my screen. I believe I can do that to provide an exhibit that was provided along with a tree analysis that the city prepared for this project. So give me a second to pull that up. So you should be able to see my screen now. This is the exhibit that was prepared along the memorandum for trees on the project. And what you can see is the heritage trees each identified by a number and the area of the heritage trees as it impacts the library footprint in blue. This is the first floor of the library. This is the first floor of the library. The second floor of the library and then the mezzanine level of the library. So you can see that the heritage trees have a significant impact on the footprint of the library. I think it's also worth noting that you can see in this exhibit that the footprint of the trees sort of as defined as an impact within this memo and this exhibit are drawn tightly to the tree canopy. However, the reality is we would not be building directly to that tree canopy. So you really would look at a radius another four to six feet beyond the tree. And you can imagine sort of how significant that impact was if you draw a line kind of along the edge of these trees. With all the heritage trees you would be looking at a sort of significant and detrimental impact to the library. And even if you look at the trees individually any single tree as it impacts the library would have a significant domino effect in terms of programmatic function, layout and square footage. And I'm happy to answer any specific questions but I think that sort of generally describes the impact of the trees. Council Member? Good. Council Member Brown is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I have a motion that I sent to the city clerk. Bonnie, if you could pull it up. It's a long motion. I couldn't provide it in advance because we operate under the Brown Act. Let's go. Okay, so you can go ahead and read along with me. So my motion is to approve the heritage tree removal permit applied for on October 12th, 2022 for removal of the following trees using the numerical designations established by DIAD. Conditional upon city council approval of a building permit for the library affordable housing project on lot four. To direct that the city staff have the library affordable housing project developer and architect to develop an alternative conceptual design for the library affordable housing project that could accommodate the two liquid ambers. Those are trees 10 and 11 they're on the corner or towards the corner on Cedar and Lincoln. To be provided to the city council no later than May 1st in the spirit of not delaying. Direct that the alternative conceptual design for the library affordable housing project shall not sacrifice any programmatic goals of the downtown library or childcare center. Direct that city staff have the library affordable housing project developer and architect consider in its alternative conceptual design the possibility of incorporating tree number five which is a non heritage tree. I'll just keep, I'll summarize paraphrase here. Pursuant to these requests direct the council at its next meeting following the provision of the alternative conceptual design make a decision either to affirm that the final design will accommodate heritage trees number 10 and 11 possibly tree number five as provided in an alternative design or approve the heritage tree removal permit conditional upon city council approval of a building permit for the library affordable housing project on lot four and affirm that for the purposes of seeking sources of funding for the library affordable housing project this motion would establish a decision framework for final development of architectural construction plans and the decision concerning which alternative to pursue shall have no effect on the final issuance of the building permit for the library affordable housing project. Is there a second? Motion fails for lack of a second. Mr. Newsom is recognized for a motion. I'd like to make a motion to accept the agenda item. Make the motion. I'm sorry. I'd like to make a motion. Yes please. Second that. Let me hear your motion. I'd like to make a motion to accept the agenda item and the stack recommendation. Is there a second? There is a second motion a second under discussion. You can open on your motion sir. Thank you, Mayor Keely. So this project was approved by close to 60% of voters in November. And I think this project will be a great addition to downtown and by extension to my district and by extension to the city. It provides 124 units of much needed affordable housing. So housing for say construction workers and social workers and teachers in our community. And it also provides a state of the art library that the community can enjoy that has great features such as a childcare center which as a parent I think is a great thing especially since it's for working families. Now I want to thank those who came out and express their support for the Heritage Trees and for the Heritage Tree issue and I appreciate your concerns on the issue. Mayor Keely and myself had been working on this issue for quite some time to find something that we think will help address this issue. And I want to thank Mayor Keely for his work that he has done and on this issue. Now part of that work, we want to offer a condition for this project and I'm hoping that can be brought up. Let's see. The condition, condition number 73. So the condition that I'm putting forward is one that reads a total of the modifications are a total of 14 24 inch box size replacement street trees shall be installed around the proposed library building to replace the nine heritage trees to be removed to accommodate the proposed project. Additionally, city staff will plant 12 street trees of 24 inch box size at offsite locations within the city's greater downtown area. Locations and species shall be identified by the Parks and Recreation Department consistent with the downtown plan and approve street tree list. Additionally, another 10 trees shall also be planted in the greater downtown area. In total, 36 replacement street trees will be installed in the greater downtown area to offset the nine heritage trees currently proposed for removal at the library site. All such trees shall be planted prior to issuance of Certificate of Occupancy for any affordable housing unit. So while this project would typically require planting nine new trees, let me do this, that's an amendment to your own motion. So I wanna make sure we get a second if that's what you're looking for here. You're making an additional motion here. Is there a second? Ms. Golder seconds, please proceed. All right, thank you. So while this project would typically just require nine, the planting of nine new trees, one tree for each heritage tree is being removed, this project with this condition attached will be required to plant 36 new trees or four times the typical number. And the goal with this condition is to offset the loss of carbon sequestration that will take place with the removal of the heritage trees on site. And it seeks to do so by adding 36 new trees to our downtown ecosystem and creating a great ecosystem. So in closing, I think with this condition, this project will make a great investment in our community. It'll provide much needed affordable housing. It'll provide a great library in downtown that we will be able to enjoy and that our children will be able to enjoy. And it will help build and keep a vibrant downtown ecosystem. Debate or discussion. I'm wondering if I might add the additional condition on here that appears, which is when the removal of the Magnolia trees occurs, staff shall evaluate whether wood from the Magnolias can be salvaged for use on site as benches, tables, artwork, play equipment, or other amenities in coordination with the project architects. Is that acceptable to you? Yes. Make a motion, seconder. All right, with that. If I might comment briefly, this community believes in reduce, reuse, recycle. Seems to me if we're going to go down the path the gentleman wants us to go down, which I want to go down as well, that we should reuse to the degree possible and integrate those into this project. I think it is a way to honor the history of those trees as well. Questions or comments? Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you to my colleagues for thinking about the trees and how to address this major challenge we have related to carbon sequestration. I just want to make a few comments here that I wasn't able to make in the context of my attempted motion. And so I just want to say a few things. The community members who initiated this appeal and who have, they've really been asking, many of them, there's a lot of overlap between the folks who filed the appeal and people who've been working very hard for a very long time to rethink the way that we approach our planning of downtown and particularly with respect to lot four and the current, the existing library site. And they've been very dedicated to that. And they're asking us to consider incorporation of at least two of those heritage trees. And it's been more than a robust debate. As you, those of you probably are here, you've been following it, you know. And it's been protracted and difficult. I believe the project before us is a better one because of those conversations. It's a much better project today. And it provides a range of community benefits, affordable housing. And I felt that this could be another opportunity to improve the project. There's been significant alterations, but no real attempt. It doesn't feel to me and the appellants where the original appellants, you know, have suggested that or they've made that claim. And, you know, they argue that the city isn't following its own laws with respect to the heritage tree ordinance. I'm concerned about that. I take that very seriously. And I'm concerned about climate change as we all are here, I imagine. And it will take decades for replacement trees to provide the same carbon sequestration benefits that we see now with old, older mature trees. You know, I teach about this and, you know, I talk about it and it's just so clear. The science is so clear. You know, and then I get into this room and we have to make very difficult decisions and weigh real world challenges, right? And real and trade-offs. So it's hard for me to drop those concerns. You know, people are asking for, you know, these trees, not just for the carbon capture, but for shade, you know, tree canopy to soften the streetscape. Somebody said to me yesterday, that's all we're asking for is that you think about softening the built environment that we all move through on a day-to-day basis. I think it could be a small step to do that, to, you know, a small gesture to help heal the divisions that I have seen arise in our community over this, of all things, a library project. I mean, it's just staggering that we are find ourselves in this place. So, you know, I guess I'll just, and I don't believe that it's a trade-off. I thought maybe this could be a way to try to figure it out a little bit. And given that that's not happening, I do wanna say, though, that I genuinely believe it's a much better project than it was when we got started, and I'll leave it at that. Thank you all. Thank you, Ms. Brown. Ms. Calintari-Johnson. Thank you to everyone who worked on this and thank you to the speakers here in Chambers and who called in. I know it's been a long evening. I wanna just also acknowledge that I met with some of the members who spoke from the save, give the trees a chance group, and I did follow up to find if there were any alternatives and the information I got back from staff and the architects went back to that question that Ms. Marin asked that would it impact the goal of the project? Would it delay the project? Would it compromise affordable housing units? And the information I got pointed to that it would. So I appreciate your motion, Council Member Brown, but ultimately I'm in support of the motion before us because I think that we do have a great project and a better project because of the dialogue that's happened in the community. And I hope that this is an invitation to continue to have these conversations. Hopefully we're moving ahead with this project but there will be many more projects that will come before us. So let's continue to have dialogue so that we can make each project that comes before us a better one. And I appreciate. I appreciate the. No, you can't. No, you can't. Thank you. Back before the council. I appreciate the added conditions as well. Thank you. Ms. Watkins. Yeah, I'll keep my comments brief because I think a lot of them have already been said. And I also appreciate the motion before us. I too had a chance to meet with a lot of individuals, reached out to our staff to understand what could be possible and ultimately learned that really we have limited choices here. Having been on the council throughout a number of votes in regards to this project, you know, the community's fingerprints are all over it, right? And that it has made these improvements element by element and transition by transition. And this is another iteration of that. I particularly am proud one to have really championed in wanting to see the childcare. I think that's huge. So I just, I think there's aspects of our project that we can be really proud of. And I really appreciate what the addition was in regards to the reuse of the trees. I think, you know, what I really get is a sentimental attachment to these trees and to what this represents for our community. And nobody wants to be in the position to have to make these types of choices. And that's our job. And so how we can integrate them in a reuse purpose is a really creative solution. I just really appreciate that addition. So I'll conclude my comments. Thank you. Ms. Golder. I too will keep comments brief. Everything a lot of people have said I completely agree with. And I don't think this has to be in us versus them. I have reached out to many of you to speak to you about this issue. I love trees. I spend every weekend hiking in the woods. I grew up in Bonnie Dune. And I also am really proud of this project. And I can't wait to see it to completion. Having visited the Capitola library about three times in the past six months, you're gonna hate this. I had to circle the block through four times to find a parking space because it was so packed with people and so many people wanted to be there to read the books, study gathering groups. And it was just such a beautiful space that it's really a magnet for that community. And so I really wanna see that here as well. I also asked if the two trees could be saved and if it would impact the size and the scope of any aspect of the project similar to what Mr. Newsom asked. And I'm just not willing to compromise that for the community. And I think you'll all remember when I asked about the trees being repurposed back a couple of years ago, when I reminded you that the trees that were planted at Santa Cruz High Memorial Field in memory of students that were killed in World War I had to be cut down, they repurposed them into a beautiful bench as you walk up the stairs next to the names on the wall of all the students that lost their lives in World War I through the current Gulf Wars. And it's a really beautiful thing. And so I don't think, I know I was mocked on some people's social media and some of the people that love to troll me online, but I really think it's a great idea and I'm really happy that it was an addition as well. So thank you to everybody for your teamwork. And I do hope this is still an open invitation to any member of the community that wants to have a dialogue about these projects moving forward because there's going to be a lot of redevelopment in the next three and a half years while I'm sitting here. Thank you. Mr. Condati, I would like to ask you to respond to the issue of whether we have sufficiently covered everything or we didn't. A couple of things. Thank you. The project architect is available if the council has questions about the efforts that were made to incorporate trees into the design while achieving the primary objectives that the council outlined in moving this project forward. Second thing council is that staff mentioned some modifications to the conditions of approval in their presentation and have slides to show the council if you'd like to review that, but I want to make sure that those were incorporated into the motion. Or in the motion. Okay. Further questions, comments, debate or discussion? Ms. Watkins. I know that we're all tired, but I do know that the community does want to know if this has been thought through in terms of the architects incorporating these into the discussion. So if that individual is available, I think it'd be really great to hear from. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening. Jim, round the earth for the future housing. I just wanted to speak real quickly. I really appreciate the consideration tonight. One thing I wanted to make very clear are architects from the start. We were familiar with, this is not my first project in Santa Cruz. We are familiar with the ordinance. We from the start, from the initial city RFP being published did make good faith efforts to try to incorporate those. And as noted in the previous, I don't want to belabor the points that we brought up, but I did want to add on to what Jason said, Abe from Jason Architect said that the site, especially it's not just the canopy, there's also soil, a lot of differential settlement, all the soils down town. The site is not unique by water table. There's a lot of other challenges from the constructability, aside from just the pure impacts to the building footprint. But I wanted to make sure that that was clear. This isn't something that we have not tried to incorporate into the design. And we have gone about that in several iterations, trying to figure out how it could work. And the reality is, we're proud of where we are right now. I think this is a much better project than where we started. And I really appreciate the amount of time and energy that everyone has put in on both sides to really get to where we're at. So I just wanted to note that for the record, appreciate your consideration. And I'm available for any questions. I want to ask if that was responsive to your question. That was. It was, very good. Thank you. For the debated discussion, Ms. Brown. It's not debate. I just want to make a concluding couple of comments. So like one of our earlier speakers, and I've said this project is greatly improved. And I'm very much supportive of the efforts that have gone into making it, providing more community benefit, affordable housing, all of the things. And I am like an earlier speaker, I am torn. I am now torn. I came into this completely opposed. I am now torn, but I'm afraid to say that this is not going to be unanimous vote. I think the 40 or so percent, a little upwards of one third of the people who weighed in on this are going to get one seventh of the vote tonight. So I just wanted to say that to be clear about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Very good. For the debate or discussion, seen and hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Newsome. Aye. Brown. No. Watkins. Aye. Council Member Brunner is disqualified herself. Council Member Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. We are on oral communication. Anyone who is with us who wishes to speak on an item, not on our agenda, but under our jurisdiction can do so at this time. Good evening. Good evening, Council and Mayor and associated administrative assistance and leaders of the litigation league. I just wanted to say that the point that I tried to make and the effort that I put to get those packets to you people, and I don't feel like they even got looked at. Okay, I'm, hold on a second. Hold on. This is oral communication on an item, not on our agenda, but under our jurisdiction. You are commenting on an item on our agenda tonight. Okay, all right. I apologize, I got it off track. We won't talk over each other. I won't do it to you, you don't do it to me. Right. If you want to make a comment on something under our jurisdiction, but not on our agenda, please do so. Thank you. The bigger picture for me is the fact that this city, and I've been researching this for more than 25 years, has been misspending the park fees and the Quimby fees since 1972 on the facilities tax and since 1980 something on the Quimby tax. And I want to work with the city and with Tony to see that it gets fixed. It's been ignored and Barrisoni told me to just go ahead and litigate. I don't want to do that. You know, it's the taxpayer that loses. I presume a Mr. Condati would get paid for whatever work he did to defend something. But I've seen a lot of sloppy litigation and one of the sloppiest litigations that happened recently was the ordinances that the two or three ordinances were passed to control crowd events and rallies, et cetera. And right after that, two months later, we had one of the most massive interruptions of the city we've ever experienced. And so you can't just write an ordinance. I mean, that ordinance had things in it like the normal flow of traffic. Now, nobody could tell me that you have the data on the normal flow of traffic of all the major writers in the city because I don't know what it takes to take that information. So it's a matter of, you can't control public behavior with an ordinance in language unless you really work out how you're gonna defend it and how you're gonna enforce it. And I'm working really hard to see that the Climby Act is properly interpreted and enforced and that money is going where it's supposed to because the main thing I've been trying to find out in the last six months, nobody in the city has heard of an extra study. And I did a whole PDF of the entire city's website and I found one reference to an extra study on a traffic study. But they're supposed to be an extra study according to AB 1600. So what I'm going to do is... I'm close too far. I'm starting to get up, I'm sorry. Hold on a second, I'm trying to help you out here. All right. What I was gonna say is when you and I had our little call a few seconds ago, I intruded on your time. Take five more seconds and ramp up. Okay, well, you'll hear from me again. Okay. Mostly in right. I believe that. We do believe you on that, sir. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good night, everybody. Good night, sir. Any further business to come before the council? We have people online. There are people online. Thank you. Mr. Phillip, good evening. Yes. Hey, I suppose I could have three minutes. Could I? One and a half. It is important. It's not the usual elective fashion. It's better than that. Anyway, if you could start my time over if you're only gonna give me two minutes, that would be great. Okay, you're not gonna do that. Okay, on 228, when the West Cliff damage was discussed, it was stated that it would be irresponsible to tell you we're gonna put West Cliff back the way it was. It was actually irresponsible to combine a retroactive emergency repair cost item with a take it or leave it sparse on details authorization to do a one way study prematurely deciding to put into effect the one way West Cliff adaptation management plan without giving council other options to consider. Yes, including putting it back the way it was and whether the first test of that plan shows in fact, it is a failure that needs a reevaluation. As to the 2021 West Cliff adaptation public works plan, it was interesting to read all the many, many listed West Cliff CIP projects listed were unfunded and almost all funding was expected to come from somewhere else. Hey, how's that going? After my review of the plan, which does have a few things going for it, I still find it troublesome in its priorities. I find his priorities are of a nature conservancy type where no kidding stand is the highest priority, meaning let nature mostly take its own course and not instead a people priority, which is hardly mentioned. I note the first bullet points of the various sections read as such. Number one, protect beach width. Number one, minimize coastal armoring. Number one, improve multi-mold transportation. Number one, minimize coastal habitat loss, which tells me cars, houses and even public infrastructure like West Cliff Drive itself are zero priority expendable. This is known as a radical managed retreat coastal adoption plan. If you're keeping score, the plan score with Ro so far is Pacific Ocean 10 West Cliff coastal adaptation plan zero. Good to see. Thank you. The sustainability. Thank you, sir. Ms. Kuhl, good evening again. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. I just wanted to talk about the fact that we don't have, and again, this is Alicia Kuhl, president of the Santa Cruz homeless union. We do not have a 24 hour available warming center or shelter during this crisis. That's one thing that was not on the agenda today. I think that the crisis response for the unhoused population has been really unacceptable. With all the money that flows through, I think we should have had a better warming center and maybe even motel vouchers for people during these emergencies. I want to talk about the fact that today's the third anniversary of Food Not Bombs has been serving food now every day for three years. And instead of supporting them, the city continues to try to regulate them with that permit process. And it's not that they don't want to comply. It's that people need to eat no matter what. Food Not Bombs cannot allow the city to regulate whether people can eat or not. And I also want to go over just a couple of hard numbers because I hear a lot about violence against women and preventing that and women and children are most vulnerable. Of our homeless population in 2022, we had 2,299. Of those people, 1,774 were unsheltered, 32% were female, 12% black, 39% have been in foster care before. We had 332 veterans on our street, 93% unsheltered. 222 individuals that identify as children and transitional age youth, 97% of them were unsheltered. 48% are living in tents, 38% in vehicles and 14% just on the streets alone. Out of those individuals, 58% access free meals. And that's the importance of Food Not Bombs and services. And so while you're talking about funding and all of these other things, I would urge you to consider these numbers and provide more for our homeless population. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kuhl. Mr. Snyder. Oh. Good evening. Let's see, I wanted to mention a little bit about how I did some data analysis of some information from the police department. So it's a public safety issue that I wanna speak to. So back in 2021, Facebook posts listed all of the vehicle break-ins in their locations within the city. So I counted up the number of lines in the data set and I ran it through a simple word frequency counter and got some statistical data on which streets, which roadways in the city have the most petty victimization of vehicle owners. And so it was real clear, we were speaking earlier about Laurel Street and the unsafeness of it. This is sort of related. It's kind of the broken windows theory where a little bit of disorder creates kind of the impression that more anti-social, higher level anti-social acts become more acceptable. So you'll see, yeah, like there were people in the Lord, that happens to be one of the two zones that constituted, so streets off Laurel Street, Chestnut and Felix, and Shelter Lagoon. They had as many as Ocean Street, and Ocean Street had the most. And I wanna talk a lot about Ocean Street just because I feel really strongly that Ocean Street needs a lot of care. It should, I think you should be put in sharp focus by the city, making Ocean Street more livable, nicer. It is kind of a keystone or it is kind of a very central part of the city. With respect to, it's the first thing that everyone sees and the last thing everyone sees when they leave. Thank you very much. Mr. Snyder, thank you very much. I do not believe we have anyone else online, is that correct? Okay. Oral communication, please. Yeah, I would just also like to echo the concerns about the police harassment of Food Not Bombs recently, the incident on Lot 10 and the incident here outside of City Hall, particularly the incident in Lot 10 citing health and safety concerns. When I would argue that enforcing the not distribution of supplies to people is a much greater threat to public health and public safety than people setting up some tents without the proper permits. And so I just would like to echo that as somebody who has with people directly in my life experienced homelessness. My mother has been struggled to live in this county for my entire life just to stay near me. I was born into homelessness and so these things are quite concerning to me and I find that when the police do their job of siding with property over people, it threatens and directly endangers the lives of the most vulnerable members of our community. And also I'd like to talk about a few other things that are more me. This one just came up earlier. There's not a single active water fountain on this entire City Hall campus. I was thirsty during the break and I was like, where can I get some water? And I couldn't. And this is a broader problem throughout the larger municipality area of just there not being public amenities for citizens to use when they are thirsty or they need to pee. Or the next issue I'm gonna bring up is if they're standing at the bus stop and it happens to be raining and most of our bus stops do not have any kind of rain guard of any kind and some that do, they only have rain guards on the top and then the sides are just open and the bus stop I was actually sitting at this morning to come here was insufficiently protecting me because the winds were high enough that the rain was being whipped from the side. And so none of the bench was dry at all. I'd like to sit up on the next variety of public amenities concerns that I think the city could be doing better to address. Thank you for being here today. Thank you very much. We'll participate and we appreciate that. Ms. Bush, no one else online. No one else here. Before we adjourn, I wanna thank our police officers for being here today. Thank you very much. We appreciate your presence. Thanks for all of those who participated today. Motion to adjourn and be in order. Ms. Golder moves and everybody and their brother and sister makes a second, but I'll say that it's Ms. Watkins. Not debatable, those in favor say aye. Motion carries. We stand adjourned.