 We'll go ahead and get started here. Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to our 1030 a.m. public portion of the closed litigation session of the June 25th, 2019 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. And this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony. Thereafter, the council members will move into our courtyard conference room for our closed session. I would like to ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Here. Glover. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Matthews. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. I'd like to see if there are any members of the public who would like to address the council at this time. Okay, great. If you could go ahead and line up to my left and we'll go ahead and start with you, Mr. Norris, if you'd like. We have two minutes. Tell me when. Yep, you'll have two minutes. First, we need public performance evaluation of two of the most powerful and well-paid positions, the city manager and the city attorney. Two or three minutes of comment period is a cosmetic at a time when few can participate. It's not a fair hearing to allow these officials, the interested public, nor the broader community. Closed door rubber stamping does not ensure confidence nor promote efficiency. And of course that's on your agenda in the closed session today. Martin Bernal and Tony Condati, known them for decades. They're amiable folks. But their reactionary and unchallengeable policies outlast all elections. They're an undemocratic reactionary albatross that hangs over all city departments. There's Suzy O'Hara's false testimony at the Ross camp hearing in federal court two months ago. Read Gallagley's smears of droog-lover here. Bernal's systematic exclusion of progressive members and their measures from city council agendas. We need a real change. Time to open up the performance evaluation for a real hearing. So-called progressive council members have the four votes for a real hearing and the votes to demand a new team. Second, police and rangers subvert the federal courts don't harass the homeless for public sleeping if there's no shelter ruling. Mills SCPD now uses trespass on public property and park closing laws against sleepers instead of the camping ban. This threatens the safety of unhoused people, but also the whole community. Mayor Watkins received Glover staff reports way back in January requesting the citation records. However, with no agenda notice, this is on closed session today. Watkins' back room power of agenda censorship instead buries the records. Release the data gathering dust in the city attorney's office now. Please. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Catherine Donovan and I am speaking to you today as the president of the Midmanagement Association for the City of Santa Cruz. Today in closed session you'll be reviewing our latest proposal for a new contract. Our bargaining team has reached out to individual council members to explain our position and to discuss the issues that we feel are very important to the city concerning our mid-management salaries. In the city's most recent compensation study, the average total compensation for mid-managers was 17.4% below the survey group, the most underpaid of all the non-executive units. Many of our group are nearing retirement age and with salaries so much lower than the other jurisdictions, we have trouble retaining the people we need to replace these long-term workers. Young people are willing to start their careers here in the city, but as they gain experience and reach a time in their lives when they want to set down roots and fully invest in their community, they look to other places that will pay them more, often significantly more. Then they can earn here in Santa Cruz. This leaves a gap in experienced workers that this city has a hard time filling. To fill that gap and retain those experienced workers, salaries need to be more competitive, not less. The proposal we've submitted would provide the mid-managers with the equivalent to the contract that the city recently signed with SEIU. All we're asking is a fair deal to be acknowledged and valued at the same level as other city workers. Thank you. Sure how I'm supposed to do this, but my car when I was, I think it was back in February, I don't have the exact dates, I don't have the letter with me, but I had foot surgery in November and so I was not driving and I just started driving again and I was pouring rain and I came around the corner from Bay Street on to California and I thought it was just a puddle but it turned out to be like a humongous like hole and it bottomed out my car so severely it ripped the tire, the thing that it told the tire on, I don't know the technical terms, it dampens the bumper, like I couldn't drive straight and for a couple days I was like kind of bummed in my dad's that I could call the city and I called the city and I got some estimates about it but prior to that the city said there were horses that blocking it off and that night it was a fluke that they didn't have them for some reason, they weren't sure why and they were covering it with a metal plate the next day and so um since I hadn't been driving I wasn't aware of those those that that was the bad everyone my dad knew everyone else knew that it was a bad area but I did not and so um I'm just asking for compensation for the damages to my vehicle because it's severe okay is that all all right thank you good morning I'm Anne Hogan wastewater system manager I am a manager for the city of Santa Cruz and I manage several managers for the city of Santa Cruz the managers are your professional and technical staff that handle complicated infrastructure they maintain expensive equipment they handle large budgets and they manage large staff like me many of them came up through the city ranks sent themselves to school did internships and returned to their city to provide these professional services we really need these managers the work that they do is very important and one of the hardest parts of my job is retaining this professional and technical staff because they can go elsewhere and they do possess a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge so I'm going to thank you in advance for your approval of the contract negotiations for the managers thank you hi my name is bill brooks I'm here to give you a run down quick rundown on an item three in your closed session it's it's about a mixed use live work project small one over below the elks club on oceanscreen extension um this this situation is is about an ADA path of travel we of course had our plans approved by the council and went on with the working drawings which went through the city and uh plan check and they were approved and our ADA path of travel was discussed and and it was approved our staff our plans is our stamp about proof and what this is really about is kind of a fairness now I'm sure when the city attorney briefs you in closed session and you know she'll suck site I think some law or rule and we're with her word smithing I'm sure she could convince you I have sandwiches and I have sandwich but this is really all about just fairness so we built the project to the plan and the city building department came out and inspected it many times and when we got down to the end for the final inspection which is just before people move in and we had people ready to move in they said we want you to change your path of travel for the ADA and and they also had a question about the floor in um in the bathrooms uh not being accessible for the shower for the ADA well uh our consultant who is on the same level of licensing as the city's uh John Alder who's an access compliance licensed consultant um said your time is up sorry thank you thank you that's it so any other member of the community who would like to address the council at this time okay seeing them we'll go ahead and close uh go to the closed session council member chrome the the woman who spoke to us well I I didn't get your name ma'am thank you all right we'll go ahead and close then um and adjourn to our closed session courtyard conference room and we'll be back here at noon okay well good afternoon everybody welcome to our 12 10 p.m portion of our June 25th 2019 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council I would like to ask our clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council member it's chrome clever here pliers here brown here Matthews here vice mayor coming here mayor Watkins here and if our clerk could please lead us through the Pledge of Allegiance we're going to jump right in and uh go ahead and have some introduction of some new employees and we'll start with our fire chief uh chief hi duke mayor council jason hi duke fire chief for the Santa Cruz City fire department and I'm very happy to present three of our newest hires to the department they just completed a 16 week academy that was a cooperative countywide training academy very rigorous uh first person I like to introduce is Clayton Powell he comes to us from the city of Watsonville fire department where he had nine years of experience he's a registered state fire training instructor he's been a lead instructor in our Santa Cruz fire academy and he's also has specialized training and rescue operations he lives in the city of Santa Cruz with his wife and his two children and he brings a tremendous amount of experience and training to our city and I'm very glad that he decided to to join us next would be Adolfo Gonzalez Adolfo comes to us with a year and a half of paramedic experience also has five years experience as a volunteer firefighter with branch of 40 he was born and raised in Santa Cruz and he lives in the city with his wife and his four children he also has a lifelong passion for soccer and he played professionally in Mexico I expect great things from Adolfo I think will be a great asset for us we also have Bobby Sakine he comes to us with a year of paramedic experience in Santa Clara and prior to that he worked as an EMT with Monterey County he is fluent in Japanese and he has he lives with his girlfriend in San Jose but he spends a lot of time over here and we expect him to move over here to raise a family at some point Bobby also played Division 1 NCAA Soccer at UC Berkeley for four years and has been a competitive soccer coach and lost at us for the past three and I also Adolfo is also a fluent in Spanish I forgot to mention that and I expect great things from all three of them I'm really proud to present our new firefighters welcome and thank you for your service to our city okay I'd like to now invite up our director of public works Mark Dettle good afternoon mayor and council it's my pleasure to introduce our two new employees next to me is Aidan Hernandez he's a new parking facility maintenance assistant and he was born and raised in Santa Cruz currently lives in Watsonville it's the for the past 20 years he's worked in the construction field doing remodels additions and new construction custom homes graduated from Aptos High and attended a 18 month course with Heald Business College received an associate in hospitality and tourism and when he's not working let's spend time with his family on outings with them he enjoys going on bike rides with his cruiser and on West Cliff and enjoying the beach any fun fact he like he built a house for his mom in 2007 so that's pretty cool so please join me in welcoming Aidan next next to Aidan is Gary Curran he's a new resource recovery worker he's born in Santa Monica and grew up in Venice Beach California he currently lives in Santa Cruz on the west side he has two boys one girl and two dogs past work experience include he was in the he was a system manager in the Dairy Department of Staff of Life he went to Venice High when he's not working he enjoys taking his kids to the beach hiking and watching his kids play sports he likes to spend free time with his kids so please join me in welcoming Gary as well thank you and welcome and thank you for your service to our city as well so we have a fun presentation up next and I would like to invite up our parks and rec director at Tony Elliott to kick off um July is parks and recreation month the tire all right good afternoon mayor and city council uh it's an honor to be here with the team I'd like to introduce mr. Robert Acosta our interim recreation superintendent here he is on my left he's very fast this gentleman is very fast uh and I'd invite the entire team to come up Robert we'll have a short presentation on parks and rec month thank you mayor and city council we appreciate this time um I'm going to start this presentation just by telling you a little story when I'm not the acting superintendent I supervised the summer camps program so last week I was talking to a young man named Owen about um how his school year went and what his summer had been like so far he was excited he had gone to his friend's mission hill graduation and he also had a good season at little league he made the all-star team so they're still playing um and he was having a good time at summer camps and he was just really excited for his all-star game that's going to be I think either tonight or tomorrow night but typically after a baseball game him and his family go to Stagnaro's on the wharf because that's where that's his favorite place to eat um that's the whole story but that's the short version of the story the story that I want to explain for this presentation that we're going to do today is I want to explain to you what the parks and recreation department was doing in order for Owen and his family to have these positive experiences um the the parks and recreation staff at the civic set up 400 chairs so 200 kids could graduate that they set up the street closure so that the kids could walk around and and be teenagers out on the street without having to worry about their safety um and that was all done before anybody was even thinking of showing up to the graduation in early 2018 the parks and recreation staff was working with the little league department to get the fields reserved so Owen could have a place to play baseball and have his all-star game um in November the summer camp staff from the parks and recreation department was putting together all the programs for summer camps so that Owen and his mom could have a place for him to sign up um and then in December the parks and recreation admin staff got together and got everything in the computers and got everything ready to go so people could come and register on that first day in April they were also there for the first day of registration in order to make sure that everything went smoothly for people to sign up for all of our programs um and I was just thinking about this as the parents are driving around town they're driving by the medians which also the parks and recreation department staff is making sure they're well maintained and and are not an eyesore for people in the community um before Owen's game the parks and recreation staff at Harvey West Park will make sure that the area is clean and safe and that they will have a positive experience in the park um and when Owen goes to Stagnaros he will see and his family will see the result of all the hard work the wharf crew does who are also parks and recreation staff just to make sure that it's a safe place for people in the community to come they maintain it it's a good place for people to come and get that beautiful view and all of this is done on social media so if you if you check out social media you can see all of these things that are done so I bring this up to mention that July is parks and recreation month and these are examples of parking of our parks and recreation department that's the old name it's parks make life better month now but it's um the examples of the parks and recreation staff making sure that all throughout our community our community is treated to parks making life better for everybody in the community so I just wanted to point that out just to for Owen just to go out and have these simple good times our parks and recreation staff is working hard to make sure that they have a positive experience um and I'd like to play a little commercial a little 15 second commercial about parks and rec or trade would like to play it July is parks make life better and Santa Cruz parks and recreation will have free events all month long there's outdoor movies at the beach free swim days nature walks and tons of other activities so get out there and see how parks make life better so there um the staff behind me is going to give you guys a swag bag they're going to give you a little poster that has a list of all our parks and recreation activities I have heard that this swag bag is comparable to the academy awards bag so um we'll see that'll be for you to decide um the the thing that you will be given there is bookmarks sure thing the things I want to point out is you have parks and recreation bookmarks for those of you that don't know bookmarks are like a paper kindle there'll be there's two parks and recreation pencils in there mugs with from the loud nelson community center and as well as from the clam chowder event that we do there is a clam chowder t-shirt parks and recreation sunglasses a teen center lanyard pamphlets for block the blaze because we always talk sun safety very much very important to our youth and everybody that participates in our programs um three caps the wharf block the blaze and the teen center I'm biased to the teen center one just saying and um and it's all in the parks and recreation backpack so the thing I wanted to point out in there is a popcorn I wanted to point out a couple of events on the poster the popcorn you get is for the movie night here across the street at the civic they're playing captain marvel it's july 6th from six to eight p.m and july 18th we're having our food truck event up at garfield park as many of you may know food trucks this year is moving to different parks this thursday will be up in mission plaza um july 20th is a downtown significant tree walk that will be meeting at city hall here at 9 a.m and then we will kind of end the month july 27th at harvey west park working with santa cruz county and the santa cruz mountain bikers to put on a big event over at harvey west park family fun day it's a free event everyone's invited the pool will be open so we just wanted to point out the fun stuff that we're doing to make life better for our community and and to to say thank you for giving us this opportunity to kind of show what we do in the community so thank you thank you and we would like to get a picture because if you go to any of these events our hashtag for for this month for this upcoming month is july is santa cruz so if you are doing any free events or if you were out seeing any of the cool stuff we do if you can put that hashtag july is santa cruz we would love that to be all over the place so what's the best way to take a picture with everyone should we go in there come up here oh we'll go behind that's as you do i'll just want to i just want to say thank you robert thank you for the entire team being here for the swag and the fun hats and for everything you do for for students like owen and so many other students and families from the very from everything that we experience in the city it's it's truly phenomenal we appreciate it so much mayor absolutely those are great hats and it even fit all right well thank you for starting our day off in a nice positive note all right so we'll go ahead and move along and i will ask if um chris fairy could come forward and we'll uh have a proclamation and appreciation for july as lakes appreciation month as well hello thank you mayor city council good afternoon i also have Veronica sight check here from lock loman it's uh pretty hard to follow the parks and rec department but we're going to give it our best um we just wanted to take a couple minutes to tell you about lakes appreciation month and what we're doing at lock loman to celebrate it i know you have a massive agenda so we won't uh put on nearly the show that you have become accustomed to but anyway lakes appreciation month is a an international event to appreciate our lakes and reservoirs um you probably know lock loman but lakes are water supply recreation areas there also is a habitat for listed species we have western pond turtle last year on our secchi dip and we saw bald eagle and an osprey they were squaring off in front of us which is pretty awesome so a council member mires was there and council member matthews has been at the secchi dip in in the past um but lakes appreciation month is increasingly important because climate change threatens lakes uh water demand is obviously a demand on our reservoirs and lakes um development watershed um disturbance and whatnot so we just want to express our appreciation for our lake lock loman and just draw awareness of the importance of lakes to everyone around the world and make everyone aware of this event that's happening globally i i participate in this back in new hampshire at my home lake every july so this is kind of fun so building a bridge coast to coast with this event and so happy that you guys are here to support it um we're hoping that the mayor will join us at our secchi dip in which is how we celebrate lakes appreciation month at lock loman and with that i'm going to turn it over to veronica and she's going to tell you more about that so thanks again okay thank you uh at lock loman the way that we celebrate lake appreciation month is the event that we call the secchi dip in we invite the public to join us um the secchi is the tool that we use to measure water quality and clarity so uh uh we now have an amazing educational pontoon boat that we take everybody out in and we have the event out in the boat on the lake give a little history lesson um talk about quality and clarity of the water take the measurement um this year it's saturday july 27th from 11 to one and we invite all of you to join us and we just thank you for your continued support of lake appreciation month thank you i would like to add that admission to lock loman is free if you're participating in the event so there's our incentive okay well you sold me so i'll see you up there but before you go i i do have a proclamation here i'll read a couple of the whereas is and then um we'll we'll send you back up to the enjoy the appreciation and appreciate our lake um so whereas maintaining the health of our lakes is the responsibility of every citizen the city of santa cruz recognizes the need to protect these lakes for future generations through federal federal and state regulatory agencies and with the support of the california lake management society and whereas lock loman reservoir is a fundamental component of the city of santa cruz water system and also provides important recreation and natural resource values to our community so now therefore i martin watkins mayor of the city of santa cruz do hereby proclaim the month of july 2019 as lakes depreciation month in the city of santa cruz and recognition of the vital role that our lakes play in our environment and the well-being of our city our county and our state and i encourage all citizens to actively participate in the protection and preservation of our lakes and attend the event in july so i'll come down and hand this to you okay so now if i could um see if we could invite linda snuck up here and she is chair of our sister city's committee and we can welcome some incoming student delegation good afternoon mayor and council i'm isabel tonser and i'm the co-chair of the sestio levante sister city committee and i'm here to represent the committee and linda as well and uh we're here we have two students from sestio levante and it's one of our first time having student from that city so we're very very excited so it's jovani and elisa and we have two of our host families the third one michel is working so hannah and kali and they're hosting jovani and elisa elisa sorry for until um uh mid july and mid july our two students are going to go to sestria until early august so i'm hoping that we'll have a little presentation when you come back and uh we'd like to thank the city to uh to further support and also thank the scholarship committee to make it possible and support so thank you very much and we'll keep you updated we had a little gathering at block ma loman on saturday to welcome our students so taking some english lessons and we're trying to organize something to uh to send them away and so we'll keep you updated about that thank you thank you and welcome to sestiana cruise i hope you enjoy your experience here and we'll look forward to keeping up the updates as you come back from your journey to sestria levante as well so thank you for being here and thank you to the sister cities committee all right thank you okay so i think that will rounds out our presentation so we'll go ahead and move on um in our agenda so i have a let's see so a few announcements and um first is that today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and is streaming on the city's website at cityofsanta cruise dot com all council members can be emailed at city council at cityofsanta cruise dot com if you would like to communicate with us about any agenda item we'd like to see receive your email by monday at five p.m before our city council meeting and this will provide us with an opportunity to review your email and include it in the rest of our agenda packet please do bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and the city council um constitute public records and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public accordingly if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to have made public you should not include that information in your correspondence to us our rules of decorum are on my left and it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we asked that you respect your fellow citizens when you're inside and outside of our council chambers so at this time i'll go ahead and ask if there are any uh council members who have statements of disqualification for today's meeting okay seeing none okay are there any um additions or deletions to the agenda i have a brief amount announcement about oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us to items that are not on today's agenda oral communications will occur at or around 7 p.m i'll go ahead and ask if our city attorney can please provide a report on closed session yes thank you mayor Watkins members of city council uh this morning the council convened in into closed session at 10 30 a.m in the courtyard conference room there were four categories of uh agenda items on this morning's closed session agenda the first was liability claims those are the claims of Armando Cervine uh Genevra Marie Emilia ore ocean and jewel street llc um those are the three liability claims those are also listed on your consent agenda this afternoon as uh item 13 was one item of significant exposure to litigation which the council received a report from the city attorney's office then there were several items of labor negotiations uh involving the following groups uh mid managers oe3 supervisors oe3 fire management fire department ia ff police management police officers association and executive team the council met with its negotiators and gave direction lastly there was a performance evaluation involving the city attorney in city manager positions um there's no reportable action taken okay all right thank you so um at this meeting we'll have an opportunity for council members to report out on actions at external boards committees and joint powers authority meetings that occur between our meetings um for future meetings if you could just come prepared to provide a brief update on your actions that have occurred since our last council meeting and um we'll go ahead and maybe go from i can't act on since i made i contact with council member brown we'll go ahead and start with council member brown and we'll make our way around okay um so i'll start with the area agency on aging i think i reported at the last opportunity about a senior survey that we are conducting and at the time i apologize those who um attempted to take the survey i didn't provide the timing of that it's not actually up on our uh count seniors council website but it will be sometime very soon hopefully by mid july it's a wonderful opportunity to weigh in and for anyone over 60 to provide some information that will help us better understand what kinds of services are needed or desired in our community for seniors i also wanted to uh draw attention that there will be at various farmers markets i'll highlight city of santa cruise on july 17th the wednesday farmers market downtown um free vouchers for local produce for um low income and uh people who are 60 years or older and um just look for the seniors council booth there at the farmers market which hopefully um you all enjoy attending when you can visiting when you can so live oak is sunday july 21st and those are the two closest ones if you want to find more information you can go to the seniors council dot org um and i don't think i have any updates from the regional transportation commission we're meeting this thursday so i'll report back in august um and i'll we have two other members of our library subcommittee here um i can just initially report that we had a first meeting public meeting on the 19th where friends of the library don't bury the library uh santa cru city schools librarian um delac the downtown library advisory committee and other um community representatives came as well as members of the public to talk with us about their vision for the library some of the um previous work that's been done and so we had a good kind of kickoff to thinking about how we are going to move forward to bring a proposal um back or recommendation back to the council in october and then we also had a series of office hours yesterday many many people have signed up so we'll be providing additional dates when we're all available to meet with folks um and we do have a web special web page that um you can go to to find out more information um no significant new development since the last reports i gave just the uc community advisory group uh meetings have been deferred with so much change on campus new chancellor etc so that's a bit on hold um but the last couple of weeks have been weeks of celebrations and events and i think we all were at a million of them not really committee assignments but i went to ebb and flow uh on the river to the uh woody's launch woody's on the wharf uh launch um to juneteenth at louden melton to the uh brainstorming for the chinatown bridge public arts project and finally to the goodbye party that the arts council gave for michelle uh williams and we presented her with an honorary citizenship for the city of santa cruz which they really loved and her son said do we really get to keep this so yeah lots of community events going on best thanks um i'll start by saying that um for the local agency formation commission i'll just have to apologize to my colleagues that i left my notes at home so i wasn't able to report back on that but i'll report back on this at the next report out and in addition to that for the 2020 budget subcommittee we met with the finance director um marcus pimentel and we're introduced to a new portal that's going to be launched online on the city's website that is going to allow us to track um how our budget is getting spent over time and be able to look at that across the region so that's forthcoming and it will be great when when that's live so that we can have more transparency around our city's budget in addition to that we made recommendations that are in the in today's agenda for a revenue subcommittee and so that will be something that will be um addressing later in this afternoon um the association of monterey bay area governments was um a bit of a roller coaster not a roller coaster in a bad sense but some goods and some bads that came out the association of monterey bay area governments is launching is updating its public participation plan this is a required guide for all public involvement activities conducted by ambag it contains the procedures strategies and techniques used by ambag for public involvement in all programs and projects that use federal funds it's a federal and state planning requirement ambag prepares and adopts the um i'll just refer to as the ppp every four years and the last one was adopted back in 2015 so the 2019 public participation plan will cover a four-year period from 2019 to 2023 um some of the key dates associated with it on june 12th 2019 ambag board of directors will we're we're asked to release the draft 2019 uh ppp for a minimum of 45 days public comment and review period and a scheduled public hearing on august 14th the public hearing on draft 2019 um ppp at ambag's board meeting will come back um on august 28th the close of the public comment period will occur and then on october ninth ambag board of directors will be asked to adopt the final 2019 public participation plan in addition to that um we uh discussed the housing planning and production grants program so this is a revision of the trailer bill language implementing a new housing planning and productions grant program this provides regions and jurisdictions with one time funding for planning activities to meet the regional housing need assessment goals and it's administered by the california department of housing and community development and so um just a little bit of background under this new program the funding will be allocated to mega regions throughout the state in the central coast the funding will be allocated to the uh central coast working group and ambag working together with other um council of governments in the central coast mega region we need to select board members representing monoray in santa cruz county to serve on this multi county group um there's a total of 250 million dollars available statewide um as far as santa cruz we are eligible for about 300 000 worth of these funds and um it's something that we're going to need to be applying for in the very near future so that was some of the the better news um some of the not so um happy news was that we there was a presentation about um about plastics in monoray bay and um one of the things that they or a few things that they were highlighting is that um plastic pollution is increasing in monoray bay um and it's become a a growing challenge to monoray bay um one of a couple recent studies found that plastics to be a bigger threat to whales than oil spills are drilling and when scientists examined 102 dead sea turtles from the atlantic the pacific and the mediterranean the average animal had more than 100 150 pieces of plastics in its gut and some had more than 500 um one of the things that also came out from that meeting is that it's estimated that humans are consuming about five grams of plastic per week that is about the equivalent of a credit card and so through the course of the year humans are consuming about the equivalent of 50 credit cards per year of plastic um california and the santa cruz region has been have been at the forefront of trying to deal with plastic pollutants there was a 2008 styrofoam ban in food service 20 tail 2012 retail sale sale of styrofoam was outlawed um we've um done everything from banning plastic bags and in 2017 all food service wear must be recyclable or compostable um in santa cruz and the hope is that there's going to be more to come there's um um there's an item on our agenda today addressing a resolution around plastics and so it's really important that we stay ahead of trying to get plastics out of our ecosystems and one thing i wanted to pass around there was a a paper that came out recently on june 6 2019 by joy et al and it was published in nature it's a scientific report um that discusses how micro plastics in the monterey bay um are greater than um what's found in the surface of the pacific gyre um the pacific garbage patch so i just wanted to pass that study around so that my colleagues could have a copy of that as well um let's see thank you oh there we go that's also and then the last thing uh that we discussed which was also not um so such a happy moment was that there's a safe vehicles rule that's coming out in 20 in august 2018 the national highway traffic safety agency and the us environmental protection agency proposed the safer affordable fuel efficient vehicles rule which sounds great but um the proposed rule would hold the national fuel efficiency standards to 2020 level and so this rule would actually repeal california's higher fuel efficiency standards so this would actually negatively impact the state's ability to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals as well as public health housing equity and goods movement goals um the emissions factor model that's used to demonstrate conformity requirements with the federal clean air act um if it's if these regulations are rolled back this model will not meet federal planning requirements and as a result transportation agencies will be unable to demonstrate that their projects conform to federal clean air act requirements and metro planning organizations in cal trans will be unable to make any new transportation conformity determinations for their planning for their plans and programming documents um and so some of the consequences for failing to conform uh the california council of government estimates that just under 2000 projects totaling over 130 billion dollars may face project delivery delays or losses of funding of that roughly 22 billion maybe at risk in the first six months should actually be finalized in the next few months and if california were required to follow the federal rollback proposal global warming emissions could increase by almost 15 million metric tons per year by 2025 and that's roughly equivalent to putting an additional 2.8 million cars on the state's roads for a year um and so what are some things that we can do um continued outreach to our congressional delegation to urge them to um push back against this program and continue outreach to both the us department of transportation us epa and continue coordination with state partners so there's a lot of work that i think local jurisdictions need to do in order to express our desires to maintain higher quality standards throughout the state and the country here here on that note any questions okay thank you vice mayor please i'll just briefly say i have we there wasn't uh many meetings that um weren't already addressed that i attended within this time frame the only would be um just to just to notify the council and the community that the homeless two by two meeting uh did occur between the last two meetings we had ron there who um is replacing tina and um and attending those meetings with with us um we had a reflection of the closure of the gateway encampment and then um just a shared commitment to collaborate moving forward for solutions and um recognition that with the funding available to be able to provide a year-round uh sheltering options which is unique this year um and so that is sort of an ongoing uh conversation and a collaboration that um will report out on when those do occur um the budget committee did meet and uh we'll be sudden setting that committee and um very exciting to know that our budget staff our our fiscal staff have been working really hard not only on getting our budget ready and for all of the work that we were doing to get uh to the place of passing a balanced budget but also working on creating this online platform that will be forthcoming that i think will be really um useful for the community and for us in terms of decision making um and then i think the only last mention i have which isn't actually a formal um uh partnership but is the work that's happening countywide in regards to the census and so um just to um really remind our community how important it is to stay engaged how important it is to encourage folks to take and fill out their census forms and um there will be a really robust uh countywide effort to ensure that we get every person counted so the city is a as a participant in that along with every other jurisdiction and school district and um that will be in april when we actually have our census day so i'm just going to add one thing to the homeless two by two one thing another piece of information that came out at that meeting was that um initially we had anticipated 1220 river street closing at the end of june and that date has been extended and if the city manager can also speak to it but i'm pretty sure that it's going to be extended to march right 2020 so i just wanted to let members of the community know who are concerned about the closure of that camp that it will remain open until march at this point in time thank you for that very important note and then um i don't know if city manager martin Bernal wants to bring up um our retreat but i could just briefly speak to it we um had a council retreat with our uh staff members on saturday and had an opportunity to reflect on some of the principles of our governing body but also really look at some of the upcoming priorities for the several months that will be serving together and then at the same time thinking about a longer term process in terms of coming up with the longer term strategic plan so it was a full retreat day um facilitated by nicole young and um in partnership with our staff so hopefully some good outcomes will come from that and it was a good working session so i want to thank the council and the staff for taking the time to do that okay council member mayors i think i'll um defer to my colleagues so am i right here for public safety we had our first meeting last night and so we are just starting to get started on a work plan and i'll have the i'm sure council member glover would like to fill in a little bit more on the meeting last night but uh it was uh it was helpful we got some uh relevant public comment and um got some um annual reporting from our both our fire department and our police department so it was good to get the public safety committee up and running and i look forward to additional meetings um throughout the end of the calendar year um i thought i would go ahead and also update on the cow working group so this is a group that is looking to um resolve the bacterial contamination issues down at cow beach and uh we are a working group comprised comprised of both environmental nonprofits as well as city staff and other partners uh and we've taken a number of infrastructure improvements that have been completed over the last few years uh one of the things we measure ourselves against although not entirely against is um a report card that heal the bay produces annually and we have moved up on that list a little bit though but we are still not the number one uh dirtiest beach in california so we're very proud of that moving down the list um it's a very difficult uh situation that we have particular to cow beach because of the wharf and the roosting pigeons and other bacterial sources that a lot of other beaches in california don't have um and so we have been diligently working on with stanford university on testing the water and developing management um actions there and although we're still on the list we feel very confident uh that we're moving towards uh removal and uh we'll be uh redeploying our committee over the next year to again work on the various issues um but I do want to note just for the public that we do not receive uh you know uh cases of people becoming sick by by swimming at cow beach it is a very popular beach we have people who swim there every day in the ocean a lot of surfers a lot of children a lot of families um we really have a unique situation there with with uh with our wharf and some other sources and we're working diligently to to get our water quality to a place where we can get off the list so um I appreciate all the nonprofits and environmental partners that are working with us on this and hopefully next year we'll ratchet down and off the list uh you may see something in the newspaper on that though in the next few days because I believe the uh the announcement from hill the bay is is forthcoming uh also I'll report out um just uh metro I already I think we reported last month but we are meeting on Friday the metro board will be adopting our budget so that is an important meeting for those of you interested in uh metro and the transit system for the county and our meeting starts at 9 a.m. on Friday morning uh finally I believe I will report out on um I'm a member I was uh uh uh established by the council to serve on the league of california city's environmental quality policy committee I did attend the annual meeting Sacramento on June 13th and I think the pertinent um pertinent legislation that the state is working on um really uh is actually right in line with the principles here that we have been working on as a community and those uh include um a very ambitious and uh really nation leading um set of legislation from both the senate and the assembly uh it is in our in our packet today to take action on and that's a uh plastics reduction and also a source reduction a piece of legislation so that so that people who bring uh products into california will have to make those uh out of recyclable or compostable uh materials by the year 2030 and I don't believe any state in the nation is pursuing something quite as uh ambitious as this uh it'll help both with source reduction um obviously and also with the plastics uh conditions that we're seeing in our offshore areas so it's exciting bill we have a item on that with our agenda today also uh there's important legislation uh being uh supported by the league of california cities regarding um the use of community choice power so we with our community choice power Monterey Bay community power uh there is attempts to take some of those choices away from us or further garner those choices uh and so it's strong legislative push this year and the league along with uh legislators are really fighting back that attempt to try to to take some of those choices away from us and finally um a safe water uh safe drinking water fund was created this year first time in the history of california with a designated source of funding from the green house gas reduction fund this will provide over 150 million dollars annually for disadvantaged communities to um to build and uh to retain safe drinking water both in wells and in municipal systems so that's a a step towards uh a very important um policy for having everyone in california be able to have safe drinking water coming out of their tops so that's another focus of of local cities uh and supported by the league uh and again we have a outstanding water department here who is constantly focusing on that for us so we're lucky to have um the kind of department that manages our water resources the way they do and i think that is it for me thank you councillor clover thank you so last night was the first public session of the public safety committee meeting with uh it was a really enjoyable time together of about two hours and 40 minutes about two hours from two hours and 30 minutes somewhere in there we had a variety of issues that were brought up from the community that ranged from the watering schedule in san lorenzo parks to issues with leaf blowers and landscaping race car is going too fast on the pacific mall strip uh too many jump bikes on the sidewalks young people not wearing helmets and climbing on the handlebars but then we heard reports from the fire department and the police department with regards to updates on fire safety and the crime report essentially the fire report consisted of a whole bunch of fantastic acronyms like the wooey the frappe the cwpp uh that focus on wildland urban interfaces fire risk assessment programs and then also county wild lands protection plans uh all trying to mitigate the impact of potential uh fire outbreaks due to uncontrolled fuel or other kinds of land that isn't maintained up kept that also is in tandem with the fire wise usa program which is working on engaging with residents especially ones that live on the border of the urban wildland area so that they can be making sure to maintain their properties and avoid being any kind of a catalyst or additional fuel for fires raging out of control also a report on the amount of fires locally the arrests so there were eight arrests and two convictions uh around intentional fires being set also the concept of enforcement and how that's going to move forward um also with the santa cruz police department so overall there's been a four percent decrease in violent crime since the uh for this year uh 10 percent decrease in property crime and a 12 percent decrease in nuisance crime which is interesting we also discussed the impact of alcoholic outlets on public safety and whether or not an increased access to alcohol outlets is a good or a bad thing for keeping people safe also spoke about the issue of homelessness a citation data the differences between citations and the way that they're implemented or given out then we opened up the meeting so the community members could essentially report back about things that are troubling them some of them included the issues of the neighborhood policing and not feeling represented or having a representative active in their location which was found out to be a staffing issue that came out the other side i'm also talking about first alarm and the effectiveness of them working in the lower ocean and the harvey west park area something that was uh picked up by the news actually which is worrisome is the issue of the violent language online so there were advocates here specifically representing the santa cruz homeless union that had submitted evidence at a previous meeting of violent and hate filled rhetoric online also calls for violence that included the use of baseball bats and fire uh to injure or immobilize people experiencing homelessness so uh there was a good conversation around there the entire meeting was audio recorded so you're more than welcome to go back and listen to the meeting for the specifics uh also we talked about our work plan and our anticipated focus moving forward so uh working as a legislative review body for the legislation going on in sacramento that we can bring to the council for approval we also decided on our meeting schedule which is going to take place in august october and november of this year towards the second half of the month we'll also be receiving activity reports at each one of the meetings um soliciting feedback from the community as well as any information or data they've collected forums for discussing community priorities to help us to figure out where we're going to prioritize our energy and things that are the most important to the community also dealing with different emerging issues engaging community and really some of the things that came up for my uh that my colleagues were interested in looking at were increasing the fire wise engagement focusing on bike thefts the teen involvement in criminal justice and public safety uh talking about the camping ordinance and figuring out what's going on with that public safety impact fees wayfinder information and as well as the ucse impacts on police and fire resources so a good conversation and uh if you're interested in coming to the next one it'll be uh towards the end of august thank you i don't know if uh my head is spinning if yours isn't um you can see that you know we have these meetings every two twice a month but all the stuff that's going on in between that it's it's really amazing this is a halftime job too so i don't figure out these folks um i have my hat off to to them um the groups that i want to report on are the community advisory group which is a group that meets with the university and with community members to figure out the long range development process plan planning process between the university and um the city don't forget that almost 80 percent of our city voted for measure u a couple years ago which is to limit growth of the university until the resources show up but preferably the resources should be here before the university continues to um to grow just a couple things to follow up on uh councilmember glover's remarks on the public safety i just threw out a few uh things that stuck out with me that maybe he he he mentioned or didn't mention um the fire wise usa we have three groups in santa cruz three neighborhoods that are organized around that and we're hoping to organize more uh given the catastrophic fires we've had in california um you know it's better to be prepared um in santa cruz uh when when when the fire happens i don't know if it's enough um we learned that sergeant forbes now is the go-to guy on the east side and so neighbors can contact him uh we learned also about an amazing program to walk with our police chief in various neighborhoods so if you'd like to walk with our um it's police chief and deputy chief and other officers just to walk your neighborhood and show them around and show them um issues you'd like to point out to them you can go online and register for that uh there were 254 total fires in santa cruz last year uh that's about average of what the the previous three years so that's not significantly on the rise what was significantly on the rise were uh fires out in uh in in nature you know in in the pogo nip and other um natural areas around town um rick martinis mentioned to us that if an officer finds someone sleeping on private property they are going to direct uh that that officer is that is directed to um find out where the shelter is and transport them if they want to be transported to the shelter so that that is policy you know it's really great for me anyway to hear hear that about our police department what they're doing um i would say that uh customer global went over the citations it's interesting that calls for service are down from uh a year ago um number of citations written is also down traffic citations if you've been stopped lately we had we got a special grant to uh because we can hear from neighborhoods about people just speeding through the neighborhoods and using it to bypass uh highway one and stuff at rush hours so those are significantly up so the if you've noticed um it's if you haven't noticed there is more attention being paid to that by our police department um i learned the difference between burglary and larceny and i'll see if i get this right burglary is when you go into a structure or a house and larceny is happens on the outside of that the burglars are actually uh down and but and so is larceny but i think larceny involves bike thefts and that's almost a thousand um incidents of larceny last year which you know it it's not surprising especially if you've personally had your bicycle stolen last year um and i'm gonna just go there and then i also joined um council member matthews at the chinatown bridge um study session really it was a session to see to plan that bridge that goes over from the san lorenzo park uh to where chinatown was there and trader joe's parking lot and where the theater was i guess it's called dna comedy club now that was our chinatown and so we're gonna commemorate that bridge and it's quite exciting you know george owes involved kathleen kerchett kerchetti the artist um who teaches art at mission hill uh middle school still and also um tom ralston of ralston concrete who's you know got some awards for some of the art that he has done as well with just using uh you know concrete um i want to talk about there was five of us present up on campus um one the um this these bells that have been put up to uh portray history of the or colonial history and the amamutsan tribal band has been on a campaign to take these bells down there was one on campus and there's two in our our community as well it was amazing really to see uh the number of people who showed up on a on a wednesday morning i think it was wednesday morning uh and just the emotion you know of removing this bell and hearing uh especially the tribal leader um valentine lopez talk about what those bells signify to um the people of the amamutsan tribal band and of course he said he's coming after santa cruz next i guess because there's two of those bells in santa cruz and so i guess we'll have those discussions as well i just want to end by thanking um a vice mayor comings for talking about plastics and also for the council members who brought the plastics issue to us i think that this is a crisis and i think we um should be pursuing this with all deliberate speed in um really going after the folks who are producing the plastic and that's that's the kind of legislation i would like to see uh because that's you know it's the consumers don't know what to do with it but the producers if you can go back to the producers they need to figure out what to do with it or not to produce it thanks again thank you mayor all right city manager martin brunner do you have any updates just really briefly uh no significant updates since my last report but uh just wanted to note a couple of uh jpa meetings uh this week the first is the monterey bay community power board meeting the operations board meeting is meeting tomorrow at 10 30 you can go to monterey or you can come to the remote location here at the civic auditorium and then on thursday the library joint powers authority board is meeting a special meeting to consider and adopt the budget and that's at 10 30 on thursday and that's over in the main library all right well i'll just sort of extend the comments that council member crone mentioned earlier i want to thank my colleagues for their work that they're doing in our community and these various forms as advisories and commissions and and other types of bodies that they attend on our behalf so thank you for your work and your updates um so next on our agenda we have the city council meeting calendar and i'll just sort of orient the the council um my role is to try to streamline and try to get the um meeting agenda uh working so we have a couple uh shifts from past practice so this is now uh earlier which for me i never understood why it wasn't earlier anyways but anyways so here we are and i've made the change and i think it makes sense personally but um we'll go ahead and have that heard at this time and i'll look to our clerk to see if there's any modifications not at this time okay and then we'll go ahead and um move on to the consent agenda portion of our meeting um i also am going to just sort of uh orient the council and the community for how this is going to flow which is a little bit different than in the past um in consent agendas in past practice generally um when planning the meetings we uh allocate 10 15 minutes for clarifying questions but the items are in in consultation with our administrators and management placed on consent to um be acted upon in one motion um and uh the past several meetings those have some of those items have been pulled for further discussion completely appropriate very difficult however for me to uh plan the timing so what we're uh going to go ahead and do today is um allocate approximately 15 minutes or so for consent if there's uh clarifying questions comments or um uh specific items that a council member wants to speak to at that time totally appropriate if there's any items that are pulled um we'll go ahead and hear them within that time frame but if we're unable to get to all of the pulled items we're going to have those items come back to us at the end of our afternoon agenda ideally and that will we can move on um to our general business items which um i know have a lot uh more sort of substantive community interest and time allocated for them so just sort of uh kind of here we are how we're going to try at this time um in terms of trying to keep the flow going for our ability to govern um so just wanted to make that brief announcement um so for our uh consent agenda we have items that are four through 25 in our agenda packets again those items will be acted upon in one motion unless uh council member polls an item for further discussion so at this time i'll go ahead and ask our if any of my colleagues would like to pull uh any items today council member brown yeah i'd like to pull item 18 okay and thank you for the introduction to this and um so i just wanted to let you know that i acknowledge your um your efforts to try to move us quickly through this but that this is one that i think is a big item and we've had a lot of community input about and if we can hear it before the 15 minutes then that's okay i also have a quick comment on item 24 okay so we'll go ahead and see which items are pulled and then i'll return back to you for uh comments is that appropriate okay council uh vice mayor come on i just had a clarifying question for um some community members on number nine okay okay so we'll go ahead and uh return back to that when um appropriate after we acknowledge which items will be pulled any other items to be pulled from consent i wanted to see that how many people were here for item number 24 anybody here for item 24 yeah so i'll pull 24 um for the public and also i have a comment on uh a question on item 11 but i don't need to pull it okay okay okay seeing no other items being pulled at this time we'll go ahead and um acknowledge the item number 18 and item number 24 have been pulled i'll go ahead and return to council member brown and then vice mayor Cummings and then back to council member crone in regards to any additional comments so uh council member brown well i well i can reserve the comment because in item 24 is pulled now oh i think okay uh council vice mayor Cummings i just had a clarifying question um and i'm not sure if the economics director could maybe help with this do we specify which item oh and so this is regarding item number nine um some members of the public there was a little bit of confusion um regarding whether or not this was somehow related to the um building of a new basketball stadium and i just wanted um to get some clarification uh right no it isn't um good afternoon bonnie uh economic development director um this is related specifically to an opportunity we meet periodically with our economic development administration liaison and she brought to our attention the availability of technical assistance grants and we had one previously at the county level to do an industry cluster study and a workforce investment and as a follow-up on that the sports and sort of sports related impact studies specifically for the city is an area that was identified and so we talked with our representative about the opportunity to go a little deeper to understand both what the opportunities um the economic impacts and the potential support we could provide for the sports industry here in santa cruz and that goes um as far as sports as you know appreciating the outdoors in santa cruz to manufacturing and the sports industry and the number of manufacturers and businesses that are here in santa cruz from skateboarding surf you know bicycling all here in santa cruz um but we've never actually done an economic impact study or an industry cluster support study so the technical assistant grant is an opportunity to leverage um you know without over 50 um funding provided by the economic development administration to offset and the um part of the match from the city can be in kind and so it can be staff support um you know just our our time in administering the contract um towards that so we thought this was a great opportunity to get more information and get a study in this area that we haven't really done even though we know it's a big part of santa cruz um we haven't done a concentrated study on this in the past it would be great to see the results of that study yeah we're excited to just a follow up question since we have her here so a member of the public was asking about the economic adjustment assistance and saying that if there if this is going through that um grant uh isn't that just for distressed communities and would you characterize santa cruz as a distressed community uh this is a technical assistance grant and a meeting with our eda representative um from a citywide perspective she said this was definitely an eligible eligible criteria okay so it has nothing to do with distressed communities uh for this particular grant it wasn't a criteria that was that we had to meet thanks thanks thank you thank you okay were there any other questions on any of the items aside from item 18 and 24 which have been pulled okay is there any member of the community who would like to address the council on our consent agenda which is items 4 through 25 excluding item 18 and 24 which have been pulled i have a question on 11 okay okay seeing that do you have you want to speak to the consent agenda you'll have up to two yeah i'd like to address uh oh good afternoon i'm scott graham i'd like to address item 19 um seems like this company did a uh whatever they did and then it turned out that it wasn't up to current standards so now they have to redo it at a cost of another 200 000 and i don't understand why if they did it wrong the first time we're paying them to do it again oh you know it's like they should be you know footing the bill for this to be done the second time and then the other thing is my understanding is this is to lower the water and the lagoon so that the uh boardwalk basement doesn't flood so why isn't the boardwalk kicking money into this too since they're the the they're the entity that's going to get the most reward from this project is there any other member of the public wanting to address us at this time okay seeing them we'll go do you have you could why don't you come so this is on our consent agenda this is not including item 18 or 24 so if you'd like to address us on any item in our consent agenda between items 4 and 25 but excluding 18 and 24 you're welcome to do so at this time my name is Elise Kasby and my concern today about the consent agenda is actually i'm concerned about the entire consent agenda um i understand that in in order for the uh city council members and the city staff to conduct business in an efficient way that there needs to be places where the public is does not have full participation um but as somebody who's extremely concerned about the situation of corporate and private um interests and the intersection of our public ability to understand government and to understand what's happening in government um i i want to ask the council if you would look for example at two two items number 14 number 15 just quickly both of these are about city staff in the following departments public works water police parks recreation city manager departments and then 15 is is is similar it's about the library public works water police human resources i'm concerned about disparity of incomes in our country and in our city in particular and i don't know what these uh what these two issues are exactly about but i would think that the classification and compensation plans in terms of budget personnel are important for the public to understand and so what i just wanted to say is what i really hope for our future in government and especially in local and city government is that we find ways to have more public participation in decision making and also the word transparency is kind of loaded so i just want to say ways of easily accessing information for example about these two items and then weighing in thank you very much for listening to my comments okay okay we'll go ahead and um return it back to council now and i believe council member croon you had a question thank you i just had a question um on number 11 um the grant for uh just there was a piece in the sentinel this uh the other day too about the homeless garden project and the timing and what so this is we're going out for a grant can we assure is there any assurance of timing that will take place where this uh soil remediation can be done um and give them a reasonable frame of uh when yeah so this um is actually a grant for site characterization and so the application is due later this week the awards will be in august and they anticipate um actually and this is what's great about this grant it's with the department of toxic substance control is that they actually pay 100 of the site characterization so uh once we heard about um we're um applying for for three different sites but the property we own in sky park um downtown metro uh the city owned property in um downtown as well as uh the pogunip area where we recently found out about the skeet shooting contamination and so with the deadline um being later this week this is an opportunity to have the department of toxic substance control actually pay for the additional site characterization so that we better understand the extent of the remediation that needs to be cleaned up so the timing for this particular grant is actually really quickly so the awards will be um in august and the work will commence in september and so i think part of it will be dependent on the level of contamination that's there how long that actual work takes but i don't think there'll be a significant delay from applying for this grant since the awards are really okay thank thank you for that thank you mayor okay thank you okay we'll go ahead and see if uh we have a motion for our consent agenda so okay we have a motion by vice mayor coming seconded by councilmember mathews all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes you need just to clarify that was consent with the exception of 18 and it's correct yep so we'll go ahead and return to um the first item that was pulled which is item number 18 i'll look to councilmember brown um i believe who pulled this item thank you so i i just wanted to raise a couple of concerns that i have been have heard consistently and i understand this is a project that we have been working towards for a long time um the various steps along the way and i've supported those um so i'm not here today to um change my mind on that but i did want to given the uh the you know pretty significant community input about concerns related to um pedestrian and bike safety um at that intersection um see if there's a way that we could try to and and a concern about lack of community engagement on the issue i know it's been on our public agenda so people have had the opportunity to weigh in um but it would be helpful for me to get a better understanding i had been not being an engineer not this not being my area of expertise kind of was operating under the assumption that making those improvements meant improvement for pedestrian and bike as well i'm hearing people suggest that that may not be the case i'm wondering if there's any possibility that we could um perhaps have our um department of uh our commission on transportation and public works take a look at this with that particular i excuse me dropping things um and maybe bring us back some kind of um provide an opportunity for more community input give us a report on it i don't know that that would necessarily extent delay the project but it would give us kind of a another level of review and opportunity for the community to weigh in sure and agendize that for their meeting and our dental director of public works would happy be happy to take it back to the public works and transportation commission we're at 95 design at this point we would bring it to them um before we bring it to council for a bid and award so um we think we could do that schedule at the next transportation commission meeting that would be great so do we need a motion to do that or could we that's why we're happy to do that thank you thank you okay is there any member of the community who would like do you have another question forgive me uh vice mayor comes i just i recently had received an email and just wanted to follow up on that email with you um at the city council meeting um it suggested that the improvements at that intersection of highway one and nine was legally a legally required mitigation to the eir for the tannery project and i just wanted to see if you can comment on right it's part of the traffic impact fee project lists so when the tannery paid their traffic impact fees um that allows them to use that for their environmental impact of increased traffic um because it's a city-wide impact on that that intersection is has about a hundred thousand vehicles i go through that intersection each day significant traffic um so by improving that intersection they they are improving the city-wide traffic flow so um any project that pays traffic impact fees um will have an will contribute to this portion to this project uh we have about 25 million dollars in projects and this is a significant project in that list great and then just one other question and this was another um email that was brought to my attention by a member of our community and friend who um expressed concern because i also along with this member of the community lost a friend of ours and a member of our community on january 5th 2018 who was hit and killed at that intersection and um there's been some some concern about with it widening that this also allowing for faster cars and so if you could just briefly um speak to some of the improvements that might happen at the intersection for we can we can put up a map that'll show the the improvements um josh banger senior civil engineer josh banger senior civil engineer um so okay so there are two components that i came across in the project study report which is a number of years old at this point and the first is uh these the technically southbound lanes of highway one right here uh currently the crossing width is 152 feet after this project will actually be 133 feet because you're getting rid of that pork chop island so it's it's actually improving pedestrian crossing there and then uh at the this side of the intersection uh north and southbound nine we're installing bicycle lane here it's a full width bicycle lane that goes all the way up to well all the way to instantly street basically and then um merges into the existing the existing improvements as well as a through lane bicycle lane for the southbound traffic right here this that's those are both in coordination with a bicycle lane over here and um whatever the existing infrastructure is right here so then some oh and then there's also installation of bicycle detection devices in the bike lanes so those are some things that um we went into this project very beginning with um with the understanding we were going to be doing an additional question around that is there going to be increased lighting or maybe flashing yellow lights to get people to slow down as they're approaching the intersection included in this project you know i actually i'm not sure that there's more lighting more street lighting but i i do think in my review i came across some warning lights that are going to be installed further further away from the intersection but i can double check on that thank you and we our intent is not to um have people travel faster through the intersection but it's to move um more cars per cycle through the intersection where right now um it's a constriction so you can't move enough cars so they they can wait two and three cycles before they especially if you're on river street trying to get through that intersection it can be significant delay and you're um so this will move two lanes through so you'll move cars and traffic faster but not speed faster just more volume of vehicles thank you very much additional question yeah for mr. dettle um is i just want to follow up on vice mayor's question so i just i didn't hear you say there was but that doesn't mean there isn't is there a legal requirement to do to do this it is part of the traffic impact fee project list so yes it is uh it was on the projects and it's our current project list that's correct what what does it mean a legal requirement we have a listing of of projects that are that as people pay their traffic impact fees they have to be um identified by that's how the fee is calculated so um this project was the was the one of the major um reductions in uh traffic impacts throughout the city was counted based on this project so thank you just to clarify it's you know it's environmental mitigation for the traffic essentially is how we mitigate the the traffic impact but it's not a legal requirement in fact well under sequa in order to approve a project you either have to find that um impacts that can be mitigated are mitigated to a level of insignificance or that there are overriding considerations that justify basically uh living with the unavoidable impacts of of not mitigating um one of the conditions that have been applied to various projects over time is that they pay into this parking fee so that they will be able to mitigate the impacts caused by the new development so um part of that process is dedicating those funds to projects that actually in fact do that mitigation is there any member of the community who wants to address us on this item this is item number 18 on our consent agenda yes thank you mayor hello city council members uh rick lon genotti with the campaign for sustainable transportation so um the state of california and trying to reach its climate goals pass some legislation 2013 that's going to get rid of level of service that quality of traffic delay as a significant impact for environmental impact reports so as of next june the city will comply with the new requirements we're still under the old requirements which is why this intersection is even uh being funded um however i think that your question to the city attorney might be how can we get to where we want to be a year from now right now so that we don't have to legally be required to do this project you are in charge of the city ordinances and the city regulations and you can stipulate that there can be a amendment to the eir that would not include level of service for for this project so um this this intersection can you bring that slide up again about the intersections this i believe that's the existing intersection no this is this is not this is the future plan okay this this intersection is a disaster from the point of view of pedestrian and bike safety if you're on river street going from the gateway plaza going towards the tannery you're in the middle of two right turn lane you know on a bike two right turn lanes on the right and then left turn lanes and straight lanes you know so you're in the middle of four lanes of traffic on a bike that's it's an ultimate disaster you'd never want one of your kids to do that um the plan for improvements on this intersection is the state minimum a four foot wide bike lane this if there ever was a place to put protected bike lanes it would be this intersection i don't know what i don't know where else in the country you would put protected bike lanes if not this intersection so in your direction to the transportation commission could you please ask can i finish my sentence i you know i i try to be really consistent with at the end of the beep that everybody so that it's just pretty much consistent for everybody who comes and speaks so you're welcome to email us or you can email us or send a note over but thank you very much is there any other member of the community who would like to address us on item number 18 of our consent agenda this is item number 18 on our consent agenda if i could get a sense of how many folks are here to address us on item number 18 of our consent agenda okay okay you'll have this okay up to two minutes my name is carol long and i'm with the santa cruz climate action network and in pretty much daily contact by email with the other planning committee members and we do oppose adding an extra lane to this intersection as adding extra lanes has been shown by studies many studies to contribute to more traffic more auto traffic and that contributes to the co2 emissions of the city which we are currently declaring an emergency to reduce so we are opposed to adding an extra lane to this intersection we suggest that the monies be used for bike transportation or for vision zero thank you michael saint with campaign for sustainable transportation basically not interested in anything associated with an increase in single occupancy vehicles i think the monies as previously stated before could be used basically for pedestrian and bike safety monies could be transferred over to the exploration of transit on our rail trail and my personal opinion is we need to calm these intersections not speed them up and increase traffic i've been doing a lot of traveling lately looking at public transportation i went to boston where they actually buried a freeway and put a greenway on top of it because it was so obstructive and very dangerous and unsafe lake tahoe has gone into a heavy transportation changeover they've decreased lanes through kings beach down to one lane each way with roundabouts south lake tahoe is shutting down highway 50 through the casino area in a five-year project they're going to reroute 50 and make a walkable environment through the casinos all future transportation in tahoe does not mention anything about highway widening to solve their problems my question to the council here is when do we catch up with other communities and i did miss watsonville they're doing something on main street of widening the sidewalks and taking a lane away from cars also so when do we catch up with other communities and getting people out of cars thank you um council i just first of all want to talk to being a pedestrian at this intersection i a couple years ago i was crossing this intersection almost every night as a pedestrian and it was really scary it's extremely wide uh the time that i got to actually cross through the intersection was just barely what i needed and i'm fully able to walk and and so forth i still had to make a lot of eye contact with vehicles that were turning coming from the tannery area turning right onto the highway i constantly had to make sure that i that they were going to wait for me and not just try to blitz near me or around me to make that right hand turn i wanted to say this also because there's a woman that i knew from the shelters there who had a son who was schizophrenic and had pretty severe mental health issues and he was um he was harmed uh in that intersection he did live and survive but this woman was already under tremendous burden in caring for her son and being homeless and that just made everything extremely difficult for her the last thing that i just want to say is i really think that what we could really use um is a full presentation by several climate change experts on what is happening and what are the impacts of climate change on our community and specific i would like that to take place during a special city council meeting um so that the public could be involved so that the public could really be uh encouraged in a very vehement and and forceful way to really come and learn about the impacts of climate change that are going to be happening in they're already happening and into the future and how things uh issues around fossil fuels and cars and alternate transportation such as walking and bikes please don't uh expand the highway and follow up what Mr. Longinani has recommended thank you good afternoon i'm Brett Garrett um just a reminder that we are in a climate emergency as this council has affirmed and uh decisions should be made on the basis of what is the right thing to do during a climate emergency um i want to thank sandy for the suggestion of bringing this project back to a commission for more public input i did notice in the public record there's over 50 letters in opposition to this project in today's attachments online on the agenda and i think there were only one or two opposed to the project um i want to second what the other speaker said including um rick's comments about the rick longinati's comments about the new um requirements it's my understanding that going forward we need to mitigate vehicle miles traveled which is different from mitigating traffic level of surface um and just a couple of comments on this um diagram that's up here i i don't actually see where the crosswalks are in this diagram they seem to be like that almost looks like there might be one crosswalk but i just don't see where the crosswalks are and if we're going to build this i think there's an extreme need for the the green box i forget what it's called the little green box for the bicycle like across from the rio theater um this would desperately need a place for a bicycle to be when they're waiting for the signal to turn green when they're trying to make a left turn uh thank you very much is there any other member of the community okay good afternoon mayor and council members uh my name is robert singleton i'm the executive director of the santa christ county business council which represents the 85 or so largest employers in our county um our membership is strong in support of the changes to this bridge that will facilitate a greater level of service than what we're currently experiencing i'm also a board member of bike santa christ county um so we study lots of different intersections levels of service how to uh cross those places with bikes and pedestrian access i would like to point out that there is a bridge or the that the bridge is important because right underneath the bridge you can cross this terrible intersection that happened to deal with any cars or any stop lights through the levy system which is actually the preferred bike way of crossing that intersection frankly there's just not a lot you can do with the amount of cars that are going to be coming across two intersecting state highways and frankly it's rather like three because of the fish hook in 17 this bridge is a blight and a nightmare in terms of the catastrophic and perpetual and iterative impacts it has on traffic throughout the city almost every major corridor is affected in the city when this when this particular intersection is backed up because it backs up all along the fish hook so all of one north traffic coming up the rest of the county all of 17 south traffic gets blocked into that all of ocean street traffic gets blocked into that highway nine traffic is then really hard and you have people who are very frustrated who've been sitting in traffic for you know tens of minutes when they otherwise if the intersection had the capacity that it should have been having why we've been planning for this for over 10 years for this project is because of the tremendous amount of capacity that gets backed up and the rippling of impacts that has in our traffic please do something about this intersection it's terrible i mean i i would challenge any and every one of you to go sitting at any time past noon on any weekday i did it today and i'll be doing it tomorrow it's not a fun intersection is surely the bottleneck that costs me at least 10 minutes each way in any direction i'm going and i'm just one person so imagine the tens of thousands of cars that sit in here every day them sitting sitting there idling their engines and not moving is certainly not good for our climate thank you so any other member before we get started that would like to speak to us on item number 18 of our consent agenda okay you'll be our last speaker than behind us um maryland care and i just wanted to recommend a documentary called taken for a ride it's about how the automobile industry good year tire firestone uh conspired to build buy up good public transportation systems across the us and make people dependent on the automobile because they saw that people could ride every few minutes inexpensively on the street cars and they said no one's going to buy our automobiles as long as this good public transportation exists so they removed it it's quite a documentary and this is the mess we're in now because we've been taken for a ride thank you good afternoon scott graham um yeah part of the problem i see here is that we should learn a lesson from los angeles if you keep on adding lanes they just get filled up this is just you know adding one lane and turning for turning a corner um there's a real solution to the pedestrian and bicycle safety on this intersection that is a bridge for pedestrians and bicycles just like the one that's further up where mission starts um anything else you do here is not going to make it safer for pedestrians and bicycles as the former speaker just said bicycles can go underneath the bridge if they if they're on the levy and right now there's you know crosswalks at river street and there's a crosswalk on one but it's only on the the mission side of one um there's no plans of putting other crosswalks in the design for this bicycle lane going through there is ridiculous all bicycles should go under the bridge the or if there is a pedestrian and bike bridge that goes over the freeway that would be the best way for everything to happen so i would say take the money out of this current boondoggle that they got going and put it into a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the freeway thank you right so we'll go ahead and return back to council at this time council member crumb um i like the direction that the council around was going in i'm i'm wondering is that is that instead of passing this today we're going to send it to the committee and it's going to come back to us i mean that's yeah yeah i mean is is is that what the council is in agreement with also we have the director that'll coming up here this is really just the consultant agreement to finish the project to finish the design so um we have the 95 design we just need to have it's part of the um plans for uh for uh preparing the site and that type of thing as well as far as getting the project ready so council member matthews and um to that point um i'm um somewhat okay with referring it to uh transportation for a final review but let's let's just look at this um i would like to um move that we um move the recommendation forward uh and forward it to public works for a final review for um particularly consideration of um additional safety possibilities so that would be my motion okay i'll go ahead and second that motion and in comments of that um you know uh looking at our report this has been an issue a priority issue since 2004 and this council and every council since 2004 has continued to move this project forward there's the level of service indicator letter um which is a formula arrived at and it tells us this is a horrible intersection and then there's just our common experience it's a horrible intersection and there are some clear bottle next um we are already proceeding with um with plans with acquisition to improve this and it is a matter of safety it's a matter of reducing sitting there idling in your car through three light changes which is not good for the environment i mean there are a whole lot of ways to um approach this but um i think um this will contribute to not greater speed but less congestion going through here um so uh for all of these reasons um i would um i'm favor moving forward looking for additional safety enhancements i'm sure there are some council member brown and well um i have a question about that because i um understand all of those concerns that council member matthews has expressed my intention is not to delay this project but i think if we're going to be trying to get input into that final design it would be helpful to have that input be provided in at a minimum in consultation with this consultant so approving the contract is one thing but having that work just happen independently of any recommendations would not actually that would defeat the purpose of doing this so i want to ask yes i wasn't clear i would say that approving this contract just continues allows the designer to continue to finish the project and take that input and incorporate from so what i would do is take the 95 to the public works commission get their input and then direct the designer to complete the project based on the input so i think we're we need them on we need the contract approved so that we can continue to finish the project so and we just a friendly amendment to clarify that to make sure that that recommendation from transportation and public works is included in the mix for the i think that's intrinsic in the motion i'd like to make sure that it's included in well my motion was to move the recommendation and refer this to public works commission public works transportation commission for their input which would be considered and incorporated by the designer in the completion before the projects is is ready to bid so as long as that's a little come back to you for approval and and ready to bid so okay sounds like for their vice mayor coming i would just like to ask if a friendly amendment could be that specifically one of the aspects of safety that's looked at is um lighting for pedestrian safety at night because that is when one of my friends was killed at this intersection so totally that would be i i can see many safety enhancements that are conceivable at this point and lighting is an obvious one yeah so the safety items just for to be clear on the motion the amendment would be that the considerations the issues considered by the transportation and public works commission would include safety and specifically lighting not directing lighting but considering lighting okay councilmember clever thanks uh so i'm just i just wanted to point of clarification because i heard a speaker say that uh moving cars will reduce greenhouse emissions and then i heard it also echoed by a member of the council i'm just curious what data are you going off of that to make that claim because just in a quick research into does that work essentially of reducing emissions and transportation there's a litany of studies and analysis from say another speaker gave example of la where they spent a billion dollars on winding freeways and then it hasn't impacted the lessening of cars on the roadway or the lessening of emissions so i just i'm just curious do we have a site for that data or is that just hearsay right here everybody okay well i just want to put that on the record so that there is absolutely no support for that claim that the increasing of car expediency or movement has in any way a chance to reduce emissions actually may i may i address that just quickly please so um functionally you can think of this as an improvement in the intersection not a freeway improvement set per se right and there's been we designed our roundabouts for example that's one of the mitigation things that allowed us to do so was that keeping cars queued up in an intersection produces far more greenhouse gases than just moving the cars through the intersection i can i can certainly find the data to support that for you i would love that please especially if we're going to be using it for decision making or influencing this project especially because the data that i found is contrary to that claim so i'd love that okay council member krone also i i don't know if uh vice mayor if you got your question um responded to it i didn't hear um you say that uh the intersection is just not going to get worse for pedestrians it's not going to get better um well actually i believe it will be getting better because the the way it was designed the crossing is reduced by oh 19 feet uh at the the north leg of the intersection there so this is not the striping plan but where the existing crosswalks are right here and right here are where they're remaining this crossing here if you can see where i'm doing that that's reduced by 19 feet in width there by getting rid of the pork chop it's currently right here um you know i'm just we talked we talked about plastics before and and um talking about you know making cars move with with greater access uh i know a lot of us would love that but um it also goes contrary to um you know our whole um walking our walk and talking our talk on on on the earth issue of climate change um it doesn't really make sense we're going to be spending oh it looks like about 15.5 and then another 8.5 so 23 24 million 5 million this year or the next fiscal year in city funds um and it's going to really suck dry the uh the traffic impact fee account um and it's going to make the intersection larger it's not going to reduce the you know or it's not i don't know why we're widening um intersections like this so i i would prefer that this go to transportation and public works and then come back to the council without um you know approving this um contract amendment right now mr canadi yeah i would like to just point out to the council that the subject of the highway 1 highway 9 widening project is not on your agenda today it's an amendment to an existing consultant services contract not to say that um the context in which this consultant services contract amendment uh shouldn't be discussed but if the council is going to revisit the question of the highway 1 highway 9 widening project uh or the wisdom thereof uh that sounds like a different agenda topic to me okay okay so i think i think we're there we have a motion we have a second we'll go ahead and uh uh take a vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes with council member brown matthews vice mayor Cummings clever mires and myself voting in support and council member crumb voting against so item number 24 was also pulled from our consent agenda we're going to go ahead and do things a little bit differently i'm going to see who here from the community is wanting to address the council on this item we're going to go ahead and have public comment on this item and then what we'll do is reserve discussion for council after our general business item um later in our agenda as uh we're still on consent and we have a number of items before us so we'll go ahead and hear all public comment on item number 24 and we'll go ahead and take that in and then we'll go ahead and resume that conversation after we finish up our today's afternoon agenda so if you're interested in speaking to us on item number 24 we're going to ask that you please line up to my left and um you'll have up to two minutes thank you becky steinbrunner resident of aptos thank you councilman crone for pulling this item to support transparent open government this agreement that is before you today is now 19 pages originally 13 pages that has not been seen by either the full commission of your transportation and public works or your water commission your advisory groups and has not been publicly vetted it's all been worked out behind closed doors by a group of people from the water commission that agreed to bow to pressure from soco creek water district to move it along i'm asking you to postpone any decision on this and agreement until both commissions have seen it in full they will not have seen it if you pass it today the um no one has seen the groundwater sustainability plan which this project is supposed to address that will not become public a public document until july 19 when the mid county groundwater agency board meets and unveils the the plan i want to point out to you on page six of this agreement it talks about open and transparent and if you approve this i don't feel like that is open and transparent at all there is great public resistance in the mid county area against this project despite the project's support that you've received in your packet today largely from the rotary group and i see that mr cartwright here has been brought by soco creek water district to speak in support i want to let you know his well is not in the prisma aquifer it's in the aromas aquifer a completely different aquifer i want to say that i thank deb workman for pointing out that this project will not reduce pollutants into the bay it will concentrate them and finally i want to tell you there is legal um uh action against this project case number 19 cv 001 and i will give to you um and your copy of the um thing and i have significant petitions opposition thank you next speaker please yes please postpone this decision and a unique full and open transparency on this becky steinbruner has been attending and researching water issues for considerable time and is very clear in her analysis and i've been going to some of the socal creek water board meetings as well and i noticed how the language they use makes it sound so great pure water but what is it tertiary treated sewage water poop water and at the last meeting um ron duncan said let's see what was the word and instead of using the word um wastewater call it resource water so the language is very deceptive i learned that you cannot remove pesticides and pharmaceuticals from this treated water it's an effort to reduce salt water intrusion but whether that'll work i don't know and as i've been to this meetings i keep thinking that sounds like fracking they're injecting what i consider additional toxic chemicals into the water with no proof of safety and refer you to a book called toxic sludge is good for you lies damn lies and the public relations industry by john starburton sheldon rampton there's a quote in there i'll leave you with from one of the public relations propaganda firms the role of our communication is to manage perceptions which motivates behavior okay to create business results thank you i think that's what's happening here okay you'll have up to two minutes are you coming up rosemary okay yeah and i'll just i'll just remind before maybe we get started i'll just remind sort of the community and the council we're going to do things a little bit differently here with consent um we have a super super full agenda actually coming right up to our seven p.m um an evening session so we're going to reserve discussion for this item until after uh we go through our general business items but we'll have public comment on this item because i know there's many members of the community here to address this and do you want your two do you want two minutes i will i'll take my two minutes okay we'll go ahead and give you your two minutes thank you so rosemary minardum the water director for santa cruz i just want to make a couple of comments about the ground water sustainability plan that's been being developed for the um santa cruz mid county basin the last wednesday was the last meeting of 20 meetings of a ground water sustainability plan advisory committee um it steinbrunner was attending almost every one of those meetings in addition to having a public presentation of most of the recommendations that will be in the plan that supposedly isn't available until next month uh we had a um board meeting with a joint advisory committee meeting and mid kind of ground water agency board meeting on um the 16th i think of may last month all of the recommendations particularly related to the sustainability indicators were presented and discussed both in the advisory committee they were developed there and i will tell you that in the santa cruz mid county basin the key issue in that basin is seawater intrusion um something has to be done in this in this uh basin in order to protect the ground water resources which many people in our county apart from those served by the santa cruz water department and the folks in partial folks in cellaransal valley water district are all dependent on groundwater so ground water sustainability is a huge issue and this project is really a key effort for us to move forward to protect a really critical ground water basin in our region from the threat the further threat the further intrusion of salt water which is a major issue in this area with that thank you thank you very much thank you for your working commitment i'm ron duncan the general manager of so-called creek water district well the problem's been shared by many we have seawater intrusion at either end pleasure point down the selva beach new scientific data has shown it's right along the coastline immediately threatening our water wells if you take mr p cartwright his well was destroyed about a year and a half ago he had to get back 25 000 if somebody farms that land we serve his household so we'll take it to a personal level 70 of the populated coastal regions of the world have seawater intrusion you go to the south it's three miles in you go down to monoray it's 10 miles in i think we can do better i hope we can do better the odds are against us but we have an opportunity here to do this and we're poised to do it together as a community i believe what's in front of you today is a contract an agreement that is is it's it's bigger than us it's part of a social responsibility we have to protect what we have and provide for future generations that's what this agreement's about and it's a solid agreement it has good language in there to protect both asian seas and better than that it guides us it pulls us forward to do even better than what we're doing what we haven't been able to do before and that is coordinate collaborate work together help one another in order to overcome these problems that y'all have been challenged with and there's some big ones and water is one of them we're going to have to do that there is no way to solve these community problems without agreements like this thank you mayor watkins vice mayor comings members of council dug angford chairman of the water commission former member of wasack and melia's grandfather here to give you some comments on the policy and process aspects of this consistent with the commission's role as an advisory body to the council from a policy perspective this is this is good policy for the city for the region and for the planet from the city's perspective it protects the perisoma from seawater intrusion we extract five percent of our water uh using our groundwater wells in that basin right now we plan to do asr there in the future and be able to take more water we need that aquifer to be functional it upgrades our existing tertiary treatment uh equipment with at no cost to us and it enables future water supply options that are part of the wasack framework which has been accepted by the council and reinforced by recent actions at council regionally again it protects the basin uh we don't yet know the final answer for what it's going to take to perfect protect the aquifer down there but we know it's going to take a portfolio of solutions there's no single silver bullet that'll do it we don't have enough water to solve it ourselves it continues to build and in the case of so cal creek rebuild regional collaborations between santa crews and other agencies in the area and it enhances regional water infrastructure which provides resilience in the case of calamity as regards to the planet it does reduce the volume of wastewater going into the marine uh moderate base sanctuary and again it enables santa crews to maximize its surface water use as part of its water supply portfolio from a process perspective um the process has been robust we've seen this uh item at the commission several times over the last few years the ad hoc committee that worked with staff to develop this agreement consisted of an attorney two former members of wasack a 20 year executive director of the rtc we brought a lot of experience to that negotiation and i think as you saw in the staff report the agreement we have here was better than it was before so in summary uh i respectfully recommend that the council approve this agreement thank you madam mayor members of the council my name is robert boswell i'm the district council for so cal creek water district i just want to comment a little bit on the legal side because i know there's some threats of litigation um miss timebrunner who is not a resident of the district or the city is the only person who's brought any litigation that she brought in to say in january of this year no other person has filed anything and this agreement specifically includes a provision that the district agrees to totally indemnify the city if any action is brought against the city as a result of this agreement so i think we've covered all the legal issues we truly expect that we're going to prevail in the actions she's got pending under the california environmental quality act um but at any event there's no exposure to the city thank you afternoon mayor council members uh i won't reintroduce myself robert singleton i won't get into the tremendous catastrophe that could arise from having further saltwater tuition effect our groundwater supplies all across our entire coastal region i think that the impacts of that um not having access to sustainable sustainable and reliable source of water are pretty self-evident um and speaking more just about the terms of the agreement so right now the city of santa cruz treats all its wastewater and then dumps it into the ocean locally um with no mimicking of the salinity or adding anything to it so cal creek is essentially coming to you offering to pay you to buy your wastewater that's otherwise going into the bay for their own uses to be able to recharge their aquifers and provide a sustainable access of water to their ratepayers how this is not in a benefit to the city and so-called creek is beyond me because they're essentially helping to reduce your impact on the natural environment and pay you to do it well at the same time bolstering your infrastructure for other collaborative projects that you have like sending water over there for asr rock for storage and recharge which is this city's stated explicit preferred policy option for future water savings so if you want to further cooperate with the districts make sure that their their ratepayers actually have a sustainable supply of water as mandated by the state and make sure that you're actually getting fairly compensated for reducing your own impact on the environment how is this agreement not a win-win for every single person involved at least casby i want to address this issue that's only consent agenda i think it's becoming clear that it should not be the consent agenda should be for items that are not controversial they're for items that have already received sufficient vetting from the community that they are clearly can be seen by members of the community that they are beneficial and helpful and i think that there are sufficient questions to show that this is being rushed through i see the problem as being a question of solutions i think we're agreed here that seawater intrusion on our freshwater aquifers and water supply is tremendously problematic it's difficult but i think where we have disagreement is what kinds of solutions are really the best to pursue i'm not going to pretend that i can talk to understand much about short-term solutions but i think that what we have to start to come to terms with is that we need paradigm shifts in terms of thinking about our city government about all of our public assets such as water and water use and how we build and what constitutes business we can no longer do business in the way that we did a hundred years ago one of the best books on this is a book called overshoot it talked about the various kinds of ideas and put people into groups the technological solution that you see here comes out of a type of thinking that this sociologist ecologist his name is cat and william caton he was a sociologist who became an environmentalist please look at his book he talked about the need for paradigm shift solutions and that these technological solutions we're not going to get us to where we need to go please do not approve this take it off the consent agenda thank you i'm bruce jaffe i'm a director on so kiki water district but i'm not talking to you as a director talking to you as a citizen this is how it's supposed to work collaboration we have a regional problem the problem is seawater intrusion we use that resource that's threatened let's work together let's solve the problem now one of the things that really concerned me about pure water so-called whatever pure source so-called i don't like the name neither by the way but it is fairly pure water it's it's the technology gets it down to a point where you have to add in minerals because it takes it out but one of the concerns was was safety i have two kids teenagers i know you know what that's like but i i want to see him be able to live in the community um my wife my friends uh so is this water safe so i i spent a lot of time researching it i'm open to find out information that it isn't but nothing that i've found so far indicates that it's not safe and i've drank the water not the kool-aid the water from uh from uh recycle plants and i had no no qualms about it because it is safe and lastly in my day job i study climate change as part of my job i'm with world experts on climate change and scares the shit out of me um and one thing that this solution to raising the water levels with recycled water has is this resilient to climate change you could have the rainfall stop and you would be able to to raise the water levels with this thank you okay so we'll go ahead and um close public comment or oh okay you'll be our last speaker all right good afternoon scott graham um my concerns with this is it going to be uh growth inducing will this make it so that soquel and aptos and capitol can increase their housing you know build more and i think either possibly if you could put some kind of condition on here that if there is an increase in building that low income housing and housing for people that live at or below the poverty line could be the beneficiaries of these new hookups the other thing is i understand that soquel creek has lost their um or didn't reapply for their use of soquel creek water and so they could if they reapply and get use of soquel creek water they could inject that into the aquifer also and that would help restore the aquifer um instead of using this reclaimed water thank you okay thank you okay we're going to go ahead and close public comment on this item this is item number 24 of our consent agenda we have a really full agenda here today um given it's our last meeting before we take a break for the month of august um we're going to go ahead and take this back up after we conclude our afternoon agenda and uh we'll take a position on that at that time um so we're going to go ahead and move along to our next agenda item which is item number 25 and we'll revisit this at the end of our afternoon agenda 25 is dropped forgive me 25 is not so um item number 25 will not be discussed forgive me uh so we're going to go ahead and uh we're going to that will be um reintroduced for a future meeting so our next agenda item is item number 26 and um we'll go ahead and have our staff here to introduce us item mayor walkins members of the city council i'm still josh bankers and senior civil engineer public works maybe we'll give you just maybe just maybe two seconds while the chamber's kind of oh i'm sorry no no no we want to make sure we're able to hear you so as soon as we get a moment we'll go ahead and have you all right okay wonderful so we'll go ahead and have um you go ahead and go ahead and get started with your presentations want to make sure you were heard sure i appreciate that so um the item before you today is the introduction of the public works ordinance component for small wireless communication facilities in the public right of way um there was a zoning ordinance first reading a few no that's if you have any conversations that you'd like to have feel free to do so outside of the chambers at this time we're on item number 26 and we're at the portion of the agenda item which is our staff presentation okay okay group we try this again there you go all right so um as i said this is the introduction of the first reading of the ordinance of public works ordinance for small wireless communication facilities in the public right away um the zoning the first reading of the zoning ordinance happened in april i believe and these two ordinances are meant to work in conjunction with one another and so let me just review how we got here to begin with so in september of 2018 the FCC adopted the declaratory ruling and third report in order in the matter of accelerating wireless broadband deployment so that laid out a bunch of um stipulations that local agencies had to abide by during the permitting process of these small wireless facilities and in october it was published and in january of this year it became effective well it became 90 days after the federal registration so this adopts new standards limitations for when a locality can prohibit or deny small sales facilities new deadlines these are called shock clocks for actions on small wireless facility applications and with some fees new standards for aesthetic requirements and new standards for spacing and underground requirements so in april 23rd you approved the aesthetic standards and compliance with the FCC ruling so uh that makes public what the city expects as far as facilities to be installed what can or is not acceptable and then the zoning ordinance uh was here which sets out the cease requirements for development permits for for for these facilities so before you today is the new uh title 15 chapter 1538 which is the public works ordinance specifically for wireless facilities in the public right away the resolution adopting a fee schedule for small cell facilities in the public right away because it's not in our master fee schedule now a resolution adopting an updated version of the small said snow a small cell aesthetic design standards the small cell wireless permit guidelines and a my master license agreement template these all work in conjunction with one another to facilitate the permitting process in the public right of way the the master license agreement for example if a wireless carrier wants to put something on a city poll they need to enter into this agreement with us before they can even apply for that so and then the permit guidelines are exactly what they're going to need to supply the city as far as information for us to make a decision and then the design standards have just been updated a bit so this sets forth the requirements like i said that the ordinance itself refers to the design standards and the permit guidelines that was intentional because those may change over time so they're not included in the ordinance itself but they are included by reference so aesthetic design standards private utility poll as i was saying they must have an agreement with the joint poll association and then placement facilities in the on the facility owned by a city must enter into a master license agreement with the city purpose is to standardize the city approach so part of the FCC guidance is to treat to be fair with every applicant so we have an established procedure so we're not seeing this being discriminatory at all uh streamlines the city's process in order to meet the FCC shot clocks so going through our normal process now we um we require the carrier to come in and get a an encroachment permit which requires council action and if it's a design permit it may have to go through the planning commission which is another which is another whole series of things that has to happen the point being is we can't make these shot clock standards if we go by that old system so that's what we are aiming to try to rectify now and then apply the aesthetic standards so this is an example of something we don't want to have happen here um i believe this is up in san francisco applying the standards they're going to look more like like this so um the review for review process so as an application comes in staff from public works and planning will review it to make sure that the um the application is complete the review includes a review of a radio frequency report to ensure consistency with FCC regulations we require this already shall require that the application meet all their quite required small cell wireless facility permit guidelines as i've said everything that make sure it's complete they have everything that we're looking for to have the information we need and ensures compliance with the small cell aesthetic design standards so the big change for this is that the director of public works will will have the power to approve conditionally approve or deny the permit application which functionally includes the um encroachment permit that otherwise we have come to you guys then that decision of course may be appealed to the city council within 10 days um just functionally how this is going to work is we're going to put up a website page specifically for small cell wireless facilities and as applications come in it'll be put on the page and then as soon as a decision is made it'll be posted the decision has been made and then that clock for 10 days for the public or whomever to challenge it begins this is kind of you can't really see this very well so at the top there that's just the application process so here's the process down here's the submittal itself and it goes down and goes to it goes to planning public works twice both for development review and for um uh engineering review and then uh and building department for if some of these facilities require a separate meter pedestal or meter service from PG&E and that's where the building department would come in so we have 10 days we as an agency have 10 days to review this and decide whether it's complete or not if it's not complete we send the carrier an incomplete letter and that brings us back to the application submittal itself and that effectively stops or tolls the shot clock at that point because we have said no it's not it's not ready yet bring it back then come back with us so but if it is if it is accepted um then process within 60 or 30 days of submittal we get approval when the director of public works approves it's posted on the web the appeal is um 10 days instruct appeal upheld go to city council then you can uphold or deny the the appeal at at city council now this standardizes the fees a lot of these fees are set forth in the FCC order itself at least as safe harbor fees we some of ours adhere to those most of them are are larger and they can be challenged but it's based on how much staff time it'll be required to administer these things and go inspect the actual construction so as I was saying the fees are based on the best efforts to approximate the actual cost of city staff time and we went through a whole I mean this has been quite a while in development we went through a whole thing comparing how much time we thought it would take to process these versus other cities and we ended up pretty much right in the middle of all the local cities in the south bay area and the monterey bay area updated aesthetic design guidance standards then you approve the design guidelines on the ninth and the proposed changes is the new title they're now they're called the aesthetic design standards because we have permit guidelines we didn't want anybody to get confused addition of standard three providing zoning district preferences and a 15 foot radius requirement in all zoning districts pursuant to see council motion so again this this is goes functionally through what you have to do to adhere to the elements of the chapter and you require it requires currently a public notification process it's requires or it encourages a voluntary neighborhood informational meeting part of the FCC order is that the city cannot put any preconditions to reviewing the permit and this would be viewed as a precondition so it's voluntary we encourage the carriers to come in ahead of time and if they can get this done ahead of time and we really encourage this communication with these carriers to come in we can know what they're planning we can tell them what we're going to need to expect and generally thus far they've been very cooperative then required RF exposure compliance report master license agreement template we have one master license agreement in existence right now and that's with crown castle I think that's the only one we have and that basically sets forward the the rental terms if you will for using a city facility as a light pole or traffic standard to place their their small cell antenna now this is a contract and may be negotiated by the parties and this is this will be negotiated through the city attorney's office and the director public works and then the MLA which is master license agreement well that's template again you're approving something sort of informed will help the city process the permits more expeditiously so the idea for the master license agreement is they come in they want to do what they're going to do they want to put something on our poles this is we're not considering this part of the permit process itself this is all this is a rental agreement agreeing to allow them to put something on city facilities and in addition to this for each specific site they'll have to come back with an addendum or sub provision I can't remember what we called it but that comes back with a specific site site information and that will meet all of our permit guidelines so individual sites will each have a separate section tagged on to the master license agreement exhibit and really that's that's what we have right now I'm happy to answer any questions if I may thank you very much you're welcome any questions from the council at this time Councillor McCrum what does it cost to for the public to appeal the process right now it's the appeal fee I think it's 675 675 exactly 675 $645 I've been whispered Councilor Myers I have a question on the I'm glad to see that we'll have a transparent website based sort of way that both the public can see what's happening as well as the applicants I'm looking at the small cell wireless facilities permit guidelines so it's 26.38 in our packet under section x which is the compliance report section yep you know yes is there for so I understand we're developing something that will basically help us process the applications but I think the concern with from that I hear a lot from the public is are these things being actually operated correctly to the extent that we're protecting people right we're moving around our community walking underneath these things living near these things so I'm assuming this the compliance section the compliance report where we are looking at the certification of the of the actual RF exposure compliance is this something we could also add to our website so that people understand where these things they're being a permit they're being applied for potentially permitted and I don't know if those all fit on that one what website but I'm just curious how I can't I don't see why not I mean it seems to me that all these documents are public at that point anyway um so we could certainly make an effort to put that on the compliance component to what we want to see in some of these and some of these facilities especially as they are becoming more and more integrated into our neighborhoods and our areas that people are living and walking in somehow if it would be it would be nice if we could um I don't know if we want to actually alter this language but I'm just that's just what I'm could we it sounds like it's possible we absolutely yeah no absolutely we can we can certainly modify this as much as we need to want seem too much but you know to be fair this is this is our first shot at this whole process so that there are going to have to be some tweaks and whatever your suggestion seems not out of line at all to me so thank you you're welcome any other questions vice mayor coming I'm just kind of curious um how these fees were determined and also um is there any regulation on what the max fee could be for the installation um and the licensing fees around these polls for the installation of the cell towers so okay the initial fee of the $2,700 or $2,277 for a city poll uh this is for on a city facility and this is something that's set that's the safe harbor fee that's set by the FCC so we could go more than that but that is the one that is promulgated by the FCC right now and that can't be challenged really so but there's always there's always an opportunity to change those if we need and actually the way everything is written or the way most things have been written every couple of years um agencies can compare their fees with other agencies in the area and things can be adjusted um so everything comes more commensurate with everything else that that is being done but so to answer your question the $270 could absolutely be uh raised it may open the city to litigation it may not i'm i'm thankfully it's not my department then annual increases uh the license fee shall increase annually on the first anniversary issues to the rate 3 per cent per year well actually this this um at the direction of the finance department this is actually going to be linked to the cost of living increase which is uh so essentially these fees are being appended to our master fee schedule and the master fee schedule the increases are tied to the cost of living increase every year i believe i'm saying that correctly so it's not a three percent per year rate but it's um it's whatever whatever is the uh the accepted percentage the additional administrative fees and costs related to this license charge hourly very of $147 per hour um this was taken from our master uh master fee schedule the study that was done back a few years ago before the master fee schedule was adopted and that is for example now uh if you go for a street opening permit with the cdc a city Santa Cruz public works and say you say okay we're ready to come out for the inspector to come out we're ready to for an inspection and you're not and he has to come back out you pay you pay that that rate at that point so it's just it's standard it's kind of what we had been doing the master license administrative fee well um to be honest with you i can't really address that that's really more the city attorneys because as i understand it that's their staff time to negotiate and develop a develop that contract with the carrier i think it was based on what was what the crown castle negotiations how that ended up right costing right so all right then permit application fee um as i was saying before minimum $5,000 for 35 hours of staff time that's going through so let's say you get a permit or you get let's say you get a permit application that comes in it's going to go on a city poll it's going to um or it's not going to go to city poll it's going to go on a jpa poll but it's going to need its own power supply so effectively what you're doing is you're getting a an encroachment permit a temporary encroachment permit for construction a um a building permit an electrical permit and a street opening permit if they have to you know uh get into the street to connect to the wireless or they they can go overhead that's great but i mean that's really what we came up with we have a whole like i said we filled out a whole table of trying to figure out where we ended up and i think we're at well 35 hours of staff time seems seems reasonable um then the 147 an hour that's the same so that's item b and then uh uh objectively reasonable costs related to administering i mean if if for some reason there's a huge administrative hiccup that is the fault of the carrier or whatever that requires a lot more staff time i mean we can make the case that we can charge additional administrative costs for for handling that i hope that answers your question did i just want to follow up to with the city attorney to see if maybe you could speak to um what what would restrict the city from increasing some of these fees in terms of legal liability i'm going to refer to um the attorneys in my office who have been working specifically on this item and barbichoy from the city attorney's office with regard to the fees the um fcc rules require us to be able to charge what are deemed to be objectively reasonable and actual costs and that's similar to fees that we assess generally as part of the master fee schedule anyway because by law the fees that the city charges have to be uh justified and substantiated so um i think your question was how do we charge more it's depends on what the actual costs are in relation to the project so um josh mentioned the um safe harbor fees so the um city poll for 270 that's a very low rate so we decided that um for now we can charge that and match the amount that was um authorized by the fcc rules but we have a lot of leeway since we can actually charge the actual costs and that's why we thought it was important for the fee schedule that we're proposing that we identify the um additional hourly rate charges that we can use that we can calculate uh to determine what the actual costs that are going to result in relation to the project i hope that answers your question that was helpful yes thank you any other questions from council members at this time okay seeing them we'll go ahead and um open it up for public comment on this item and there was a request for additional time um from em emf aware and so you were granted your additional time so you'll have um four up to four minutes to speak on behalf of your group thank you thank you council members mayor walkins uh planning department i i want to begin by thanking all of you i i can feel that you really have heard what we've said and care about us um i appreciate the ordinance that's been created so far we have some things we want to ask for as additions and some changes um and i think i heard you say on the in the public noticing that on your website that you were going to post the applications when they're received was that correct correct okay thank you i appreciate that we'd also like to increase the the um i realize that right now it's stated that it's a 300 fee that you're going to send out post cards and notify property owners we'd like to have that increased to 1500 feet this is this the distance that the signals travel been writing to you quite a lot about people who are disabled by emf sensitivity myself included um a person who is within 1500 feet of an antenna or a tower has the right to know about it and request accommodation if that's required very you know very important and we also have a lot of also much appreciated mention about the ada and the public works 7901 uh which is all about not incommoting the public and honoring the public's rights so uh anyway that's why we're we're asking for that and the person who's coming after me is going to show a short video that's going to verify how Verizon has bragged about their signals traveling 1500 feet and as far as 3000 feet 5g signals which this is this is going to be about eventually the small cells we definitely would like to ask for the appeal fees to be waived thank you for asking the amount 675 645 we can never afford that none of us could um and since this is the only form of public process anymore there's nothing else in the in the processing goes you know everything's approved and then there's nothing for us no way to um to comment or have any part in it so I feel this is essential and I see that there's some um standards of what types of appeals will be allowed and I think that that's fine but I I also have a question of who will make that that determination and on on what grounds that seems very important to know the people who are coming are going to be talking about how they are affected by emf sensitivity I think it's important I've been encouraging those who are to come and speak so it's not just me I know many others have and to recognize that the American with disability act has recognized that anybody who has a um I could say it specifically in their wording they don't recognize any specific disabilities but anything that substantially limits one or more major life activities is considered by them a disability and this for us definitely I mean many of us are have many more than one major life activity affected by this and particularly as these are all going to be in the public right of way close to homes businesses um places we go on a regular basis I would like to add one of the other requests we have is that in order to um balance the need for wireless services which I I realize many people want and we have the duty to provide there's also your time but you're welcome to leave your documents with us I'm going to thank you okay so next speaker did were you in okay I can't scan sure sure would you prefer to um go at the very end or okay well thank you for thank you for bringing that to my attention okay so you'll have up to two minutes thank you this short video comprises clips from Verizon's own corporate videos and it demonstrates the lack of necessity for placing these small cells at close spacing particularly considering that the 5g nodes will allow up to 100,000 simultaneous connections apiece and we went out in these 11 markets we tested for well over a year so we could see every part of foliage every storm that went through we have now busted the myth that it has to be line of sight it does not we've busted the myth that foliage will shut it down I mean there was back in the days when a pine needle would stop it that does not happen and these things in the 200 feet from a home we're now designing the network for over 2000 feet from transmitter to receiver which it's really high frequency so everybody thinks it doesn't go very far but it's a really big pipe and so that's what allows you to gain the the superfast speeds on top of this parking garage we're 3000 feet away from our radio node the cool thing about this is we did not move the radio node it's pointing down to serve the customers in that area but here even 3000 feet away we're still getting gig speeds so we've driven about a third a mile away from the radio node it's located over there behind the trees we're still getting very good speeds even though we have foliage in between favorite time and the next speaker thank you we are approaching July 4th to celebrate America's freedom and independence today we live with the impending loss of freedom and loss of health with the untested militarized weaponized 5g system that will rate radiate humans animals and sex plants in the millimeter wave frequencies the us allows a thousand times more radiation than other developed countries the military uses millimeter wave frequencies to crowd control by burning skin which then disperse crowds radiation in any form mutates alter cells radiating humans animals and the insect world is to destroy life as we know it high levels of radiation harms the growth of plants what are we going to eat our hope for a future is acceptance and creation not destruction with 5g we will be surveyed in our homes from beam forming which can see through our walls it will be able to see us in our most private moments in our bathrooms and our bedrooms the powers to be want ai robots and transhumanism the fact is the future doesn't look too great and Elon Musk wants to place a neural link in our it's a brain mesh with an rf chip in our brain so that we can communicate with robots did they ask us if that's what we want they're scheduled 24 000 satellites which require the 5g small cells near our homes and businesses to receive these signals a millimeter wave frequencies which will damage and destroy we are asking please postpone as much as you can the 5g small cells okay your time is up thank you thank you okay hi gail necuna and i want to reinforce what you're doing i think you already know that there's a great deal of danger in this technology and i just want to reinforce and go over some things such as starting out with the telecom industry's platform their approaches it's for your safety that you need to get this technology and that it is for emergencies and that if you don't comply they will sue you sort of carrot and stick what's not to like it's an offer you can't refuse they also say that the science is not conclusive so you can't see it so it's hard to quantify the danger but they don't want you to know that this manual published in 1981 from nasa shows the dangers and studies of microwave radiation they don't think you're going to have this manual published by the air force in 1994 outlining dangers of microwave radiation and they don't think you're going to have this nasa the influence of microwave radiation on the organism of man and animals manual printed in 1970 they also don't think you're going to have the navy naval medical research institute manual published in 1971 with 2311 studies of the dangers of microwave radiation they don't think you're going to know that so they're going to tell you that the science is not conclusive and they think you're going to believe it out of this 1981 manual there are clinical manifestations of chronic occupational exposure of 525 workers to electromagnetic radiation at microwave frequencies 1978 bradycardia disruption of the endocrine endocrine humoral process hypotension thank you thank you my name is drew lewis 5g is a dystopian techno technocratic nightmare and ultimate threat to human freedom i have emailed you all a link to a short recent documentary titled 5g dragnet by james corbett please look at it 5g will eliminate privacy and record every transaction a conversation and movement of every citizen and make it available to corporations government and hackers it has been demonstrated that hackers will be able to use the surveillance and security aspects of 5g to view listen to conversations in our homes and disable security systems and house door locks when 5g is deployed russia has stopped all collaboration due to these and other concerns i would like to close with an offer of some information that will help you to avoid getting cancer from your wireless devices thank you okay next speaker good afternoon my name is kevin hoek i'm a sanikers attorney and i'm representing emf aware i'm wondering can i have four minutes for this presentation we'll go ahead and pause the time i didn't receive your request in advance so you'll get to your two minutes okay um the most important thing for you guys to understand is the 10th amendment gives you the right to regulate when an industry wants to introduce pervasive toxic pollutants into your neighborhoods 10th amendment it's your right okay so they can say the FCC can do this rollout and they can say you know some that you need to um ultimately approve some of these transmitters but the point is that there is plenty it does not obliterate your rights under the 10th amendment to regulate where it's appropriate emf aware has presented several suggested changes and all of these are well within your 10th amendment rights to regulate toxic pollutants being introduced the most important is the insurance requirement okay this is these companies are self-insured this is uh you guys are i'm sure very familiar with the science this is very dangerous technology to be pervasively putting it at ground level and there are going to be lawsuits self-insurance is not going to cut it when the lawsuits start coming in on this stuff it's guaranteed to happen the most important thing you can do is to require these industries to show that they have independent commercial adequate insurance for what they're doing if that is not that's well within your rights to require if that's not included in this rules package this is uh because once the once these telecom industries don't have the money to pay for these lawsuits the um it's going to come down on the city for not requiring insurance it would be irresponsible and reckless to not require independent commercial insurance that adequately protects our citizens some the other um emf aware requests for changes are very important when it comes to the due process rights of the people when the application hits there's no question that you have the right to require i'm going to go ahead and um we we're going to go ahead and do our two minutes and when it's your turn we'll go ahead and have you come up as well but um your two minutes are now complete and we'll have our next speaker i have a fact sheet that i have that i have vetted and uh i believe that all these facts are accurate we have our next speaker here go right ahead hi lydia hammack i currently live in lompico but i'm moving into the city of san accrues and i'm very concerned because emf does cause problems with your intercom system and the city is complying with the a da to provide reasonable accommodations for this disabled and we need to balance those interests with interest of providing wireless services so in order to accommodate disabled persons and ensure they have access to government services a small cell facility shall not be proposed within 1500 feet of parks libraries municipal buildings or post offices that would help a lot of people afternoon council members my name is barbara river woman one thing i haven't heard is what is the good that's being served here i mean we're hearing a rollout of all of the extreme health dangers and um impact on democratic process but i really don't know what the good is it sounds to me like it's simply speeding up the download time this is a huge price to pay so people can download faster all of the process that was the appeal process or it was being detailed over here at the beginning doesn't mean much if we don't have the right to speak to the issues of the health impacts or the environmental impacts you know i don't care how long we can appeal and how many times we can appeal and to how many commissions and we can appeal if it if we can't speak about what's being spoken about right now from the floor and whether we're whether it's illegal for you to even consider that um the uh health and all policies seems to require that we consider the health impacts of this right up in the front if we're not allowed to legally where does that put our health and all policies plan um i have just changed all taken unplugged all my wireless gotten rid of it all together it was really simple i want to encourage everybody sitting up there and especially those of you have children close to you in your homes or who are in the classrooms please encourage them to just unplug it is so simple you can get just as much speed and i'm even i'm even learning how to um make my ipad wireless which i'm reluctant to give up we can do it we don't need to go this route at all um the fcc issue is huge um it challenges our democratic rights we shouldn't have to be told and i'm really glad that there's an 10th amendment that actually protects our right to challenge this thank you hello council members rick longinati um i appreciate that i think all of you are really concerned about the potential health impacts of this technology and more than that that i i think you're all appreciating what it's like to have our rights of self-determination a local self-determination preempted uh on the on the you know to the benefit of large corporations and and so i think we need to be creative as people who are in a sense being colonized because this is what it feels like not to have power over our own situation i think we need to be creative and i think that the strategy has been mentioned by the emf aware group amendments to this are really important especially the one about requiring insurance that indemnifies the city for any lawsuits that come to the city um i want to also add just to um an idea to ask staff to research you know what other cities are doing in their role as being colonized to resist this so we're not you know so we can join in whatever other cities are doing thank you hello council members my name is elissa barnes i'm resident of santa cruz and i am personally adversely affected by the current levels of radio frequency and electromagnetic field radiation i experience headaches dizziness insomnia rapid heartbeat arrhythmia and other symptoms uh so while there is much disinformation out there and confusion around this issue it is not difficult to find clear science from national and international sources that portray the harm that technologies we already have are doing so i just want to speak to that i would really like to keep our exposures down and i very much support your efforts to do that i'm definitely standing by you in doing what we can to limit the rollout of 5g i don't want that in our community and so just to reiterate the distance between small cell apparatuses at being 1500 feet limiting that is very helpful uh with and also if we could waive the public notice uh fee that would be great too so thank you and i support that i just want to mention that it was in 2002 that wireless first came out in japan in 2007 there was 295 million wireless users and it was in 2000 now three billion wireless users so that's only 12 years we've been doing wireless technology that's not a long time it is untested technology it's really shocking how fast it's being spread it's very harmful to the environment and unconscionable the way that it's being forced upon us so thank you very much each and every one of you for your efforts to keep this out of our community i would support your work and appreciate you for being here thank you in recent months i have come under controversy for using a gesture of the nazi salute and i regret having used that rather impulsively but i want you to know that i have been studying the trend of toward fascism that we are now deeply under and we have pervasive government regulations becoming at us all the time not to mention a culture where the marriage of corporations and military military uh devices and uses as well as as procedural things this FCC what's it called shot shot clock um is a great example of that recently one of the council members asked me you know uh really they were saying to me this isn't on the local level this fascism is it really well it actually very much really is and this is an excellent example of what i've been calling regimented industry um corporate personhood which was instituted in about 1865 basically usurps the right for people and for local government and for our laws in general to protect us because corporations have become people they have the rights of people so i'm just trying to say that this this whole premise is is funky it's faulty it's disingenuous it's it's deceptive and we need to call it out for what it is it's an abrogation of our constitutional rights and our civil rights and we can't go down this path i just want to call into your um awareness a documentary called merchants of doubt where the cigarette industry casts doubt on very very specific hardcore evidence that cigarettes were damaging the public's health that is a playbook that's uh it's exposed in this film merchants of doubt it's a playbook the corporations have used since then please please see that thank you good afternoon mayor vice mayor council members my name is ginnbar katem i'm with for eisen wireless um i wanted to first thank staff for their efforts on the design guidelines we had provided uh our feedback back in april um some of the aesthetic and shock claw comments were addressed in this revised version that's with you uh we ask that you direct staff to um consider our additional comments um our offices had provided a letter i'm not sure if you all have a copy of that but um we have some additional comments that still have not been addressed um such as uh the objective requirements um really the FCC order asks that you know small cell applications be based off of objectivity and not subjectivity so that's one of the comments that we had um so other than that i just would like to you know ask you guys to direct staff to further revise the guidelines and we look forward to working with them on that and the master agreement thank you are you here i was just getting a sense of how many more folks are interested in speaking okay so in addition to the three we're going to go ahead and actually acknowledge the woman here in the front and the yellow who has been sitting there you'll have up to two minutes thank you my name is carmela weintraub i'm a 50-year resident of santa cruz right up the hill on king street where there's a um new 5g cell tower going in about 300 feet from my bedroom and i feel i have less than two minutes to defend my life i have mitochondrial disease which is you know the beginning of the desiccation of the cells um that cell phone towers cause i'm not making a case that there's a direct relationship but i feel that the my future is dim um and in the role of denial of this kind of thing in our history has been a prevalent where a belief system is overrides scientific evidence i.e the earth is flat um we the earth was the center of the universe at one time and proved otherwise tobacco smoking was not dangerous was proved otherwise the atom bomb was necessary for our defense was proved otherwise and currently we are also denying global warming i feel like there are other um governmental agencies that are saying no to this and would you guys stop reading your notes it's very disrespectful when we listen to you and you are all reading your notes i've been watching um so here we go um there are other governmental agencies i.e pacific grove and brussels and other ones that have taken a stand against this i personally was awake till three o'clock this morning because of this particular meeting and i feel it's really necessary to speak up and i yes you're welcome to leave your comments if you were unable to finish them we could review this well of course you know i have books but um thank you okay so we have the three um here in front of our last speakers um we'll go in the order okay from my left to right okay i'm ems disabled ever since the smart meters went in and i'm getting worse as the technology increases prior to this i had perfect superlative health fantastic especially at my age i had to take early retirement and undesired retirement i was not ready to retire still i'm not ready and being here in this environment i want to tell you is very difficult i have almost left numerous times today um i'm already in pain every day to start out with and being here does not help i might be sick tomorrow as a result of being here every citizen should have the right to be able to come here to the city council it shouldn't be just so overwhelmingly wired that it's impossible to be here i also as as bad as i may be i know brilliant desirable citizens here who have had to move into their cars or camp out and so much for the homeless situation you guys are trying to make smaller it's going to get bigger um most doctors have no skill to treat this um situation because there's no cause as far as uh you know it's not a cause but in the person it's the environment and so you know if the environment increases this way the illnesses will increase i want to support everything that's been said prior to me and um thank you for all the attention you've given and what you've done so far please continue thank you good afternoon scott graham um there seems to be a lot of discrepancy here as to how far these towers can be placed apart from one another and i would say that whatever the maximum distance that they can be placed apart from one another that should be what happens and i don't know if you're gonna like authorize all these companies a through z to put up their own towers but i think you should force them to all share towers not to all have their own separate towers so that we have a tower on every block basically if every company wants to have their own towers that seems ridiculous why don't they the company should get together if they're going to do this and come up with a way that they can all share the towers they're going to put up and also i'd like to see a map of where all the existing cell towers are in the city and also where all the proposed ones are going to be because right now i don't know where they are i mean unless i happen to see one the other thing is i hope that the design guidelines make it impossible for birds to land on these things because there there is evidence out of the netherlands that if birds sit on these things for too long it actually cooks their insides and so it's it'd be really helpful if birds can't land on them and bats can't land on them and you know other flying creatures can't land on them thank you and you'll be our last speaker maryland karat first do no harm first do no harm the hippocratic oath we know this is a harmful technology we know this is a corporate takeover basically of our rights and a land grab and if the telecom industry had not been gifted this land in the public right of way i don't think this would be taking place and i want to know how many of you saw the documentary 5g apocalypse the extinction event i left it at the last meeting where you were talking about health and all policies show of hands thank you this is essential to see to know what is going on here you talk about aesthetics there's nothing aesthetically pleasing about uh devices and toxicity that can kill you but you and would you talk about cigarettes and the only thing you would talk about is how elegant they look or how the packaging is that's not what significance the significance is the deadly nature of it and the forced imposition on the public i have an article here about abnormalities in blood cells from exposure to this wireless technology normal blood cells are kind of circular stuck together stacked up this is not aesthetically pleasing it is not pleasing to our health and it is caused by these exposures voting for 5g 4g now in the public right of way is imposed harm and you're you're welcome to leave your uh i'll leave you with this and a picture of one of these 4g's near where i live thank you freedom boulevard and redwood hydro okay so we'll go ahead and return back to the council at this point for any action any clarifying questions or action to be made councilmember glover and then councilmember brown thank you uh well first of all thank you to all the people that came to speak this afternoon about the issue of electromagnetic fields and the placement of these different towers you gave us a lot to think about and i do want to assure the speaker that mentioned looking at tablets and stuff like that is that i'm just taking avid notes of all the things that people are saying just to you know what's going on this side of the screen so just curious questions to the planning public works department with regards to some of the requests from emf aware so is it feasible possible or do you need our direction to increase the notification outreach from 300 to at least 1500 feet well um so the 300 feet right now is the standard for any design permit that so anybody comes in for design permit they have to notice within 300 feet part of the FCC thing is we're not supposed to be discriminatory and if we require them to notice 1500 feet i'm not i don't know whether that falls under that or not but if they notice 1500 feet then if there's an appeal within that there's quite a bit of staff time that goes back into because then the city has to notice all 1500 feet prepare a report for you possibly prepare resolution um i mean the implications of the staff time really more than anything else okay thank you for that um and then it was mentioned uh with regards to the ad a so i previous to this i was looking up the definitions of ada accessibility and as uh miss orion had stated the definition is the impact of major life activities but then i was looking at uh a document focused on accessibility to buildings thank you uh and it said that according to the ada and other disability laws public and commercial buildings are required to provide reasonable accommodations for those disabled by chemical and or electromagnetic sense sensitivities so with the ada guidelines understandably that we need to keep the permitting process objective and equitable across the board but with things that could impact people with that are protected by the ada and this is more of a question i guess for the city attorney does that give us any leeway or the ability to change those requirements for notice and notification yes um thank you councilmember glover um Stephanie hall from my office has been looking at that very issue and she's here today so i'll ask her to respond to your question thank you good afternoon Stephanie hall city attorney's office so both in our proposed permit guidelines and the city's proposed ordinance we do require carriers to comply with the ada so the burden will be on the ada to or sorry the burden will be on the wireless carriers to follow all ada regulations so all reasonable accommodations and then with regards to the locations especially around public buildings specifically let's say for example city hall or other places where people need to be able to frequent for public business or parks i mean a setback an area of either um safety or emf free especially with regards to four and five g or do we in city hall have any emf free zones where people can go and do business because to my understanding of just reading the american disability act it is required for public and commercial buildings to require reasonable accommodations and so reasonable accommodations i think could be interpreted in different ways but just from our own legal opinions as to what our ability is as council members to give direction so in terms of reasonable accommodations i'm not aware of any in particular for e ems electromagnetic sensitivity i was able to get in contact with a stamp staff member at the u.s access board and that's the federal agency responsible for developing and maintaining accessibility guidelines for facilities covered under the ada and she told me that they have not issued any guidelines at this time for ems i don't know if you know in the future they might come forward with some but as of now there are none so there are no specific guidelines on reasonable accommodations for ems okay i'll find the information and bring it to your office later because i it was from a government website that had that listing um but that's okay i believe that was a report i did see something like that it just wasn't made final and so it's not binding okay i did see that as well thank you for that um just two more questions uh one uh the cost of appeals so i know that that is uh an impact on staff time but just some feedback from the department uh is i mean what does that fee go to cover let's just cover that just so that we all know why is it why is it 648 dollars to appeal uh uh planning process i think right now it's kept artificially low i don't think that it represents the amount of hours that go into appeal process so we could technically reduce an appeal process for uh 5g or telecommunications tower installations technically um technically you could i think that would probably be considered a discriminatory move against these folks knock it back to the attorneys i'll retry with the city attorney's office if you choose to set different appeal fees for this ordinance as compared to other ordinances that would uh be um potentially an equal protection violation and in order to overcome an uh challenge that uh you're treating um this ordinance different the people who appeal this ordinance differently from others you would find have to establish a rational basis a legitimate governmental interest to support that distinction and have creating that difference and and i i'd say that we would be um at risk of losing that type of challenge because under the federal rules the FCC uh not just the FCC guidelines but the federal law prohibits uh the city from enacting laws that uh are based on concerns about emf radiation thank you and there's one last question uh with regards to the insurance question that was brought up by the council from emf aware is it within our ability to require that the service provider have their own insurance that will or rather it will make the city free and clear from any additional lawsuits that their insurance may not cover so our current permit guidelines uh as well as our master license agreement requires a substantial insurance um to be provided by the wireless carriers and the requirements are at least five million dollars in commercial general liability insurance and uh ten million dollars in the aggregate so i don't know where the reference came from with regard to self insurance um i haven't seen that and i think that the requirements that we have with regard to insurance are ample okay thank you if i might clarify something so in addition to the the permit guidelines there is the actual physical permit that will be issued very much very similar to the ones we have right now on that on that form specifically it has insurance requirements for ones in the public right of way that we do not have a master license agreement for so while it might not be pointed out in here i think that's just because it's on all of our permits already okay thank you thank you well i actually have a clarifying question related to commercial general liability insurance uh the materials that we received suggest um that we include coverage for claims directly or indirectly arising out of resulting from or contributed to my electromagnetic fields electromagnetic gradation etc and so i'm just wondering with respect to the question of general liability insurance the the sum is seems like it's a pretty standard or you know substantial but is there any way to make it clear that these are concerns that we would like to ensure are covered under the liability insurance policy i mean i can't imagine that this is necessarily lineated in those policies so the standard requirement in a commercial general liability policy is to provide coverage for personal injury property damage and other related type of damages and so that's what we're requiring and to in order to require a specific policy addressing emf radiation again that would be in direct violation of federal law and so we would not be able to do that and so if people are um alleging that they've suffered personal harm to their health then if they proceed to file a claim with the city or they i guess that would be when our insurance their insurance would be triggered is if they filed a claim with the city then we would seek indemnity from the wireless carrier on the basis that the wireless carrier agreed to provide indemnity and they would have the commercial general liability insurance to cover that type of claim councilmember crone and vice mayor just to go back to councilmember glover's question about the enacting of law appeal fees what if you don't have charge any appeal fees that's not enacting a law is it be different from all the other development permits that we do in the city that are appealable so for instance uh uh any of these uh uh microsites that were on private property that decision is appealable do you want to have anything again i mean it goes to the same same um rational that i provided earlier that you'd have to provide a rational basis and identify the legitimate um governmental purpose in which you would treat applicants or appellants related to this ordinance differently than appellants in any other situation and you also know that crown council they they don't self ensure you said they they are carrying at least uh what was it five million dollars in commercial insurance i i haven't reviewed the current crown council uh master license agreement but i think that it would be very similar to what we're requiring right now thanks what was the public notice fee that the person asked about i i think the the question was extending the public notice notification out to 1500 feet right now we are requiring carriers to notify within uh 300 feet of any proposed installation which is a standard for all development fees or i'm sorry development permits um the only thing i the only question came up if if something gets appealed there's a lot of staff time that goes into re notifying people within 1500 feet and then preparing a staff report and then coming up before you guys so uh it's it is a matter of of uh uh staff time at that point do we know how many cell towers there are in Santa Cruz right now we have somebody have a map or do do have we map that well we will be i mean part of our website we will put all of us things on the map i mean uh through our office we've geez maybe maybe a dozen in the last year something like that yeah out in the right avoid in the right away and and those will all be crowned castled primarily so only the ones in the right away but not well i don't i can't speak to those i guess we probably have uh 40 to 50 40 to 60 somewhere in that range they've been um in and out of the process since the late 90s how much would we expect to have dozens more hundreds more you know the this whole uh micro cell thing um seems like it's the new engineering solution so i don't expect we'll see a whole bunch of larger facilities going up on private property seems the direction that these companies are moving is create smaller sites in the right away and um mr. city attorney that one gentleman uh the other attorney mentioned the 10th amendment um does that come into play here at all i i have not analyzed that argument stuff of you i'm not i'm not familiar with that argument i could look into it and report back offline to the council if you like thank you and um uh i had one other uh thank you vice mayor coming matthews and then brown and then mires and then clever okay quick question and i had to step out for an emergency but so if this was asked already i apologize but i was just wondering who covers the payments for notifications to go out for these installations or is that included in any of the fees for the public notifications that is the um that's under the responsibility of the of the applicant so the carrier has to do that great um the other and i think that maybe council member glove was asking about this are there any is there any ability for the city to create setbacks around for example schools or parks with regards to where these towers can be installed um you know we did uh the city council approved a um um a setback from an elementary school 10 or 12 years ago and when we came with the zoning ordinance amendments to you a couple months back we included a discussion of that in the staff report there was a letter from a Verizon attorney saying that the reasoning behind that thousand foot setback was RF emissions and it was clear in the council meeting that that was the reason so that if that were to be taken to court um the city attorney agreed that we probably would lose that case so i i didn't get any um comments that regarded setbacks from public places until this morning when i was reading the um the correspondence received so i pulled up um this is kind of confusing this is the cannabis oh this is the cannabis mapping overlay that was created and what this shows is uh 600 foot setback from schools parks playgrounds when we were doing the recreational cannabis ordinance that was one of the buffers that we looked at so 600 feet versus a thousand feet and then versus 1500 feet would probably eliminate most of the city from having to any of these to be located so that would be in conflict with the uh federal ruling and then my last question is and i might have missed this earlier but would we be able to extend the notification out to 1500 feet just given the fact that that's the distance that those radio waves travel i think that would absolutely um be something that could be contested because again it's the RF um uh energy that the FCC says that we can't regulate so you know just based on the public comments that we've heard that 1500 foot is coming from the RF effects and i don't think that that would hold up and just to tag on a more practical if you will consideration uh the 1500 feet right now all development permits required to notice within 300 feet which is what we have here now um and as i was saying to the other council members the um if there happened to be if we accepted the 1500 foot rule and it was an appeal that would generate a lot of staff hours in time to to respond to that appeal as opposed to as opposed to 300 feet and i just have one question for the city attorney i know earlier this year we had we'd been interested in joining other municipalities that were suing the FCC and i was just wondering um in joining court cases against the FCC and i was just wanting to know if you could update us on you know what's happening with that and if we're able to join in any cases against the FCC around this yes and i'm going to ask Stephanie to respond to that question as well because she's researched that uh fairly extensively so i know that the league of cities filed a lawsuit and many cities joined we have missed the deadline for a motion to intervene um and i believe we also missed the deadline to file an amicus brief but they're in the ninth circuit i believe council member matthewson then council member um i'd like to get if i could a quick summary of what happens if we don't proceed and then i have some other comments so if we don't proceed um federal government in general regulates wireless facilities so local governments were limited and if the city prohibits such facilities it'll it'll be a violation of federal law and then the city will be at risk of a carrier bringing a lawsuit against us and um ultimately the courts may grant injunctive relief which would mean ultimately an order requiring the local officials to issue the application so that would kind of be the end result well basically um it appears there is a fairly recent federal law on this and um i appreciate that we've shown interest in um participating in a challenge but in the moment that's the federal uh legal framework that we have to contend with um i think um in terms of the requests that have been made to us um certainly uh being very proactive in terms of noticing on our website is something that everyone is agreeable um to and that in fact i'm quite sure will serve probably a more effective noticing than postcards frankly um we did get a very complete analysis of the legal issues from the city attorney's office and i really appreciated that responding to a lot of these issues the federal law is really clear that we can't regulate at this point on the basis of um uh implied uh or perceived health issues those we can we can do the design issues and we can do the permit process um on those issues um and and there's been interesting coverage of the um um conditions we might establish that would be different from our standard appeal our notice standard noticing and standard appeal process and um there again i think there's a good case that can be made that to the extent we do some exceptional noticing or exceptional um appeal uh not not appeal fees um noticing uh on that that that would be discriminatory um i was impressed with the city attorney's analysis on the insurance requirement um i don't know have the rest of you seen these so you have them available to you um that it's already required both in the master agreement and in the individual permits um in general um um i think the uh i err on the side of um going for greater public noticing staying with our standard um noticing distance and um standard appeal fees um i believe that insurance concerns are met uh and i do have concerns about the restrictions to um uh not permitting them within 1500 feet of a government facility because again the as i understand it the federal language is very clear that um like the map here um excessive conditions uh amount to an effective prohibition and i i'm just concerned about being um legally vulnerable um so those are my comments councilmember brown and then councilmember meyers i guess i wanted to follow up on the question related to um the aesthetic design standards that was we were reminded of uh by members of the public so i it looks like we my recollection and i went back um in fact and did look at the the minutes that we did um when we considered the planning commission's recommendation that we um directed that these towers be um that the spacing be 1500 speed in all zones um we didn't talk about setbacks well we didn't do anything about setbacks but we did we did include that and that doesn't seem to have been expressed in the design standards um in um under e item three um exhibit a five site locations restrictions um and item b and in the master license agreement resolution so i'm just wondering if um there was a reason for that or if that was an oversight i mean i can't imagine it was an oversight if there's a reason for that i'd like to understand no it was it was an oversight oh okay wow well i we did correct that we forgot to read that into the record so that was changed we'd like that to be changed in all three locations it's in the staff report it's in the guidelines and it's in the resolution and it's just from all zone districts okay so thank you for that and then my other question was um when at a previous meeting there was some direction given about these coming back to us along with some analysis of what other communities have been doing to try to um to try to deal with um maintenance of local discretion and control to the extent that was possible and i recognize that that the result of that is in what has come before us however part of that was also uh uh request for information about you know perhaps joining in on uh lawsuit uh you know suing the fcc about this issue and so i'm concerned you know i'm disturbed to hear that we kind of missed the boat on that and we've never had a report back i'd like to um hear more about that if that was ever looked at and um if not i want to make sure that we include some direction to pursue that in the future because i don't think um any of us are well i can't speak for everyone on the council but i certainly am not happy about um what the boxes were being forced into here and the health implications i'm going to say it even though we're not supposed to even be able to say it i mean it's it's just you know really disturbing in so many ways so i want to make sure that that um is not lost in the future and i'd like to hear if it was considered at all for because i thought it was going to be in this we would hear it at this moment and it's not on the agenda today that was certainly taken into consideration and we did explore um you know what other cities have done and what other cities are doing um this the city historically has not had an affirmative litigation uh budget or or division and so um if i misinterpreted the council direction on that um i'm happy to report back on the status of that litigation and provide regular updates as it as it moves forward um as a practical matter um what we would do and still may have the opportunity to do depending on where the case goes is join as an amicus basically lend the the city's name to support the petition or the position of the plaintiffs in that case and we can certainly look further into that can i ask a follow-up question about that what's the cost of signing on to an amicus brief i've just heard that generally there is no yeah there is no fiscal impact associated with the cost of signing onto it um you know we do we do account for our time in monitoring it but it's not a huge investment of resources if i may um maybe i can offer uh uh path forward given the constraints that we really essentially everywhere we turn um face in terms of our federal kind of limitations um i just really want to echo uh councilmember browns uh interest in wanting to see how we can track various um legal um uh efforts happening and whether it be joining um given kind of our unique situation as a smaller city um and and some of the state stuff but maybe if if the councilmember is interested in and moving that this item you know and we have very little sort of a discretion here but are very interested uh collectively in tracking some of the legal um avenues moving forward might be a nice pathway at this point councilmember mayers yeah i'm uh a little bit well i'm i'm regretfully going to go ahead and try to move the item um in the interest of time and uh just want to thank everyone for coming here today um i think everyone understands we're sort of in a we're in a bad bad spot here in terms of really um having heavy heavy federal regulation impacting what we can decide in our neighborhoods and um i do support uh and hopefully we'll have a maybe a follow-up motion to continue to fight with other communities around the country that um are really struggling with these things coming into our neighborhood so i'm fully supportive and continuing to carry out this fight but i i but i do believe that we we have a fairly we have a solid ordinance to um at least do our first reading on um and we've i thanks to everyone who's done a lot of work and sent us a lot of good suggestions i think we're we're as close as we can for our first reading and um so i'm going to go ahead and move the motion uh with with one thing i would like i guess add it in is i would like to make sure that we our community is available you know that any compliance reports or or anything that comes in i'd like to make sure that those get posted um regularly uh and that those are available for folks to understand so i'll go ahead and make a motion um introducing the public for publication and ordinance adding chapter 15.38 to the Santa Cruz municipal code for small cell wireless communication facilities in the public right of way uh a resolution adopting a fee schedule related to the city's cost related to small cell wireless communication facilities and a resolution including a approving the small cell wireless facilities permit guidelines approving the master license agreement template and substantial form to be approved by the city attorney and authorizing the city manager to enter into an lma with wireless facilities providers and see approving the updated version of the aesthetic slash design standards i'll second that and i'd like to add um as a separate item that we um express the city's interest in joining as an amicus um or advocacy efforts for asserting local control over these facilities I have a motion by council member um meyers seconded by council member Matthews with the friendly amendment to have um us continue to track and support any types of legal efforts along the way okay so I have council member Glover crone uh brown and then vice mayor coming thank you um so I just want to just express to my colleagues that we have a moment right now for first of all just a question for the city attorney um say we don't do it say they sue us what does that look like fiscally and resource wise and should the league of cities uh lawsuit be successful would that then void the uh lawsuit that we'd be facing from the federal government since it would already been dealt with with the league of cities let me address your first question first um I don't know what the shape of that litigation would look like so I'm reluctant to give you um an estimate of what the what the financial legal exposure is but I can tell you that in terms of resources the telecom industry has more of them than the city of Santa Cruz and it will be expensive so um does does making a statement on the issue um justify incurring that kind of a fiscal impact that's really a policy decision for the city council but it wouldn't be my recommendation and as to your second question that the as I understand it and Steph can correct me if I'm wrong the litigation challenges the rulemaking itself and so if it prevails then it would it would essentially attack the rulemaking not its application to the city of San Francisco or to the city of Philadelphia so so we would benefit from that I just was going to add that in light of the pending litigation and and you know laws are in flux and they change and so that was one of the reasons why strategically we tried to make the ordinance 1538 very um straightforward and then we included a clause specifically to say that we the city council can make modifications or changes to the ordinance as the laws change and then one of the um good things about having the guidelines the aesthetic standards and the permit guidelines be guidelines and not be included in the ordinance itself is to allow flexibility and to allow fluidity so that as uh we uh go through this process and that there's changes that need to be made that we are able to act quickly and make the changes and so that's why it's brought to you in that format okay um thank you for that uh so then I guess just my comment is that we have a a decision or a crossroads essentially to go right now we could either one fall in line pass this move on to the second reading uh symbolically accept the totalitarian control of the federal government around our communications and the public health as well as the issues or we can take a stand and say no we will not allow you to dictate how we impact the health and lives of our citizens that are from a range of abilities and socioeconomic positions and in doing so that opens up a bunch of other possibilities so uh I am very adverse to moving forward with this because it's been dictated from the federal government there's a lot of things right now the federal government is doing that I want absolutely no pardon and uh inundating our communities with 5G is one of them so uh there's also the issue of there's also the issue of the health and all policies and how that pertains I mean uh the strategic meeting this weekend we one of the things that I wrote up on the board was not just talk to talk but to walk the walk and if we're going to care about health and all policies and this openly research does show whether it's been concluded by Verizon or the SEC or not is that 5G and microwave radiation especially in high doses impacts human health plant health and insect health and for a place that's a breeding ground for monarchs if we're going to saturate ourselves with 5G that has been uh suggested to damage pollinator and insect life I I can't I can't support it. Council Member Cronin before um maybe we go through I know there's others that want I just want to remind us that we have a very very full agenda and we're actually going to be returning to an item from consent before um oral communications to this evening at 7 p.m so if we can move into place of some sort of consensus I think that'll help us be able to address all the issues I know that we all care about so Council Member Cronin and then Council Member Brown and then Vice Mayor Cummings. One question um Tony if we did like a moratorium and didn't pass this and waited for the the lawsuits to play out or the you know um would we how open would be to a lawsuit from Verizon I guess or from the FCC they're not gonna probably not from the FCC. Probably not from the FCC we would be exposed to litigation from the wireless carriers themselves. What's your sense like what are we at a crossroads here are we at a tipping point do you sense that this stuff is going anywhere or are we just up against this you know juggernaut of a you know telecommunications industry that it's really going to be tough to um I mean that's hard for me to to answer I I think we are up against a juggernaut it's not the wireless communication well if if you attend or analyze what is going on in Washington DC with regard to the wireless industry and the and the amount of resources that they bow into lobbying both both the congress and the the federal regulatory agencies it's it's really astounding so um so we are up against a difficult adversary and and while cities are very active in in lobbying um their congressional leaders and and whatnot um their resources are a drop in the bucket compared to what's being poured into and it's not just the telecom industry it's it's a it is a huge variety of corporate interests that just wields so much money and influence particularly in light of decisions like the citizens united case and supreme court that we we're in a difficult environment I just want to make sure we're going to get the 1500 feet in this it's that's in here right for between between locations correct and um mandatory community meetings you said we can't do that right that's my understanding and we can uh sorry I want to speak to that it's not that we can't require the uh I think you're speaking to the voluntary neighborhood information meeting right so it's not that we can't require those plea application procedures all that the FCC order says is that it starts the shot clock when we require one of those pre application procedures and so our concern was we wouldn't meet the shot clock if we had this meeting and then it just added time to an hour already very short timeline that's why we made it strongly encourage recommended yeah and we can't waive the appeal fees because that would be like a prejudice against other feet I mean we we think of it in terms of the risk of a legal challenge and believe that if a legal challenge were based on that the equal protection issue we are vulnerable and the 1500 feet distance have we figured out how many actual small cells we could put put in Santa Cruz similar to what we did with the um cannabis um retail outlets no is so is it going to be dozens or a few um year and a half ago we heard from AT&T that they would roll out um I think it was 60 to 80 of them potentially in the city in the city yeah and it's crowned castle part of that AT&T or is that on castles like a um infrastructure development company and they develop the site and then they lease it to different carriers thank you and last thing I'll say is I you know and I'm not saying this right on those steps out there in 2002 the city took on the DEA it looked like it was a Hail Mary pass and we're fighting you know medical mario from medical marijuana rights and um the community came together at that time and it was an amazing thing to see and I and I think that this is at least as important if not more important given a lot of the stuff of what we've heard today and and as far as us being up against you know being told what to do by you know corporate america and I think that we have certain rights as a as a city and I think we should exercise those rights I know that this is taking a long time but this is a really complicated issue it has enormous implications so I just want to make sure that I am entirely clear before we move ahead here in addition to the legal ramifications I believe that we have had at least once and I think more than that on more than one occasion conversations about the other implication of not issuing encroachment permits which is if we can just circle back around to that conversation so I'm clear that the towers could go in anyway without any guidelines right so it's not just the is it am I clear about that that we're not just dealing with the potential legal challenge but if we don't do anything or if we say we're not gonna issue encroachment permits under our condition the few conditions we can that they can and would likely happen anyway well to be honest with you I'm not entirely sure that that's that that's correct in conversations with the city attorney's office um if the way the way it's written uh it the law a lawsuit may require this require the city to issue a permit so in which case they would still have the requirements associated with that permit that that was not the initial understanding that we had so without the design guidelines this is that type of facility that could be installed so for clarity if I'm hearing you correctly um it's not necessarily they would just install it but we would be uh legally uh required to issue a permit for them to install it without any design I don't exactly know how the legal challenge would play out but that's my understanding if a carrier were to sue the city then there's the possibility that the court could order the city to approve the permit so it would we would have to wait for the whole entire lawsuit to end but I do think it is correct that we have to apply standards in evaluating these permits and the design guidelines are one of the standards that we apply so if they're not enough in place then we don't have those and we don't have objected standards by which to evaluate an application vice mayor coming I just want to um I share the sentiments expressed by all my colleagues up here today um I do think that we need to be responsible in terms of when we're taking on lawsuits and who we're suing and what outcomes are going to be since we're not taking on the FCC who's actually responsible for making these regulations um by taking on Verizon we would likely lose and we wouldn't be correcting any of the regulations that we're actually wanting to see changed um I think that well my hope is that the league of California cities is successful in their current court case and that we are able to be able to have more regulations around and more ability to regulate these types of technologies as they get rolled out in our neighborhoods but I think at this point in time it would be in the city's best interest if we move forward with what has been recommended to us today and that we follow up and keep track of what's happening with these court cases so that we can try to get more local control over these facilities as they get introduced into our community okay I agree and we have a motion by council member Myers seconded by council member Matthews do you need me to repeat the motion at this point that you have it okay all those in favor please say aye opposed okay so that passes with council member Brown Matthews vice mayor Cummings myself and Myers voting in support council member Crone and Glover voting against okay we're going to have a short um we'll take maybe a short transition of about three or four minutes before the next item and then we're going to go right ahead for or is I'm sorry forgive me is the next item are you you are the presenters for the next item it's the second reading of the zoning okay we'll go ahead and do that and then we'll go ahead and take a short break okay so we'll go on to item number 27 which is the second reading and do you have any additional presentation or data that you'd like to share on this regard they originally scheduled the second why don't we have a count we'll have a council maybe a short break for while there's a staff time to okay i'm going to go ahead and bring us back together here at this point i'm going to um go ahead and turn it over to our staff so we're going to go ahead and come back to the city council meeting i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our staff at this time and we're on item number 27 okay so this is the second reading of the zoning ordinance changes we usually don't do a presentation but we'd like to continue the item so that we have the second reading on the same date that the new public works ordinance is heard and that would be august 13th okay that makes sense to me do you need a motion for that i will move to continue so we have a motion by council member matthews seconded by council member mires to the date to the date of august 13th so this item will be continued to a future day okay and um and so we won't have any discussion at this time on this oh but can you give a specific date to august august 13th oh i think it's at a future date i'm sorry to the next meeting august 13th and at that time we will hear the second reading and also we'll also hear a public comment on it okay so we're not going to have any public comment on this this item has been continued to august 13th there is no public comment on this item question i understand when something's on the agenda even if you continue it it's required that you have the public comment that's my understanding we have people here ready to talk on it okay so if we were to continue the item for a second reading we would have if we were to have public comment we would probably document the individuals that did speak to the item i'm assuming and not allow that public comment to repeat again when the item comes before there's no requirement that you have um public comment on an item that you're just continuing so it's up to the pleasure of the council okay i'm going to go ahead and just although i i really just want to thank and acknowledge those that do want to speak to this item we have um a very very full agenda and we will be hearing this coming up and um you will have an opportunity to speak to us and reach out to us between now and august 13th so i'm going to go ahead and suggest that we don't have public comment at this time since this item will be continued to august 13th in which time we can receive public comment along with the second reading of the item we have before us so um i appreciate your interest in speaking and addressing the council we'll welcome it at a future time um but today we're going to go ahead and just continue the item and we'll uh hear it on august 13th and we have a motion by council member matthew seconded by council member mires all those in favor please say aye to move it to august 13th yeah uh all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously okay so we'll go ahead and move on to item um number 28 an item number 28 is um for the one let's see okay so we have this is the there's a process here for um the downtown commission so we have one possible appointment with a term expiring on january 1st 2020 and so we'll start with uh council member crone and then each council member will name one nomination and once the nominations are complete we will have each council member state their vote the nominee who receives the majority of votes is appointed but before we begin this process i am assuming that there is an opportunity for the public for public comment on this item is that correct okay is there any member of the community who would like to address us an item number 28 which is the downtown commission appointment okay please come forward and you'll have up to two minutes good afternoon mayor and council members uh my name is matt ferrell and i'm the vice chair of the downtown commission and i'm here to support the application of joe ferrara who owns atlantis fantasy world downtown um i've known joe for over 30 years and i think he has a strong institutional memory of the issues that have confronted downtown especially in the retail community and that's a representation that we currently lack on the commission with um resignation of uh casey coonerty proddy we have no retail representative on the downtown commission uh joe's been involved in uh a lot of downtown efforts including serving on the pavilion partnership board during the earthquake from 1989 to about 1992 and through that experience i think really helped shape the uh the future of downtown and i think looking at downtown and where we are now economically with the vacancies down there having a retail representative on the commission would be very helpful thank you thank you there are any other members of the community who would like to address this on this item okay seeing them we'll go ahead and return back to council for the process again we'll go ahead and start with council member crone um for nominations and then we'll uh go around and we'll see who gets the majority of votes council member crone thank you mayor um uh he was here he had to go uh i i would like to nominate enda brennan he um has been around downtown for at least 30 years he's owned um a building down there um i know his partner runs uh the restaurant swath as well and um i'm really happy to uh put his nomination forward enda brennan okay council member glover do you have a different nomination no no enda brennan okay council reminders i'm gonna nominate joe ferrara okay i don't have another nomination uh vice mayor comings no one knew no one knew okay then we'll go ahead and now uh return back to um council member crone for your vote on uh the two nominees the two nominees are joe ferrara and edna brennan enda enda okay uh joe ferrara joe ferrara joe ferrara okay so we have five uh supporting joe ferrara and um and he will be the next nominee correct okay okay thank you very much i'm going to go ahead and um ask if the council would support me and making a modification to our council agenda right now we have had um a member of our community who is on the cabrillo uh board here sitting here waiting to speak to us on the item that i think will be coming probably in about an hour from now if i don't move it so if it um is okay with the council i'm going to go ahead and um move up that item to our next item and then we'll have um a little sort of a shift here so what we'll do is instead of having the conversation around the council ad hoc revenue subcommittee we'll go ahead and introduce um item number 30 33 thank you very much and and then we'll hear that item and then come back to our regular council agenda okay council member govern yeah thank you um so i totally respect your decision to do that however i will express my concern about moving things around in the agenda because based off of your uh previous message anticipating the meeting would be 10 to 12 hours long and then looking at the layout of the agenda uh and like you said this would most likely not show up until in about another hour or between four and five or six or somewhere in there uh if there were people that were coming to speak in support of it uh they may miss the opportunity because you've moved it forward in the agenda if you decide to do it totally but i just want to put that out there that it could be an unintended consequence as we hear a lot okay so the agenda items um are actually not listed in terms of timeline and actually this is probably given how far behind we are relative to the timeline that we originally anticipated having that item come before us um but it's at the discretion of the mayor to ensure that the meeting can run um uh as effectively as possible it's just sort of switching it out at this time so if that is um uh that that would be my preference so if that's uh possible we'll go ahead and do that at this time and unless there's any formal objection we'll go ahead and have item number three 33 heard um and and then we'll go back to item number 29 okay we're going to go ahead then and here item number 33 and i'll go ahead and actually kick it over to councilmember glever this is a item that was brought forward by um by yourself absolutely so uh ab 302 let me just pull this up here is a bill that's on the floor uh for the state with regards to the legislation and it is something that would mandate community colleges to open up at least one parking lot for overnight sleeping for students that are currently experiencing homelessness that are registered students of the school uh i believe there are some data points in your agenda packet just with regards to homelessness among california college students uh and it's while it's an imperfect bill there are always ways that bills could be improved and that more additions could be made or more issues could be addressed i think this is an important first step in creating uh safe sleeping spaces for people since cities and other municipalities have been having a difficult time in finding the political will to make it happen for uh students especially so it's a great opportunity for us to just symbolically send our support to the state for the implementation of safe parking locations for students uh as well as ideally uh then work with cabrillo uh if it's because it's to my understanding that they've already uh among their board of trustees worked out a potential sleeping program structure should ab 302 uh move forward and i have had a chance to review the letter from the president of cabrillo college uh as well as spoken with mr spickler mr spickler with regards to the uh concerns that have been expressed by some members of the group so i want to acknowledge those and at the same time uh illustrate that while there are issues we need to move forward and take tangible steps towards supporting our homeless population especially those that are students to make sure that they're getting the rest they need because that's one thing that i think a lot of people don't take into consideration is the impacts of sleep deprivation on someone that's trying to participate in an educational system uh the inability to retain information the lot loss of fine motor skills and then also just the mental health issue of being under consistent stress while uh not having a safe place to sleep so if this is even even a small tool that we can add uh into the state belt for addressing those issues i believe this body should support it thank you any questions for councilmember clever on this item at this time by spearcomings do you know when this item supposed to be heard on the floor of the senate there's no some to my understanding there's no set date uh is there why don't we go ahead and invite up maybe if we well let's go ahead and just if we could maybe open public comment and then i know we have a board of trustees um uh from cabrera here is there any member of the community who wants to address us on this item okay and just to respond quickly to the vice mayor if i may um vice mayor oh okay vice man coming he's going to respond to your really quick uh the reason why i brought this forward was because there uh is the sentiment among students that i've spoken to and looking at the proposed timeline that it may come onto the floor for a vote is potentially in our break so i want to make sure that we as a body can make a deciding vote with regards to whether or not to send support in a letter and not lose that opportunity so we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment on this item at which time i know we have a board of trustees member here uh from cabrera college that if you want to use your maybe two minutes to talk about your position but if you if we have further questions in regards to the specifics um since you're here that'd be great thank you very much mayor wattkins and city council members i'm christina quavish from the board of trustees of cabrera college and um i appreciate the opportunity to come before you and that you have had the opportunity to read dr wetstein's letter to the uh the the education committee regarding our opposition to the bill and let me just state that uh when this was initially proposed we actually were in favor number one we totally understand the issue related to homelessness and its effect on our students and we too want to make sure that they have a safe and um sanitary place to sleep and are able to pursue their studies that we want to support and the feeling was that this current bill really does not address that in the way that's going to protect our students um as it's currently proposed and dr wetstein did meet with assemblyman burman as you mentioned to talk about another option that our facilities manager and dr wetstein developed around a safer opportunity for our students which would include kind of a community or a common area that would include places to study to sleep to wash up and to be able to pursue their studies that was proposed months ago as when this bill came forward it was not included in the amendment as an amendment and so as the bill went forward we along with 16 other community colleges as well as some others that didn't make it in time have um issued our opposition to the bill at this point it doesn't include any resources for us to provide for safe and healthy um spaces for students to sleep and we feel it's really kind of a piecemeal effort at this point and not the one that we would support my understanding and this is kind of back and forth between the our um organization in sacramento the league that there are other many community colleges are in opposition of this bill at this point thank you next speaker and you'll have up to two minutes as well hello council again my name is elise casby and i'm speaking to this bill um i haven't read the bill um but i'm going to assume that the uh things that council member gliver just said um he's looked at it are reasonable and i just want to say that i think that a lot of people who are who are not homeless and who are you know obviously people of good will and good intentions understand that homelessness is extremely difficult but i just want to impress upon the council that um number one unless you have experienced living outside all day every day the the sleep deprivation the tremendous cons all consuming concerns where am i going to go to the bathroom now where am i going to go to the bathroom later how am i going to eat breakfast how am i going to eat lunch these things are happening in our world because we have failed as a society to anticipate the needs of our people and so i think that what we have to do right now is settle for piecemeal solutions um i i do appreciate the trustees comments who went before me i understand the concerns and i think this idea about the study common area is great i want you to know i did go to meet the snail movement students at ucsc at the faculty meeting that they attended up there at ucsc they were able to garner a vote in favor of their ability to sleep in the parking lots at ucsc and some of the professors spoke to the fact that we need safe places now so that students are not being interrupted in the middle of the night by police so that they can go to the bathroom safely so they can move from their cars to the bathroom and that does not withstand that we are going to work on other more comprehensive and better solutions in the long term please vote as the faculty did up at ucsc to support this bill thank you hi my name is her gene i'm a first year student at ucsc i've been working with soren whiting who's been working with councilmember um glover on a resolution in support of ab 302 so i'd quickly like to read that as fast as i can in the time i have allotted um whereas there exists a shortage of available and affordable housing and safe housing available to students pursuing a college degree in the state of california and whereas the city calls attention to the according uh to that according to a study conducted by the hope center for college community and justice at tumbling university's college of education 19 percent of community college students in california are experiencing homelessness and whereas the city finds that many students currently experience homelessness and therefore have to live in their vehicle for shelter whereas the city finds that this form of homelessness results in the potential enforcement of chapter um 636 01 uh camping prohibited end whereas the city finds that enforcement of this chapter leads to the disruption of sleep schedules for students woken up during the early morning hours and whereas the city finds that studies such as the one conducted by the national sleep foundation determined that individuals who habitually sleep outside of the normal range may be exhibiting signs of symptoms of serious health problems and if done violationally um may be compromising of their health and well-being and whereas the city finds that students living in their vehicles are more vulnerable and um while sleeping in open areas and therefore have higher risk of being victims of assaults break in and stolen damaged property and whereas the city finds that many students who are unable to afford housing on or off campus may risk the consequences associated with sleeping in a parked vehicle and whereas there exists ab 302 authored by assembly member burman which is an act to add section 76012 to the education code relating to community colleges and whereas the assembly bill has been found to have minimal minimal fiscal impacts and is therefore a non appropriation measure whereas the assembly bill has passed the assembly forward by partisan support and whereas the assembly will provide homeless students a legal and safe option to live in their car without the threat of external forces and whereas assembly bill 302 is among the most basic realistic and appropriate actions that can be taken to support students currently experiencing homelessness now okay you know what we have this resolution in our agenda yeah thank you your time is up okay are there any other members of the community who wanted to address us on this item okay seeing them we'll go ahead and return back for um action and deliberation any other council members want to speak to this item uh vice mayor comings the one thing that i'm concerned with it has to do with the fact that there are no resources being provided to community college to actually account for the costs it's going to take to allow for these parking programs to exist um i think that it's i mean i brought forward on behalf of um the group that some of the students on campus you know beginning a discussion with ucsc about allowing students to sleep in their cars on campus and it's something that i'm going to continue to pursue and i think that as well approaching the institutions themselves individually and working with the institutions to design these programs i think is um appropriate i do i am concerned with unintended consequences that could come from such a bill being made law that requires community colleges and the reason why is because it's expensive enough for students to attend community colleges it is if these costs come into the university it is likely going to fall onto the students in further increasing their tuitions and that is something that i'm a little bit concerned about so what i think will be um really useful is that if we as a body um wrote to the makers of this bill asking them to amend it so that they could have um and this is um from a letter that came to us but you know having the bill be amended to address the economic inequities faced by many community college students as well as the unfunded mandate aspect of the bill's implementation because if we can get the state the state to put some money into these programs i think that they would be better for the students as a whole not just with their ability to sleep in parking lots but also for if they're homeless but also keeping cost of education down i have councilmember brown matthews and then councilmember well i guess i want to echo some of vice mayor comings comments i um i did read the the letters that we the correspondence we received from cabrillo and appreciate the the concerns that were raised i do believe that there is going to be a fiscal impact to this i do believe that the state has a responsibility to provide the resources and i'm disappointed that that is not part of um the legislative approach that assembly member berman has taken i do think that we absolutely for going to provide some kind of correspondence should be um should be including that that because unfund i mean i'm uh i have seen and i think many of us have what unstate unfunded mandates and federal unfunded mandates due to local governments and um you know like the community college district so i um so i i do have that as a central concern and moving forward at the same time i agree that um students need just as all unhoused people need safe spaces to sleep and we have to be you know we cannot wait for the perfect solution to try to resolve this um so i do think that we need to move forward and and provide i mean i would like to say um that you know i support as a council member here in tana cruz i support the right of students to have a safe space to sleep and i want herbrio college to provide that space just like i want ucsc to provide that space i've had those conversations with the chancellor um and others so i'm trying to think about a way that we can do this and and acknowledge that we want to support this but that we do absolutely believe that or i do i don't know if others do i'm looking forward to hearing others perspective that there has to be some resources attached to it um i don't know if the the the figure that was included i will just say this quickly the figure that was included in the letter that we received from the career college president was i mean it was a pretty large number and if i recall and so i was trying to get before this meeting a little bit more information about how that it could be so high and i'm still not entirely clear um but i do think at a minimum we should be saying resources are necessary and the state should be providing those council member matthews council member yeah i'm generally sympathetic with this um i'm not uh i don't feel comfortable endorsing the um bill as it's currently written i would be very comfortable with uh communication from the council that and i should say i was very impressed by the comments from the trustee that they had they were in a serious conversation about what sort of facilities could be offered on campus to meet the needs of students who don't have secure housing that they had tried to communicate that with the author of the bill and were not successful in getting those concerns heard and were joined by other community colleges from around the state that to me seems like a communication gap between the author and reality and it gets to that unfunded mandate thing um so i would be quite happy to um ask the mayor to write a letter that we we as the city acknowledge the serious impact of housing insecurity on college students we appreciate the interest of the cabrillo administration and trustees in developing basic resources for homeless students that we urge continued um conversation between the community colleges and state legislature legislators to come up with um agreement that provides resources to meet these needs um and uh i think that should do it i mean it it signals our support uh and i would just say parents so and end of motion or do you okay let's go ahead and make that the emotion is that that's okay it's fine with me okay so we'll go ahead and make that emotion um by councilor matthews i'll go ahead and second that and i would just say uh finally um uh legislative bills do evolve and i think this one is pretty close there's clearly a need there's clearly an interest and then that we just need to move it forward so uh i think that's where our support should go councilor glover and then vice mayor coming okay thank you so uh just some really disturbing statements uh that i've heard recent just now um i understand and respect the perspectives but i do not uh agree with the urgency and the urgency has been an issue in my opinion for this body for a while ever since i've been on it actually about the the intensity at which we approach issues um the unintended consequences which is a statement that was up here i would encourage us to think about the consequences of not moving quickly uh continued conversation the state itself has been talking about homelessness and the issues of homelessness and the issues of homeless students for years decades dare i say and so we want to encourage continued conversation around a bill that could be amended or added to we could express our support for the bill and encourage them to add other things but still express support for the bill the bills will never be perfect not everyone's going to be happy so there's that uh with the resources for the community colleges totally hear that concern like i said read it in the statement from the from the uh president of cabrillo but at the same time i'm sure that we can find especially for cabrillo we have the HAP the the homeless action partnership the governor just distributed hundreds of millions of dollars around the state to be able to aid in emergency shelter services for people including students to my understanding so if educational institutions are going to apply for the funding that's coming from the state through the HAP committees then what's stopping us from being able to generate money that way i think we need to get creative of finding resources and not just knock it off the table or say that we don't support it because it doesn't have some golden package of money associated with it and if we're going to wait for the state to come with funding like hey oh that could be forever so when are we going to actually take action on the students getting back to the fiscal impacts that was mentioned no one ever suggested that there were no fiscal impacts but the number that's cited in the and we're talking about fiscal impacts to the city and also to the university or the excuse me the community college individually the number that's cited in the letter here is a quantification and like council member brown said i had no idea how they got to this number but they cite uh 68.8 million dollars to implement this if you include title nine requirements sanitation restrooms liability insurances i think if we were to lump everything into one pool and say we shouldn't do this because it's going to cost a lot of money then we would never do anything uh we need to be thinking about this on an individual college level with regards to yes it's going to impact all community colleges but each of those community colleges can get creative in the way that they implement the programs other things that were included in the in the letter were saying that it sends a message that parking lots are good enough for community college students i have to incredibly disagree with this statement and it draws a strange energy around the rest of the letter because if the president of cabrillo is saying that they're not going to support opening up parking lots because it sends a message that parking lots are okay places for students to sleep when those students are sleeping in their cars being harassed by police when they don't have parking lots asleep in there is a disconnect between the president and reality so we need to move forward in a way that is proactive that is dedicated and that is intentional of creating as much open spaces for people to be able to sleep and exist as humans as possible so i will not be supporting the motion and i'm in i would just make a substitute motion that we move forward with the original recommendations of sending a letter to the state representatives endorsing ab 302 but with the addition of encouraging the bill writer to incorporate funding from somewhere into the bill as was requested by the board of trustees is it going to happen i don't know but at least we're going to make the the the movement forward so i'm going to make an alternate or substitute motion okay there's a substitute motion made by councilmember glover is there a second seconded by council member crone we'll go ahead and vote on the substitute motion which is to essentially move the recommendation before us at this time with additional direction to make modifications as outlined by councilmember glover is that correct mr condadi that's right if the motion passes then you will vote on the substitute substitute motion well the substitute we're voting to accept the substitute motion at this time that's right okay all those in favor please say aye do you have questions about the process yeah no i had a friendly amendment to the substitute motion okay um we'll go ahead and make the friendly amendment to the substitute motion or do we vote on the substitute motion before making the there can be a friendly and additionally i would like to hear back the language on the first motion because i don't actually remember exactly why don't we go ahead and take the vote on the substitute motion whether or not we want to accept it if we want to make modifications to the first motion and um then we could do so at that time i think it's difficult it's difficult to make to vote on a substitute motion without knowing what the language of the first motion was because that's going to influence that's going to largely influence my vote okay well i can go ahead and maybe sort of in a in a snapshot describe one motion the original motion by councilmember matthews is essentially suggesting that we don't necessarily write a letter in support of this legislation at this time but instead reach out to um uh some of our legislative uh folks in sacramento expressing our interest in wanting to see more services to our student population that is experiencing homelessness so it's sort of not and not in support of the legislation do you want to do want to elaborate more i may not in support of the legislation as currently written supportive of the concern and also that we urge not only our local electeds but the bill authors to engage in serious conversation with community colleges okay so uh and then does that help with the clarification okay so we'll go ahead and vote on the substitute motion at this point all those in favor of the motion by councilmember glever seconded by councilmember crone to move the resolution forward do you have clarifying question we're voting to accept the consideration whether to consider it okay so all those in favor please say aye opposed no so that passes with councilmember brown vice mayor comings councilmember crone and councilmember glever voting in support councilmember matthews councilmember meyers and myself voting against so now we're going to hear the second the substitute now you may vote on the substitute motion okay we'll go ahead do we want to restate the substitute motion absolutely it's the original motion that's found in your agenda packet with the addition to which is writing a letter to the listed representatives encouraging them to adopt the ab 302 but with uh an addition to that original motion which would be to include language to encourage legislators to include funding or uh resources for community colleges okay so that was the motion I'll just briefly say I you know I think everybody here agrees that we want to see more services and we want to see more attention paid towards our student population experiencing homelessness unfunded state mandates for education can be very very difficult and we have direct opposition from the local Cabrillo college who it's going to impact the most and we just had a conversation earlier in regards to local control and how we appreciate that and so what I think we're also doing is saying that we're we appreciate it for us but not necessarily for our Cabrillo college which is stating that they don't particularly feel that this is best for them at this time with what they can accommodate so I just want to kind of highlight that kind of discrepancy for me that stands out and and you know and I mean I guess I'll just leave it at that but the motion before us now is to move forward with support of the resolution and um and we'll go ahead and either have further comment or we'll go ahead and take the vote on that okay we'll have vice mayor Cummings Matthews and then Brown and then Clever I'm just wondering if there is the potential for the inclusion of language that says that this that our recommendation um would only be considered if the bill is amended to better address the economic inequities faced by many community college students as well as address and fund and make sure that there's a funded mandate aspect of the bill's implementation because I agree that we need to do something but I also um don't think that this is a very wise decision and for us to encourage this bill given the fact that there's no funding so if the bill includes um that that the state's if the bill is revisited and the state is going to fund and provide funding for the bill's implementation then I'm in favor of this but if that is not going to be the case when this recommendation is you know taken on by the state and the final bill is moved forward then I wouldn't want to um say that Santa Cruz is in support of of mandating community colleges to support um unhoused students without any funding if that's the case and I'd just like to say if that's the case then I think that it's on the community to work with the community colleges to see how we can work to um create programs that are going to address these issues rather than making it a mandated bill across the state which can have um serious consequences in terms of cost of education for students okay councilmer matthews brown and then glutton that was entirely the intent of my motion in case that wasn't clear but I should also say that it's very very common in legislative evolution that groups will say oppose unless amended or take no position in case amended so that's an explicit direction that we could put forward that we support the intent of this but we can't support it at this time unless it's amended to blah blah blah so that was really where I was trying to go with my motion we could be more explicit thank you so yeah that is also a concern of mine I was hoping for something more along the lines of support contingent upon the legislature identifying and providing resources working with community college districts to provide the necessary resources in order to um establish such programs that was my hope that we would get somewhere close so we can say we because I support that I mean I actually absolutely support this but councilmer clever and then council councilmer matthews thank you uh yeah so I could I could accept that friendly amendment to vice mayor with regards to that specific language uh that the city of santa Cruz supports uh resources for students at community colleges not have to sleep in their cars uh and this bill specifically and this is you know paraphrasing but um but contingent upon there being funding allocated to support the colleges that are being mandated to do the sleeping programs absolutely um the other thing I just want to mention uh just to make sure that our you know the statements that are being made are clearly understood by the community um I do think it's a little dangerous for us to conflate the installation and mandatory acceptance of 5g which has potential health complications to the mandatory creation of safe sleeping spaces for students that are experiencing homelessness so uh just for people who are watching this later and didn't see the earlier conversation I am against federal mandates of us having to put in potentially dangerous technology that impacts people's health I am not against the state mandating there to be safe and uh secure sleeping spaces for students experiencing homelessness so I just want to make that expressly clear for everybody okay council member mayors I think I'll just weigh in um I I appreciate um the trustee showing today you know uh coming today to explain why the bill is not quite what is needed for the system to actually be successful and and potentially looking at this as a as a possibility to help students who are experiencing or who are on the house so um I I you know I respect that um Cabrillo college the trustees and the president and other community colleges who it sounds like they're quite a few across the state who are struggling with this bill um I mean they are the ones that needed to be at the table they need to work with the legislator and I think um I'm very comfortable with us expressing not that we don't support as any community that uh if students are expecting experiencing homelessness you know we would like to have make sure those students are taken care of but I do agree that we could we could come up with language with uh you know would guide that opposed until amended opposed similar to the type of language we've heard so for the purposes of possibly moving this forward I'm wondering if we could have the motion include uh to work with our Cabrillo college um uh folks to to design the language of what that would include in in terms of supporting the bill at this time with x y and z modifications I just without a further kind of understanding of what that needs to be it's hard for me to sort of understand how to specify that at this time and given the number of items that we have before us I I fear we could have a very long conversation without being able to address some of the other items that we have coming up councilmember um Matthews and then councilmember Brown to my mind it's really different to say I support this bill pending amendment when you don't really support the bill as written as opposed to saying appreciate the intent um but withhold endorsement until amended and that's what groups you've got a lot more power if you say we support the intention but we're not going to support it until it's amended I think a lot more power I think that that's not the motion on the floor I know but that's I was just going to say just by way of background that is the standard typical way that when bills are reviewed you either support it you oppose or you oppose if amended that's the standard approach that's used by certainly by the league of the cities just to give you that background okay okay councilmember Brown then vice mayor comes well having been a legislative advocate that's written many letters on assembly and senate bills I know that many of those included support contingent upon language and so that was what I'm hoping for I would not support um sending or I'd I'd prefer to say nothing than to say we oppose this um so um that was my hope that we were just going to get a and I could be very simple support contingent upon the um legislature providing resources to help fund these programs and work with community college districts to make them to develop them okay I was I was just going to say that that's pretty much that was going to be the words on the friendly amendment that I was hoping that we'd be able to adopt I was going to suggest that vice mayor Cummings repeat his friendly amendment language just so that we make sure we've had it um have it for the record just given the length of the discussion since the since the language was introduced yeah I would appreciate having the whole thing typed up for us to look at since it's wandered around okay why don't we go ahead and have a repeat of the of the motion I'm not sure if we will type it up but if you know if that's a possibility we could do that okay why don't you go ahead and repeat the motion then why don't you repeat the amendment absolutely so since we've moved some things around just a little bit uh and of course now this agenda report's not pulling up um the here we go so a motion to direct the mayor to send a letter of support for AB 302 contingent on amendments that allocate funding to the colleges as well as working with the colleges to develop the programs that was a fusion of the two okay and then do you want to add your friendly amendment I think my friendly amendment was included in what yeah was it because it's making it less confusing I mean I could read the one that's here and then he could do his second amendment or his amendment if that would make it easier not necessarily I think if you if that's the motion before us that's the motion before us um you know before we have that up I know and I don't want to open up a lot a long dialogue at this point but I do know we have folks from Cabrillo here and I just I think it's really important to understand your position if if that supports you in doing the work that you need to do to support your students I don't know if you need to speak on behalf it feels to me that it's actually an opposition from the position of Cabrillo but I'm not a hundred percent clear do you feel comfortable speaking to that thank you mayor and city council members I'm christin fevos and the director of marketing communications at Cabrillo college and I also do government and community relations as well so yes I think for this bill we would definitely we and the other 114 community colleges in the california system would want there to be funding from the state would need there to be funding from the state in order to implement this effectively I believe that trusty quavis referenced a meeting that we had with assembly member burman when this bill was first released and talking about the campus commons idea and a safe parking lot um which I think was really innovative um from our director of planning um that um whole infrastructure which was admittedly a little bit more than I think assembly member burman had envisioned had an 11 million dollar price tag on it there are 114 community colleges in the system and the league's estimation of 68 million system-wide um I think is is a good starting point for basic sanitation and security services but is still conservative so I would agree that um supporting this if amended to include funding and resources for community colleges would be essential for effective implementation across the system okay I appreciate your perspective thank you okay do we want to go ahead and show that so in your restate you didn't mention the resolution are you including that well I think in the resolution language that it says we officially endorse it uh so it would have to change the resolution language to match the statement of support contingent on the allocation of funds from the state to support community college and colleges in developing the program but uh it had to change line one so that it's not it's formally formally endorsing assembly bill ab 302 contingent upon allocating funds to colleges same I just copy so it should be a one two one also drop one you could just write and either way great and I did want to put thanks I did just want to clarify also with the statement of the marketing director just mentioned you just cited 11 million dollars for an entire complex area for students to engage in not just a sleeping program I wanted to make sure that that is abundantly clear in the record and then um also just with the 16 community colleges that were cited by the other trustee that have come out uh as was just mentioned uh by the communications coordinator there are 114 community colleges so that would put it at roughly 10 percent uh have written in opposition so just to put those out there as far as numbers yes so 16 community colleges got their letters in in time to the chairs of the senate education committee and the senate judiciary committee um per my conversation with the chancellor's office there were several who submitted letters they weren't in time I asked him if he thought it was fair to state that most of the community colleges statewide most of the 114 were opposed to this bill and he said yes thanks mayor that was my next question that for council member lover do you know how many community colleges wrote letters in favor and support of this bill I did not look at the numbers of fours and against with regards to letters written to the senate I might be able to pull that but it in the initial time I can give you that information later it's since it includes the the their primary concern is the funding so if we can resolve the funding situation I don't think it's a moot point Mr. Ghandani I just wanted to point out I hadn't read the resolution before this afternoon's meeting so I apologize but I would like to point out that references to the camping ordinance chapter 636 are not totally accurate given that the council has adopted a resolution suspending the enforcement of chapter 636 and related standard operating procedures pending an amendment to conform to the requirements of the martin versus poise decision so you might want to consider striking that language just I would just offer that for your consideration council member matthewson and council member clever the legislative year will continue can we defer this till we come back I think it's I I don't think it's adequately for me it's not adequately adequately informed personally so I don't feel comfortable supporting it at this time but it's on the agenda because there was a strong interest by council member clever to have it on the agenda so absolutely thank you take the vote on it if we wanted so just with regards to I mean it's unfortunate that just now the city attorney is looking at the resolution which was submitted a week and a half ago for review but would totally be okay with striking the specific citation ordinance number from the resolution if that's the only issue that the city attorney sees with regards to the language and then I would just move to call the question so we can move forward second okay I was just going to point out there's another one in light of your conversation that you might want to consider it says whereas assembly bill has been found to have minimal fiscal impacts and is therefore a non-appropriation measure that's another whereas that you might want to take out and then you'd want to modify to include the revised language as well okay so those modifications accepted okay so we have a call to the question made by council member clever seconded by council member brown all those in favor of calling the question all those in favor of calling the question please say aye aye any opposed no all those in favor of the motion before us please say aye opposed no so that passes with council member brown vice mayor Cummings crone and Glover voting in support Matthews Meyers and myself voting against at this time and I would like it to be entered into the record I'm fully supportive of the intent but not of the specific language you could echo that for me yeah I would like to similarly okay so we're going to go ahead and now go back and thank you for being here we'll go back to item number 30 no forget item number 29 on our on our agenda and this is a recommendation to form a ad hoc revenue committee we discussed as the process being that the council subcommittee focused on the budget would take into consideration interest from council members on the formation of the revenue subcommittee and I appreciate the interest of council members wanting to serve on that committee the suggestion brought forward by myself and council member brown and vice mayor Cummings is to have an appoint as the initial committee council member brown and council member Matthews to serve in that in that capacity is there any additional insights or elements I missed from my colleagues that you'd like to share at this time no okay are there any questions at this time council member crone just wanting from the city clerk what did you go if how norm how often has the two-person subcommittee has a city entertained two-person subcommittee has that ever happened before and I think it's probably fair for city manager martin and bonnie asked me that question earlier today and I don't see additional research but from my time being here I can't recall the there being a two-member committee although it's not there's nothing prohibiting that from being the case but typically we've had three member committees and I'm just wondering mayor in light of you know you had earlier said that you know there would be other subcommittees and other subcommittee assignments I definitely like to be on this subcommittee I know other council members would as well I would just I don't necessarily think that it precludes for a third sub council member to potentially join the subcommittee what we sort of discussed was essentially the sort of first iteration of it would be council member brown and matthews and then with further conversation with the full council at that time and which could essentially also incorporate having an additional council member if if felt appropriate I also which I'm absolutely you know supportive having that conversation I also wanted to mention that in our discussion we talked about this being a committee so we're we're looking at revenue enhancements in Siri in a package in a series and kind of potentially laying out a longer timeline for various revenue enhancements and so this one would be for the the sprint the march primary and then another committee will be established was one of the reasons I agreed to take on this mission because I wasn't you know sure that that what that would look like for the longer haul so that being said this is for you know for one round and if people want to talk about having a third member I'm absolutely in fact I supported that in the beginning so there's not a motion on the floor right not at this time well I would I would nominate uh council member Glover to be a member of that subcommittee as well because I think that um you know three three is the rule or has been for you know firmly established in Santa Cruz okay council member Myers yeah I just like to state I actually appreciate um very much that there was two people selected for this committee and I think it's um it's very reflective of what this council where this council is right now so I appreciate that um council member Brown and council member Matthews are willing to sort of you know facilitate this in this first step I think it's very important that we um this is the most important work that's ahead of us because we have a declining very serious declining budget problem that's going to hit us again next year and it's going to be much larger than what we did this year and so I think the the work of this committee is is so important right now and I just I'm very thankful that you guys are willing to serve in this I think you both bring a level of experience you've worked together on difficult subjects and I just think right now we're we're not unfortunately we're not in a place where I think a third member would be counterproductive frankly. Vice Mayor Cummings and then we'll go ahead maybe open it up to the community and then return for action. I was just going to say that being one of the members of this committee who made these recommendations um similarly I I feel that um council members um Matthews and Brown would be really good to be on this committee and I think that one thing that was difficult when we were trying to decide the makeup of the committee is just um really trying to think about you know who could be in this in that third position and the fact that I think everybody on the city council currently would really want to work on this and just you know for some of us there are different constraints other and then you know whether or not um there might be contention around the makeup of this committee and so personally I would be happy moving forward with the recommendations that we've provided thus far and then allowing for council members Matthews and Brown to discuss whether they would want to have an additional person and then allow them to identify the person who they think that they would be willing to work with since they're going to be the ones um really working on this over the next few months and as council member Myers said this is something that's going to be extremely important for our community because we need to um be able to have something that's going to come before the city that that the members of our community are going to be interested in adopting as we try to address some of our long-term revenue enhancement issues. Go ahead maybe see if there's any member of the community who wants to address this on this item. Okay come on up you'll have up to two minutes. Elise Caspi this is an interesting issue for uh I think we're at as a council and I just want to um to say that uh in the last issue that we talked about the um Cabrillo colleges need to provide students who don't have places to sleep I think that some things came out in the discussion uh particularly council member Brown talked about uh mandated bills that don't provide financial assistance and what a problem they are so I do appreciate that council member Matthews and council member Brown have a wealth of experience between them and I think that the comment that council member Donna Myers just made and I I'm assuming a little bit so I could be wrong on this I just want to say that but she's saying that there's a political reality that council member Brown and Matthews both together represent different constituencies to some degree and having these people work together is a beneficial thing my concern is and again there's a lot of dynamics going on there a little a little oblique to the to me being a member of the public but when uh Chris recommends Drew to be on the committee I think that what that speaking to is a couple of things first of all uh council member Glover has proven to be a paradigm shift voice he is incredibly creative with how he sees uh solving problems and he brings that creativity in a way that is very pragmatic at the same time not having as much experience perhaps working on governmental bodies um so maybe not having that temperament tempered not temperament tempered reality uh voice but I do think that we need people who are willing to shake up the system because there are constituencies that are not being provided for out there all right we'll go ahead and come back to the council for action and deliberation um and we'll go ahead and vice mayor Cummings and then council member Glover I'm going to move the recommendation um to approve the ad hoc revenue committee scope of work and appoint council members Brown and Matthews to the city council ad revenue committee I'll suck at that vice mayor Cummings seconded by council member Myers council member Glover yeah well I think the community member for the kind words um I will express my disappointment in not being selected for the revenue subcommittee uh I look forward to communication ideally with one or more members of the subcommittee group or hearing their recommendations with regards to revenue solutions especially in a situation right now when we are uh underpaying our workers cutting community programs and looking at a whole bunch other issues I think a aggressive approach towards revenue generation for the city is what's needed uh and thinking outside the box getting creative and making it work um I'm also disappointed there's no representation of people of color on that committee and so while it's wonderful that there are different constituencies uh there is a homogeneity on that body which unfortunately does not include a percentage or a population of the community and now for the first time in the history of the city we can have the perspective of a non-white male from the african-american perspective come and provide suggestions for revenue generation however um like I said before after expressing my disappointment for not being selected I will respect the mayor's decision and look forward to revenue conversations moving forward right um I'll just a couple of quick comments on this there will be um presumably our finance director um department will staff this and I think it just in terms of brown act we can come back on this but if people do have suggestions it's probably best to go to staff and then that comes to committee rather than get complicated right off the bat and the other thing I'll just say the agenda report refers to something that might come forward on the march 2020 ballot but certainly we get talking about the possibilities we're looking forward to a november election as well so we'll see I mean it may be do this in march and punt to a new ad hoc committee that's right the november let's move around yeah I I just want to make a quick comment about this because this is um well I just want to be clear that I I'm I absolutely would be supportive of another a third person being on this committee I um and I feel like I can work with any and all of my colleagues in that sit at this dais so and having those conversations can be um you know challenging but they can also be productive in as they challenge us so I absolutely would support having a third member um everybody on this uh on this council had expressed interest in being on this committee if that doesn't happen I do hope that we can seriously consider having uh you know a range of perspectives um and and mixing it up a little bit so we can get to some you know creative solutions for round two of our revenue enhancements comes and become um I won't be supporting the motion I just want to say for the record that I think a two person from what what information I've gathered a two person subcommittee is unprecedented in Santa Cruz um and for that reason I'm not going to support the motion okay recommendation okay so we have a motion and a second motion by vice mayor coming second by council member Myers all those in favor please say aye aye opposed so that passes with a council member Brown Matthews vice mayor Cummings myself council member Myers and I believe council member Glover voting in support with council member crone voting against okay so we'll go ahead I'll just say I feel like this motion is I don't know what TV show or movie or figure movie figure but this is your assignment should you choose to accept we have a mission impossible moment here for the community okay so we'll go ahead and move on to item number 30 on our agenda and that's the beach area parking meter rate ordinance updates and we have our staff hearing good afternoon council uh brian raguno parking program manager for public works department uh just a brief recap of the staff report and the ordinance updates that are in your packet um through the budgetary process and the adoption of the fiscal year 20 budget that you guys took action on at the last meeting uh one of the considerations for revenue generation was increasing the beach meter parking rates um so before you is the ordinances that need to be amended to include that rate change um we had the opportunity to potentially go up to a 24 percent increase uh what's reflected is roughly a 20 percent increase just to get to a nice round number from a programming standpoint um but I'd be happy to answer any specific questions there's no material changes to the ordinance other than the rate tables to reflect that 20 percent increase that was directed by the council to staff for there any questions council member clever can we go to 24 percent the difficulty in that is you end up in a dollar 86 or some odd number and from a programming standpoint when you're equating sense to minutes it's not a clean way to program so with the dollar 80 you actually arrive at eight minutes and 20 seconds which makes nice round numbers for what they get for quantity um we could consider it but then there is a disconnect between what value the public's getting on that calculation all right thank you any other questions at this time seeing them we'll go ahead and see if there's any members of the community who wanted to address us on item number 30 on our agenda okay seeing them we'll go ahead and return back to council for action council member seconds that council motion by council member matthew seconded by vice mayor Cummings all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that two passes unanimously a minute wow that's impressive all right so we'll go ahead and now um have item number 31 uh heard before us and I know several of our councillors brought this forward if see if I can beat that I can't uh so uh again this is uh this was referred to us through the league of california cities um it's a request to um write a letter to direct the mayor to write a letter of support um to both the assembly and senate committees that are hearing senate bill 54 and assembly bill 1080 for the california circular economy and plastic pollution pollution reduction act uh we did work with our waste um management uh manager on the language of the uh agenda item it was very much a priority for our public works department to express this and um I think it's a great thing for our city to be have our name on and so I hope the council supports it any questions from members thank you for bringing this forward for us to support I should say yeah we should we hope the of course yes okay if we have no is there any member of the community who wants to address us on this item this is item number 31 of our council agenda okay seeing them we'll go ahead and return back fraction count vice mayor comings um I'd like to move the recommendation I just wanted to make a comment too that um one thing that I forgot to mention earlier with the presentation that we had from ambag was that um microplastics are becoming one of the biggest um pollutants to our Monterey Bay ecosystem and to many of the other ecosystems and is getting into our food supplies and so we really need to take a hard stance and really start addressing plastics especially in clothing and all the other ways that microplastics can enter ecosystems second councilmember matt just a comment in addition to this um councilmember mires brown and I met with um representative of save our shores and waste reduction staff um with a long list of great ideas of local policies that we can work in work on in conjunction with the county so we'll come forward in addition to the state legislation I think with some very again aggressive and forward-looking local measures we look forward to seeing this comes from around now I would just add that microfibers is included on that list okay great okay any members of the community who want to address this on this item seeing them we'll go ahead and return back for action I believe um I don't know we don't have a motion oh no we do have a motion I already did this forgive me vice mayor Cummings uh seconded by councilmember mires all those in favor please oh I'm sorry councilmember Glover excuse me all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously so we'll go ahead and move on to item number 32 on our councilmember agenda councilmember glover since this was initiated by you would you I care to introduce the item sure we could do it together since we co-sponsored this thing wow hey oh so this is a resolution supporting assembly bill 392 which is also known as the california act to save lives this has to do with redefining the appropriate times when police officers or peace officers can use deadly force it's changing some word wording around on the state level and so the motion or the recommendation is to send a letter of support to the state legislators around the issue supporting it and moving it forward also acknowledging the resolution that you'll find attached to it just the realities of police violence and the need to address these issues we got a chance to run the resolution past the police department who reviewed it gave some feedback and those additions were included so we have the support of police department in the language change I guess I'll just echo those comments and I appreciate the police department's weighing in and it's nice to see that it's gaining traction at the state level in terms of bipartisan support so hopefully this will be an opportunity for us to really move a positive bill forward are there any questions from the council at this time is there any member of the community who'd like to address us on this item okay seeing none I'll move the item okay second so the motion by council member Myers second did by vice mayor Cummings all those in favor please say aye opposed okay that passes unanimously thank you for bringing this to us my pleasure our pleasure our pleasure okay we already heard item number 33 on our agenda so we're going straight to item number 34 and that is the support for janice labor negotiations and it was an item that was continued with a uh I think uh understanding that there was going to be more of a conversation with some of the leadership there in regards to the item do did that okay I'll start us off I know a few council members had conversations I'm interested to hear feedback on that the results of those conversations so I did meet with uh janice uh CEO uh upon his request and had a you know long and um comprehensive conversation about um the issues and and some of the concerns that he had as uh the director of the organization absolutely understandable particularly related to the fiscal challenges that the organization has as do many non all nonprofits I mean not there's and public entities yes there may be a few nonprofits out there that aren't in this don't have this challenge but I don't know of any um so we did have a conversation and we also had a conversation about um the uh kind of how we can better come together to address and begin to provide support um and resources to address our um opioid crisis because it is as we all know one of the most pressing challenges that we face um right now with respect to um addiction and the you know we we just don't have the resources and I hope that those are going to be coming from the state but I don't think that we can just kind of wish for them and think that they're going to appear just because everybody knows it's a problem so I do think that we have a role that we really need to play and be more proactive uh about in terms of the specifics of the um you know what was brought forward in the resolution that at the time um Mr. Escalante said there were some inaccuracies in it um I asked him to explain what those were I didn't get uh he didn't mention he was not able to when we looked at it he didn't bring up anything and specifically that was was not factual um and you know and I and I'm just going to be honest and say that there were some some real um I saw some continued challenges I mean I don't think that we um came to any resolution of agreement about what's going on with this um you know unionization effort um the career effort for uh to get a fair contract he suggested that implicit in the resolution in the language of um asking that they um that Janice as an organization and its workers bargain in good faith implied that there was not good faith um and I that it was not my intention at all and it was not my intention in um because I think I originally initiated bringing this forward and asked my colleagues to sign on um I you know I'm not questioning the faith of anybody involved here what I am hoping for is that the two sides will get back together and try to find some resolution to this because it's not good for worker morale and that is not good for the clients the very very people who are really marginalized who are very much in need of supportive services and workers who are under tremendous pressure um at very low wages and um so I just think for the purpose of labor peace as I do with all any and all labor negotiations that it's important that that happens and so I um I'd like to um move move that we move ahead and adopting the resolution I would also want to add to that though if the my colleagues who signed on with me are agreeable that um we um move forward um well I guess actually I don't need to add this because I don't want to ask staff to do a lot of work on this but I would I'll just say I would like to um move forward to to bring uh you know a resolution of the kind that um Mr. Escalante suggested that expresses the uh Santa Cruz City Council's perspective on um you know living wages you know the ability for nonprofit wages to increase etc so it's it's a broader conversation and the broader conversation about the opioid crisis I don't want to lose track of those so I will be communicating with um some of you all and hopefully bring something to the council agenda but in the meantime I'd like to move uh that we adopt this resolution today okay second okay um vice mayor Cummings and then we'll go ahead maybe open it up to public comment so I just want to share I mean I just want to um knowledge some of the information that um councilmember Brown brought up because we were both in the same meeting so I don't want to reiterate everything that she said but one of the pieces that I do want to reiterate is that when bringing this forward we were not making any accusations about any of the the people involved in the bargaining bargaining and bad faith um we are just expressing with this that we um really want as saying as councilmember Brown mentioned that the workers the union and the management are bargaining in good faith to try to get the best contract possible for what in our community is one of our most necessary assets because we all understand and know how much um addiction services are needed we all know how many how much we need beds in our community and these services are some of the only services that we have to address these issues that we have around addiction and the need for addiction services um additionally one of the things that came up in the meeting is just the need for us as a local municipality to advocate to our assembly members and to advocate to our senators and the governor for more funding for treatment because there's a lot of money coming out around homelessness and treatment addiction services and treatment is a piece of that and so I think it's very important that we as a governing body and representatives of our community um in the coming months also um make resolutions and put and ask our um our higher representatives to you know recommend that we get more funding for these these issues um in these services and so this is why I'm um in support of this today. Go ahead and maybe see if there's any member of the community who'd like to address us on this item please come forward and you'll have up to two minutes. Hi my name is Maisie Matter I am a treatment technician at Janice and I just wanted to address how the turnover and the understaffing really affects our um ability to care for clients um adequately so just within the last month or two there's been four people from my department alone that quit before their first uh or their um for two weeks two of them they quit their first day one she quit her third day and the next one he quit within two weeks um this job is just extremely stressful on people and I feel that 13 15 and you know up to 1650 is just not nearly enough to um stick with that kind of work um another thing that came up recently was over the weekend it was this girl's like third or fourth shift and she uh had to work it alone from 2 a.m to 6 45 a.m which from what I've heard is illegal we have almost 40 clients and one girl was working there she's not even allowed to you know dispense medication yet because she's only been there for a week and she was given no support by supervisors or anything to have anybody else come in between two and six um uh some people recently have been working 12 hours 16 hour days multiple days in a row because we're so understaffed and um this directly affects the client care because we get stressed and we kind of put that on other people um and then the thing that upsets me the most is that clients are there to uh be part of a therapeutic process and their recovery and one of those things that we provide is a beach walk every day and on Sundays for the last three to four weeks besides the last one uh because I stayed two hours late so I could do that with them uh they were deprived of that because of understaffing thank you thank you any additional members of the community want to address this on this item good afternoon Scott Graham um being a former union member I realize how important it is for people to get together and demand fair wages for the work they do and this work is very important uh in our society right now I America has a real addiction problem it's not just here in Santa Cruz it's nationwide I mean I was in a small town in northern Maine and there was people addicted to heroin so it's like it's everywhere you know I I know there was a big thing on the news a year or so ago about addiction in New Hampshire and it's the same thing it's these little tiny towns in the middle of nowhere where there's heroin and it's it's pervasive and uh hopefully the uh workers at Janice can get paid a fair wage for the work they're doing and that they the Janice itself can expand or maybe some other group can come into town and provide more beds for the people that need these services because right now there's just not enough beds for the people that need help there's just uh not enough services for them and it just compounds the problem to leave people you know either out in the streets or in their parents basement or wherever they are suffering because they can't get treatment at the time you know the the main thing is getting treatment when they want it not when they're imposed on them by the courts or anything else but when they feel the need for treatment they should be able to get that treatment because that's the window of opportunity to help them thank you okay we'll go ahead and um return to the council at this time for um action that council member Matthews I just had one side conversation here since the uh language at the end of the resolution calls on Janice to bargain in good faith implying that it's not it said there was some conversation about that I just uh suggested a modification resolved that the city council calls on Janice and its workforce to re-engage in serious communication and bargaining that results in a contract covering compensation and working conditions and so we sort of we did sort of have a motion on on the floor before opening it up and that was by council member brown seconded by council member glover are you all accept that okay so we have a friendly amendment accepted okay made by council member Matthews that's been accepted by council member Brown and Glover in regards to that modification I appreciate that I noticed that as well okay thank you for the follow-up and um further and further exploration for understanding and modification unless there's any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously all right why don't we take just maybe a short little uh moment of five minutes as we get the next item um queued up for us and that's item number 35 on our agenda and good call let's say on a cruise together what that's just information all right we're gonna um reconvene our meeting here at this time we're actually on item number 35 of our afternoon agenda and that is a item regarding recommendations for data collection related to rental housing I'll just also remind the council that before we break for our evening item we'll go ahead and have the further conversation regarding the water item brought back before us then so we have one more item after this before we move on to the evening item so we'll go ahead and ask staff at this time to introduce the item and then we'll open it up for questions from council members my name is Sarah Noisy I work in the planning department and I'm here with our code compliance manager Laura Landry to um offer your council this presentation about um a rental housing data collection effort so look just a little bit of background this is going to be a very short presentation so um during the June 11th hearing um the discussion of the final report from our consultant from CCP about the feasibility of doing a rental housing task force um one of several issues that was identified was a lack of mutually trusted impartial data about rental housing this is one of the stumbling blocks facing any kind of effort that would address um rental housing needs and conflicts between landlords and tenants and so the vice mayor um made a motion essentially in order to uh allow this that topic to be agendized so that we can begin a conversation the council can have a discussion today and and then we can sort of start that community process and conversation excuse me so just a very little bit of background this was covered in a little bit of detail in your um staff report there are several other cities that have rental registry regulations we summarize briefly in the staff report these five um all of these services or registries that we were able to identify operate in support of a rent stabilization or tenant protection ordinance or code which the city doesn't currently have so in consulting with the city attorney um they have confirmed that the city does have the authority to collect data about um rental housing units um of the nature identified in the motion um under our police power and again I just want to make it really clear to the public there were a lot of um comments in the correspondence that we received talking about the city you know implementing a program today that is not where we are in the process this is the very beginning of a conversation and there will absolutely be a community process and stakeholders will be consulted and we have our community outreach policy that we would be following should any ordinance be directed by your council so I just want to make sure that's on the table so this evening just to provide a little bit of a framework for your conversation staff has sort of come up with like the top five questions and these are in order of priority for us and really what it comes down to is if your council could get very clear among the seven of yourselves what is the goal of your data collection is this a one-time survey effort to support work by a future task force is this an ongoing program that you'd like to create somewhere in the city to like manage and collect this data over time so so what's the goal right because those have become two different programs that we would initiate for you there could be anywhere in between um how would this information be used is this something that would be reported out in aggregate annually quarterly at will is this something that would be um available to the public is it something that would be available um only to tenants and landlords for their particular unit um you know how are we going to be using this information and then if you guys can really focus on those two top two questions um staff could come back with recommendations on these other um three questions if there's anything that sticks out to you that you are aware of that it's very important to you that um there is a specific type of information collected absolutely make that part of the motion that would be really helpful to us to have for when we come back next time but so the third question is sort of what information is most important to collect um would the debt the collected data be subject to review or approval by the city or would it simply be collected um and then would how would non-compliance be addressed would we leave it as a civil matter between landlords and tenants and then the code sort of supports the tenant to um you know have their rights respected or would it be an issue where we're involving our code enforcement so that's kind of how we've sort of envisioned your conversation this evening so as mentioned in the staff report there is with every project a little bit of an opportunity cost there would be multiple city departments that would be involved in any implementation of this effort IT advanced planning our code compliance and rental inspection service also not mentioned here is our housing section in economic development may be involved to some degree sort of depends again on the you know scope and extent of the program that your council chooses to pursue um and then implementation implementation and timing and also sort of the fiscal impact um of the program will be able to have more detailed information about that once we answer these sort of high level questions and start this conversation we'll be able to come back and have um you know better estimates and more specific information about those things at a future date so then our staff recommendation is that by motion your council accept the report and provide direction regarding the goal or goals the intended use the scope and extent of a rental housing data collection effort and we are here to answer any questions you might have at this time well i just want to first acknowledge and thank you for the short turn short turnaround in timeline in producing this gender report before us um is there any questions from the council at this time i want to make a comment that um i'd sent i'd submitted um some information received through the community to um staff and city manager and i just wanted to and i'd shared that with the other members of the city council um this is all information that was brought to me by members of the by members of our community and thought that it would be um and it's what influenced this coming forward and so i just wanted to share that with everyone as we begin to as we begin this discussion around the process and um this potential program moving forward i'm wondering if we want to reserve that um sort of summary and explanation of the document until after we have public comment okay are there any questions at this time from staff for staff okay we'll go ahead and then um move the item to the public comment portion of today's agenda and i'll just um acknowledge that i received a um request from Lynn Renshaw representing Santa Cruz together for additional time and you'll have four minutes and then i'll open it up for other counts other um community members to address the council hi Lynn Renshaw, SantaCruzTogether.com i think i can do this in two minutes and save some time um i was happy to hear that a public input process is being contemplated and i hope that it engages all impacted stakeholders to act without meaningful public outreach would further erode public trust so thank you for that point um i want to echo a little bit about what is the purpose of data collection through the rental registry is it to understand rents and increases some neutral information is already available at the american community survey where the census bureau has rental information for Santa Cruz compiled from compiled from 2010 to 2017 it's at www.census.gov slash programs slash survey slash acs is it to understand the number of evictions that information is readily available at the superior court sanacruzlocal.org just compiled that data and found 13 evictions a month in 2018 trending down from 2017 most evictions are due to non-payment of rent is it there's a purpose to understand the housing stock that information is readily available in the sanacruz city housing element i've read that about 14 times it'd be a good idea to take another look why isn't staff analyzing available data first why would the city institutionalize this registry and create a new bureaucracy at least before looking at existing data it should be noted that these burdensome registries primarily exist in rent control cities and nearly all only register larger apartment buildings this is not a standard practice or a common practice in other cities and it certainly doesn't relate closely to sanacruz needs and it certainly doesn't solve any problems are you letting are you planning to let people understand the costs in city staff and dollars and also an opportunity cost taking away from other programs they could be working on san jose's registry requires one staff per 1000 units so at a similar rate that would be over 10 city employees to manage this registry what will the public process around this policy include rental registries are currently the subject of four pending federal lawsuits in the state of california the issue is fourth amendment invasion of privacy if this leads to a lawsuit and then a federal lawsuit how much will that cost what public services will be cut to afford that litigation for the interested people watching at home and i've learned there are quite a few people who watch this every every time on tv join our newsletter at sanacruz together com thank you so now we'll go ahead and see if any other member of the community would like to address this and you'll have up to two minutes all right i'm carrot philip well it may be true that some people wish there were better information about rent increases rather than rely on lies exaggerations and politically orchestrated falsehoods this kind of data collection if made permanent does some damage to our privacy as a people as a temporary measure to establish some data it could partially provide a piece of the data set necessary to dispel some lives but not enough as a permanent measure it is big brother breathing down the necks of these private citizens voluntarily entering to and executing legal contracts it is one step from this to making it a crime to enter into an otherwise legal contract but be guilty of a crime by not reporting quite ordinary information in this sense it's quite or willion and i'm not going to read the rest of it but we looked at this last in the beginning of the year and i i looked for information and there it was some information that i wasn't satisfied with there was the ucsc rental advertised prices that were sort of divided by kind of housing and there was zilla information on the value of houses what i would say is that you have no interest in the value of real estate which is the other half of the the reality of it because you know it's different running a shack in the back or a mansion you know tenants are renting value with certain property rights and the value matters and the changes in value matter and so when you don't look at that you only have a part of the story that is subject to political football you know tossing around but it really doesn't mean anything okay so and what i found looking at the data from you know last year was not what you'd expect that when you look at ratios of rent to asset values you find that actually during well it was pretty bad because the housing recession was a housing recession and so you had a lot a lot of people thank you hi my name is alayna cohen and i'd just like to echo the comments that lin renshaw made and also put in a special plug for having the kind of community community engagement discussions that the planning department offered i think it was in 2016 before measure m i participated in that with other members of the um uh sanacus together and the planning department and we had all been hoping that um other community members who had a different approach would participate in that including the people who supported measure m and um they did not participate in that and i would really urge the city council to have those that kind of community engagement meetings before they decide whether they are going whether this kind of data collection is going to be a one-time event or something that's part of a more formal registry because i think to make the decision to have a more formal registry without having that kind of input and without having a meaningful analysis analysis and discussion of what data we currently have and what are the problems with that data and to have a civil conversation about that with people who are mutually concerned about trying to resolve this problem um i think that that's a really important step for us to have before we go into any other more um more detailed work related to this thank you very much hi i'm steve roar i hate public speaking but i'm here because i feel compelled to um it sounds like maybe we're moving towards more strict rent control i want all of you to know i'm a flawed human being like you all i think we should look for rather than having a certain political ideology we want to look ahead and see what the results are so let's review things a little bit when measure m went forward according to a relic i just talked to there were over a hundred homes on the west side that were rental properties that sold and they became owner occupied most of them and the reason for that being if you make an environment that is hostile towards landlords why are they going to stay in that business my wife and i are using our rentals to subsidize our income my retirement pay is very very small the people that live in my rentals i have two rentals one is a group of students their parents income is part of the review process their parents every one of them their parents income is four times our income the other house i have is a dean at ucs uh across the hill at san jose state his income is also three times my income when i was working that that i'm retired it's about five times so if you just arbitrarily pass rent control and for the sake of argument let's say you go backwards my wife and i is retirement is going to be dropped and the people that live in our properties who have an income come four or five times ours are going to get a discount so if rent control is pushed at least put in some of these policies to make sure that people that are barely getting by aren't going to be punished thank you we'll go ahead and do this good evening everybody and thank you for allowing us to speak in this forum and to kind of analyze the situation as to looking for data i did send an email regarding i think two very interesting groups that have provided some interesting data i there's a link in my email and i refer to the center for california real estate all of the universities are participating in it including stanford and berkeley and they um have entitled the particular report rather than be going into everything about it is that rent control hurts low income families and increases costs for all renters that data that is in that particular article is really really valid and important and considering the fact that the universities are participating in this and have the data that we're trying to seek the cost of this to do this on a local level just for what's going on now dealing with the expenses and the financial status of the city i would say we should not go there we need to let the the students already doing it at the at the university level the other article that i brought up was the brookings institute which was done in october 18 of 2018 and there's a quotation there with that that also goes with the link rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants but in the long run decreases affordability fuels gentrification and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood so at the conclusion of the article was the following statement and i this is very important because this is not a biased report or biased interest the authors did not receive any financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article they are currently not an officer director or whatever so thank you so much right are any other members of the community wanting to address us on this item you'll be our last all right good afternoon sky graham i don't see any problem with collecting data on rentals as a matter of fact i would say that one way of doing the collection is to send whatever questionnaires you come up with to the landlords to the landlords rental agencies or whatever but also send that same questionnaire to the renters and see how much difference there is between the two questionnaires because i'm sure there would be differences and pause you for a second bunny i'm not sure okay go ahead um so i you know i i'd like to see uh some data on what you know what's going on here and part of that data is uh how many housing units have been lost because of the rental inspection uh program um and i i would hope that the property owners who have lost those rentals would uh contact you and let you know because i'm not sure if you're getting the correct data from the planning department there's i've heard of several i actually knew a woman that three of the places she rented she had to leave because the planning department shut them down but through the rental inspection ordinance so um i think it's there's there's a lot higher number of units lost than what they're claiming and i would hope that uh you know there's a bunch of fear going around now that this is some sort of backdoor to uh rent control and i don't think that this is not a backdoor to rent control this is an information gathering thing so you have an idea of what's going on out there i mean our landlord's taking advantage of this uh rental market and increasing their rents you know 50 100 percent from what they were five years ago thank you i just want to acknowledge that are you interested in speaking on this item okay then you'll be our last speaker i believe is there any other member of the community okay you'll have up to two minutes good afternoon um i'm here to speak my name is brennan robbins and i'm here to speak for the tenants who can't be here today because they're at work and this item has been scheduled for the afternoon session um in short because i just got here about five minutes ago it didn't have time to write a speech i support the rental registry it's the least you can do to find out what's actually going on here in Santa Cruz for tenants um i don't know why everyone here is only talking about rent control because i was under the impression we aren't discussing that tonight um and now that the rent freeze is gone and no fall evictions have resumed i think that this collecting this kind of data is going to be essential to understanding how to move forward with a or even whether to move forward with any kind of protection at all for tenants um in addition it also just will provide information that perhaps uh students might know want to know before coming to UC Santa Cruz that we can use as a foundation for good policy um so in short i support the rent the rental registry and urge you to vote for it thank you all right so we're going to go ahead and return to the council for um action and deliberation at this time and um i don't know i know i'll just maybe briefly if maybe the staff wants to elaborate i know rent control was referenced in regards to jurisdictions that have these types of registries but the topic before us is essentially the registry at this time correct the data collection yeah the topic before before your council this evening is um what type of data collection are you interested in doing in looking for other examples around the state what we were able to find are places that have a collection data collection or registration program that supports a rent stabilization um ordinance so you know what we're talking about this evening is a program that you know should it be an ongoing program would require some kind of an ordinance be written locally it would that would not um there's no comment on the level of rent that could be applied that would be a different discussion that discussion has not been agendized and that is not what we're talking about this evening okay just want to make sure that we're clear on that as we move forward with our discussion at this point okay vice mayor coming just wanted to um just comment at this moment in time this was brought forward because there was a lot of concern around um the fact that many people from the no item campaign during um the past election were saying that there's not enough data and this has been something that's been a concern throughout the community is what are the actual percentages and rent increases I encounter people on a regular basis who tell me about how their rents have gone up 10 20 percent within a year I know plenty of people who have had to leave due to rent increases from their homes and then I know plenty of people who have been asked and given 30 day notices to move out without any reason and have committed no crimes such as um failure to pay rent I will acknowledge that um we also received a letter from the california apartment association and one thing that was clear in that letter was the indication um and I think this similar numbers that were brought to our attention this evening about um the number of people who are getting evictions and um there's something though that was missing is that there's no information on notices to quit which are completely different from an eviction an eviction is if you violate the law then you are asked to leave the home and um the police the courts will intervene to removing you from um someone's home that you're renting a notice to quit is being provided with a notice from a landlord to vacate the home and they don't have to give you any reason and there's zero data collected on that information so it's hard for us to understand how many tenants are being displaced from their homes when we don't have adequate information and there's no way for us to know you know there are many good landlords out there and I happen to have one of them and I pay very um affordable rent um and we do want to make sure that the policies that we're implementing are protecting those people but we do also know that there are people who are abusing um their powers landlords within our community and we need to have some metric for accountability and some programs that can allow us to hold those people accountable for um treating people badly within our community that's why this is coming forward additionally um I'd just like to say that um we we allowed six months um for the report to come back from Dave Seppo's and during that time we took very little action because we wanted to understand what the recommendations would be coming back from that report whether or not we would be forming a task force whether this is something to pursue obviously um we chose not to move forward with the task force at this point in time but that isn't to say that we shouldn't do anything and we know that tenants are struggling within our community still and this is an opportunity if we're not going to have a task force for us to bring the public together and have discussion around what we should do moving forward with this being the first step in that healing process because ultimately we want our community heal we want to do its best for our community and I just want to reiterate that this notification program is not rent control and then I also wanted to ask one question um of the I think the city attorney or the city manager do um do landlords or people who rent houses have to submit and register with their rental inspection program currently is there any information that they have to submit yes currently through the rental inspection program they are required to um register their rental unit so I just want to point out that this can just be another piece to that since people are already having to register their units this is just one more piece that can go into that process that would be helpful for us to better understand our rental housing stock and how people are being treated within those rental units within our community. Councillor Brown. Staff wanted to make an application here. Yes I would also like to clarify that room rentals are not included we also have exemptions such as section eight um that are not part of it or um senior yeah 80s and also the 80s yes okay Councillor Brown and then Councillor Berman. Well so I wanted to uh just follow up on Vice Mayor Cummings comment I would would concur with those comments um and appreciate the document that he's provided to us and I think has also been provided to staff which has some of you know my answers to those broad questions and I did not have an opportunity and I I really do appreciate staff turning this around so quickly and giving us a pretty comprehensive um set of questions and then the the detailed list to work off of I didn't have the opportunity to like really get into the day gritty on all of the subsections one aid two but I did look at the you know kind of try to frame how I'm looking at what the purpose the the goal would be for this kind of program um and you know how it might be used as well as a couple of comments on the compliance question um so in terms of the goal I think it seems pretty simple um we as has been mentioned many times um don't really have data I I mean I think that the data sources that were mentioned by uh uh remember the public are helpful in so far as they go but it was very clear during the conversation about Measure M but not just about Measure M just in general about the kind of crisis that people are facing you know with the housing costs in Santa Cruz we do not have data about notices to quit we don't have data that really actually tells us um how much of rent increase people are experiencing we do not have information about notices to quit 16 evictions I mean that's a very long drawn out process that is not what causes people to move out of their homes on a regular basis but we know that's happening people are losing their housing um so I think those are the kind those are the key issues that we want to be able to track and I think it is a matter of tracking it over time I mean we track for the rental inspection program um you know we have a system in place and so adding additional questions to me does not seem and I'm not saying that it's not going to take any effort it obviously will um but with that in mind I mean the goal is just to develop information documenting rental units in the city the number of rent increases at various levels over period of time periods of time the number of um and frequency the number and frequency I think so that's part of the tracking over time um notices to quit 30 day 60 day 90 day I mean 30 and 60 are usually the standard um but I know there are other situations when you know that happen for various reasons in terms of how it might be used I mean I think the cumulative information should be you know some kind of aggregate should be made available to the public um you know on a I think a quarterly basis seems realistic um you know just to have that information how many uh notices to quit have been issued what you know how rent increases kind of within certain percentage um adjustments um what information is the most important to to collect I think I've said it rent increases notices to quit um again um would the collected data be subject to review or approval by the city I you know that I think is a trickier question I mean I I think that there are some privacy questions and I think the legality of it needs to be considered further before we um provide direction on that I mean it would be helpful to better understand that um what can be done but I think the it's not about for me at least you know pick finding properties where the rents have increased and going and picking on those landlords or finding tenants who have been you know challenged with paying their rent and you know you know highlighting that I mean this I think it's it's really about getting this information about what's happening in our city not too exactly to whom but what is going on is in the overall trends um in terms of non-compliance I think that we we also ought to think about that um you know we don't have um a lot of resources for that for the kind of enforcement that we would like to have around for example around um are uh what are what if I can't remember exactly what we've called it now it's not it's no longer exorbitant rent large rent increase ordinance um but this could be a way to help track that and and we and provide some understanding of what's going on there perhaps um we could think about some kind of uh situation where we land landlords are fined if they're um not complying with that over time you know over a period of time but I'm not saying let's do that today I'm saying let's have a conversation about that um in general I think the purpose of this is to get a better understanding of what's going on in our community at that not granular granular level but um with some additional data I mean the ACS and you know all of these things don't really tell us what's happening in our city in that way so I'll leave it at that for the moment and maybe if I could ask if you don't mind putting on the slide with the questions before us I just want to just sort of remind our council that we have one more item before uh public before we have oral communications at 7 p.m. so just to sort of keep us moving in a direction that will lead us to some sort of outcome my understanding is that you're asking the council to consider the top two questions before moving forward with some of the following those are the most the top two are the most important far be it for me to tell the council exactly how to do your jobs this is my recommendation is that you focus on the top two questions if you can answer those by motion by consensus of your council that will give us sufficient information to be able to come back at a future date and flesh out these other three obviously if there are pieces of those other three that are important that feel you feel very strongly about those would be great to include also but really you know the more we thought about this after we had written the you know the staff report and kind of turned it around you know we kind of mulled it over the next week and it was really the first two are the big pieces and that that'll give us direction to kind of come back with a recommended approach okay I appreciate that okay vice mayor Cummings council member Glover okay council member Glover thank you um so just to clarify vice mayor with the packet that you handed out is this your suggestion for the structure of the program these are recommendations that were brought by members of the community um regarding um the purpose how the application the the um how the application will be structured it's not the final application obviously because we haven't gone into that um and some of the provisions around um the types of data we would be collecting and how the data will be collected so the idea being some suggestions have been that when someone moves into a unit after they sign the lease agreement the landlord submits that to the city they will be provided with a response saying that it's been submitted which would then also be provided to the tenant saying that this information has been submitted to the city if for example the rents are to be increased um that would be submitted with the city as well they would get a response and give that to the tenant just so so that that information is on record the only the idea with being that if a tenant were to receive a rent increase and that information wasn't to go to the city that is the only instance under which um there could be the potential for a fine or notification that this information needs to be submitted because the idea is that the city will will have that information on hand um and there are no consequences to receiving that information but not submitting that information to the city there would be consequences for that and I um I understand so that's great it's very thorough uh and has a lot of great points in it um just curious under chapter 21.06 b um with the provision of the chapter on what it will not apply to which includes legal accessory dwelling units single individuals and owner occupied single family residence hotels motels so I understand the hotels and the motels part um is this because of the coast of Hawkins rent control stuff because this isn't rent control we're just collecting information is there a reason why we're exempting ad use and mobile home parks um with the ad use these are currently not covered under the rental inspection program um which is why that language was included and um because I think just with the with the opportunity that presents itself now for us to collect a broad swath of information about a variety of housing facilities in the community I I think that we should be collecting as much solid good data as possible so that we can go back and look at our ad use and other kinds of stuff and I just want to I'm going to go ahead and just interject really quick briefly what we have before us is a handout that vice mayor coming submitted to us I don't know if you've received that on I have your ad I'm just curious in terms of the comprehensive nature of the handout and and the sort of the context of today's discussion the appropriateness of developing this level of I I don't think a motion's been made yet but what I was envisioning was direction to staff to use this as the basis for bringing back an ordinance for consideration by the city council at a future meeting so I would not feel comfortable with the council taking more specific action than that but can I I'll go ahead and have vice mayor come in and I just want to mention that these these are recommendations that have been brought forward by members of the community there's the intention tonight is to not take action on these the intention is that this is information that's been brought forward that should be considered when we do this public process the city staff has asked for us to provide them with you know information around what we want the goals to be what the database should be and I wanted to provide this information to the city staff so that because this is what's come come before me so and I just want this to be included and then we can discuss process around community engagement as this moves forward councilmember mires then counts move from yeah I thank you for the clarification I just I just want to make sure that it's a little odd that I guess I just want to make sure that the public understand so but within this document we started down a road of discussing nuancing the actual language in these chapters so this is not something that the public has seen it's not agendized I'm trying to get clarification on exactly what we're trying to do right now I'm curious about that myself but as I said in terms of the council taking any formal action or adopting any specific language that probably would not be appropriate for this evening just to remind the council also that you also received a letter from the California apartment association raising some privacy and other potential legal hurdles that we might have to overcome we've actually analyzed that and we think that there is a legal mechanism for you to require that this information be furnished if that's going to be the direction of the council but we would like to have the opportunity to review the citations to the cases that are mentioned in that article and possibly bring back further recommendations based upon that review okay thank you for that clarification yeah I mean I guess I would like to kind of I guess keep keep the discussion kind of according to the agendized item and the the request for staff from staff I feel like we're getting into we're sort of in we're sort of going back and forth between two different processes right now we have councilmember Brown and then vice mayor Cummings and councilmember Glover yeah um so just in response to that and I understand looking working off of a document that the the public hasn't seen to make decisions and we have until not well some of us have seen it but um that we haven't all seen I you know I understand that I guess that's why I tried just I believe kind of summarize what was in here in terms of the basic goals I mean I think that I tend to agree and we you know there is some more detail in here but I do think it provides a pretty good framework for kind of coming up with uh recommendations or kind of options from from staff to come back to us that in in addition to this includes a community engagement I mean I shutter to call it program because that implies a whole potentially a lot of staff time not a program but you know a proposal for you know having some doing some community outreach perhaps having a meeting or two where we invite the public we can have those conversations it doesn't it's not a huge time commitment and resource commitment but it does provide an opportunity to discuss in more detail information that can be disseminated once it's kind of worked through by staff so that that's all I and so summarizing it in that way was what I was interested in doing and just to give a sense of where I'm at I would support sending this to using this for staff as a basis for coming back to us perhaps in August or September I just want to remind the public how difficult it is for us to actually have communication amongst ourselves on items before they come to this meeting so I personally can't send this to all my fellow colleagues and you know get input from them this is the opportunity to do that there's not supposed to be action taken on this item these are just things that have come out of the community that I'm bringing forward I'm really hoping because at the last meeting I heard from many of our colleagues that other members of this all the all the members of the city council at the last meeting said that they were interested in working on this and that they were interested in in working on trying to gather data and get more data on our rental programs and understanding evictions and notices to quit this is an opportunity for us to begin that conversation if we would like and these are some of the this is some of the information and some of the recommendations that have come to me from the community I'd like to hear what other folks want so we can try to build consensus I'd also like to hear what other folks think that the process should be as we move forward so that we can engage the community on this topic because this should not be coming from just a subset of the city council it should be coming from our entire community as a whole and we should be having these discussions because this has been one of the biggest divisive topics in our community and I don't think that we could have these conversations offline or just a subset because I don't think we'll actually get to the root of trying to address this issue I fully support and echo those sentiments from the vice mayor I would also like to point out that while the background is lengthy of two paragraphs in the front the document itself is set up to answer the questions that are being posed by staff the purpose of the group the application of the data the provisions that go along with it who has access to it the enforcement policies that are associated with it so I appreciate the vice mayor preparing this document I hadn't seen it until today but we have time right now if we want to take a second and go through some of the numbered areas regardless of the the wordy intro you know we could that's not going to go into the ordinance we're really talking about the purposes the application the provisions so for example the purposes number one of the purposes is to document the number of rent increases notices to quit and evictions occurring in the city on a month and or annual basis we heard quarterly as well and the percentage of rental units where evictions occurred that's fantastic can we all agree on collecting that information I think it'd be great the first step and then we can just go through I mean these are the suggestions that were brought forward so we could just go through and decide thumbs up thumbs down if we want to move on the instructing staff and then if anyone has any suggestions you can just throw them out there and we can talk about them but as you have mentioned a few times we have another issue after this so the more that we can move on the item I think the better sure well why don't I go ahead and maybe since I can't make a motion but I'll just sort of share my kind of just general thoughts I do believe that there is consensus that there is an interest in information I particularly appreciate data I do however um struggle to sort of reconcile what I think was a really intense report that came out um and regards to uh feeling uh kind of the divisiveness and the approach and um the perceptions that this could be uh something else that it that maybe is designed to be um I'm just that just gives me pause I guess just personally um having worked on the housing blueprint subcommittee you know I mentioned this I think the last time is as well as I think one of the aspects that would we want to keep in mind is really just the cost of living in balance and how are we increasing affordability and how do we build on past efforts and I want to sort of just maybe see how we can use that as a foundation moving forward and then looking into some of the housing protection areas where I feel we did leave a little bit um kind of open for further discussion in regards to sort of the section 8 in regards to our program in regards to more information and data like how are we thinking of it holistically it sort of comes to mind for me um and I think also what I just will sort of say is that um although how and how do we balance wanting you know accurate information good information and data with the opportunity cost that might accompany that and um you know I think that's a really important thing to consider moving forward so I realize that this could be a very sort of intensive conversation a very um specific kind of policy um outcome but given sort of where we are in the process sort of how we want to engage our community and and sort of timing wise um I'm just not quite sure how how we can get into the level of detail that is sort of suggest in this document personally so I'll just sort of that I mean I can just lay it out there I can't I can't make a motion um I know councilmember Matthews had something she wanted to add just very briefly I want to thank the staff you did a heroic job pulling together this information on a one meeting turnaround it was spectacular so um but it shows uh an enormous variety of what the possibilities are and I think we're not anywhere close to even answering your top two questions here is it a one-time simple collection of data the this document representing um one community opinion points to a much more detailed ongoing enforcement oriented approach which is quite different from a one-time gathering of information and how will it be used you point out that the information gathering that you've been able to find is related to an ongoing rent stabilization type program I am concerned about the cost the community document refers to this is a simple easy to administer ordinance no it's not it's very and we've been told this by our staff it's labor intensive and expensive so maybe we want to do that but I too am concerned about the opportunity costs so I'm not at all prepared to give a green light at this point councilmember clever and then vice mayor thank you so yeah in the light of our inability to do anything else I think that this is a great opportunity for us to collect some really solid data and it's a it's not even going to be the data collection itself it's going to be asking the staff to come back with a proposal as far as the structure and then we'll be able to hear from the community and continue to add in or evolve and change so I'd like to make a motion to accept the report and provide direction to staff to use the community document submitted by vice mayor Cummings to create a draft proposal for the goal intended use scope and extent of the rental housing data collection effort second so we have a motion by council member lover seconded by councilmember brown I believe vice mayor Cummings did you have your okay I would oh yeah sorry I would I know that at our first city council our next city council meeting in august the first one in august we're going to be bringing back information around priorities that were set at our meeting on this past saturday and I know that this was one of the the items that city council members got to vote on in terms of prioritized of how staff should be prioritizing their time so I would just add to that motion that we bring this the what what was just what councilmember lover just moved forward that we bring that back at that meeting in conjunction with the priorities so that we can see how this program falls out in those sets of priorities because if this does become a prioritization of staff then we can take the time we can have a reasonable timeline associated with it if it doesn't if it falls outside of the priorities then we're obviously going to have to reconsider is that timeline going to be much longer for the for the development and the community process around this program accepted as well council member okay so um council member matthews and then maybe we'll do a restatement of the motion and I would like to just suggest that this document be made available to the public honestly we just saw it now okay okay why don't we go ahead and um did you have okay let me go ahead and restate the motion um so do you this is so the staff can feel clear about what they're sort of expected to do it do you have it or do you want me to repeat it or absolutely uh it was a motion to accept the report and provide direction to staff to use the community document provided by vice mayor Cummings to implement or to influence the structure of the program regarding the goal the intended use the scope and extent of the rental housing data and then there was a friendly amendment by vice mayor Cummings to have this come at the first meeting in august and coincide with the priorities setting absolutely and then accompanied by council member matthews I think it was a friendly amendment or suggestion which was again this document be made available and then to make the community document available to the public any further discussion at this time council just one I mean the first question here is what's the goal and the goal in this document is an ongoing program ongoing system I mean I think that's one of the questions you wanted answered thank you for the clarification okay so any further discussion all those in favor please say aye a post no no so that passes with council member brown vice mayor Cummings council member crone and glove are voting in support council member matthews mires and myself voting against okay so we'll go ahead and um now return to the consent agenda item that we postponed until this time and that is item number 24 of our consent agenda rosemary minard water director thank you for coming back to join us I appreciate that no problem and uh we'll go ahead and see I think it was council member crone that pulled the item if I recall correctly is that correct item number 24 do you want to ask any specific questions at this time no I think that most of it's been been responded to and I really appreciated the water director's two minute little you know speech that clarified a lot so I really have no no other questions and I think we're in good hands okay councillor brown yeah I would just say I hadn't intended to pull it but I'm in a sense I'm glad that it was and that people from the community showed up I mean when we think about it while this is an item that could have been passed on consent and I'll make the motion that we um move ahead with uh the as as directed by staff to do that um I just think this there's so much work that goes into putting something like this together this is I mean yes it is a technological fix yes there are going to be challenges with it um yes it I know from talking with many people who are involved that it was an arduous process but I think that it is it reflects the really hard work and good thinking of a whole lot of people and you know and it deserves to be recognized as such um so I'm happy to make the motion so we have a motion by council member brown seconded by uh council member Matthews looks like we had our questions answered we've already accepted public comment in this regard unless there's any further questions amongst the council we'll go ahead and take the vote okay I do want to comment um because I represent the council on the mid county groundwater agency with David Baskin who's on the water commission and I do want to just reiterate um council member brown's comments about the extraordinary amount of work that goes into this and um um this has been a focus for the collaborative work of these two agencies for many many many years we are so fortunate that our adjacent water districts um work so well together and understand the shared interests and shared benefits so uh we are really really lucky to have this working relationship between us and thank you and congratulations thank you thank you uh council member Myers yeah I just want to echo that as well um this is actually in my opinion is a pretty historic agreement and um it's setting us on a course now for uh our sustainability of our water supply so I don't know that there's anything much more important than that for a community so um thank you for all your work and thank you to Soquel Creek um we really appreciate what has been a uh I know rough and tumble partnerships and sometimes but uh we appreciate you sticking by us and uh really pleased to uh support this vice mayor Cummings I also just want to thank the water department and for all the work they've been doing and um I'm just glad that we're at this point where we're able to we're able to see saltwater intrusion happening and have something that we can implement that's going to mitigate it before it becomes a detrimental problem um because this is happening all over the world and we are fortunate that we're able to be in front of this problem and I'm going to be really excited to see um how this program and the mitigation efforts actually end up um working okay we'll echo those comments thank you very much for sticking around I appreciate that as well okay all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously so we'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting for our evening session we'll return around 7 p.m. for oral communication I'm excited for a second I was like we have a whole hour until 7 30 right well good evening everybody welcome to our 7 p.m. session of the June 25th 2019 Santa Cruz City Council meeting I would like to ask our clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council member it's crone here lover here Myers here Matthew here vice mayor Cummings Mayor Watkins here so we'll go ahead and move on to oral communications and I'll just make a brief announcement oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda and if I could get a sense of how many members here are interested to speaking to oral communications items not on today's agenda okay we'll go ahead and have you line up to my left to ensure that we are hopefully able to capture everybody within that 30 minutes I will go ahead and offer a one minute if anybody just briefly wants to say something to the council in one minute you're welcome to come forward first if not we'll go ahead and have the full two minutes are you interested in the full two minutes or the one minute a one minute is more than enough so I'm going to give the council this article and essentially my concern and you'll read it in the article if you choose to read it is that there is a kind of a nationwide anti homeless campaign this building steam it could be very dangerous for people living on the streets so not only the violence that we're seeing by the organizations associated with the recall campaign we are also it there is a lot a great deal of other coordination go ahead and pause time really quick this is for items that are not on today's agenda we're going to have a 730 item that will address elements of homelessness and and so are you interested in speaking to us on on that topic and if so that would be the appropriate time to to I'm just about the the violence again and the impending campaign to you know that's going hand in hand with you know so we're in a second wave of anti homeless propaganda by groups like the Manhattan Institute which will read in there and and Seattle Dine was one of their hallmark videos and this is life threatening for people living on the streets and it goes with all the other anti homeless laws that were passed in the wake of the broken window study which was the first study this organization put out so yeah we don't want people to die that would be great if you try to not kill them thank you okay so we have um this is uh oral communications we have our 730 item which will also have public comment um this is for items that are not on today's agenda okay so anybody interested in speaking for one minute briefly or if not we'll go ahead and open it up for two minutes we allocate about a half hour for oral communication so we will conclude at 735 okay sure please my name is Elise Kasby and I'm a democracy activist I am speaking to the council members but I'm also speaking to the public and in fact I just want to say that I think that if if if people are really keeping up on what's happening in our country um I'm only addressing my comments to what's happening in our country I really think that it's time that we as a nation need to face the fact that our political system does not work for most of us we live in what's called an oligarchy and in fact the Bank of America many years ago sent a a letter around to its clients calling our nation an oligarchy and I think that what we need to do is to understand that uh councils such as this one are actually unable to handle the workload and it's just a sheer matter not of incompetence but just a sheer matter of just a workload that it's completely out of balance thank you thank you okay we'll go ahead and then um now open it up for the two minutes and we have a line here on my left so uh we'll go ahead and start with the first person in line all right here at philip santa cruz somebody has to say this at least once I will talk a bit about the leftist mantra of diversity which also happens to be one of our city's three pillars of community leftist value diversity above all considerations they wish to use it to replace our better effective value system based on meritocracy competence experience wisdom and excellence with the mediocrity of diversity which is all diversity really is by itself a random collection of people belonging to various identity groups resembling the population it does not represent organization rather disorganization our enemies around the world are not reducing admission standards to achieve diversity in the hiring of air traffic controllers by discounting pilot experience lowering admission standards to meet medical school racial quotas and adversity scoring for college entrance SAT requirements our education system world standing is falling behind barack obama said diversity is our strength but he lied there is no proof of that only teamwork intelligence unity and aforementioned meritocracies result in strength and superior accomplishment leftist value the utopian socialist idea that all unequal people should be treated unequally by force to make them all equal and that is as dumb as it sounds the reality is people are different and that is normal the only equality is their equal inalienable rights and their equal treatment under the law otherwise people are different to deny that fact is being a typical leftist who is all about feelings and not rational facts they overstep the right of equal opportunity with a force to quality called diversity or equity leftists wrap themselves around the cloak of legitimate civil rights movements of the distant past whose objectives have already been met in the court of public opinion and law long ago but continue to profess otherwise and are illegitimate in today's world they will never ever give up preaching the existence of systemic racism white privilege sexism and accuse any and all who disagree with them as racist sexist ages and fascist Nazis okay next speaker i know i'm natalex dot kennedy at gmail.com 3469 888 um the let's see what i really want to speak on here we've got to ban the new 5g technology it is far too hazardous to life human life livestock birds you name it have all died from getting too much radiation from 5g towers which is a technology far faster than 4g and already 4g is too fast to begin with i mean you download something huge and it takes a few minutes um we also need oh what's going to happen when they have the 5g towers all over town and they turn them on is half the population going to fall over dead as the other half going to turn into flesh eating zombies i don't want to find out ban 5g now okay now with all that said what we do need is good old fashioned fm radio broadcasts of all of these city council meetings live as it's going we also need the same thing online is streaming audio only we don't need the video a lot of the time we just need the audio also what we could do is we could put up subtitles on the screens right up here whereas the computers that are handling all this they would translate all everything that like i would be saying into text which could be displayed up on the screen uh it doesn't do it a hundred percent right a hundred percent of the time but it's pretty close uh that and also the software is able to translate into any other language so we could have people coming up speaking Spanish while all their Spanish would be translated into English for the subtitles for everybody else um with all that said we also need to get some more tandem bikes for the police department as far as i'm aware they're working on maybe one that they're getting on their own accord we should put at least two or three on top of that thank you good evening my name is mary i'm homeless this happened because of an accident that permanently damaged my spine a few years ago i am here to um address the issue of the homeless committee that includes no homeless people i would like to know where mr glover and mr crone were i'm sorry i'm gonna go and pause the time this is actually um oral communications this is a time for us to hear from the community on items that are not on today's agenda we will be having a seven it was on tonight's agenda it is tonight's agenda but this is not that time we were going to hear that item at 7 30 this evening so i'll go ahead and ask that you reserve your comments and tell the public comment portion of that thank you thank you okay so this is for items that are not on today's agenda okay i'm council mayor uh this is homeless uh uh similar it doesn't have anything to do with the agenda item uh it's a season report uh so last fall oh my name is brent Adams of the warming center program last fall uh an earlier council voted to reduce the emergency winter shelter by 50% and warming center called the red alert a warming center doubled down on our commitment to never turn anyone away to be ready to open on twice the number of nights uh and for twice the number of people and we did that successfully finally in march uh we were stoked that warming center's longtime commitment to the highest priority on those with mobility challenges was met by the salvation army with city funding it was a challenging winter and we all got through it great job job of sheltering every person who saw it and now day and night storage program has just completed a full year of service 485 clients uh transformation of the homeless experience no one has to carry items around anymore a reduction of strewn items and we've hosted the winter shelter uh shuttle stop right in front of our building bulky items uh people can get on the shuttle without that we host items from people in the downtown streets team uh river street camp and pauli loft successfully i want to introduce you this at this moment connecting the dots it's a homeless person's need oriented survey uh we had seven ucse students interact with 70 64 respondents asking 30 30 questions uh there's a point in time count but this is actually a data oriented count you will have this on your desk uh i'm gonna pass it around but the question is you know what the answers the question where do people have their laundry done where do they access water showers where do they poop last year set data set informed that we needed a storage program immediately 85 percent people said they needed storage this year's data screams that we need laundry and i am happy to announce laundry wednesdays coming soon at our site everyone who needs laundry gets it for free cheers okay all right you have up to two minutes go ahead good afternoon my name is becky steinbrunner i want to talk with you about doing your own independent research on items and i really applaud independent thought one comment councilman burg lover brought up this afternoon about the improvements at highway one and highway and whether that really was going to bring about improved greenhouse gas was stellar thank you so what i'm here to to plant in your thoughts and to encourage you to research is is the mid county ground water basin really is in overdraft as we're all being told i want to share with you information that uh state water department water resources department told me just last thursday there is no scientific proof that it is he said don't submit a public records act request because there's nothing to give you that comment came about during the break of the mid county groundwater agencies advisory committee when the hydrologist from montgomery and associates stood up and said the reason the mid county basin is declared in overdraft is because back when the state was redoing their uh bulletin the district so calc creek water district had decided that it was and the state just went with that let me say that again the state just went with the district's determination that has no scientific merit behind it so i want to encourage you to start looking at the groundwater monitoring well levels in the mid county area it speaks volumes most of them are doing well in fact they're at historic high levels and that was even stated in the sentinel by general manager ron duncan if you look at the sky tem the helicopter uh study that was commissioned of the danish company at the very end in the technical memo it says by and large groundwater levels have recovered next speaker thank you you'll have up to two minutes you'll have up to two minutes if you need to use the phone john golder um it was quite illuminating attending the retreat that you focused it up there between the council people and the department heads and seeing the process of laying out your agenda and and especially seeing you get together on the principles of how you're going to communicate and interact i come from a sports background we work as teams the team we're talking about here right now in this chamber is a team of our representatives working for us the people we're supposed to be informed and involved you're supposed to be responsive and effective effective and responsive um so i'd like to this is kind of a little test of process i'd like to know i'd like i'd like to be able to send to council members information on the quimby act the park fees and the history of that and what has failed and the park fees and the subdivision dedication ordinance has suffered for 43 years of failure it was originally conceived in 1945 the first tax went into 1973 and the quimby tax in 83 and in the city can't show a single square foot of land they've ever purchased with the quimby act the vast majority of it like i said was millions of dollars has gone to remedy existing deficiencies which is not the purpose impact fees are for so i just like if just raise your hand if you'd like to get some material from me i'll give you a basic stuff first and it'll be followed with more more involved law that you can read or not read okay that's that's the test you all passed it i love it okay thank you thank you and then anybody's welcome to send us any information at any time but we'll go ahead and have our next speaker come forward and you'll have up to two minutes as well this is a reminder oral communications items not on today's agenda thank you hi my name's samantha atkinson and thank you all for listening i have actually i am from the tannery art space and i live and work there i uh am here to represent artists who cannot make it and who are either out of town touring or in my case my mother who is an artist and is in the hospital we are being pushed to buy our management of john stewart company to demolish or come to code in our apartment buildings and there is a lot of miscommunication coming up coming from our landlord john stewart it's unprofessional it's been negligent it has been time uh the time is not uh been the timelines aren't even allowable and i have a letter that i'd like to give you addressed to my mother who has not been able to receive it i took a picture if you can make copies and spread i have business cards her art her card and my business card is or my information is on the back i'd like to give those to you we are seeking from the community or on our on behalf of the community we need an advocate we need time we need financial aid because these uh these permits that we have to get to demolish or to come to code are highly uh they're outrageous expensive and it's pushing a lot of artists who are unable to pay for it out of the community community and we're very concerned and we're being under a time restraint so we're seeking help and we've got more information coming if anyone what can reach out to us and talk to us more about this we appreciate your attention thank you thank you hi so just to uh specify um she's talking about apartment modifications that were allowed by management um at the tannery art center uh there was a lengthy there's an application process that happens where you submit a design and the management reviews them and decides whether or not that's an approval structure that's been going on for nine years mine's been standing for nine they had a licensed uh we lots people they require like a licensed contractor or an architect in some instances not our apartments are they're inspected two to three times a year by a bunch of different entities including the fire department and the city and it's been fine up until this point but on um April 5th on a second inspection by the city they decided that none of these structures were permitable anymore so um it says right here in their language that um we need to get permits when required but they have never required asked or even told someone that they need to inquire whether or not they needed a permit to do these things and now everyone needs one and at our own expense we're supposed to retroactively get permits for existing structures get architects and then a licensed contractor to build them um which is outrageous we're a subsidy like we are artists that are struggling to live here and i appreciate the arts councils efforts to bolster artists in our community and this is going to put some people out of house and home if you're on a fixed income and you need a you need a licensed contractor you need to get a permit that's insane i mean and we have a detrimental reliance here where we've been asking them and relying on them to tell us what we need to do to build these and make them right and all of a sudden they're they're trying to absolve any negligent they're basically saying that we're the negligent parties are the tenants and not the landlords um so some of us have been waiting they gave us an ultimatum on the 17th well actually they gave us we had a meeting on the 14th when they told us all this and they gave us to the 17th to decide if we wanted to have our get pay for demolition permits or go through the coding process and um a lot of us i would really like to be an agenda item you're welcome to leave any and you're welcome to reach out to us in advance as well okay next speaker hi um i too live at the tannery and in a nutshell what it appears to me is that the john steward company has authorized its employees um who manage the property to permit people whether lucidly or verbally or on paper to do something they're not qualified to do i'm a builder myself um they don't understand code or they haven't been taught how to interpret the code or to tell people how and and where and how they can build something or not um the costs are astronomical for people who live in affordable housing to bring things up to code i myself as a builder it's it's love of my hands i can easily build or take down anything in my unit without problem um they actually told me not to take anything down because they want to record and they want to report me so it seems to me that they had permission that they don't have and now to cover their butts they're turning into reporters on everybody um i think it's unfair um i don't feel like they're working with the tenants even though they say it out one side of their mouth and and the communication has been very harsh you know they post a note at the end of the day on friday expecting you to get something done by monday you know i just had a notice put on my door very quietly at five o'clock yesterday and had nobody to talk to in the office just downstairs they were gone you know um what i would ask is that you know if there's anything that you guys can do to make this like a separate deal with the city so they can handle this differently than just all these people coming up and and dealing with it in the in the regular way because this is not like a regular situation people have been permitted to do stuff they've paid money i've lived there one year and and i had no idea how this was all going to work out okay thank you next speaker next next speaker i have a saying that we want to learn how to discern but let's judge with love compassion understanding and model our lives on altruism and holism and what i'm seeing in our community is getting more and more divided in our world and it's really hurting a lot of my spirit inside and what i'm seeing it's going on this is a city council that's representing all kinds of different people of course there's going to be division there are different people they're going to have division with them themselves but they're working really well i've seen a lot i mean of course there's going to be problems i've seen a lot of these different meetings i've been at meetings yesterday i've been to hold meetings that they had on the budgets you know come on this this what i saw on monday's paper with people writing about this you know getting rid of drew and chris is totally ridiculous and they're just they don't even say they say they don't work on anything except for just the houseless people or something they work on so many different things drew chris and san and uh don we're at a meeting yesterday about public safety and about you know the the internet and what people were doing on the internet what we can do about the the hate on there you know so it's just and after the meeting before what we had when when it kind of blew up was about just the time and about what people thought were they were going to be able to have time to speak or not it wasn't about them completely just leaving the meeting and not doing anything and most of the meeting had already been done to that point anyway it was just the final part of the meeting and they went outside to talk about other things that included governing our city so they met up with other people that were also dealing with issues that are continuing in our city and in the world so it's just come on you guys look at the world and look at our community more holistically there's way too much biases you guys are just looking at little parts of what's going on look at all of it please okay let's speak here please i'm an architect here in town i was invited by one of the tenants at the tannery today to come and review the situation that they find themselves in and i think it's difficult because there have been improvements that have been made by successive tenants in these units that the responsibility for which is now falling on the people that are there now and essentially they've been given a notice that says within 40 you either you have a choice of scheduling helping a scheduled demolition of the improvements that are not permitted or you have 45 days to get a building permit to legalize it and anyone that knows anything about the process here if it goes through the standard procedure is that you can't get you can't get a permit for hanging a picture in 45 days so i would just like to implore you to implore the planning and building staff if someone does decide to carry on and try to get their place legalized or parts of it to try to create a streamline process that is minimal cost we're talking about very small improvements you know lofts that are supporting beds little ladders that probably don't comply with code things that have to be probably engineered if you go through the standard process to use every piece of discretion that they have at their disposal to make it as easy as possible because otherwise you're going to literally bankrupt people or make them you know move out thanks before we continue i'll just um i'm going to go ahead and close oral communications after the person in the white top we have oral communications for a half hour and then we'll open it back up so we'll go ahead and close it after those that have been in line and then we're going to go ahead and start our evening um agenda item i didn't acknowledge okay you will be our last in the plan that will be the last for oral communications um and then we're going to go ahead and start the evening item you'll have up to two minutes name is pat kiddle santa cruz i um tonight have a concern about uh possibly us going to war so long mayor they they always want to walk out on me um the israel lobby to be blunt is trying to get us into war with iran i've discussed this for years before the council and right again it's flaring up now we came within a whisker of attacking iran recently that could have flared up quote this sounds like a purpley but it could flare up in a world war three because the russians and the chinese are tired of americans at the behest of israel uh pushing everybody around and um the russians and the chinese are fully capable of standing up to us so tonight i've got a shirt on it's uh an israel attack the uss liberty on june 8th of 1967 and they deliberately tried to sink this american ship and blame it on the muslims which of course is standard procedure uh israel failed in this outrageous attack on the us navy but the navy um was ordered to shut up by president johnson and higher ups like uh john mccain's father who was actually in charge of things at the time this is treason of a high order the uh surviving crew members unanimously unanimously say israel knew exactly what it was doing there's plenty of evidence to this effect if anybody wants to google a very simple search name gtr 5 dot org or dot com gtr 5 dot com you will see just how treacherous israel is okay next speaker i'll just remind those that we're going to be closing oral communications after uh the person in the plaid and then we'll start our evening session hi daria smosnain i'm going to talk about something that everybody on this day is going to agree on a source of money for the city and i'm going to be shooting myself in the foot actually in the wallet by uh and revealing this and um you are woefully undercharging folks like me and others at the city landfill um i pay his little 34 for a big trailer that i had to pay $230 at oakland and $130 in selenus i talked to craig pierson i got some information i go there about five six ten times a year on any given day there's roughly there's an average of 50 folks at dump i mean on the basically the uh moms and pops not the ones that are on the scale you do 50 times 360 days a year it's open you're talking about roughly 20 000 trips a year charge me eight dollars more eight dollars that's 160 000 don't be a little a little bit of gripes but you simply put a poster up right there at the entrance say you think it's expensive here san jose curbie canyon this is what it costs oakland selenus charge me more charge us more ten dollars eight dollars it won't make a difference and we and it's it's still a screaming bargain now spoiler alert i did talk to craig great team he's got up there great operation he will give you the standard bureaucrats response about this being a public entity and they can't do this and it's it can't make profits from it and so forth but the city needs a way to generate money 160 000 it's it's not millions but it's a game it might be a little bit of a game it's too full it's two fte's and parks and rick charge me more money please thank you i know you said um no uh comments on discussions on tonight's agenda but um i got an email earlier today saying i could come down and make a statement um about my interest in the community advisory committee on homelessness that will be after okay this portion okay i'll do it then yes thank you okay go right hi thanks for letting me speak i was kind of at the back of the line Cynthia with center cruise tenants um i wanted to talk about um your business license municipal code and in it it says that um a commercial um enterprise a commercial enterprise has to pay for a business license however and then it says this includes rental properties of three units or more but it doesn't say this does not include in this excludes commercial enterprises that are single family homes now in the last year about 30 percent of people buying homes in Santa Cruz were from out of the area according to a realtor i spoke with and um a lot of people are making a lot of money from their single family homes including goldman sacks which bought many of them after the foreclosure crisis blackstone and other large corporations that own single family homes and they jack up the rents and areas and then there are multiple uh landlords that have multiple dwellings some in Santa Cruz some in other counties these people should be paying a rental uh they should be paying a business license they have a commercial enterprise providing a good which they like to say they're a provider so they're not providing a service or providing a good and that is a contract to live in their home so um they should be paying a business license so i you don't even have to change the language in your code if you would like to interpret it differently but um i think that's another stream of revenue that you should be tapping into in the city um thank you thank you okay so it was um i um it was brought to my attention that there are some circumstances uh within this uh individual to my left who would like to address this at this time so we'll go ahead and have you speak now for the 730 item is that correct that you need to go and then we'll have uh your two minutes now and then we'll go ahead and close uh oral communications but allow you to speak to our 730 item no so Mary it's that Mary it's at your discretion so what i told the mayor is that you had some transportation challenges and we it would be about a 45 minute wait or you know 30 minute wait um in order to talk during this so if you want to come up now you may yeah yeah please come forward thank you thank you yeah i introduce myself my name is Mary Beeson i'm a relentless homeless advocate i am very proud to be the team leader of the levy of downtown streets who have supported me in many ways and i am involved with that in many ways um i have been homeless for two and a half years i feel it's absolutely ridiculous and i'm really wondering where you two gentlemen were when you seated or seating this panel and it includes not one homeless person i have the weird distinction of being the first person in 40 years of homeless services i believe that has been seated on a committee commission panel board as a homeless person i was also the second person in that rainy mara invited me to join the panels that dealt with the 10 million dollar grant and move forward to the final panel i think it is absolutely okay let me say this i've set it before and i'll say it until somebody hears me i do not believe that the homeless situation will be resolved in Santa Cruz until the homeless become part of the solution instead of all of the problem we do have we do have commonality with the home community we have two things in common one we want to be off the streets and we're willing to earn that right if only you will hire us to many they want us off the streets both of these communities are constantly asking where is all of this money going because we do not see it being used effectively for our purposes or the home community why because the nonprofits in this community and most of homeless services have no systems management training they know what they're supposed to be doing but they cannot cannot do that without without management training there is no way to be effective and efficient there is no accountability we're not seeing results and everyone's hating it okay that needs to be fixed is that my two minutes that's your two minutes yes okay i'll take it and run so we'll go ahead and um i'm going to go ahead and conclude one i'm going to go ahead and conclude oral communications one of the aspects of oral communications is that although we're unable to take action on any kind of issue that's brought to our attention we can allow or we can use this opportunity because it's brought to our awareness to ask our staff to further investigate or explore information in regards to an item that's brought before us by the community and i think that i'm assuming that there's probably likely consensus amongst my colleagues to have that happen in regards to the issue around the tannery at this time i don't know if we need a formal motion at this point not necessarily okay is that is that adequately okay yeah okay councilmember i mean vice mayor comings and then councilmember uh cronin and glover and uh thursday go ahead i was just i just had a question for clarification because it sounds like this is a bit of an emergency situation that's happening with the folks at the tannery just i was looking at the calendar and given the fact that they're given these 45 day notices at the end of which they might have to be you know potentially be kicked out of their homes we're not going to meet within that 45 day period so i'm just curious as to what kind of action the city can take to ensure that these folks can remain their homes given the fact that what it sounds like is that this was management allowing these tenants to make changes to their homes and and then now it turns out that that either was or was not true so if you could speak to that lila would be great sure good afternoon mayor and councilmembers leave out there the planning director and there are some very significant life safety issues at the tannery lack of ingress egress is up there with those where bedrooms have been constructed and ladders are leading to them for example and there is no escape path if a fire were to occur some of those can be rectified fairly easily and others have some more substantial work that needs to be done to either permit them or to to remove them if people are working in good faith then we will certainly work with them on the deadlines and we will be they can always reach out to us if if they have concerns about that so we have we have provided notification to all the tenant all the effective tenants and at this point we'll be looking at each of those cases individually to see how the situation can be rectified just a follow-up question to that though i think that one of the bigger issues with this is that it sounds like there might have been this issue where management gave them permission to make these changes and they've made these changes and they don't fall within the city code so i'm wondering how will the city be able to investigate whether or not you know if this is true then the tenants are actually made changes that they thought were approved by the by the management of the tannery and if it's not in compliance with the law i'm just trying to understand how you know the management can be held accountable because the tenant shouldn't be held accountable if they were told that it was okay for them to make these changes and they fall and they're not you know legal changes to their building and they're out to code sure so first that very well could be a civil matter second with it being a with the city involvement of it being the tannery property and the city ownership that's something that we would i can certainly coordinate with our economic development team on and if if we if our team hasn't coordinated already we we certainly will i know that there have been some discussions i don't know if there have been any discussions about liability because that is typically a civil matter but it's a it's a discussion that can occur between our real estate professionals and the management company i would just like to express that i hope that this the inspection program does everything in its power to make sure that these folks don't get ejected from their homes and that we do everything possible to make sure that changes can be made and and that we can protect the residents of the tannery we absolutely will as we do with all properties okay okay councilmember clever our i'm sorry councilmember crone clever brown Matthews and i want to just remind us this is not an item that this has not been agendized that's right this is an opportunity ask for information the council can't give any direction okay yeah vice mayor well it is an potential emergency here and uh vice mayor um Cummings covered what i was going to ask but can you assure us is that a is that a okay question that nothing's going to happen until council meets again in august but nobody's going to get kicked out we're looking at all the life safety issues as i mentioned um there are for example places where there are places where there's been drywall put up that separates areas into you know loft areas that really are the matter of taking out a few screws and pulling down the drywall but that has no light no ingress egress so really serious life safety issues you know if there's a fire then there is no escape in those kind of scenarios so some of those we are going to be looking to address immediately we have given timelines for that um and we are going to work with these folks as we do um with all all tenants if if they've got some of the bigger projects they're somewhere you know basically second stories have been created within spaces some of them have the ability to be permitted some of them do not have the ability to be permitted and so each one of them needs to be looked at individually because each one is kind of a individual um uh change that was made without the benefit of permits i'm gonna interject that i'm getting concerned that this is turning into a substantive discussion i agree and just following up on council member crone's comment um it's not an emergency uh merely due to um by virtue of the fact that you don't have another meeting until august because between now and then a special meeting could be called so if there's a need for the council to take action on this between now and mid august um a special meeting could be called i think the overall sentiment is the same that we do want these uh lifesaving concerns addressed and we don't want displacement and so how can we to the best of our ability you know reconcile those two essentially completely understand that's the approach that we will be taking okay okay great so given that do we feel we adequately we're able to address any concerns during oral communications and the fact that it's not agendized for this evening okay just one quick question um because so there are just a few screws some need to be removed um would those require permits to remove those screws and license contractors um and if that's the case i imagine that might be a problem financially for some of the people so um and then also just a question with the same way we treat all tenants normally with these permitting violations it's usually the landlord or property owner that's supposed to take care of right typically it's uh it's the landlord that but it it can vary depending on the situation um in in this instance um the management company my understanding is that it's been the the tenants who have made the improvements and so there's the civil matter and we will we're happy to report back to the council and we've got a discussion scheduled councilmember Glover um is it and uh friday thank you um and we will report back to the full council on the status okay okay um i see our city attorney here going for his i think i mean unless there's anything really pressing that council members need to ask i think we are clear okay so councilmember matthews and then vice mayor i just wanted interim report looks like a breakdown in communications working towards resolution and better systems in the future okay vice mayor comings and then council member brown my one question with this is with this 45 when would what would be the date that this 45 day period would fall on because i'm just concerned that it might be worth us scheduling a meeting some point later in july if that's going to be the time when um we'd see this 45 day period lapse um because if we if we can't address this until august 13th my concern is that um we might see loss of tenancy or some people get pushed out especially because there's a concern around you know if these if people need permits or they need to get contractors and they're not able to afford that that they might go over this 45 day period and so i just wonder if you could speak to that and whether or not we may need to hold a what i would suggest rather than making that decision this evening is that you direct staff to report back on the status of this sounds like code enforcement effort um that information could contain details about whether or not there's action contemplated that might justify the council calling for the mayor calling for a special meeting and that's that could absolutely happen or if it can be handled administratively or if it can be absolutely a result we heard from public comment we're not allowing public comment at this time and what we can do is we'll follow up get the additional information and we'll report back to you very shortly and then you can make a determination moving forward and if there's a needs schedule especially yeah well you know we we obviously economic development manages in part that property um it's uh there's a lease with the city and uh we're familiar with the management companies we'll have conversations get the information for you with the planning department and uh update you on that and if there's a need to have a meeting well you know but otherwise we'll keep you informed i just want to very shortly sounds good um however i'm just looking at just this one uh letter these are people who are being required to deal with this today um and so i i mean i just want to stress that yeah well we can go ahead and um we can go ahead and have anybody who we have our uh we have our planning director here and anybody who wants to have some immediate questions answered i think that's appropriate to have them here okay okay thank you okay thank you for being here and then thank you for following up on that and uh any further meetings will be forthcoming yes and feel free to follow up with us and we'll give you an update as well okay okay so at this time we're going to go ahead and move on to our 7 30 item our evening item and um that item is um it has an official title and it is the response to homeless homelessness and it's the community advisory committee on homelessness nominations and work plan and we have uh Susie O'Hara to kick off the presentation yeah so um good evening mayor and council members i'm Susie O'Hara i'm the assistant to the city manager and i'm very pleased to be here tonight to talk about the community advisory committee on homelessness nominations and work plan um as council members will note in the agenda report uh staff has been working with um an informal subcommittee of the council on this process um and after um a few weeks of the applications being open we just received a tremendous amount of interest and i suspect many of the folks that we have in chambers today are applicants so i'm really pleased to be talking about that process with you so from the respect with respect to just reorient the council to the formation of the catch on April 9th um and that city council meeting we are talking about all things homelessness as we had been doing for the the several weeks weeks previous to that but i wanted to note the motions to kind of orient everybody back to what was directed at the time so at that time council member brown moved second second by council member glover to develop a 10 member ad hoc community advisory committee on homelessness composed of a myriad of stakeholder sectors and so really the intentionality around that was to ensure that we had a broad cross-section of the community um that was willing to come to the table um to really open up dialogue with the city council on immediate kind of mid-term and long-term solutions around homelessness and i won't name them all but as you can see the um the council did put some thought into who um are the appropriate stakeholder representations um from homeless advocates through youth homelessness um having a student for instance local business neighborhoods and those with lived experience and we'll talk a little bit more about what mary was talking about a little bit later in the presentation um pleased to note that we received 52 applications in that period of time that the applications were open um we were asked to provide an extension as in human nature there might have been a little procrastination and people were interested in applying and ended up we got a lot of applications that that week of the extension those 52 applications as i mentioned really represent a diverse cross-section of our community members and in that process this is making bunch an eye really dove directly into the applications looking at people's experiences and came up with a list of recommendations for the mayor to consider as it relates to striking a balance of what is the appropriate number of people um on the committee so we can have really open and transparent dialogue but not get overly cumbersome in terms of the numbers and we did land on 11 people an appropriate balance of city and non-city residents and i'll tell you from the list of applications it was um really obvious that there's there's interest outside of the city in with folks advocating for this process so we did land with eight um in resident in city and three outside of the city um the recommendation uh with the motion as previously articulated was for two two people outside of the city limits so we can talk more about that all stakeholder sectors are represented um many of the folks that applied for the catch noted that they felt they represented multiple stakeholders sectors and so we we really did dive into their applications um to look at generally speaking what was um their strongest level of um sector representation um hope to achieve gender balance and i think we did with the recommendations and added um really new voices to our conversation around homelessness um one of the very inspiring results of this application process is we we received applications from folks that are pretty brand new to the community and so in thinking about our community dialogue around this issue for the last um not only six months but maybe 20 years plus um we have a lot of the same folks that um come to council meetings and um want to be involved and it was just very heartening to see that new people um who haven't necessarily been part of the conversation are interested in helping the city in this way um really did try to strike a balance with different backgrounds professions ages and advocacy roles um at that uh time this is now a few weeks back Megan and I made some recommendations um did check on folks backgrounds and references and made a preliminary list of recommendations to the mayor who asked a few of her colleagues to help come to some consensus as to the nomination process and what who we would ultimately be moving forward with tonight um for full council consideration so I'll yield back to the mayor and um vice mayor Cummings and council member Donna Myers to talk about that process. Thank you Susie and thank you to Megan as well for your work on this and just really want to acknowledge and um show appreciation for our community who uh provided just really made our job very difficult and being able to whittle it down to a small subcommittee of folks and um definitely a demonstration of how this community can come together and really is part of the solution so I just really want to acknowledge the 52 applicants and I'm assuming if we left it open I believe many more would have applied so I just really want to thank all those that applied. As Susie mentioned um you know I really um wanted a inclusive process and knowing that we cannot have a full discussion amongst the entire council that I can speak to two of my colleagues in regards to um kind of the preliminary look at the various nominations and looking at it through the lens as Susie sort of described and as demonstrated on the PowerPoint here is how do you balance background, professional experience, sort of the breadth of representation that you want within these limited sort of sectors that we hope to have engaged and um and council member Myers and vice mayor Cummings and myself went through and discussed the various nominees, the subcategories, the balance of the various demographics as well as the residents of the city and outside the city and came up with a list here before you have 11 community members and I'll just see if any of my colleagues want to add to that description of the process. Yeah I would just like to say that it was I mean this was a challenging process given the amount of applications we received and the amount of interest and just the backgrounds of the people that um that applied to be on this committee. I think that one of the things we were trying to do is make sure that we had broad representation of our community um and and a broad representation of people who engage with the homeless community including people who have lived experiences with homelessness and who can really provide information about some of the different aspects that we need to be focusing on mental health, behavioral health, veterans, people from the faith faith-based community. There was a lot of different people who we took into consideration. We wanted to make sure that we can increase the amount of diversity of people who have experience working in this field on this board because those lived experiences and professional experiences are going to really help us get to the best programs and understand how best to implement these programs and also how to communicate with members of our community and so it wasn't an easy process and there are people out there who I apologize that you couldn't be on it but there were a lot of people who want to be engaged on this and I really encourage those people to continue to stay engaged and try to interact with this group and with the community and the City Council as we move into this this process. Councilor Meyers. Yeah, I just uh I'd like to just thank the staff for sorting through this and and um we it was just uh it was uh it's a it's an impressive list of applicants from our community and really difficult process um to whittle down but what I'm most excited about um being one of the council members that brought this to the council originally was that um you know I think it's really important that this committee really provide a broad look at homelessness and those that are unhoused in our community so I'm especially um glad to see that we were able to get um both people that can represent homeless youth as well as veterans um people with long-term policy experience we have neighborhood uh folks represented and we have uh you know physicians represented so I think we um have come up with a very compelling list of of community members to serve on this and um I'm also very committed to um making sure that we allow time and we'll talk about our work plan a little bit more um but we allow time for those folks who are living um unhoused right now to fully participate in this process and to absolutely be part of part of what we will be doing so I just um we had a number of people who were unhoused who did apply and um we uh we're absolutely committed I know to making sure we have conversations with those folks so um I was glad that those people came forward and so um thanks to my colleagues here and hopefully we'll uh we'll get started soon on this so um I don't know how many people are here that are on the current list but this does represent the 11 names across 11 sectors um represented in the community that um staff brought a slightly larger list and this is the subcommittee of the council um did whittle it down to one representation one represented person per kind of sector um so I didn't want to move into the proposed catch work plan and philosophically kind of tell you what the hope is with that process so as council and the community knows there is a mountain of work ahead of us as it relates to um short term very urgent solutions that we have been grappling with over the last several months you know around how best do we move forward on um some very challenging subjects citing shelters thinking about program models for shelters how do we engage with neighborhood groups around acceptable program models the issue of transitional encampments and how they fit into our community in terms of the discussion around the project charter what should we be doing with our facilities and bathroom facilities and how best do we move forward with those considerations and so given the many urgent um issues ahead of us we really wanted to take this this process in phases we have 11 people that we are considering moving forward with at this time um and it's expected that this first phase will be a lot about engagement and communication and dialogue and really um developing a process for which we can all raise our level of knowledge and really um learn about the issue of homelessness from a much deeper perspective and as council member Myers noted this is the time that we really need to be engaging with folks with lived experience and and I have some recommendations for council's consideration around the emotion later on but um I would expect phase one to be an educational phase and really leaning on those with lived experience to um help us understand our systems and how they are utilized in our community right now so that phase one learn engage to still prioritize it's what we're thinking is essentially a listening tour so this is not something this council is unfamiliar with but having an opportunity for our community to um really sit around a table together in many different forums and talk about this issue of homelessness and let our community advisory committee um learn from our community as two priorities um level of interest in different solutions and quite frankly um our level of tolerance for solutions and in that process it's not only about engagement and education but identifying key issues um to pursue in phase two and phase three phase two would be um learning and engaging and distilling but also coming up with some recommendations for council on um what would be considered urgent policy considerations so siting and program modeling for sheltering including our navigation center transitional encampments and others the city management of public facilities and bathrooms the camping ordinance that just names a few of the current policy considerations that are on the you know currently under consideration in this body it really is important for this group of folks that have um invested or potentially are going to invest a significant amount of time in in coming up with solutions for the city to have an opportunity to engage on those subjects so we envision that to be happening during phase two and then phase three is after hopefully we've been able to take a breath on some of the urgent issues really look long term what is the 10 year what is the 15 year what is the 20 year plan around homelessness ultimately those solutions should be leading to housing more people to ensuring that we have emergency services that are available to to ensuring that we have the appropriate level of shelter available in our community um and removing barriers as much as we possibly can so developing long-term solutions on policy considerations um I envision that would be updating the homeless coordinating committee recommendations um master planning of the coral street campus and then really looking at coordination across um our systems of care in the community working with the county understanding state funding that's coming in and then also being really um a lobbying arm for the city with regards to state and federal policy around homelessness so I I am going to yield back to the committee members with respect to um it it it's um an interesting time to be talking about a formation of a citizen task force after last meeting um and really the difficult conversations around what would lead to success in an effort like this so I think it's important for us to talk about and reflect as to what Mr. Seppo's mentioned during his presentation at the last meeting and really thinking about the opportunity that is ahead of council and in thinking about those recommendations and really putting some commitment around um ensuring that we have success with with this um especially on the heels of the discussion from the last meeting so I'm going to turn it over to the mayor for colleagues to talk about this thank you Susie I think you know one of the things that we have with this is an opportunity for us to um demonstrate I know what I believe we all feel in regards to wanting to find solutions as a community on these difficult and sometimes divisive topics and although the report was on the rental housing task force over the past several months we've also seen divisiveness arise as we've discussed homelessness in our community and so uh some of the meta messages that were in the um report are sort of highlighted here about how we as a council can um do our part to allow this process to ensue um have understanding that um we as a council um need to allow it to happen without interjection and to support those folks who have really uh been so generous with their time who are willing to have these difficult discussions to allow them to do that without our intervention um and so I mean I think I just really want to appreciate the council members who brought this forward with with me in this regard because I do feel it's really essential to the success of of this committee and then I'll see if my colleagues have anything they want to add in that I'll just uh I think that um you know the the the purpose and kind of idea behind this committee really sort of generated out of a a set of different circumstances maybe than our rental housing task force I think we um last Saturday we had a very good session as a council we um really reflected on the need to begin to figure out ways to work together um especially on the big issues of of um homelessness and housing especially in our community um and so I think that um you know we in in a sense have to trust that we can move forward and and be productive in this process and I'm hoping that by doing this we can again demonstrate that involving our community in this kind of process is very uh fruitful and productive to actually having um good policy developed and actually having implementation on the ground and I think that's what's really important is that um by bringing these folks to the table and uh working through a community process I'm hoping that really what we get to is a faster way of implementing uh assistance for the for the people in our community that need it the most I'd just like to say that um you know making sure that we're including the community in the process in this in the decision making process especially around some of these issues is what's critically important and so um I'm really hopeful of this community and I'm really hopeful of this um group that we're bringing forward that we're going to be able to work together to try to find to figure out what um we can implement in our community that's going to be most helpful uh for our our unhoused populations and I also just like to say that um that I think this can be a really good example of how we can come together as a community and I know that um though the recommendations brought forward said that we shouldn't form task force we're doing so with homelessness and I hope that we you know as a city council and as a community can come together to work on other difficult issues such as rental housing and issues around tenant protections um because if we can come together on these issues I think that we'll be able to grow very strongly as a community moving forward. Thank you council members so I just um wanted to point out a few of the uh the guiding principles in uh Mr. Seppo's report that I think um should be considered and adopted as we move forward with a catch and that is um to form a committee that listens and validates honors and not challenges each other's stories is accountable for self and organizational behavior defined shared beliefs moves to the center and away from extremes and ultimately embraces compromise as a mean as a means to an end and that was in his report and I just think it's it's nice to reflect on as we move forward with this as well. So a recommended motion for the council consideration is to adopt the catch nominations and work plan and include all pending homeless related policy considerations you know as we enter into this next phase I think it's really critically important to ensure transparency in our community and as the mayor mentioned um really try to give um charge this committee with this work and allow them to step through that process so I could potentially be challenging for you to consider current homelessness policy while this committee is forming and really crystallizing around building um collaboration and consensus amongst themselves and then I did want to mention that I think it's important to include in the motion that to ensure that those who lived experience are included in all phases of the um catch work plan both applicants and others expressing interest I know that we have folks here who I am familiar with that would be wonderful additions to these deliberations and so I would imagine potentially even a subcommittee of the catch of folks with lived experience that really could help guide the process moving forward so that would be my recommendation as well so that's it for me so I'm happy to take any questions and hear your feedback so now would be the opportunity for questions and then we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment are there any questions or would you uh prefer we move straight on to public comment public comment okay all right we'll go ahead and um now open it up to public comment so this is an opportunity for members of the community to address us on um our evening item we had one request for a group presentation on behalf of why is I believe is that correct is this a group presentation or is that not true yeah are you representing a group tonight or no okay you'll have three minutes you can start and then um we'll go ahead and acknowledge the person in the white sweater who was waiting in line for for a good portion of oral communications you're welcome to come forward to and start and have your two minutes at the very beginning if you'd like since we haven't heard from you you're welcome to get in line as well in terms of or in terms of public comment so we'll start with yours in terms of a group presentation I encourage you to reach out earlier in advance but we didn't have as many group presentations I'm happy to accommodate that and then we'll open it up for two minutes for other community members okay great thank you mayor good evening council uh monoconic live oak resident um uh so why is democracy santa cruz county uh has been looking at a model called uh the civic council or the wisdom council um and it was used most successfully notably uh in austria and veralberg um to deal with the immigrant crisis there that they were seeing from the middle east um so what I want to do is just break down first of all what the wisdom council is uh how it aligns with your current process and then how it could be integrated with your current work plan that you see before you so the idea behind a wisdom council is that you randomly select members of the community usually 11 to 16 I was interested to hear the 11 number as being your ideal um and the idea behind the random selection is that you get people without roles right without an axe to grind I think that this is part of the issue behind that was noted with the with the rental committee is that instead of being appointed these people are bringing fresh experience and perspectives um these people work with the facilitator for 36 to 48 hours um and come up with their top five recommendations those recommendations are then presented at two community meetings where the public can give broader input on those and then a responder group uh looks at those recommendations and says okay here's what the people are saying uh we're the guys with the expertise the or the gals um how do we turn these into actual policies so that's the overall idea um you know I think it aligns with the process that you outlined tonight because it includes the addition of new voices to the conversation uh would ensure that you get different backgrounds professions ages advocacy and roles um and that you also understand community support tolerance for homeless solutions so how I would recommend that you go about integrating it with the work plan you see before you um you've got I think with the the committee that you've already selected you really have a lot of expertise it sounds to me like a responder group and so you might consider uh doing one or multiple uh random selections of groups from um whether it's just the city of santa cruz or you include uh parts of santa cruz county um because you'll get a better sense of how you know the general population feels about these different um proposals that you're putting before them um and that ultimately the entire community needs to accept um and I think that you also might hear um variations or new ideas that may be the experts didn't consider um that's it in a nutshell um you know we're happy to answer questions um and work with staff um on any of this okay thank you we're gonna go ahead and maybe have I just want to find out how he selects people like what's the process I don't think this is the appropriate form for that but I do believe that he's available online I can say it and yeah real quick um the way you would select is um you why don't you go ahead and start the typically take sorry uh take the voter rolls is one option and you just literally select 400 people send out 400 uh pieces of mail if they have an email address or a phone number associated with their record you could try them that way as well um and then people would um you know opt in that way you obviously want to cover people's transportation costs um and you know other costs so that uh they can participate and everyone equally I mean if you think about this is really a sort of a pop-up grand jury right I mean this says this model has lots of other instances throughout our society we use juries to determine uh you know how to convict a homeless person why wouldn't you use them to uh think about how to proactively create policy all right next speaker and you'll have up to two minutes thank you um I mayor Watkins and members of the city council um my name is Melanie McManus and I applied to be on the community advisory committee on a homelessness I understand the finalists for this committee have been chosen and their nominations will very likely be approved tonight I was not chosen and I know that there were many qualified candidates for this committee I do not expect or anticipate at this late stage of the process for anything to change allowing me to be part of the catch I want to make a statement however on why I feel if something does change or if there's an opening similar in the future my application should be reconsidered in my application I briefly covered why I felt my time working as a paramedic was supremely relevant to this cause I understand deeply the struggles that homeless people face on a regular basis I understand how intersected things like debt chronic physical or mental illness addiction evictions income inequality crime and laws and family dynamics to name a few intersects with the issues of housing and homelessness taking care of homeless people in times of small needs and big crises plays a large part in my familiarity with these issues I interface with the homeless population on a very regular basis and not just at my job living next to the river walk between highway one and downtown just uh less than a mile from this building I interface with members of the homeless population every single day I also am a millennial and a property owner I appreciate the concerns property owners have about things like shelters or other services in their neighborhood I can relate to the frustration of having a large camp pop up nearby and the valid safety and monetary concerns that go along with it but as a millennial I am also intimately familiar with how difficult it can be to find housing that is affordable safe accessible and sustainable all at the same time since I applied for the committee I have been researching and brainstorming prevention and interventional strategies to quell the homelessness crisis we have here in Santa Cruz the large increase in homelessness in recent years is like a water faucet was left on and it's not enough to just stop up the water we need to turn the faucet off thank you for your consideration thank you I'm Keith McHenry and I've been homeless five times and fed people for 40 years and a few things like that um the um you know I think what we could do is we could just actually wide out the date on the 2000 report and republish it we could also wide out the report on the 2017 report the date on that report and republish that because none of those things were actually done and just like the 2017 report this committee was a punt so to speak because we weren't going to do anything about helping people that were living on the streets and the council voted against it smeared a number of counselors in the in the process and I would also like to um report that a number of people living on the streets who've applied um did not get on there's virtually nobody of actual real experience of homelessness on this committee and um sadly Mary blamed Chris and Drew for not being included on the committee even though she's certainly qualified and another homeless person told me that Cynthia Matthews said she was not qualified to be on the committee um implying because she was homeless now this issue is about homelessness and it's clear that uh they are not represented by this committee so I would urge this uh city council to vote against this and just simply take out the two other reports change the dates and actually implement the proposals that were made on those two other reports thank you very much I would only like to say I have no idea about the statement it was just made yeah okay go ahead oh it's okay it's okay we'll go ahead and we're going to go ahead and open it up to keep it going for a public comment on this item 730 you'll have two minutes thank you hi I'm uh Greg Benson good evening um a registered voter resident of Santa Cruz um lived in the Ross camp um I live at uh the river street camp right now um which I thought would be you know they call it the concentration camp um it's actually a place where you can kind of like start to restructure but I had to like bow out of being able to go back tonight so I could participate in the political process because of rules which that's just a foible or it's just a little screw up um it's not their fault it's just I didn't clear things 20 weeks ago but I'm going to be fine because I worked the aisles both sides and um figured out a workaround uh main thing um I've been homeless for quite a while and I've but I've worked in 52 countries and I've done some things that nobody should ever ever ever know about and um those people that do question me on uh you know take back Santa Cruz um hey if you want me to if you want to put up your portfolio against uh mine and investments um I'll crush you but that's not what it's about it's about opening our eyes to love and opening our eyes to people opportunities of human growth um that's what we can do um and we have to reach across the aisles here um man um I love everybody and and uh Ranger Matthews I just have to say um because I give them a hard time I said politically connected um there's just every I mean I talked to everybody I talked to I mean and by the way I retract the fact that um Chief Mills did not eat my friend's dog and that's this video that's playing I'm not kidding I mean there's ridiculous stuff I I just I did say that um in all seriousness though um there are amazing opportunities this commission um I didn't know about it okay thank you all right let's move on to this okay hello I'm Angela blessing and I um have a tiny nonprofit called it's our home and uh we work in partnership with wise democracy dot org uh up in Washington state and uh I'm gonna piggyback a little bit on Manu's comment on the wisdom council process and I'm really heartened to know that you guys are putting together this thoughtful uh panel of experts and community members to uh deliberate and the main thing I want to do right now is urge you to look into this uh technology of dynamic facilitation which is the facilitation tool that's used in the wisdom council process in Austria and other places um the and I appreciate it also what you said about how it differs to have random citizens and their perspectives versus the experts and that being true and relevant um I see that there's been a lot of thought put into this process already and I think the dynamic facilitation technology would be really helpful and expedite um unifying creative out-of-the-box ideas so um there's lots of information if you just look online and we have local experts and we have the inventor of dynamic facilitation coming in July and you'd be happy to speak with you guys and give you a little taste of it like you could we could have a session for a couple of hours and you could feel what it feels like to be facilitated by him okay there um I'm Raphael Sonnenfeld uh I appreciate being nominated as a community organization member uh I founded Friends of Depot Park I just wanted to thank whoever uh selected me in uh nominating me today I appreciate that I just wanted to speak for a minute about the proposed work plan um I'm just slightly concerned that um the way that it's broken down into phases phase one and phase two in particular uh there might be um uh it's it seems like uh the way it's structured uh could potentially drag out solutions that might uh be able to be implemented more quickly than uh six months to nine months from now and uh I would just hope that we could consider uh sort of blending those phases together and um meeting more often than once a month um and possibly uh being able to continuously engage in the community to uh to uh discuss what solutions would might be recommended uh rather than having an engagement period at the beginning and then having a recommendation distillation period after that uh so uh that was just my first take at looking at this plan but I'm I'm happy to and look forward to the opportunity to to work for the city thank you hello again I'm Satya Ryan I want to speak in favor of the wisdom council idea also I love the creativity of it I just finished reading Jim Ruff's book and it's quite extraordinary I've been feeling frustrated with the communication that's going on in our whole community um in general I just think that there's so much division and so many us versus them things going on and I think that we can tend to over study things sometimes form study groups and listening groups and with good intentions but it doesn't always get to what we're hoping to get to so it just seems like a great opportunity to try something new and what have you got to lose you know and especially with Jim Ruff being in town he's actually offering a facilitator training and he's also offering an offer they're doing a lottery right now which I've joined in on to hope I get to be part of a group not this this group but um although I would welcome being in this group too um and I do and I don't know and I think there's lots of things we can do and I like the idea of having more homeless people on this group I think that that's you know maybe there can be numerous groups how how can it hurt to have more creative ideas come um I think what you'll find if you learn more about this process what I saw in his book there were there were groups that had seemingly impasses people that were getting nowhere and they they actually came to wonderful solutions and imagined solutions so I was quite impressed to read about it because I tend to feel discouraged about things like this many times so I hope you'll give it a chance thank you good evening Kareena McFarlane live oak and I'm also here to speak about yeah definitely seriously check out wisdom council dynamic facilitation um Jim Ruff is quite extraordinary it's been his life work he's 72 now him and his wife have been bringing this work around the world for 30 years to many cities we're hosting in july not just Jim Ruff but Marcus Goet who's coming from vorlberg where they have instituted it into their constitution he was hired by the state to interview people about their experience being randomly selected for a wisdom council and I just talked to him on the phone about two days ago and he said what happened to me through my camera lens was I was absolutely blown away I was just floored at what people had broken through and shifts and breakthroughs and so he packed up and followed Jim Ruff back to the United States and trained with him and took it back and he's now a part of the justice department with this work so it's really extraordinary I'm going to leave my cards I'm available in any way that I could expand or elaborate on what it is it's really magic heartfelt miracle kind of technology thank you my name is Elise Kazby and I have been very deliberately investigating life as a homeless person and being a homeless advocate and getting involved with city council and homeless action groups that is groups of activists for the last since 2009 I can't tell you how just supremely disappointed I am with the recommendations as they stand first of all I do not think that Susie O'Hara should be doing the deciding at all the Susie has a long history of working I'm sorry to be taking this position Susie I'm just being very honest I see Susie as an anti-homeless person I think the way that Ross Campbell is dissolved was supremely unfair and disappointing it was also kind of sneaky the ex parte permit there are other problems so I just want to say who decides when are we going to start having a democracy where the people who decide are the people who are affected labor has realized this and that's why labor has unions they are defensive units surge is an actual city and he has been highly employed by the city if he's representing your one homeless person that's that's not right I'm I'm so upset about these choices it's heavy on business what do people have worked at look at or the group that was just bought by Google know about this I once watched Don Lane who's one of our better advocates in the city talk about how a homeless person could survive with a blanket but not a sleeping bag on the street please this is highly insulting we're not going to get anything different of it maybe the wisdom council is what we should do this is now raged okay hello I'm Travis Wheeler I'm a partial dictator I mean sorry director for food not bombs and I am homeless I've been homeless for about 18 to 19 years in Santa Cruz County what I've witnessed is there's not a lot of people that want to be led to a camp or pushed out of town or how to have a specific number to be called by have a curfew or when or when not to go to bed and when they're allowed to go back to their to their area and collect their personal property I've never never been part of any of these camps and I've never been part of any type of homeless situation here other than trying to get enough food in my system to survive and be a regular person I'm all about helping the community and I see a lot of things that have started to go wrong in the last five to seven years since I became homeless again because I couldn't afford my rent there are other situations where let's not leave this about me but people people that are homeless that aren't allowed to sleep in areas that aren't being used at night I was using a place for six to seven months in a parking garage and I was just woken up three days ago being yelled at a police officer uh saying that I can sleep anywhere but I can't sleep here which I also think as a bar term even though I haven't drank in over five years or done any drugs that uh yeah you can go to another bar but somebody else is going to be waking you up saying that you can go to somewhere else but you can't stay here thank you my name is brian schulman many of you know me I'm the producer of currently now the voices from the village show and my television show bts presents at community television I'm currently a resident at the tannery so I'd like to know if this is the appropriate time to speak on that subject that came up earlier is there going to be another time for public comment go ahead and pause it this is no you said earlier when I was in line you said I could do that later when I got back in line this is in regards to the um item before us which is in regards to the homeless uh and the cash that's being formed when I was at the beginning of the meeting when they were I was waiting for public comment you said you can go later when I was asking to be in line and you said come back later so this is the later understanding okay well why don't we do that okay so since there was a misunderstanding we'll go ahead and allow you to speak on this um topic and then also remind you that our planning director here is we've you know taken up that issue so we won't be discussing it further but you're welcome to speak on that and um and apologize for the community the miscommunication I did speak with him outside so we did have a conversation and discussed how to get in touch and talk about it later but I wanted to make sure to have an opportunity to explain what is happening at the tannery so that the council has an understanding what's going on because I think the discussion that would took place earlier was not clear and therefore the discussion that you had wasn't using the right information to make your decision there's currently 40 tenants who live at the tannery that are in question about whether their units are changed according to code the code that was made at the at the time that the building was produced was created was that the units cannot have anything added to the units according to code so since then it's been 10 years people who live there have gone to the different management companies have asked if it's okay to make some changes and the people who live at the tannery have asked the management who said well we think it's okay but we're not really sure but it's okay unless you know we find out otherwise and so they would make small changes to the units and then somebody would move out and somebody would stay in where somebody has made a change currently and now the city has found out that because of what happened in Oakland with the building the fire that the city doesn't want to allow any code changes to anything that was previous to the way the design of the building was made 10 years ago so they're asking for people to get permits to demolish their units back to the way they were originally and to pay $280 for that permit and then to have it removed by a contractor that's approved by the city that will be according to their guidelines for bonding and insurance and with those two requirements people have to decide within two days whether they're going to remove by paying the fee and having their unit removed back to the way it was original or to have a code approval to go forward and so it's a real question they don't know what to do okay thank you all right next and I believe you'll be our last speaker and this is on you'll be our last speaker in the front and this is on our evening agenda item on the cash go ahead my name is Candace Elliott and I'm one of the nominees for the committee and I wanted to thank you all for the nomination I really appreciate it and I wanted to speak on two points that other speakers brought up the first one is the idea that we would just throw away everything that all the committees have done before and not look at it and not take it into consideration it would be very important for me especially moving forward that we would consider all of those things and then the second thing is about including people who have experienced homelessness on the committee because I'm one of those people and like someone else said you know there are things that I've seen and done that no one should have to do and and I do believe that it's important for voices like that and for people who are currently experiencing homelessness to be involved in this whole process and so thank you for putting this together good evening council members my name is ed porter and I want to commend you all for putting together this package I can see a lot of effort went into it and I want to say that but also agree with the man who spoke relatively early I think he's right back in the back with the baseball pat and I think he made a very perceptive comment I know that I recognize most of the connections that all of those applicants you're I think you have 11 applicants that they all have some government connection city county social service agencies of all kinds very widely representative of that group but you know sometimes I think all of us have bristled at times when we're accused of being part of all of the government and agency group and not completely represent representing homeless people and I think he made the point very eloquently and so I'll get right to a suggestion to answer his comment and that is I think that tonight in this action you should add two more seats to the group and choose not necessarily homeless people because they're stressed already they don't need the stress of a city committee I don't think but people that have gone through the homeless services center and maybe worked at the homeless garden and then got employment and then got housing there's just talked to Catherine Byers a few minutes ago and in fact 750 people did that this year in fact the homeless services center has about 750 graduates I'll call them graduates because I'm from an educational background those are people who succeeded with the help of the city of Santa Cruz and county and with the homeless services center and all the social service agencies that are involved and know something to tell this group and I recommend you put on two more seats thank you for that purpose okay and you'll be our last speaker here good evening Scott Graham um to me this sort of seems like the old soft shoe sort of a dodge to oh we're gonna have another yet another task force on the homeless issue and then do nothing about it because ever since 89 after the earthquake when the homeless service center came about there has been multiple task forces on the homeless issue and I don't think hardly any of those suggestions that came forward have ever been implemented so maybe if you still insist on having a task force this time around the first thing they should do is look at the last few task force recommendations and pick one at least one recommendation and implement it immediately and then distill everything else out but let's make some real positive progress on here you know let's not just sidestep this put on a you know dog and pony show and then after it's all over do nothing it's time to really do something and I hope that whatever can be done before the rains come next year or the end of this year that something can be done to help people before the weather turns bad thank you okay just going to do a real quick last call for anybody interested in speaking on this item is there any other member of the community who wants to address this on this item okay seeing then you'll be our last speaker I was just going to say that I agree with you to appoint but they have been doing making some changes so we have to at least look at some of the changes that have been done sure we can do a lot more and always we can do a lot more but that's also started a point we realized that we've also made some differences as the communities do time I've seen a lot of differences happen in my time out of the decades I've been here for decades and I would agree that we definitely need people that are currently homeless there needs to be at least a couple people on this council this particular catch that that are currently homeless that are willing to take the stress of going ahead and going through it because these are the people that are most in this situation right now even if somebody's been there before they still can't totally identify with it if they're not in it now right okay thank you I'll go ahead and um just return it back to the council for action and deliberation I just again want to reiterate our gratitude to the folks that are here expressing their opinions as well as those that um apply to participate and are suggesting other ways to stay engaged I think it again just really shows and highlights how our community really wants to be engaged in solutions in this way and I think also really illustrates the difficulty our job was in being able to really identify a smaller and select group of 11 folks that being said I just want to orient us to the recommended motion I want to also incorporate appreciation of having and ensuring that those with lived experience are included in all phases of the process as well as ways that the once forms the cash can engage with things like the wisdom council and other types of mechanisms for how to modify the work plan and really leaving it up to them to essentially identify their best the best path forward with through consensus so I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council and then we'll go ahead and see if we can get a motion vice mayor Cummings and then councilmember clever want to again thank all the staff for the amount of time and effort they put into this all the members of the community who applied to this and then for to all the people who came and spoke this evening because I really haven't I'm not that very I'm not that familiar with the wise process and there was a lot of support for that and so I want to thank everybody for bringing that to our attention I'm very interested in looking into it further with regards to that I would like to better understand I hope that that can be incorporated potentially into this work plan I don't want to abandon all the work that was done by staff to start over again with trying to use that model in this process but I do think that it's going to be useful for us to learn more about that moving forward and how we can incorporate that into other decisions that we're going to be making in the near future that being said I did have one question that that like spurred my curiosity when the member of our community whose first name was Greg came up and he was mentioning not being able to get back into 1220 can you speak to that because I just think that it would be great if we could figure out some way for members from 1220 to be able to come and address the city council and be able to get back to 1220 and get in so can you elaborate on that I just want to understand for so I have to assume what Greg is mentioning is of the last shuttle has already done its route but anybody who has a prior agreement with Salvation Army staff around a work commitment or any other type of commitment has alternative means to get into 1220 so I'm assuming that Greg has a ride in and if he doesn't have to jump out and say okay okay that's great to hear and I think if we can maybe some point have the Salvation Army help us understand some of the sort of specifics in terms of the program sure and I and I think to just get to Vice Mayor Cummings comment about ensuring that those that are currently sheltered have an opportunity to engage on even this work that will be something that I think the committee should really tackle at the beginning to ensure that I mean as Mary had a challenge she was going down to Aptos and needed to catch a bus folks that are currently living unsheltered and and without a home do have other extenuating challenges around transportation and I do think if we want to engage with folks with current lived experience we're going to have to remove those barriers as much as we can Vice Mayor Cummings I would just like to say that with that being said I would just you know hope and encourage that with regards to the how people are able to get to and from 1220 that we can make accommodations for people to be able to come to City Council meetings and also go and observe these meetings if these meetings are to be public but then getting back to the recommendations one thing I think would be important is that with that engagement with live experiences that the group actually goes to 1220 and engages with the communities there along with HPHP Coral Street Salvation Army and VFW I think that if we really want to get these folks understanding the different shelters we have and the shelter needs I just wanted to put that out there and then I also hear the member of the community who was Rafael who has been recommended that having the different phases might make the process very long and I think that we need to have a very inclusive process with engaging in our community but I also wonder if this can be brought to this committee as a recommendation and then allow the committee to actually formulate its work plan so that it's something that's driven by them as well rather than something that's been prescribed to them by our City Council so I just want to put that information out for my colleagues to take into consideration I just wanted to respond to that so that is the intention I would imagine over the first few meetings that the committee would actually take this as a template and consider the best way to iterate through not only public engagement but bringing in expert panels really doing the site visits that you're recommending Vice Mayor Cummings in terms of understanding the systems of care that we have in this community and across the county so I would fully expect the committee to actually be developing their work plan and figuring out how best to move forward. And then additionally taking into consideration what was done in 2017 I imagine that would be okay I'd be prepared to move this item at this time. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings the seconded by Council Member Myers my understanding that the motion includes the recommendation the suggestion for ways to engage with those that have lived experience by going to them to reduce all barriers that may be in place that don't allow them to participate in a way that works to also include exploration as appropriate from the group in terms of the recommendation that was brought up with the connection to the Wisdom Councilor-in-Wise and is that it? Does that cover your existing policy? Oh and use of existing policy and then yeah and to build on the foundation from existing impacts right now. I would also give the this committee the authority if they would like to include two more members from the homeless community on this board that they could review and vote on extending the membership to include two more members from the homeless community. As decided by the cash? As decided by the cash. Is that supported by the second resolution? The cash would be for that. Yeah I mean I I think it's something the cash should discuss certainly I don't know I'm looking kind of looking at Susie I know there was some I mean I think I mean I'm fine I'm fine with that as part of the motion. So as determined yeah in terms of exposure. Do you want to go ahead? Well once we have actually Council Member Glover and then we have Council Member Brown. Oh I just wanted to respond really quickly actually we have reached out to everybody who is on this 11 member nomination list. We haven't received an affirmative in terms of yes I'm committed and able to do this and so I would also recommend for Council's consideration and we had a few people that came up to speak today that might be interested that did apply to consider alternates also to ensure that we actually have a full panel of committee members. If there are anybody who you would like to recommend as alternates for the catch's consideration if for for any reason somebody is not able to commit of the 11 folks that are on the current list that might be something you should consider as well. Okay Council Member Glover and then Council Member Brown. Thank you and I realize that earlier Council Member Brown got kind of kicked down the stack so I will let you go first if you like. It's okay I'll speak one number. Thank you. I'm used to it. Okay. It happens I mean not me personally sorry but it just happens. In life it happens. Sorry. So great good to great that there's motion on the floor I was really excited to hear the Vice Mayor's suggestion of the two additional seats. I do want to make sure that language though is that it's direction from the Council to explicitly add two more seats with people experiencing homelessness because in the conversation leading up to it it sounded like it was at the behest of the catch whether to add those two people so I won't. It is at the it is for the catch to vote on those two people so this body of 11 will form and they will have an opportunity to review the work plan and come up with a work plan that they see as appropriate and in addition to that we will provide them with the authority to add two more individuals to the committee who are living and experiencing homelessness if they decide to but not direction they have the ability or the authorization to but not this explicit direction to they have the direct they have the direction to appoint two more people from the homeless community should they see the need to do so just want to make sure that it's explicit absolutely what okay so my understanding is the clarification is that it is in addition to the explicit direction to engage throughout all phases with those that are experiencing homelessness that the cash of 11 that are will be forms will have the they will be given the authority to include two additional folks that are experiencing homelessness as they decide so so my concern there is that they have the authority so if the catch made up of experts that only has one person that currently has experience of being homelessness currently and then someone else that just let us know that they have previous past but didn't note it on their application that they had experienced homelessness I want to make sure that it's explicit that they will add those people not at their whim that they after they form that they will include two more people currently experiencing homelessness as members of the body and then with that is so we'll start there so it sounds to me that that is an ask for a I want to make sure the languages it's not consistent so it would be an amendment to or an ask to have a friendly amendment to include that right now as it's articulated is it we would empower our nominees to make that determination okay so would you accept a friendly amendment to add language that would explicitly direct them to add two more people why are you against having representation of homeless people I'm not against that and there are there are members of this committee who have lived homes experience who did not want to have that we're keeping confidential because they did not want that expressed and so another thing I would add is that you know we're creating this group of 11 and we're providing them with the authority as the as members who represent the community to move forward with this plan um we ensure that there were representation of people who have experienced homeless on this and who are homeless on this and in addition to that we would like to give them the ability to continue to move through this process as they see fit and in doing so also given that there's been expressed that from members of the community and now from members of the city council that they would like to have that there is a desire in the community to have more homeless people on this we're going to allow them to continue move forward and give them the authority to be able to extend their membership if they see it's it's worth doing at this point and done okay so I'm just really concerned about that language if they see that it's worth the time um my goal in political mode is to make sure that we have voices represented at the table and if we give a group of people that are experts the whim to include people whenever they want to these two people that's problem and then the other thing I have a problem with personally is that you're waiting for them to finish making their own work plan before they invite the other people in so the people that are experiencing homelessness are the ones that this is going to affect directly don't have a voice in even structuring or having input in the work plan creation so there's a lot of different levels of a lack of representation so that I'm going to voice that and if you can do whatever you want with it but I I really would encourage you and and urge you I would say to intentionally include those voices and in the decision-making process even leading up to the actual meeting because otherwise we're just gonna more the same the other concern I have because I've met with a room full of people either currently experiencing homelessness or homeless advocates and they had much of the same concerns with regards to the structure I do want to say that I appreciate all of the work that's been gone into because looking at all the applications and all the different boxes you had to fit so I appreciate that but from the homeless community it may be hard to get buy-in for the solutions because of some of the personalities that are represented on the body some of whom have long-standing history in the nonprofit homeless world and who are seen by many that are advocates as not being a part of the solution so that's a big issue I don't know where the youth representation of homelessness is because that was a specific instruction for there to be youth homelessness I didn't going through the sheet I did not see anyone that was identified as youth homelessness I saw a student counselor that doesn't even in the city so I'm so just some of those selections and it was also mentioned that the selection process being kind of done in another room somewhere without us being able to even hear from or talk to the people really makes it difficult for there to be a representativeness outside of y'all's interpretation of who would be a good fit so there's a lot of concern that I have with the structure of how things are going on the work plan great as well as the proposed work plan I share the concerns about the timeline though as was mentioned by Rafa are we going to wait six to nine months to be able to implement any of the solutions or is there a way that we can expedite that process and then also you know one of our options moving forward is to run the wisdom council structure in tandem with the catch so that we can be getting a broad variety of community input from random selections while we have this expert panel group moving forward so there's a lot of different directions we can go with this but the main issue is representation on the body and the power and authority that those marginalized people have in the decision-making process I just need to say it okay we have Christopher Brown Matthews and then Myers thanks and thank you for putting in the effort to pull all of this information together for us and for the council members who looks at all these applications I was also pleased to see that we had a lot of interest and a lot of names I didn't recognize I don't I don't know I've been here working on these issues in the community for almost 30 years so that made me very happy to see I I recognize the concerns that some members of the public have expressed about previous work that's been done and not acted upon I want to have the hope that and I think you know Vice Mayor Cummings suggested it but I hope that we can make that explicit in the direction that that information be reviewed considered that so that's one item and hopefully that's happening if that's happening great secondly in terms of the timeline I think that Mr. Sonnenfeld just nailed it that we should not have this process preclude bringing potential actions to the council that or programmatic things that can be implemented now or soon in the interest of waiting for a full set of recommendations I mean if there are things that we can do sooner than later they identify there's community readiness what you know whatever basis that or it's an easy thing to do I would love to hear those things and make them happen sooner than later so I really hope that that's also clear in the charge of the committee in terms of the makeup I understand the interest in giving authority to the catch to make a decision about two additional appointments but I just want to say I just want to strongly support that happening because I really believe that what Mary Beeson said is critical that if homeless people unhoused people are not at the table and I would add have a full seat at the table not over here where you know we listen to them for a few hours or go visit um that if they have a full seat at the table we are going to come up with better solutions and if we don't we are going to have a process that is then potentially going to become embattled and I don't want to see that happen either this is a really important time for us to be making critical decisions and coming up with creative innovative ways to address these issues and I I strongly I really believe that the only way that's going to happen is if people who are experiencing homelessness now in our community are fully at the table and I'll just I'll just before we go on to council member Matthews I'll just remind you that there is one per individual that's not specified that is experiencing homelessness that is anomaly just just for clarification okay council member Matthews I'll start out by supporting the effort before us and the motion I do want to acknowledge that I've supported the recommendation as it was presented to us I know a great deal of thought went into this selection and the original concept was to bring in people who had for lack of a better term professional experience in a wide variety of fields that touch on homelessness and I think that's reflected here in terms of medical services education recovery and so forth I won't name them all but I that I believe was the original intention and and that was represented I can certainly support the addition at the discretion of the group to add additional members I think the language of the motion was currently homeless I think there could be a value of of using the term lived experience because it would be of real value to engage people who had experienced homeless and homelessness and found a path to more stability so we'll go ahead and no I'm just going to go ahead and pause remind that the community that you had an opportunity to already address this during public comment now is the time for action and deliberation on this side and we appreciate you to hearing from you but at this point if you could please not interrupt council members as they're expressing their opinions so I would just request consideration of that term with lived experience the there's been mention of engaging the wisdom council that seems like a very interesting approach to exploring issues and arriving at agreement I I don't feel comfortable including that as part of the direction of this group it certainly one many tools they may explore but I think the direction should be pretty clear so I don't know if it was your intention to designate them specifically no okay not not a expression one way or the other it's it's just that I'd like there to be a good deal of attitude here and then I just want to raise the issue this is such a big topic and so much interest in so many ways to explore it what has been the thinking of either the group that brought this forward or staff in terms of the amount of resources that we will spend on this and just setting some parameters for that yeah and I probably will have to yield to the city manager on this but I do have some unique experience in running the public safety task force in 2013 which quite frankly could very well be a very similar process in terms of that task force really did have a deliberate phase of learning and listening and engaging with the community and then working with experts in the field to develop policy that process was eight months and it was essentially a full-time job for me to coordinate that along with a student intern at the time the issue of homelessness and policy direction around that that the city is grappling with along with most cities along the west coast and across the country is growing in how complicated it is and how difficult it has been to arrive at solutions that are feasible and able we are able to move forward with so this will be a very significant level of staffing resources you know as mentioned in the agenda report a contemplation of additional budget potential for consulting services facilitation services you know I think the catch in the beginning of their process will really be considering how best to move forward with what type of coordination would be most effective so I'll let Martine talk a little bit more about you know what kind of resources we're talking about but it will be significant so as a council knows we've added some additional capacity on a temporary basis to assist in the my office to particularly focus on this issue and we're evaluating the level of work that's going to be required and it is going to be significant as we look at everything that that we'll be working on over the next certainly six months to a year not just with the cash but just around homelessness with the state funding the just the various issues that we'll be having to deal with and so we'll as part of the priority setting process I think we'll bring that back to you but my sense is that we're going to have to add some additional capacity to really focus on this particular topic is the the amount of work it's going to be pretty significant so we'll be looking at that and again in the context of priorities when we bring that back to you in August okay councilmember Myers I think I'd like I'd like to also add to our to the motion I'd like to name certainly pursue this idea of alternates based on existing applicants and I'm going to go ahead and I'd like to nominate definitely have Mary Beeson as be a main alternate number one alternate and I'm sorry I've been here for 12 hours could you remind me of your name I'm Megan Megan I think it might have been Angela no Melanie Melanie make Melanie okay thank you I'm so I'm so sorry and I'd like to also with with Melanie's you know recognizing her willingness to come down tonight but this idea of alternates is I think important and I'd like to see if we can move move I'd like to call the question soon if we can um the one um the one issue I have with the alternates is I think that there are probably people that every single person up here may want to put in as an alternate so I'm just wondering if we could have the recommendations for alternates come back to the group that made the recommendations and then we can decide on them just given the fact that we don't know how many people and and I'm and I'd be happy to take these people into consideration I just think for the purposes of time and just um the fact that there's a lot of people up here who may want to be recommended that we may be bringing that back to our group for consideration I feel comfortable with that and before I go to Councilmember Matthews I just want to also sort of reiterate that we have an opportunity to um kind of embrace some of the recommendations that came out of the seppos report in regards to allowing our community to have an opportunity to engage in a way that's transparent and we as leaders can also allow them to do that and I think this is a really great opportunity for for our community to do so um and I'm happy to work with uh my colleagues in um and in terms of potential uh alternates whether or not they fall into um various categories I I recognize that there's certain sort of representation that we might want to be um considering as we move forward um in that regard okay Councilmember Matthews my point exactly and on this uh topic of alternates I think um my impression is what we're talking about if someone was nominated but finds actually they can't do it and they don't accept it then there would be a replacement rather than an alternate yeah sorry I that that's what I meant was that there would this isn't an additive this would be if someone in that case I think if someone who represents a certain constituency isn't able to serve then you'd want to look for someone else that represents that same body of experience rather than another one who's similar to someone else so I think we'll wait and see how it shakes out there's some great people obviously anyway that's that's how I'd look at okay that issue so we have a motion on the floor made by Vice Mayor Cummings and then and then uh seconded by Councilmember Myers do you need that motion repeated at this state at this time I'm assuming so it's so it incorporates what's on the on the screen it incorporates um having a uh interest in the cash exploring if there's a if and how there could be a role for the wisdom council and wise how to um engage with folks with lived experience um and in all phases and then also if they deem appropriate to incorporate two additional seats of folks that have lived experience or are currently experiencing homelessness as they're at their discretion that that if there were any types of instances where a nominee was unable to serve or we needed to have some alternates that we would have the subcommittee review that process and and am I what am I missing review any documents that have been produced by the city for consideration for policy and recommendations okay can I make one clarification um in terms of replacements so say we have one or more of the 11 nominees that are unable to serve um is it the intention of the council to allow the catch to go through a process of identifying other folks or come back to council it would come out to the committee yeah to the subcommittee okay okay council member brown matthews and then uh clever I'm really sad to say this because I um as I think everybody knows supported the idea of doing this I in fact made the motion when it looked like it wasn't going to happen but I I can't support this recommendation without um directing the catch to a point and we have people on this list who would provide who who showed up tonight you know at the risk of maybe not getting her getting being able to get on the last bus um who have um lived experience and and I just can't support it without that um an assurance that that's going to happen it makes me really sad council member matthews and then I just want to clarify the term alternate an alternate is not you call up and you say I can't go to this meeting you go for me yes okay the replacement it's the replacement thank you for clarifying the language okay council member clever yeah so as the person that seconded the original motion uh it's just it's strange to me it seems like there is a resistance about including people that are actively experiencing homelessness we've seen uh from us not mandating their participation from the catch by making it possible or optional to changing the language from experiencing homelessness to lived experience it should I can't I can't support the motion because you refuse to elevate intentionally the voices of people who are directly the ones that are going to be affected by the decision making process and we have as we mentioned so someone is here who just said that he would miss a bed and optionally miss his shuttle so he could participate in the political process as well as the other woman that was here earlier it blows my mind I'm a huge supporter of homelessness solutions I've presented a bunch of homelessness solutions but if we can't centralize the conversation around people that are currently experiencing homelessness and give them a voting block at the table then I cannot support a catch all right well we have the motion in the second okay we'll go ahead and take the vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed so that passes with council member Matthews vice mayor Cummings myself and council member Myers voting in support council member brown Glover and crone voting against okay so that will then conclude our evening agenda item and in our city council meeting for this evening