 Morning. I'll now call to order the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is November 15th 913 a.m. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Yes, thank you. Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Koenig. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you. Begin with a moment of silence and then a pledge of allegiance. Is there any member of the Board that would like to attribute this moment of silence to anyone or anything? I would just like to acknowledge November. This is a month when some of us wear mustaches to bring awareness to the issue of men's health. I was most interested to learn that suicide is a leading cause of death among men. Men commit suicide three to four times more often than women. There are many reasons for this, but one is certainly the changing nature of work in our society. Employment among men between 25 and 54 so called prime working age has fallen by nearly 9% over the last 60 years. And as jobs requiring physical labor and manufacturing have increasingly gone away. So this has serious impacts on men's sense of purpose and self worth. I think we will all need to work to help reimagine new roles for men as teachers in health care and other professions for going to reverse this troubling trend. They're not always good at asking for help, but that doesn't mean that we don't need it. And so during this moment of silence, I hope you will send some love and support to your male friends, brothers, father, husband, cousins, whoever needs it. Thank you. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. CEO Palacios, are there any additions or deletions to the agenda today? Yes, we have a number of corrections on the regular agenda item number eight. There's additional materials, revised attachment A replaces packet page 49. There's also revised attachment B replaces packet page 72. On item 11, there's additional materials, revised attachment B replaces page 110. On item 12, there's additional materials, revised attachment B replaces packet pages 205 and 206. On item 13, there's additional materials, revised attachment J replaces page 14 and revised attachment L replaces page 108. On the consent agenda item 33, there's additional materials, letter of Santa Cruz County District 3, supervisor Coonerty regarding Sargent Ranch, quarry D-E-I-R, insert after packet page 867. On item 35, there's additional materials, revised attachment D replaces packet page 884. And then on consent agenda item number 59, there's additional materials. There's a revised memo packet page 1578, replaced, recommended action three should read direct the clerk of the board to advertise the notice to contractors for 10 days beginning November 20th, 2022 for the provisions of public contract code section 2392. That concludes the revisions to today's agenda. Thank you. And hopefully you all realize it with the large number of revisions. It's also because we have a very large agenda today. So I hope you all be cognizant of that as we move forward. So are there announcements by board members of items to be removed from the consent to regular agenda? Seeing none. We'll proceed with public comment. Any person may now address the board. Speakers must not exceed two minutes in length and individuals may speak only once during the public comment period. So if you do choose to speak about an item during this comment period, please we ask that you don't speak on the same item later in the meeting. All public comments must be directed to an item listed on today's consent agenda closed session agenda yet to be heard on the regular agenda or topic on the agenda that is within the jurisdiction of the board. Board members will not take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented regarding topics not on the agenda, but may choose to follow up later either individually or on a subsequent board of supervisors agenda. Please proceed. Yes. Hello. My name is James Ewing Whitman, a man who the mustache looks great on you. It's a quite a compliment. What to talk about? You know, this morning I was curious that folks have been moved from the benchlands. Where'd they go? I asked some people. So I went up highway nine to just see what was going on. I stopped at a place that I really like that hadn't been further polluted and then took myself out to breakfast and wrote some things down. I was looking at some books this morning and I picked up this one, volume one, Roosevelt, the lion and the fox. There's some copyrighted information on here. So I'm going to read it anyway because I thought it was quite pointy. So volume one, Roosevelt, the lion and the fox by James McGregor, Byrne 1956 for Jen, David, Timothy, Deborah and Antonio. Prince wrote Machiavelli must imitate the fox and the lion for the lion cannot protect itself from traps and the fox cannot defend itself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize the traps in a lion to frighten the wolves. Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this. Therefore a prudent ruler ought not to keep the faith when by doing so would be against his interest and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one. But as they are bad and would not observe their faith with you so you are not bound to keep their faith with them. So I've been an observer in local court and a quote from a judge after the defendant gave about 20 examples where he could represent himself and have help. The judge stated this, not under local rules. Maybe he could have clearly stated not under our corporate rules. I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Damon Bruder and I'm addressing item number 43 on the consent agenda. It concerns the Surin Services Program Advisory Commission, the approval of potential new bylaws and acceptance of our biennial report. I would like to read my welcome letter, it's just a cover letter for that. I am the elected chairperson for that commission. Welcome, supervisors. The last two years have been an exciting and challenging opportunity for our commission. Since our inception, we have learned a lot about our Surin Services Program, its clients and community, and we remain committed to learning even more. We have explored innovative ideas and implemented a few. We have outlined an ambitious list of goals to pursue. We have developed several recommendations for the board to consider. And we have achieved all of this while navigating the myriad challenges created by the COVID pandemic. Our leaders, community partners and county staff have provided tremendous support and ideas to help us better serve both SSP clients and the community. I would like to personally thank Nikki Mesa and Megan Holland for their invaluable help with understanding the rules and policies involved with our commission and meetings. We couldn't have gotten here without them. As a commission, we know that the greater downtown Santa Cruz area is disproportionately affected by syringe litter. We understand that better SSP accessibility and exchange relationships will help combat this issue, as well as improving the overall health and well being of not only the clients, but the entire community. I believe that the SSP is vital to our community and that this commission can help by learning and developing more ways to improve our program. Thank you for this opportunity to be of service to our community. Damon Bruder, Chairperson. With that being said, I would like to touch on the subject of accessibility. Everything is too far away from the people that need it. We need more accessibility. We also have two vacant seats on the commission. If we could please try to fill those. Thank you. Thank you, Chairperson Bruder. Good morning. My name is Rafa Sonnenfeld. I'm with Santa Cruz, yes, in my backyard. I'm here this morning to speak on behalf of item 13, which is the County Sustainability Update Plan. I wanted to comment that there were a number of recent recommendations that the Planning Commission made to this update, which we think are anti-housing and actually go against the goals of having a more sustainable plan. Specifically, we opposed suggested modifications from the Planning Commission that reduce height maximums, reduce density, add parking requirements or require more public hearings. We agree with the staff clarifications that support the use of density bonus consistent with state law and the alternative modes of travel such as bicycle and transit access with unbundled parking as a transportation demand strategy. We also opposed the continued use of the level of service standard for development within the urban services line, which promotes sprawl rather than vehicle miles travel, which is in line with the central objectives of the sustainability update. We recognize that this is a great opportunity, this rezoning to help us get a more compliant housing element to address our housing crisis in the county, and we need to do so immediately. If the county doesn't have a compliant housing element, we'll actually lose control of our local zoning and have potentially unlimited heights and densities. So this is actually a great opportunity to do more. And I just wanted to end with a quote from Donald Shoup's book in the High Cost of Free Parking who notes that minimum parking requirements subsidize cars, increase traffic condition, pollute the air, encourage sprawl, increase housing costs, degrade urban design, prevent walkability, damage the economy, and penalize people who can't afford parks. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Cernan Farrell. Good morning. My name is Carolyn Farrell, and I appreciate your being here today and your service to the community. I would like to read from a letter that I wrote and email. And I'm here to support the request of Supervisor Coonerty. I'm here to support the request of Supervisor Coonerty regarding the inquiry into the regulation of youth transport companies and reunification camps, and that this be done as quickly as possible. I have watched the video of Maya and Sebastian Lang being forcefully taken, forcefully and brutally taken from their grandmother's home while their aunts, friends, and neighbors watched in helpless horror. I am writing as a human being, mother, grandmother, and American family therapist who has spent many years helping children and adults heal from this kind of trauma. It is my opinion what we have witnessed on this video was child abuse. No one knows how many other children have been traumatized by the decisions that have been made or assisted by systems and people who are charged with protecting our children. This includes CPS, our law enforcement, the family court system. This video has brought to light what was hidden. We as a community now have a duty to act by discovering where the system fails to protect children. We must act swiftly by creating laws to ensure this never happens to another child in Santa Cruz County or California. I want to thank you in advance for your diligence in looking into this as quickly as possible, and I just wanted to be the voice for Maya and Sebastian today. We don't know where they are. Their family has had no contact with them. Thank you, Ms. Ferrell. Thank you. All right. Anyone else here in chambers who wishes to speak during public comment, please approach the podium and for McHugh. Good morning. Good morning. Eric Stern, District 4 Representative for the Syringe Services Commission. I'd just like to tell you our commission is really growing and doing great stuff. We were a committee in 2013, became a commission just a couple of years ago. We just now submitted our first biannual report, a lot of accomplishments in there, and under the direction of Monica Morales, HSA leadership, and Socorro Gutierrez, our program manager, and Damon Ruder, our chair. We're really spirited. We're small, but we're mighty, and we're really doing some good things. We've put out 14 needle collection boxes in high target areas. We're working with the city and other agencies to see what we can do to make our neighborhoods safer. We're meeting a lot of program goals and recommendations by the board, and in a couple of weeks, we're having a special session of the commission to look at the idea of moving in our exchange out of the Emmeline campus at the direction of the board. And if so, where's that going to go, and how are we going to do it, and all those kind of questions? So we've got good stuff going on, and I just want to say I'm proud to be working under these other folks that lead us. It's a good thing. And if you have any candidates, we do have two vacant seats. So if you want to join us in your spare time, please step up. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Thank you, Commissioner Sturm. I just have a quick procedural question. Will we be able to make comments on the tiny home ordinance later in the meeting? You will. If you can't anticipate, we'd probably hear that item somewhere around 10.30. Okay. If you'd like to make a comment now, you can speak now instead of- I'll wait till the discussion starts. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else are in chambers? Seeing none. Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, Chair. We have three people. Call in user number three. You should be able to unmute now. I am looking at a picture on the front of September 11th Sentinel. What's that giant orb? I understand it weighs 2,000 pounds. Radar installation out in top Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office rooftop. One of the pictures shows inside a new large white fiberglass dome in live oaks at Santa Cruz County's new IFB dual polarization X band magnetron transmitter based weather radar. Well, I know from reading years for years the dangers of radar and your job, your responsibility is to provide for the well-being of the community and not to further endanger the public, which this does. Paul Broder's book, The Zapping of America. Microwaves, their deadly risk and the cover-up. Microwave radiation can blind you all through your behavior, cause genetic damage, even kill you. The risks have been hidden from you by the Pentagon State Department and the electronics industry. With this book, the microwave cover-up is ended. I recommend you read the book and there's specific information on this X band. Chapter four, The Human Factor. You should have a public meeting on this. Radar emitting devices, microwave devices should be removed. They're clearly endangering the public and facts don't cease to exist because they're ignored. Here's what it says, so you cut me off and you should resture that three minutes. Professor Susskind in 61 performed an experiment for the year. Thank you, Ms. Karen. Colin user whose telephone number ends in 2915. You are now unmuted and may speak. You are unmuted. Good morning. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Thank you for repairing the technical difficulties earlier that prevented telephone people, callers from being able to access the meeting today. I want to follow up a bit on what Ms. Garrett just said regarding the satellite microwave facility on the sheriff's building. My concern is the possible radio frequency interference that that equipment could cause with the county's emergency communications co-located on that rooftop. And I want to know if there has been a study done of any possible RF interference. It could affect the county's emergency communications in a disaster, and I want to know that this has been analyzed. I also have concerns that there could be RF interference with what will soon be a new 60 foot tower radio tower at the pure water SoCal treatment plant directly across the street. That radio tower will communicate with three pressure injection wells in Aptos. And I want to know that there will be no radio interference that could cause difficulties with that. I also want to support the former, the previous speaker about the tragedy of the laying children and others like them and urge your board to take rapid action to prevent this and to regulate it in our county and in the state. I want to speak about Consent Agenda Item 25, the ongoing leaking vault issue at the Dermott Fire Station and Martin Fire Station. This is emergency action but it began in May of 2021 and it looks to me like it is a non-stop reason to not have competitive bidding for other projects in the county and I'm quite concerned as a taxpayer about this. Thank you Mr. Lerner. Benny Drescher, you can unmute yourself and speak. Thank you very much. I am calling in to simply speak on Consent Agenda Item Number 33, the motion to send a resolution regarding the Sargent Ranch Quarry in Santa Clara County and I simply want to commend the Board of Supervisors for their efficient action towards bringing this item into the agenda for this month's meeting and voice my support for this resolution. It is going to be a powerful step for our community to stand with the Indigenous people known as the Amamutsan Tribal Band in protecting their most sacred site from a potentially permanently destructive project and a vote, a unanimous vote, hopefully in support of this resolution will make waves of healing and provide ground for ecological and spiritually fulfilled community for their future generations. Thank you so much. Thank you Mr. Drescher. Lou Cheramonte, you may now unmute yourself. Lou Cheramonte, I'm a resident of Ziane and my family has lived in the region since the 1880s. I'm a member of the Santa Cruz County Democratic Central Committee and an organizer for the grassroots organizations out there Indigenous Solidarity. I'm just speaking a few words in support of Item 33 again on the Consent Agenda which does relate to a Board of Supervisor Resolution regarding the Amamutsan lead effort to protect their most sacred place referred to as the Heurist Act Tribal Cultural Landscape. This ancient site includes a good size portion or a certain portion of Santa Cruz County and the Amamutsan Tribal Band is a historically recognized tribe that consists of those who were taken to Mission Santa Cruz as well as Mission San Juan Batista. I believe the language and proposed resolution relates directly to the heritage of Santa Cruz County. It's existing Indigenous population as well as the protection of the county's ecology and I commend the Board for considering a resolution on this issue. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Cheramonte. There are no other speakers. Thank you. All right. Thank you everyone. We'll now move to Item 6, Action on the Consent Agenda. I'll start by recognizing Supervisor McPherson for any comments or questions. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Cheramonte. Can you hear me all right? We can. We can see you too now. I want to thank our Chair Brunner and Commissioner Stern of our SSP, our Serene Services Program Commission. I want to thank both the Commissioners and the Health Services Agency staff for what they've done and their work. I appreciate their efforts and to better understand the benefits that we have from that commission. I hope that we get two more members on there and for bringing their recommendations to the Board. I especially appreciate the Commission's willingness to meet in the field. I think that's been a real important aspect of this whole Commission's work. I'd like to provide additional direction to have the staff return to the Board if we could with the regular agenda item on maybe April of next year of 2023 to consider the recommendations outlined by the Commission. So I'd like to make that an additional direction on Item Number 43. As far as the Item Number 49, the Master Plan on Agents, I would thank our Human Services team that spearheaded the effort to better identify the needs of our seniors and create a plan for how to address them more comprehensively. The state is really into this as well and this assessment is critical in laying the groundwork for our future planning actions. And Item Number 56, the Storm Damage Progress Report. When I see the full breadth of the work being done to address the damage from the 2016-17 storm, I'm in awe of what the project had to manage. We had $75 million in estimated damage for the Federal Highways Administration and $53 million for FEMA. These are huge numbers and the department is really kept an eye on the ball and I want to thank the public worksite of the Community Development and Infrastructure Department for its work for the many years in working with the Federal agencies and contractors on these critical repairs. They really don't come fast enough, but I'm sure glad they're here and that you've done so much work during the years. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just briefly, on Item 50, which is the Parks Renaming Policy, a lot of appreciation of the Parks Commission and the Parks Director for the work on this. This was an item that the Board had requested after we had renamed Willbrook Park in honor of Sergeant Damon Gutzweiler. One of the elements of the Park Renaming Direction that the Board had provided was to ensure that there was maximum flexibility within the Parks Department on receiving these applications or requests for naming and that there were checks and balances associated with it. And there are, they would go through the Department, through the Parks Commission, and then up to the Board of Supervisors. I do think that there is actually some language within the renaming policy that needs to be modified in order to ensure that that flexibility is met. In particular, there's just a footnote, footnote number two, that lists the restrictions on entities that maybe don't have a connection to the county. And one of the concerns that I had raised to the Parks Department was that that may prevent, say, a foundation that wants to sponsor a new soccer field or something. And that was not the intention. And so I'm going to propose as additional direction that we just eliminate footnote number two. The rest of the policy is fine, but the goal here was to ensure that we had flexibility in funding coming in for Parks and things like foundations, philanthropic foundations that may want to sponsor something. The Board of Supervisors, the Parks Department should have that as a consideration. So as additional direction on item 50, I'd like to just modify footnote number two, which is to say I'd like to eliminate footnote number two, but the rest of the element is fine. And that's the only comment that I have on consent, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple items to comment on versus item number 30, which we've had some eloquent letters and testimony that have come in today. The violent taking of two kids from their home in Santa Cruz by a private transportation company was an important event that shocked many of us in the community. The county's role in this case is really limited. We were not a party to the case, nor do we have a lot of jurisdiction, but I think we can look at regulating private transportation companies to follow the same best practices that our county workforce does in child protective services, which is not to put hands on children and create unnecessary trauma. I also think the state can do a better job of investigating, overseeing and regulating, if not eliminating these reunification camps, which are clearly exploiting a loophole right now in our children welfare code. So I hope the board members will join me and I want to thank all the members of the community, especially the students of PCS who have been really outspoken and worked hard to bring attention to this issue and to urge government to step in and provide adequate oversight. I also want to note on items 39 through 42, the county is making an effort to really increase access to mental health services for a variety of different populations. We are hearing and seeing across this community a real challenge and crisis in the mental health area. And while there are many, many gaps to fill and needs that are yet to be met, I want to acknowledge the efforts to expand the amount of services in these crucial areas. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Kennedy. Supervisor Caput. I'll just make a comment. I'd like to welcome Thomas Bros. for a re-appointment to the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency. He's done a lot of great work with farming in the South County area. And I agree with Supervisor Kennedy on number 30 that, yeah, we need to look at this and have a little more oversight on how these agencies actually do their work. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. On item 33, to adopt the resolutions supported by Alma-Mudson Tribal Band and Preserve Yeristak, I'd just like to say that hopefully most of us have realized by now that our Western culture as it moved into the Americas and California treated Native people brutally. And to recognize that wrong, we have to ask ourselves how we can begin to make it right. I think the most obvious thing we can do is not take anymore than we already have and to stop doing wrong. To leave intact the natural world that exists today and work with Native people to understand how best to preserve and honor this world. Preserving Yeristak is just such an opportunity, the first opportunity to make things right. It's my pleasure to assist the Alma-Mudson Tribal Band. However, I can to help this effort to preserve their sacred land. I also want to thank Supervisor Kennedy and his detailed letter commenting on the Sergeant Corey Draft, EIR. On item 43, I want to thank this Renish Services Advisory Commission, including Chairperson Bruder and Commissioner Sturm who are here today for their first ever biannual report. I was glad to see that many of the commission's recommendations mirror some of the own recommendations from this board as well, suggesting policy alignment there and would be happy to support Supervisor McPherson's additional direction to bring this back to the board in April and look forward to additional thoughts by the Health Services Agency. And finally on item 58, authorizing community development and infrastructure to submit the solutions to congested corridors grant of $23 million for SoCal Drive. I wanted to call this out because we will be talking a lot about housing later today on our agenda with item 13 and the sustainability update. And we've really come a long way in terms of our thinking about transportation in this community and how to foster better transit. Very notably, this latest application for cycle three grant state grant includes a serious transit enhancement project on SoCal Drive, not only some of the existing buffered and protected bike lanes and signal improvements that we've been considering before, but an additional 34 locations with in-lane bus boarding platforms, 40 bus shelters, ticket validators at 38 locations, solar powered real-time arrival displays that will utilize our new automated vehicle location services on buses and tell you exactly how far away your bus is. So we're really starting to talk about a modern bus service, particularly starting on SoCal Drive and hopefully soon on other areas in our community. And I think that also, of course, our land use planning should go along with that. But thank you, CDI, for working so collaboratively with Metro and the RTC. I know it means a lot to them and working together, it's really necessary to get these big projects done and I'm happy to see that spirit of collaboration in our county. So my comments, is there any sort of motion that encapsulates some of the additional direction? Yeah, I'll move to approve. Okay. And there was a little bit of additional direction suggested by Supervisor McPherson on item 33 for HSA to come back with a report on the fringe services program and recommend the next steps in April. And by Supervisor Friend on item 50 to eliminate footnote two and the parks naming policy, would you like to include those? I'll back up Bruce and Zack. Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Is there a second? I'll second that. All right. Second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call it, please. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. McPherson? Supervisor McPherson? Supervisor McPherson, your cell phone is on mute. You might need to hit star six to unmute yourself. Chair Koenig? That is fine. Let's just please proceed with the vote. Chair Koenig? Yes. Oh, aye. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Then the Senate agenda passes as amended. We'll now proceed with item seven, which is as the board directors of the Davenport County Sanitation District hold a public hearing. And upon its conclusion, consider approval and concept of an ordinance amending Davenport County Sanitation District Code Title III, Article I and Article III, cross connection control. And direct the clerk of the board to place the ordinance on the December 31st, 2022 agenda for second reading and final adoption as outlined in the memorandum of the District Engineer report on this item. We have Matt Machado, our Director of Community Development and Infrastructure named Beatrice Barranco, our Senior Engineer of Sanitation Operations. Thank you and good morning, Chair and Supervisors. Matt Machado, also your District Engineer for Sanitation Water Districts. And as you introduced, Beatrice Barranco, she is our Senior Civil and Charter of All Operations for Sanitation and Water Systems. So happy to be with her this morning to present this item. The item before you is focused on our Davenport water system. It is a small water system that historically was under county environmental health oversight. And about three years ago or so, a few years ago, it was transitioned to under the state water systems. And so that requires us to update our codes to meet state regulations. The focus today is really on a cross connection program. It's so that we develop a program to ensure that cross connections do not exist in our Davenport water system. The focus there are systems or customers that have that potential such as those areas that have fire systems or dual water systems. I think this really applies to the future as we pursue dual water systems and increased fire protection in the area. Updating the district code will allow for the administration of the state required program brings the district into full compliance. So we're happy to present this item today. The recommended actions today are to hold a public hearing and upon its conclusion, consider approval and concept and ordinance amending Davenport County Sanitation District Code Title III Chapter Article 1 and Article III, the cross connection control and to direct the clerk of the board to place the ordinance on the December 13th, 2022 agenda for second reading and final adoption. And B and I are here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Director Machado. Are there comments or questions from members of the board? Supervisor Coonerty. Sure. I'll just say, since this is my district, I really appreciate the Department of Public Works working on this issue and ensuring that it will not create significant financial hardship on the residents of Davenport, which already experienced very high water rates, some of the highest in the country. And so just want to appreciate the staff and their work on this on this issue. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. All right, then I will officially open the public hearing. Is anyone here in chambers? Which two comment on this item? Seeing none. Is there anyone on Zoom? We have one speaker. Colin speaker 2915, you are unmuted. You are unmuted. Morning. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. I want to have some discussion about how this also ties in with the recycled water plant that is at Davenport. And just also publicly note that very little of that recycled water is actually being used for the agricultural irrigation that it was originally intended to serve. So are there possible connections with the recycled water? How does that all fit together? And I want to support Supervisor Coonerty's quest for discussion about pricing and economic impacts on the residents of Davenport. Thank you, Ms. Steinbruner. Mr. Chair, I'll move. I'll move. One moment. Thank you. I officially closed the public hearing. And we have a motion by Supervisor Coonerty to adopt the recommended actions. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Supervisor Friend. Clerk, is there another? Sorry, you moved before I could speak. There was actually one more person that had their hand raised during public comment. Okay, sorry about that. I will reopen the public hearing. Thank you. I will take remaining public comment. Okay, Antonio Rivas, you are unmuted. You can now speak. Hello, Mr. Rivas. We could hear you for a moment there. Okay, hold on. I think we hear you now. Okay, you can hear me now? We can. Okay, this is Antonio Rivas. I am very concerned about the live book, Senior Center, and I would like to maybe put in the agenda next meeting to discuss what's going to happen to the Senior Center in live book. Okay, thank you, Mr. Rivas. I'm happy to welcome to reach out to me directly about that. I'm heavily involved in what this is really just for comments directly on the cross-connection control ordinance for Davenport. Thank you. All right, are there any further public comments? That was all. Thank you. All right. Now I'll close the public hearing. We had a motion by Supervisor Friend with a second by Supervisor Coonerty, or sorry, a motion by Supervisor Coonerty, second by Supervisor Friend to adopt the recommended actions. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, we'll call vote please. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Chair Koenig? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. That ordinance is approved in concept and will appear on our December 13th agenda for a second read and final adoption. We'll now proceed with item 8 to consider approval and concept of ordinance amending Chapter 7.130 of the Santa Cruz County Code, licenses for retail commercial cannabis businesses relating to cannabis retailers, cannabis delivery services, and various technical changes and schedule the ordinance for second reading and final adoption on December 13th, 2022, as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. And for this item, we have our Cannabis Licensing Manager, Sam Laforte. Goodbye. I'll begin while we sort the presentation out here. Good morning. There are essentially two changes and some language edits. The first change that we have is to allow retailers located within the incorporated areas of the county to deliver to the unincorporated areas of the county and vice versa. The proposed change was initiated via some cross-terrestrial discussions between law enforcement city managers and county staff. The thought being is we should allow businesses within the county to deliver anywhere and to focus our enforcement efforts on out of county areas. The cities of Capitol and Santa Cruz are bringing similar language changes to reflect this also. The second change proposed will align the enforcement language in our retail ordinance with that of our non-retail ordinance. We felt this was necessary for consistency purposes as the administrative hearing procedures between the two ordinances are currently different. Any questions? Thank you, Ms. Laforte. Are there comments or questions from members of the board? Yes, Mr. Chair, I do. Thank you. Supervisor Fein, yes, please proceed. I just had a question for Mr. Laforte. I appreciate your work on this. I did do some outreach to a couple dispensaries. Unfortunately, I was only able to speak to one that was in the unincorporated area in my district regarding this, but I reached out to a couple of both that were there. I wasn't really sure. My understanding is that the deliveries are currently, the delivery services are currently being run out of the cities, meaning that the Santa Cruz and Capitol, other than the out-of-town ones, and I'm all for the prohibition there. I just don't understand how this advantages unincorporated dispensaries were basically providing them with additional competition into the unincorporated area without really creating a new market for them, because if they had felt that there was a pretty significant market, they would already be in the delivery business in the unincorporated area. So, can you just explain how this advantages the unincorporated dispensaries? So, currently we do have two operators within the unincorporated area who have delivery services, so this will provide them the ability to deliver within the cities of Santa Cruz and the city of Capitola. There are operators within the incorporated areas. There are two delivery services within incorporated areas, so that is the other side of the coin here. Okay. I mean, the dispensary I spoke to was not in support of it, but I mean, because the concern seemed to be that there's these out-of-town companies that are delivering in, which I think is something you've expressed in previous updates you've provided to the board as well. And so, how does this improve our enforcement on the out-of-town dispensaries? This allows our enforcement team to focus on delivery services based out of the county, so this will allow the same for the cities to focus their enforcement efforts on this. And I did speak to retailers within the unincorporated area. The most common concern they had was allowing these out-of-area delivery services here, and the proposed changes we have before you do not allow out-of-area operators to deliver within the county of Santa Cruz. So our enforcement efforts essentially will be aligned to just focus on folks from out of the county's jurisdictional boundaries and out of the incorporated cities within the county. I mean, they're currently not allowed, right? So that isn't really a shift. It's just a question of whether or not we formally allow the city dispensaries to provide product within the unincorporated area and the unincorporated dispensaries that are currently doing delivery to go within the cities. I'm just still not convinced, and then one of the concerns is also in it, I don't know where Watsonville will end up on this, they have a much lower tax rate and how that would end up impacting sort of this, this, the overall delivery system, should they get involved in it that way or how that would impact unincorporated businesses? I guess my point is, I understand where law enforcement is coming from, and if I were in your situation meeting with other city managers and such, I can see where this would come forward. We just spent so much time, and I don't have any concerns obviously about aligning basic administrative hearing language and that kind of stuff. I just don't know that this actually helps unincorporated dispensaries. I'm not convinced of that. I mean, I mean, unfortunately, like I said, I just reached out to the two in my district and only was able to speak to one, but I mean, they weren't supportive of it and didn't feel that this was actually going to help their business. And considering a lot of the challenges that are occurring throughout the industry, I didn't see it as, I didn't want to take a pro, I guess what it is in the 40s, I didn't want to take a proactive stance on something that actually ended up hurting dispensaries within the unincorporated area. And I'm not convinced that this actually helps them. So I guess at this point, I just can't support that change. And I appreciate you answering these questions, but I'm just concerned that this doesn't really do anything on the enforcement side. I mean, they're already prohibited from coming in from out of county. And I don't see that this would would really change anything on that regard. And I unfortunately don't see without a pretty significant, I just don't see how this really benefits the unincorporated dispensaries. That's just my viewpoint. So I can't support the delivery component of it, but I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. Mr. LaForda, do you want to respond at all further about potential impacts to unincorporated dispensaries? I'm happy to respond to additional questions from the supervisors. I believe I've given Supervisor Friend the best information I can. Any further comments or questions from members of the board? I guess I'll say I can certainly see the logic in trying to make regulation within our county boundaries simpler. Most people don't know where their city limits are and when where the unincorporated county begins. And so it would just, as you said, reduce one more level of regulation or where we really don't want to be prioritizing enforcement anyway. Supposed to enforcing enforcement against companies that are actually from outside of our county limits. So I mean, my question to you, Mr. LaForda, would be, do you anticipate any impact on dispensaries in the unincorporated area? Or would you think that they would have an equal increase in sales within cities that we're seeing potentially decreases city dispensaries delivered within the unincorporated area? We don't foresee a financial impact associated with this. I think a good thing to consider is the population density within the incorporated areas is greater than that than the unincorporated areas. So delivery viability into the unincorporated county is less for the businesses, essentially, because they have to travel further to make the deliveries. That's the only added information I can really provide. So suggesting that it actually could be a net positive for unincorporated area dispensaries because they have access to these larger markets within the incorporated areas? Yes, but we do think that this is very small and we don't actually foresee a financial impact to this change. Okay, thank you. I mean, in the spirit of collaboration with the cities, seeing that it's not anticipated to have any significant impact and will allow us to focus enforcement, I'm prepared to support the ordinance. Supervisor Caput, do you want any further comment or questions? Thank you. Thanks for your report. I appreciate the work you're putting in. Any further comments or questions from board members? Seeing none, is there any member of the public who wishes to comment on this item? Seeing none here in chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, we have one person. Pat Malo, you are unmuted. Hi, thank you, Malo. I just think that these changes are a good thing because it's getting us closer to at least a standard regional, like laws and enforcement issues. But I think the issue is still that we're focusing on the minutiae here instead of focusing on getting back what we lost through this whole process of developing the ordinances. And I would just say that the whole history of where state law right now says that any licensed group can deliver with a delivery license can deliver anywhere in the state. We took a lot of resources to have a long lawsuit with a lot of other counties that had bans. And we put resources into this. Now we're putting resources into shifting an ordinance that may make some positive difference. And I commend that. But also I think our priorities are still focused on enforcement when our priorities should have all long been focused on licensing. Thank you. Bye. Thank you, Mr. Malo. And that is all. All right, now I'll return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Motion by Supervisor Coonerty. Is there a second? Second. Second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. No. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Aye. And Chair Koenig. Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry, Caput. No. And Chair Koenig. Aye. Motion passes 3-5. Okay, thank you. Motion passes. And we'll return for us. That ordinance will return for a second. That would only leave a majority, right? Right. That was the first read of the ordinance. We'll return for a second read at our December 13th meeting, I believe. Okay. Mr. O'Fordy, if you could just stay put for item nine. This is to consider approval and concept of ordinance submitting chapter 7.124 of the Santa Cruz County Code personal cultivation and possession of medical cannabis relating to personal medical cannabis allowances. It's scheduled the ordinance for second reading and final adoption on December 13th, 2022, as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. Mr. O'Fordy, please. Okay, these are pretty short. We can skip it. Yeah. So next we have some proposed changes to our medical cannabis allowances. So currently, we allow patients, medical patients, to have up to three pounds of cannabis flower per year for their medical needs. Now, state law allows a person to have up to eight ounces of cannabis at any time. So our regulations are a bit different, but state law and our code have an exception allowance for patients with greater medical needs. It appears that the exception language may be being abused to shield some illicit activities. This past year, we have seen some creative language on physicians' recommendation allowing folks to carry up to 20 pounds of cannabis on them, for example. Now, to help ensure that cannabis grown by medical patients is used for their personal use, we think physicians should be able to work with their patients to determine the amount of cannabis that they need for their medical purposes in cases where three pounds is insufficient. So the proposed change would require doctors to specify amounts on recommendations when three pounds will not meet patients' medical needs. And any questions or clarification I can provide on this one? Comments or questions for members of the board? All right. Seeing none, I'll look for a public comment. Seeing no one here in chambers. Is anyone on Zoom? There's a comment on this item. We have one person at Mellow. Mellow, you can unmute. Mr. Mellow, are you there? Yeah, sorry. Hear me now. Yeah, thank you again for taking another cannabis issue up. And thank you for in many ways continuing the long history of Santa Cruz County leading in medical cannabis. One of the things that I think that we've done right in this is kind of preserve some of the carve-outs for the non-commercial medical folks who were at the heart of this whole system being designed years and years ago. I do think that there is some kind of concern for people abusing different aspects of that. And from my perspective, we want to keep the non-commercial people completely separate. Obviously, we want to give a pathway to licensing, and maybe we wouldn't have as many of these issues. But then I also just want to say that there's a little bit of ambiguity with the whole system, because at the county level, without a medical card, I could grow six plants. And I understand under state law that I could keep all of the harvest of that six plants, regardless of the amount. I think that some medical growers who aren't familiar with all of the laws being updated and updated might inadvertently have more than three pounds after a single harvest in their backyard out of a 10 by 10. They might have more out of a smaller indoor garden that's also legal. And they might not know that now they have to get specific recommendations from their doctor beyond their normal medical card or county card to be able to remain compliant. So I understand the intent behind this. I also want to keep the non-commercial medical completely separate from the regulatory mess we've made on the commercial end. But I'm afraid that well intentioned people who just don't understand the law may get caught up in this. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Malo. That is it for public comment. Thank you. All right. I'll turn to the board for deliberation and action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Supervisor Friend to other actions. Second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? I'll just say it definitely seems absurd that someone might need 60 pounds of cannabis a year for any medical condition. Although this ordinance allows their doctor to recommend that level of specificity if they want. So I'm also supportive. Quick, we'll call the place. Supervisor Friend. Coonerty. Caput. McPherson. Chair Koenig. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Motion passes and we'll return at our December 13th meeting for a second and final read. I'll now proceed with item 10 to consider approval and concept of an ordinance amending chapter 13.10.650 of the Santa Cruz County Code regarding non-retail commercial cannabis operations relating to cannabis setbacks in the CA zone and schedule the ordinance for second reading the final option on December 13th, 2022, is out on a memorandum of the Canada Administrative Officer. And once again, Mr. Laforte, if you could please give us a brief on this item. So lastly, we have a language modification to setbacks associated with the board approved changes from May. The proposed changes have been requested by the Coastal Commission, and the language that was previously approved by the board was presented to the Coastal Commission prior to the board action. But unfortunately, senior staff at the at Coastal did not see the language change until the local Coastal program adoption planning at which time a change request was made. Now, this language change does not represent an actual modification of what the board previously approved. It is just clarification and removal of a compound sentence. Any questions on this item? Questions or comments from members of the board? I do have a quick question. I mean, absent forum, it's sort of unclear to me why Coastal is doing this at all, Mr. Laforte, and torturing you about this. The language on there that's being modified where it says commercial cannabis, excuse me, commercial cannabis nursery operation should not be allowed within 50 feet of any habitable structure in the CA zone district. That could be interpreted that it's the setback only exists from habitable structures, but when we had gone through this process, and to be fair, I mean, I didn't support the language modification, as you know, Supervisor Caput, and I didn't support the initial modification. The intention for nurseries on CA land, the setback is allowed to be 50 feet from habitable structures on adjacent parcels. And I just wanted to make sure that this new language wasn't, I mean, you were just saying that it didn't actually modify that, but I wanted to make sure that that wasn't confusing. Because to me, it actually felt like it was narrowing, but maybe that's not Coastal Commission's intent, but I interpreted it to mean that it could be narrowing. So can you provide some clarity on that? It is intended just to be a 50 foot buffer from adjacent habitable structures. So that would be on an adjacent parcel, not on the parcel where the cultivation operation is planned. Because it says of any habitable structure in the CA zone district, it doesn't say, so to me, I'm interpreting that to only mean in the CA zone district, not on an adjacent parcel that may be a different zone, for example. I mean, so I just thought that their language, the change that they were making actually seemed to be substantive, but maybe unintentionally substantive. And perhaps council could provide clarity on this, because I think that you and I are on the same page on this, Mr. Laforti, but I want to make sure that the language isn't actually creating something or now changing the setback language inadvertently. I agree with you, Supervisor. I'm recognizing the same thing that you are, and we can go back to Coastal and try to change it. We can talk more offline with the cannabis licensing office, if that's the board's pleasure, but it is within the discretion of the board to either adopt this language as is or to go back and give it another shot. I have some proposed thoughts. I recognize that this means that this would end the first read for today, but maybe some proposed language could be commercial cannabis nursery operations in the CA zone district shall not be allowed within 50 feet of any habitable structure. But either way, Council, I mean, you could do, you could draft it, but I feel like that the language that they're proposing does actually modify unintentionally. I don't know, maybe it was intentional, but I feel like unintentionally what the board adopted back in May. So I mean, I wouldn't be supporting what Coastal Commission is doing today. I would just ask that the board, I don't know, Council, what you would suggest if the board is willing to direct to just go back and work with Coastal and bring back language at our next meeting. I mean, it's a pretty minor language shift here, but I think it could have a substantive change. If that's the pleasure of the board, we'd be happy to do that. Come back on December 6th, consider the comments that you've made. I can work with Mr. Laforte and we can take care of that. I would just say we will try to come back on December 6th because working with Coastal, sometimes we cannot complete these things in that timeframe. That's fair. No, I understand. Mr. Laforte, thank you. All right. Any further comments or questions from board members? Yeah. Yes. To raise a cap. So we're talking about reducing the setback from 100 to 50, right? We're talking about modifying the language that the board had previously approved in May. So there would be no effective change to what has already been approved. Well, it says what's crossed out is 100 feet, and then the new language says 50 feet. It's just if you look below in the strikeout, the 50 feet reference is there, further down in the paragraph. The intention was just to meet the Coastal Commission's. It's recommended by the Coastal Commission. The Coastal Commission requested this change because they felt the prior language was unclear. The prior language was not clear. Yes. I find the new language is not quite clear, but anyway, when they recommended a change, is this their wording or our wording? So they requested a change and we went back and forth with them on the exact language, and this is where we settled. Okay. At the Supervisor Caput, is there any member of the public that wishes to comment on this item? Yes. Seeing none here in chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? One last question. Supervisor Caput, go ahead. Sorry. Everything else stays the same, school setbacks. Yes, there's no modification to this. All right, then park setbacks. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone on Zoom that wishes to comment on this item? There is no public comment. Thank you. Okay. I'll return to the Board for deliberation action. Yeah, Mr. Chair. I'll move that we reject the recommended actions and direct county staff to work with Coastal on language that meets the Board's intention from me and to come back, to aim to come back in December, recognizing that may not work, but with the December 6th or December, because there's two meetings in December being the goal. Sorry about the not beautiful motion, Madam Clerk. But anyway, so reject the recommended actions, direct county staff to work with Coastal on language that meets the Board's may directive and to come back in December with that language. Okay. Motion by Supervisor Friend. Is there a second? I'll second that. Second by Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? I'll just say I agree that the Coastal Commission's suggested language does introduce ambiguity and needs to be reworked. All right. And Clerk will call out please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Goonerty. All right. Caput. All right. McPherson. Chair Koenig. All right. Motion passes. All right. Motion is rejected. Well, the motion to reject the Orchard Ordinance is passed, and direct county council to work with the Coastal Commission on some new language, hopefully in the December timeframe. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now proceed with item 11 to continue a public hearing to consider and concept ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz. Amending Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 13.10 to add provisions regarding tiny homes on wheels, adopt resolution affirming amendments or exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, schedule the ordinance for final adoption on December 6th, 2022, and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Deputy CEO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for presentation on this item, we have research planner for Community Development and Infrastructure, David Carlson. Okay. Thank you, Chair. This proposed ordinance was presented to the Board of Supervisors at a public hearing on September 20th, 2022, and the Board directed certain modifications, which have been incorporated into the final ordinance before you is where the Board today. In accordance with the Board's direction, the ordinance has been modified to allow a tiny home on wheels to function as a primary unit or a new construction ADU. With this modification, however, is a corrected page 110 in the packet to add a provision to prohibit the use of a tiny home on wheels as a vacation rental, whether it's a primary unit or an ADU. This was previously the case when tiny homes on wheels were proposed to function as just ADUs only, but by allowing a tiny home on wheels to function as a primary unit, staff realized this provision needed to be added to the ordinance and apply to a tiny home on wheels as a primary unit. The modifications include limiting the number of tiny homes on wheels to one per parcel, whether the tiny home on wheels functions as a primary unit or an ADU. The modifications clarify emergency standby generator provisions in the ordinance, which requires that inside the urban services line, tiny home on wheels shall not rely on a generator as a primary or a standby source of electric power. However, outside the urban services and rural services line, tiny home on wheels shall also not rely on a generator as a primary source of electric power, but may include provisions for connection to a standby emergency generator for use only when the primary source of electric power is disrupted. The modifications include provisions for minor mechanical and plumbing equipment on roofs, such as exhaust fans and plumbing vents. The modifications include clarifying permit renewal and expiration in that the tiny home on wheels permit expires upon removal of the unit from the property where it is permitted, and a tiny home on wheels permit must be renewed every five years for when the unit is conveyed to a new owner. Lastly, the modifications include requirements for permit renewal and monitoring fees. Monitoring of a tiny home on wheels permit activity is required as part of our annual reporting on the county's regional housing needs allocation, and the ordinance authorizes the establishment and collection of certain fees associated with these units to cover the costs of that monitoring and permit renewal. The monitoring would consist of verification of annual payment of the required vehicle license fee, and the work to include the tiny home on wheels units in the housing element annual progress report. The fee to cover the cost of monitoring is estimated to be about $800, which will clarify exactly what that fee is, and that would be a one-time fee, and it's based on an estimate of the current amount to cover the cost of that staff work for the life of the unit. The fee to cover the cost of permit renewal, which may include a special inspection, is estimated to be about $400, and these fees would be in addition to all the other regular permit fees that it would apply to a new primary unit or a new ADU. And so the recommended action is to continue the public hearing to consider the proposed amendments to the Santa Cruz County Code and local coastal program that provide regulations related to tiny homes on wheels, adopt the attached resolution, finding the proposed amendments are consistent with the general plan and the local coastal program, and exempt from further environmental review under CEQA and direct staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption and submit the LCP amendments to the California Coastal Commission for Certification. Approve in concept the ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz, amended Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1310 to add provisions regarding tiny homes on wheels, schedule the ordinance for second reading, and final adoption on December 6th, 2022 and direct staff to implement the amendments upon final certification by the Coastal Commission within the Coastal Zone and 31 days after adoption of the ordinance outside the Coastal Zone. And that concludes the staff presentation. Thank you, Mr. Carlson. Are there comments or questions from members of the board? Do we have other cabinet? One thing of, this is just personally me, thank you for your report though. With the regular home in an unincorporated area, and we'll say it's in a rural area, they have to have an approved septic tank, right? So if they were to put tiny homes, would they, they would hook up to the same septic tank? They would not require a new one, right? No, if the, we would, there would have to be a verification of the capacity of the existing septic tank to handle an additional unit. That's what my question was. So normally, how often does a septic tank with a normal capacity have to be, I guess, emptied or flushed out? I don't know. That's a permit process and inspection procedure that I'm not familiar with, not working in environmental health services, but I am aware there is a procedure for that and periodic checks on, on that. Yes. Thanks. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I thank you, Chair Coney, again for part of me on this off my office, bring this concept forward. Thanks for the planning staff for its heavy lifting to make sure the ordinance has its common sense approaches, I think. And I just, this really does provide a great path for creating affordable housing that we need to desperately build our community. I have a couple of questions. I want to clarify, is that $800 fee mentioned, is that a one-time fee and then there's a 400 annual inspection? Is that right? The $800 fee would be a one-time fee for the life of the unit to cover the cost of monitoring. And then for the permit renewal, there would be a $400 fee just for the permit renewal. We would not charge that $800 fee again upon permit renewal. Okay. And how might, how might the boards see the number of county or of tiny home applications approved each year? Will that number be broken out in any reports to come back to the board? Yes. In the housing element annual progress report, those will be broken out similar to how we break out the number of ADUs constructed in any given year. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any other comments or questions from board members? Seeing none, I'll open it for the public hearing. Hello. My name is Chuck Schellings and this is my wife, Shandra Campbell. We live in Live Oak. And the lot we live on is a large one. It's, it's an over 9,000 square feet, which is about twice the size of lots in our area. And because our home is small and the ADU on the property is small, only about one-fifth of our lot is covered. And what we'd like to do is put on a small tiny home, 240 square feet on, on the property. We'll meet the city's requirements as they're required and we'll even put additional off street parking on the property for that. And when we're done, the tiny home with our ADU, both the size those combined will be less than the thousand square feet that's allowed by the county right now for ADUs by themselves. So really what we're asking is that the county allow people with large lots and low coverage to be able to have both ADUs and tiny homes on the same lot. These large properties will support those two structures and issues such as overbuilding can be avoided with additional requirements by the county such as low lot coverage or limiting the structure sizes or additional parking requirements. Both the county's planning department and the housing advisory committee recommended allowing both tiny homes and ADUs on the same property. So during this time where there's a record housing crisis and the county is struggling to meet its goals for increasing housing to issue just a blanket no on those type of structures. I don't think it's really the right way to go. The county would be much better served if instead of doing that look for all possible methods that make sense to increase housing and allowing people do that as one of those ways. So what I'm asking is that is that the board include a provision in the ordinance that allows people with large lots and low coverage to have both a tiny home and a tiny one wheels and an ADU on the same property. Thank you very much. Anyone else here in chambers? Seeing none. Is there anyone online? We have one person online. Patty Cisla. You have been unmuted. Now speak. Thank you. I'm very happy to see this come back and I just wanted to say I support the ordinance. I currently live in a tiny house and this would allow me to purchase my own land hookup. I'm looking at a parcel that's for sale in the CZU burn zone and this would allow me to connect to an existing septic system, reestablish power and communications, water, all the utilities that I would need to live and be a homeowner. I am a single person. I survive off my salary alone and this is a pathway for home ownership for me. I already own my tiny home. So now all I need to do is afford the lot which there are a few lots that are fairly affordable. So by having the ordinance which allows it as a primary dwelling unit, I should be able to get a construction loan to pay for the cost of connecting utilities and I'm super excited about it and I would thank you very much if you would approve the ordinance. That's all. Thank you, Ms. Cisla. That is all we have for public comment. Thank you. All right and I'll close the public hearing and return it to the board for deliberation and action. Mr. Chair, I'll move the recommended actions. Motion by Supervisor Friend. Is there a second? Second. Second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Just one question. Thank you. If somebody puts in the tiny home on wheels, they're renting a space, they're renting out the tiny home, right? They're not selling the land below the tiny home. No, the tiny home could be owned independently from the owner of the property. Right. And there could, whatever arrangement between the tiny home owner and the property owner is agreed to. They could rent out the tiny home. The tiny home could be rented out. Yes, the property owner could install a, buy a tiny home and install it on their property and rent it out as a rental unit, just like you could with an ADU. Do they come under the mobile home commission? No. It's simply between the owner and the one that would be renting. There's no rent control or anything like that either. No. Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. I will add, I'm sympathetic to the argument made by the showings today that on large parcels where folks already have an ADU and perhaps low lot coverage, it would make sense as was recommended by the Housing Advisory Committee to allow a tiny home in addition to an ADU. I do wonder if any of my colleagues would join me in supporting a compromise where we allowed a tiny home on wheels in addition to an ADU in cases where a lot is greater than 7,000 square feet and where the combined size of the ADU and tiny house on wheels was 1,000 square feet or less. Supervisor Friend, would you want to comment on that or? No, I definitely understand where you're coming. I mean, at this point, I'm comfortable with moving forward with where we are, but I do understand that I can see the rationale behind what you're saying, but I'm just comfortable with moving forward with where we are today. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I feel the same way. I guess my question was, would that trigger a new reading? Is that a substantive enough change to require a new reading? Would it be better to move forward with this reading and then bring an amendment to that ordinance once at a future meeting? I guess that's my question for Council. I would recommend that if you're going to make changes, that you do another reading that would be keeping within our practice. Another alternative would be if you wanted to table this item and you wanted us to go away for a moment and come up with new language and bring it back to your board. You could play with the ordinance during the session, but that is not consistent with our practice. Mr. Carlson, could I make another suggestion that the ordinance that's on the table get, well, take action on the ordinance today? And the board has the option of writing direction to staff to further study ordinance amendments like we've heard before that this concept tiny home villages has been adopted in other counties. We've heard that before. So this is another, an additional option that we could, excuse me, look into. But I think taking action on the ordinance today might benefit of several people out there that are waiting to take action on their tiny homes. To Mr. Carlson's point, Mr. Chair, as you may remember, the direction was provided, if I recollect correctly, that after 25 permits ratio, that it comes back to the PC anyway for potential modifications. So it seems like there is actually a clean opportunity for something already coming back to the planning commission that we do have that direction to consider this modification at the time of it going back to the PC anyway. All right. Yeah. I mean, I understand. I just wanted to try to make an ordinance that works for as many people as possible today. I do understand a lot of the opportunity to review it in the near future as well. So we have a motion by Supervisor McPherson. Do you want to add something? No, I think we ought to move on what we have today and we will have ample opportunity in the near future to review this again. I think that's fine. Okay. Thank you. Then we have a motion by Supervisor Friend and a second by Supervisor McPherson to adopt the recommended actions. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. All right. Abbott. All right. If person. All right. And Chair Koenig? Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Maybe is any going to come back with a recommended action or was that part of the motion? Was it? So I don't believe any additional direction was added, but I think that we do have a review point after 25. Got it. You okay? Fine. Permits are issued. Okay. And I voted aye. I didn't have my microphone on. Okay. Motion passes and that ordinance will return for a second period and final adoption on December 6 of this year. We'll now proceed with item 12, a public hearing to consider an ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz amending Chapter 12.10 of the Santa Cruz County Code to adopt the 2022 California Building Standards Code and Local Amendments and an ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz amending Chapter 7.92 of the Santa Cruz County Code to adopt the 2022 California Fire Code and Local Amendments Resolution Accepting California Environmental Quality Act Notice of Exemption Determination Schedule the Ordinances for Final Adoption December 6, 2022 and take related actions as outlined in the Memorandum of the Deputy CAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. For a report on this item, we have once again our Research Planner with CDI, David Carlson. Okay. Thank you again. I'll just start out by inducing Marty Heaney, the building official who's sitting next to me, available for any questions. And there's several representatives of local fire districts in the chambers too available for any questions. Welcome Mr. Heaney. So the California Building Standards Code or Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations are the established minimum standards for the design and construction of buildings and structures in California. Title 24 includes the California Building Code, Residential Code, Electrical Code, Mechanical Code, Plumbing Code, Energy Code, Historical Building Code, Fire Code, Existing Building Code, and the Green Building Standards Code or Cal Green. Local governments may adopt local ordinances making amendments to the building standards of Title 24 based on local conditions, but a local ordinance must be more restrictive compared to the state building standards. The county has a tradition of adopting local amendments and the local ordinances are codified in Santa Cruz County Code Chapters 1210 Building Regulations and 7.92 the fire code, which breaks out the fire code in a separate chapter of the county code. Every three years the state of California adopts a new set of state building codes and every three years the county must re-adopt the state codes with the county's local amendments. So this year 2022 is a code adoption cycle year following the last adoption cycle in 2019. New this year is a change in the way the local fire code is adopted. In past years the independent fire districts including the county fire department under Chapter 7.92 the fire code adopted by ordinance their own versions of the California fire code with local amendments. These ordinances of the local fire districts were subject to ratification by the Board of Supervisors and also in recent years all of the independent fire districts including county fire have adopted identical amendments. For this coded option cycle all of the fire districts have agreed to simply adopt by reference the county fire code as represented by Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 7.92 with all of the identical local amendments. In order to implement the state codes and appropriate local amendments staff is proposing two ordinances to amend Chapter 1210 building regulations and Chapter 7.92 fire code. These amendments would adopt the 2022 California building standards codes with local amendments appropriate to local and regional conditions and would take effect in January of 2023. There are several new significant local technical amendments proposed in Chapter 1210 the building regulations as summarized in the attachment on the building code changes. It's in your packet as directed by the board the California energy code would be amended to require beginning January 1st 2023 all electric construction for all newly constructed residential developments including residential mixed use projects the residential components of those multi-family and single-family and accessory dwelling units located within the urban services line. An administrative amendment would add provisions to Chapter 1210 in conformance with state law requiring local jurisdictions to have a streamlined permit process for solar energy systems and electric vehicle charging stations and as summarized in the attachment on the fire code changes only minor changes are proposed in Chapter 7.92 primarily involving changing references to accomplish the transition from separate codes of the independent fire districts to one consolidated county fire code. So the recommended actions are to conduct the public hearing to consider the proposed ordinances amending Chapter 1210 and Chapter 7.92 of the Santa Cruz County Code adopt the attached resolution finding adoption of the proposed ordinances are exempt from further environmental review under CEQA directing staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption and making findings regarding administrative and technical amendments of the California building standards code. Approving concept the ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz amending Chapter 1210 of the county code to adopt the 2022 California building standards codes with local amendments and approving concept an ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz amending Chapter 7.92 of the county code to adopt the 2022 California fire code with local amendments direct the clerk of the Board to place the ordinances on the next board agenda for final adoption and direct the CDI to submit a copy of the technical amendments to the 2022 California building standards codes and a copy of the Board's adoption resolution taining those findings to the California building standards commission and that concludes my staff report and we're all available for questions. Thank you Mr. Carlson and Mr. Heaney for all your work on this or their comments or questions from members of the Board. I'll just add I thank you for including the provisions around requiring all electric construction within the urban services line for new residential construction. I think that is extremely important step going forward. I know that ultimately more infill development is a key part of our sustainability strategy and I think aligning that with our energy code is really going to help make that clear that all the new homes we build in the urban area are going to be as sustainable as possible and of course that works well with the additional streamlining provisions for solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations which I know have also been a pain point for some people and I'm glad to hear we'll be more streamlined going forward and I know I have heard a couple concerns about limiting options but I mean ultimately it just makes way more sense to include electric heating and cooking at the time of construction those can also be financed by a mortgage rather than asking people to pay out of pocket later on for those conversions so I do think it's important to include those. Any further comments or questions and I will open the public hearing so no one here in chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes we have one call-in user call-in user number three. You can now unmute yourself and speak. Electricity is a problem in many respects making it appear that this helps people and you're requiring it. Many people are in the category of electro hypersensitivity and I myself turn off circuit breakers in my house at night and it's horrible being in many places with all the electro pollution. We also know that frequently there are power outages, the grid goes off. Many water supply systems are by electricity so when the electricity is out you don't have water and we are electromagnetic beings humans are and ourselves communicate with each other through electrical micro currencies it's just basic so all this technology including the wireless transmits information through the use of electromagnetic radiation and our natural ability to function is disrupted by the increasing assault of electricity and radiation. The book that is translated into many languages well researched. Thank you Ms. Garrett. The invisible rainbow of history. There are no other speakers. All right last call for anyone here in chambers to comment on this item. I'll close the public hearing. I'll return it to the board for deliberation and action. I'll move the recommended actions. Should I supervise our friend? I'll second. Second I supervise our cabinet. Any further discussion? Seeing none clerk we'll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Chair Kohnig. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you and those ordinance will return at our December 6th meeting for a second and final read and thank you again Mr. Haney and Mr. Carlson for all your work on this. That concludes our items for this morning session. The board will now move into closed session. County council are there any reportable actions? There may be a reportable action and if so we'll report it out at 1.30. All right thank you. Then the board will now move into closed session and let's say we'll begin that at 11.05 so we'll take a break and we will return for a 1.30 scheduled item on the sustainability policy and regulatory update at 1.30 p.m. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon everybody. We will now resume the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and we have a scheduled item for this afternoon. It is 1.31 p.m. Clerk will you please call the roll? Supervisor Friend. Supervisor Friend. We're still on mute. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Koenig. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you. Or we begin with our scheduled item. Are there any reportable actions out of closed session? County council. Yes there is. The board approved the filing of an amicus brief in one case. Thank you. All right. We'll now begin item 13 which is a public hearing to consider the sustainability policy and regulatory update. And there's a lot that goes along with that. I've been told I don't actually require to read the entire item description. But I'm sure our staff will go with a thorough presentation on this. And so to kick us off I'd like to pass the baton to Matt Machado our director of community development and infrastructure. And we also have with us here Stephanie Hansen who is our assistant director of policy, housing and code compliance. Thank you chair and supervisors and good afternoon. We're happy to be here today. This is a big, big step for us and we're glad to be able to present this to your board today. So the item before you is a public hearing in an effort to adopt our sustainability update which is also called our county general plan. Our overall plan is to present the CEQA document, the general plan amendment and map amendments for recommended action today. And then on December 6th, we will be presenting code amendments and desired guidelines for recommended action with a second and final reading on December 13th. Of course, all this timing and action is at your discretion. But that's our plan going forward with this large item. Speaking of this large item, this has been a large multi-year effort. It's vitally important to our county. And I want to thank staff, especially Stephanie Hansen, for leading this project. Before turning it over the microphone to her, I would like to share a point about general plans in general. A general plan is a broad long range policy document that guides future development, conservation and is a comprehensive collection of goals and policies related to a multitude of aspects of community life. And in California, counties are required by state law to have a general plan. The plan amendments before you are critical to our county's future. This plan is the umbrella over our county services that we provide to our community. I just wanted to share one other thought. We anticipate this item to take a bit of time today because it's such a large document and large effort. And I regret to inform you that I will have to excuse myself at 2.30 and switch to remote. So I apologize for that. With that, I will turn the microphone over to Stephanie, who will provide a presentation on staff efforts and recommendations. Thank you, Matt. We have a presentation coming up, I think. Christine? Great. Wonderful. Thank you. Today we're very pleased to be before the board presenting the sustainability policy and regulatory updates. It's been a long time coming. We'll go over some of the history that got us to this point as we go along. Today we're asking the board to consider the planning commission's recommendation on the project and also some staff clarifications. We'll go over the recommended actions at the end of this presentation. This presentation will give an overview of the project and we'll ask the board to take action to certify the environmental impact report, approve the general plan amendments, and approve the zoning map changes today. At your next meeting, we would ask you to consider county code changes and the county design guidelines associated with the project. The sustainability update has been prepared by a team of devoted policy planners, including Anais Schenk, our transportation planner, Annie Murphy, and Natisha Williams, both senior planners. Due to the breadth of this project, all three are participating remotely today in order to help answer any questions that the board may have while referencing the documents. Staff was also supported by a team of consultants, including Dudek, who prepared the environmental impact report, or EIR. Kim Lee Horne, who prepared transportation analyses, and Mig, who prepared the county design guidelines. Stephanie Strilo with Dudek is also on the call today and can help answer any questions on the environmental analysis prepared for the project. Stina doesn't look like I have, there we go, okay. The purpose of this project is to promote more sustainable communities within our urban areas. The sustainability update has four main components to it, the general plan, which includes our local closed stole program, amendments to the county code, new design guidelines, and amendments to land use and zoning maps. We'll discuss each of these project components in more detail. The sustainability update has several key goals. First, the project implements the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan, which was accepted by the board in 2014. And second, the project aims to update, streamline, and modernize our county development codes and other related county code sections. The project addresses projected growth, like Santa Cruz County, like all California jurisdictions is required under state planning law to plan for and accommodate a certain amount of population, housing, and economic growth. To this update of the general plan, anticipate a 20 year planning horizon from 2020 to 2040. Insistency with newly adopted county plans and state legislation also informs this project. Planning law requires jurisdictions to reflect and be consistent with the variety of state laws in their general plans, as well as regional plans for the area. And if a jurisdiction is located near the coast, the California coastal act as well. At the local level, the project is consistent with the county strategic plan, the climate action strategy, which is being updated right now, the economic vitality study, the parks department strategic plan, current capital improvement program, our recent long range facility plan, and the county design criteria. Project is also consistent with the recently approved active transportation plan. At the regional level, our project is consistent with the association of Monterey Bay governments or ambags sustainable communities plan, as well as the regional transportation commission's regional transportation plan. At the state level, it's consistent with recent legislation, including SB 375, sustainable communities, maybe 1358 complete streets, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, and the current state requirements for general plans. These now include an environmental justice requirement per SB 1000 and related laws. Additionally, the project is consistent with the Coastal Act and the California Commission Strategic Plan. To provide a little background, the Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan focused mostly on new development in the county's urban areas, particularly our higher growth areas of live oak and soak health. Development of the Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan involved intensive public participation, a series of 16 community workshops, which were held throughout the county over a two year time period. Topics for meetings included overall visioning as well as plans for certain focus areas. There was also advisory groups, business involvement, and many stakeholder interviews during that process. The result of these meetings was a vision for our urban areas in Santa Cruz County and guiding principles to achieve that vision. The guiding principles are carried through our general plan that we're proposing. These include focus development, transportation choices, open space and resource protection, unique community character, economic vitality, housing options, inclusive decision making and governmental coordination. The Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan also resulted in recommendations for land use and transportation. Key recommendations including concentrating infill development within the urban services line near our transportation corridors and high activity areas, developing a multimodal transportation network, updating development review to consider vehicle miles traveled as well as modern parking standards, establishing new zone districts and standards to encourage multifamily housing mixed use in a modern workplace environment, and supporting the development and medical facilities within the Soquel Drive area. Project also incorporates the code modernization effort that began in 2013. The county code was originally adopted in the 1950s and has been amended in a piecemeal way over the years. As a result, land use regulations addressing zoning, housing and permit requirements have increasingly become complex. 2014. Excuse me, Stephanie. I'm sorry to interrupt. They've had an interruption in the streaming, so we need to take a pause just for a second until we get it streamed on. Sorry. Okay, it's back up. Okay. In 2014, recognizing the need to make the county code regulations more user friendly, staff engaged the community to identify how the code could be improved to better serve the public. In particular, staff identified the need to update the county's development permit framework, as well as modernize various agricultural regulations to reflect modern needs and practices. There were a series of community meetings throughout the county to review and further refine these regulations. The pleasure point commercial corridor vision and guiding design principles were developed with input from local community residents at workshops and ultimately incorporated into the study that was accepted by the board in 2018. Elements of this study are included in the general plan in the county code standards and in the proposed design guidelines. Lastly, from 2015 to 2016, the board of supervisors reviewed a number of draft updates to portions of the county code related to the new development framework, agricultural regulations, establishment of new development standards in zone districts that have been identified in the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. At that time, the board directed staff to continue to work on these updates. In addition to the updates identified in the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan directed the staff to provide an environmental impact report and the sustainability update that we bring before you today fulfills all those directions from the board. Development framework promoted by the sustainability update concentrates development with our in our existing urban areas, preserving our natural resources and rural areas. This development pattern makes more efficient use of existing urban land in order to reduce the need for urban services and infrastructure beyond the urban and rural services lines. These have been in place since the passage of measure J in the 1970s and will remain in place. The sustainability update continues to reinforce the importance of these lines and policies that focus growth within our usl and rsl. The map on the slide shows the overall focus growth strategy. Growth is focused within the urban services line indicated in blue. This development framework allows for coordinated development of the built environment with improvements to transportation infrastructure and other services that can support this development. Project promotes both residential and commercial growth along transportation corridors where higher density development may be appropriate to proximity to infrastructure and services. Framework also aims for services and amenities to be located within a 15-minute walk from home for urban county residents. Outside the urban area, the county's open space agricultural rural residential lands would continue to be protected and little change is proposed in these standards. County's general plan has not received a major update in over 25 years. Amendments to the general plan include a new introduction, land use and circulation elements that incorporate the new emphasis on sustainability as well as integration of the vision and guiding principles and land use and transportation recommendations from the Santa Cruz County plan. New population housing and employment targets for 2040 which include 4,500 housing units and over 6 million square feet of commercial development are also included in the 20-year horizon. The land use element has been renamed the built environment element and integrates the existing land use and community design elements with a focus on residential and commercial development. The built environment element includes new urban high-density residential flex designation to accommodate a greater intensity of residences along our urban transportation corridors and key activity centers. These will create opportunities for infill housing available to residents at various income levels and household sizes. Circulation element is being renamed access and mobility to reflect a focus on movement of people by a variety of modes rather than on movement of vehicles. The project also partially amends the conservation and open space element which has been renamed agriculture natural resources and conservation changes to this chapter focus on updating agricultural timber and water and groundwater policies. Partial amendments are also proposed for the parks recreation and public facilities element to be consistent with the park strategic plan and ensure that county facilities are adequate to accommodate the projected growth. There was one error noted in chapter 7 related to the Opal Cliffs Park District and that is provided to you as replacement pages along with a change to the general plan appendix associated with that. Other general plan chapters will not be changed. The second component of the project is amendments to the county code. These amendments include updates to title 12 the building code, title 13 planning and zoning regulations which include changes to zoning, design and coastal regulations as well as new parking and circulation chapter and title 18 procedures which consolidates procedural requirements throughout the code. There are many small also small associated changes to titles 5 and 15. Key changes to the code include a new permit level system that replaces the processing levels with more descriptive permit names that are commonly used in other communities. The system will use the terms minor use permit, administrative use permit and conditional use permit instead of the level one through seven system that we currently use. The permit framework also provides for use permits versus site development permits when ground disturbance is necessary. There's a creation of the new residential flex zone district accommodating a higher range of potential density in a new workplace zone district that provides centers for employment with a flexible mixture of commercial and light industrial land uses to meet the daily needs of workers. Improvements to both residential and commercial standards to allow developments to make more efficient use of land with adjustments to density, height, floor area ratios, setbacks and other standards facilitate the potential for development at a reasonable level. New standards for both mixed use development and medical mixed use developments are included. New agriculture and wedding and event regulations are also in the project. Overall these amendments serve to both modernize the code and align with the more sustainable urban communities vision. We'll follow up with more details on the code changes at your next meeting. Talk a little bit about some of the topic areas that are a big focus in the project. Santa Cruz County, as everybody knows, like much of California is facing a housing crisis, both in terms of supply and affordability. Addressing the housing crisis is key to ensuring a sustainable, livable and equitable future for our community. Over the past 30 years, policies and zoning standards have largely favored the construction of single-family dwellings on large lots and very few multifamily units have been built. Single-family dwellings are increasingly out of reach for all but the wealthiest of our residents. Key strategy for addressing the housing crisis is to support the development of a variety of housing choices to ensure housing is available to residents of all sizes, household sizes and incomes. The county is particularly lacking smaller units for single seniors and students as well as other multifamily options. Amendments support infill housing within urban areas and existing neighborhoods and missing middle housing types, such as accessory drawing units, townhouses, duplexes and condos, as well as small apartment buildings that can blend into existing residential neighborhoods. New policies propose support the development of higher density housing projects with compact units and higher building intensity in areas near transit and services, particularly with the new urban high-density residential flex designation. This designation was also updated to allow commercial uses on the ground floor. Policies that support infill development urban areas also support our walkable neighborhoods and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The policies and associated code amendments provide a foundation that the county can build on when we start to address our regional housing needs allocation or RENA next year. As many are aware, the new Six-Cycle RENA plan allocates 4,634 housing units to be accommodated in our unincorporated areas in the next eight years. Tools like the residential flex zoning as well as a wider range of density for all land use designations will be key to helping us meet this allocation. The new general plan access and mobility element covers a number of topics previously included in the general plan, including the transportation system management, multimodal planning, and coastal access. It also includes a number of new topics such as accessibility, safety, placemaking, economic justice, as well as economic vitality and innovation. The update includes a layered network approach to the county's circulation system, which was a concept developed in the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. Complete streets is the idea that we accommodate all users on our roadways. However, the county is a very constrained roadway system. Our rights avoid tend to be very narrow, making it difficult to build ideal facilities for all users on all roadways. In the layered network approach, certain user types are prioritized on specific street types. When these streets are compiled together, the roadway system is then comprised of a multiple interlinking network such that different users are traveling using different networks. This layering approach allows for each user type to have a higher quality experience. The layered network approach requires a transportation infrastructure designed for streets hosting longer distance between key regional donations. Roadways are in turn connected by a series of interlocking webs of smaller roads that support active transportation or non-motorized modes of travel and facilitate 15-minute neighborhoods. To achieve the 15-minute neighborhood, select roadways, reduce the distance that people have to walk or bicycle between commercial and residential uses. These roadways were generally identified in the Sustainable Santa Cruz County Plan and the previous circulation element. Transportation demand management, or TDM, is critical to reducing our vehicle miles traveled, which contributes heavily to greenhouse gas production. TDM is woven throughout the access and mobility element by providing policies that support modes rather than driving alone. There is also a new appendix to the general plan, describing various TDM measures. New Code Chapter 1316 will implement the general plan by including explicit requirements related to TDM, right-sized parking ratios, and more robust bicycle parking requirements. To support modern farming practices and address the needs of local farmers, the general plan and county code are being amended to allow new and expanded agricultural support uses on commercial agriculture and agricultural land. These include agricultural tourism and agricultural storage. Developed in consultation with the Farm Bureau and the Agricultural Policy Advisory Commission, updated policies and regulations ensure that commercial agriculture remains viable in our community for future generations. Regulations for winery and breweries have also been updated with extensive input from local winery and brewery owners. While allowing for expanded agricultural support uses, policies and regulations continue to protect agricultural land. Findings address siting on a parcel and minimize impacts to adjacent ag land. The updated code also includes a cap on total development area for agricultural support and residential uses on commercial ag land. Updated policies allow the extension of water and sewer boundaries or lines to include commercial agricultural parcels were necessary to address public health and environmental issues. New regulations for weddings and community events allow for these uses in appropriate residential and ag zone districts. Standards and permit reviews, address event hours, numbers of events, noise, parking and public notice to protect neighborhoods from impacts. The proposed regulations will be reviewed in more detail at your next meeting. Environmental justice is an important new component for general plans. This means equitable protection from environmental and health hazards for everyone. Environmental justice must be incorporated into general plans per SB1000 and other recent state laws. This important topic is addressed throughout our proposed general plan with policies addressing environmental justice topics denoted with an EJ enlisted in Appendix E. Environmental justice themes that are addressed in the new policies include pollution exposure and air quality, equitable access to safe and sanitary homes, food, transportation and other services, physical activity opportunities, community engagement opportunities, as well as improvements in programs that address the needs of disadvantaged communities. Disadvantaged communities are population groups that are disproportionately affected by pollution or hazards. They tend to have higher concentrations of low income and unemployment, lower levels of home ownership, a higher level of rent burden, sensitive populations and a low level of opportunities for education. Counties disadvantaged communities are located primarily around Watsonville and Live Oak. Additional fringe or legacy communities are located in Davenport, along Highway 9, outside the city borders and have the potential to be defined as disadvantaged communities as well. But their component of the project are the county design guidelines, which provide best practices for building design, site development, and connecting private development to the streetscape as infill development occurs. This document will design, guide the design of all projects, but especially multifamily residential and commercial development in the urban areas. There's also Appendix B, which is specifically to address the Pleasure Point commercial corridor based on the Pleasure Point study. Development standards in the county code along with chapter 1311 site development and design provide objective standards that work in conjunction with the new guidelines to ensure quality projects that are compatible with the surrounding context. Design guidelines apply to the USL and RSL, to multifamily residential of three or more units and commercial and mixed use development. These guidelines address the design of buildings and sites to ensure functional and attractive results and provide for gathering spaces, active street frontages, quality open space and landscaping, green building and site design features. Guidelines provide a flexible approach, allowing for creativity and diverse architectural styles that meet design goals. We'll address these more fully at your next meeting as well. The fourth component includes targeted land use changes and rezoning on 21 parcels located throughout the county. There are two types of land use changes. The first types are amendments to eliminate inconsistencies with the general plan and zoning map on 11 parcels. County is required by state law to ensure consistency between our maps. No intensification of land use is proposed as a result of these corrections. The slide shows a proposed map changes in the north and south county, a total of five, which would address the consistency between the general plan and zoning map. In mid county, there are also eight properties that will change to correct zoning and land use inconsistencies. These are shown on the map on the left. The second type of land use amendment is intended to implement the project goals and increased housing options and help address the housing crisis. This portion of the project includes the rezoning of 10 underutilized parcels along transportation corridors. One six acre parcel at Soquel Drive in Thurber Lane, also shown in the map on the left, is vacant and would be rezoned to a mix of residential flex and commercial to support a mixed use development. The map on the right shows nine additional parcels located along Portola Drive. These would also be rezoned to residential flex to facilitate a transition in this neighborhood, to a mix of multifamily and residential units interspersed with neighborhood commercial consistent with the vision and the pleasure point commercial corridor study that supports our workforce housing with mixed and commercial uses in this section of the corridor. Next year, as the county works to accommodate our arena and our housing element, additional properties along other transportation corridors will be identified for rezoning to residential flex and other higher density zone districts. As required by state law, the county's prepared an environmental impact report or EIR to analyze the impacts of the sustainability update. The EIR addresses all topics as required by the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA. Draft EIR was released on April 14th and a public comment period was held open until May 31st. A community meeting on the draft EIR was held on May 9th and the final EIR was released on August 12th. The EIR for this project is a program EIR, which is a higher level county-wide, not project-specific analysis of environmental impacts associated with adopting policies and regulations. The draft EIR analyzed all elements required under CEQA and found that significant and unavoidable impacts could occur in the following resource areas despite the inclusion of mitigation measures. In agriculture, new policies that support ancillary uses, support services, and essential public facilities and utilities could be located on commercial ag land and result in a conversion of prime agricultural farmland or farmland of statewide significance. Biological resources, the project includes a redesignation of the six acre site on Thurber Lane and Soquel. The site is a key opportunity site but it contains a stream that bisects the property from north to south. Future development could impact that stream, particularly if it is piped or moved to the property perimeter in order to facilitate development. This would be a permanent impact on riparian habitat. In the area of cultural resources, although unknown at this time, it is possible that future development could result in substantial adverse change to the significance of undocumented bill historic resources if preservation or avoidance of the resource is not feasible. In transportation, impacts to related to vehicle miles traveled or VMT. VMT is the number of miles generated by vehicles. One mile traveled by one vehicle is one VMT. In this way, transportation impacts are more closely tied to the reduction of greenhouse gases. The county has adopted a new threshold for VMT for new developments as required by state law. Although the urbanized pattern, policies and programs in the sustainability update will reduce VMT when compared to current conditions and growth under the current general plan, the EIR did find that VMT would not be reduced enough in order to meet the county's adopted threshold. And there was also a cumulative impact when you considered other developments as well. Lastly, the draft EIR also analyzed potential impacts of the project and future growth and found that the potential for significant impacts existed on water supply. Future potential development and growth appears to be within the growth projections developed by each of the six major public water districts serving the unincorporated county area. However, depending on the timing of development, potential growth in Live Oak and in the city of Capitola could approach or exceed the city of Santa Cruz's forecasted housing units in their urban water management plan. Similarly, the Soquel Creek water district area includes the service to the unincorporated communities of Soquel Aptos and Lacelda Beach, as well as part of the city of Capitola. And growth in these areas could also approach or exceed the district's forecasts. These impacts are therefore conservatively considered potentially significant. There could also be a cumulative impact to water supply when considered with other types of development. No mitigation measures were identified to offset these impacts. However, water districts are required to prepare urban water management plans every five years, and it is expected that their new forecast for the next plans will be prepared in line with the county's forecasted population, as well as include new water projects designed to increase storage capacity. During the public comment period, 14 comments were received on the draft EIR, and responses to these comments are addressed in the final EIR. The county received comments from local, regional, and state agencies, community organizations, as well as members of the public. Comments and responses to comments are summarized in the staff report, starting in page 359 of your packet. Comments also span a range of topics as indicated on this slide. Responses to comments include corrections to the EIR text, and comments are addressed also with some changes to policies, which we've been discussing today. These comments regarding agricultural impacts associated with utility, public facilities, coastal priority uses, the memorandum of understanding for development west of Watsonville, repair and mitigation banks, special status species, and parking reduction strategies have all resulted in policy changes along the way to the documents you are considering. Staff has prepared a resolution for the board, which would certify the EIR as required by law, based on the statement of overriding considerations for the project, which is page 389 in your packet. The statement of overriding considerations is required in order to certify the EIR despite the significant and unavoidable impacts, finding that benefits of the project outweigh the impacts. These benefits include encouragement of compact infill development, accommodation of approximately 45 housing units, streamlining of development, particularly housing projects, reduction of VMP and greenhouse gases, circulation improvements, addressing equity issues, supporting agricultural communities, promoting active communities that improve healthy living, and promoting the development of medical services and medical mixed use, including workforce housing. As noted earlier, the sustainability update implements several policy efforts, and we just want to take a second to kind of to review that outreach that is done for those projects, as well as more recently for this project. Public outreach for the sustainability update has been extensive, building on the former outreach done for the projects that I mentioned before. We started with an EIR scoping meeting and a website launch in July 2020. Website provides and has provided all along links to project documents, summarizing proposed amendments, and providing fact sheets in both English and Spanish. Website also includes a public comment portal. So far, we've received 280 comments received via the portal or email. A project survey was launched in March of this year, following public release of the draft amendments, to provide an opportunity for the public and put on key policy changes. As of November 8th, the county received 188 surveys and the results are also in your packet. County social media campaign and email outreach has reached over 3,000 members of the community with each email, including local residents, stakeholder groups, local agencies, and community organizations. In the spring, the county held seven evening community meetings with live polling that focused on various project topics. Meetings were attended by more than 160 people. Summaries of questions and comments and polling results are also in your packet. This summer, we conducted 10 study sessions with various county commissions, including the Housing Advisory Commission, the Agricultural Policy Commission, the Latino Affairs Commission, as well as various committees to the Regional Transportation Commission. In addition, four study sessions were conducted with the Planning Commission. And following these study sessions, the Planning Commission held three public hearings to address the draft amendment and provide a recommendation to the board. The Planning Commission study sessions and public hearings had over 200 attendees. After the board is supervisor, adopts a proposed amendments. The next step for the amendments will be the Coastal Commission to consider and certify them. Depending on the time required for the commission, we anticipate the sustainability update could take effect in mid to late 2023 or possibly in 2024. The Planning Commission's review dealt deeply into various aspects of the project, particularly policies related to agriculture, urban development, and transportation. The commission's recommended adoption of the sustainability update made several months, and excuse me, the Commission recommended adoption of the sustainability update and made several modifications to the policies and codes to strengthen the protection of agricultural lands, provide better protection of open spaces in our residential developments, allow more housing units and mixed use developments, expand noticing public hearings, increase review levels for larger projects, retain the scenic designation on urban portions of Highway 1, limit TDM measures related to parking and strengthen the requirements of transportation related improvements. In the general plan sections and strike-through ordinances, the Planning Commission's changes are shown in yellow highlighting and their additional staff changes shown in green highlighting. Staff conducted additional analysis of the Planning Commission's recommended amendments and proposed some clarifications for the board to consider to ensure that the general plan and county code are internally consistent, consistent with state law, and meet higher board direction and the goals of the project. These changes are provided as a separate attachment beginning on page 532 of your packet and staff recommends inclusion of these changes into the adopted documents. So with that, here's a summary of the recommended actions that are before the board today. We've divided up the actions such that the board would certify the EIR, adopt the general plan, and adopt the mapping amendments today, and then at your next meeting, the board is requested to review and adopt the county code amendments and design guidelines. So we are asking the board to conduct a public hearing to consider the Planning Commission's recommended amendments, adopt the attached resolution certifying the EIR, consider staff clarifications to the Planning Commission recommended amendments, adopt the attached resolution to adopt the CEQA mitigation monitoring and reporting plan, adopt the proposed amendments to the general plan, including the staff clarifications that are provided, adopt amendments to the general plan land use designation map, find the proposed map amendments are consistent with the general plan and the California Coastal Act and direct staff to submit the amendments to the Coastal Commission for certification. We're also asking the board to approve the ordinance amending the zoning map and direct staff to return with the code ordinances incorporating staff clarifications at your next meeting on December 6th and then continue the public meeting to that date in order to make those actions part of the hearing. That concludes our presentation. Matt and I as well as the rest of the policy staff are who are available remotely are here to help answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you, Assistant Director Hansen and Director Machado. It's really an incredible amount of work and I thank you for all the effort from county staff to get us to this point today. Are there questions or comments from members of the board? Mr. Chair? To revise my curiosity. Yeah, really a great presentation on a complex, huge body of work. I want to thank the planning department and the previous planning director Cathy Malloy, in particular the assistant planning director Stephanie Hansen now for the heavy lift over the it's just been an eight or nine year effort to get to this place. I'll note that most of the amendments are under consideration will affect housing development within the urban services line, which is the right place for the higher density to go. In District 5, the San Juan's Valley in particular, we recognize that given the constraint of lot size geological conditions and the septic tank issues that we have, the most feasible path to additional housing there seems to be accessory dwelling units or homes on wheels, which we've discussed earlier today. I do hope these amendments will provide a better clarity for the regulations and process for developers and individual homeowners to build more housing. I noticed that Governor Newsom when he was elected, first elected four years ago, he was asking for three and a half million units to be built by 2025. And I have to say I'm concerned about the states getting into land use operations of counties or local governments in general. But that three and a half unit 2025 was changed just the end of last month to two and a half million units by 2030. I doubt that you had any time to adjust anything to reflect that if at all you use that in your considerations in the first place. So that's my question. Thank you, Supervisor. Unfortunately, that reduction in projected units didn't result in a change to our arena allocation. Right. And it also hasn't stopped the state from continuing to pass all kinds of legislation related to increases in housing. So although the forecast may be adjusted, the housing crisis hasn't abated. And we need every single tool that we can get in order to meet our arena accommodation. So no relief there for us. Yeah, I'm afraid that's the answer I was going to hear. But I thank you very much. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, and just a deep appreciation for the amount of work that's gone into this. And also the amount of work that both the Planning Commission put into it, as well as some of the community members that have stuck through this process during this entire time. On just sort of a top line, I'm supportive of the Planning Commission recommendations. I obviously reviewed not just all the materials, but listened to a lot of the deliberations. And I thought they were very thoughtful in the process. And I thought that the recommendations and changes they made were the right ones. I do support some of the clarifications that are coming forward from county staff, not necessarily all of them. When we get down to it, we can get into those weeds. But I just think from a general standpoint, just moving us forward with the Planning Commission recommendations is really the right way to go with some just general clarification changes that are being presented. I saw that there were some things associated with state law that need to be clarified for one. But there were some other things that appeared to me to be more wholesale modifications of the Planning Commission recommendations, which I'm not supportive of. But all the same, generally speaking, this is a very significant investment in our community's future, both in housing and transportation. I think that it's the right kind of future planning that quite frankly, our community could have and should have taken about 15 or 20 years ago, and maybe wouldn't be in some of the conditions that we're in today. But I think that at least what we're trying to do is create an environment in 15 or 20 years that will be significantly better than that. It's been faced by current policymakers and the community at large. And I think that this does get us toward that. So Ms. Hansen, I know that you've received some praise, but I just want to heap it on too. You work on a lot behind the scenes, but you've really put a lot of your heart into this entire project to make the community better. And you deserve a lot of credit for some of the hard work. And also for being very open and receptive to meetings with board members, with the community, and et cetera, to really hear and listen to what people are looking for and to help formulate that into policy. So I'd like to admire your work ethic and approach on that. But Mr. Chair, just in general, I just want to support the Planning Commission recommendations. And when the time comes, maybe with some minor modifications from county staff recommendations. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor Coonerty? Sure. So one, I want to just add to the course here and thank staff for the good work, and especially work that was, you know, as Mr. McPherson said, over many years, but also up to the last moment, making sure to include as many voices in this process as possible as we set the direction for the county for decades to come. You know, a big picture. I think we're moving in the right direction. We're creating a more vital community, a more livable community, a more sustainable community. It reflects the goals and values of the community across the county. I think one of the first lessons I learned when I got elected office was Matthew Thompson, local architect, said, it's not just that we don't have enough units, but we don't have the right kind of units. And I think this creates a direction where we can start to get more of the right kind of units, you know, especially units for people who are younger, younger professionals, working people, working families. I think those, that's what will make our community thrive into the future. And I appreciate all the efforts. Like Supervisor Friend pointed out, I do also appreciate the efforts of the Planning Commission and the clarity that they brought to many of these issues that also reflect the values of the community. And while there may be modifications here and discussions in general, I thought that their proposals were made this a much better document that will benefit it for generations to come. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor Cabot. Thanks for looking into this. The more I look at it, I'm going to just go through and mention problems. I don't want answers on everything. Otherwise, we could be here for hours, really talking about each little category. But North County, South County, Mid County, as long as we have a fair share in each part, I'm okay with it. Because I know the state only cares about how many affordable units are in the county. So for example, if all of them were built in Watsonville, the county gets the okay from the state, basically, because they would all be met. That's not happening. We're having more and more fair share of affordable housing in all parts of the county. I'd like to see a little bit more in North County. But that would be Scouts Valley, of course, Davenport, Felton area, and all that. But that's for you to look at later. And then transportation, air quality, we have the state of California basically saying we have to clean up the air in the next, what, 10 to 15 years. And there's a state goal of cleaning it up. And for every house, from what I've read, if you have a house normally for everyone you built, build, you would have two cars and an average car travels. And I think it's a low estimate of 11 miles per day. So that's 22 miles of traffic and air pollution, I guess, from gas, unless you have an electric car. But if you build 100 homes and you're talking about 22 miles a day, traffic and all that, air quality mandates all coming in from all sides. So it's really tough. And then, of course, that's from what I also read, and I'm not sure if, you know, I haven't cross-checked everything. But they say like in Los Angeles, the city of Los Angeles, over 25% of all the land in Los Angeles is pretty much paved over or covered for automobiles. That would be the roads, the parking spaces at shopping centers. And it would also be the driveways at the home. That's not counting the homes that are covering up the land. So anyway, then we're looking at what's the alternative. Are we going to have more buses? Are we going to have more train transportation? So we have to get away a little bit from the automobile if you're going to, in a way, air quality mandates versus affordable housing. And I could go on, we need to plant more trees, of course. And then the other is when we have parking lots come in, are they going to be permeable asphalt? Are they going to be permeable sidewalks cement where the water actually percolates through? So we can just go on and on and on. And I'm going to leave that up to you to study it closer and leave it up to my colleagues actually to somehow figure this out in the future. How can you figure this all out reasonably and meet the air quality standards and quality of life and affordable housing? You don't have to answer them all. Just how difficult is it going to be? Very difficult, not so bad. I don't think anybody in this room would disagree with you that there are many challenges ahead. And some of them have competing interests. They don't all align up. However, I will say that, as I mentioned, the development patterns that we're promoting in our urban areas actually help to reduce VMT over time, even though you're adding housing units. So we're on a policy basis. We're moving in the right direction. And of course, as I mentioned, the county is updating its climate action strategy is a new climate action and adaptation strategy or plan. And that too will go a long way to be more aggressive about supporting how that development occurs. So these two things will work hand in hand together. But you're right. It's a challenge. Yes. No matter what you do, there's a counterweight going the opposite way. But anyway, good luck and looking at it. The only other thing I'd mention is roadways where the earth air quality. Yeah. And then how many are going to be affordable homes versus the bigger back mansions, I guess. You have to weigh all that. So anyway, and I didn't even mention jobs, of course, and we can get into every area. One last thing is he was in the county in the unincorporated area. I don't know. A lot of people don't realize there's no drive-throughs basically in the unincorporated area. The cities have drive-throughs. But for environmental reasons, years ago, the unincorporated area, the Board of Supervisors pretty much eliminated all drive-throughs. You're not going to see a McDonald's in an unincorporated area or a Burger King or whatever. And they were looking at the environmental impacts. And that's what I'm looking at too. When you get into all this pressure coming from all sides, all of a sudden you give up one thing in order to make the environment better. And then at the same time, if you don't do it, people that can't really afford to live here can't live here. So really, it's really a tough, tough thing. Thank you for looking at it. You've got the problem on your backs. And I really believe you're going to figure this out. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Well, also I want to commend, once again, staff for bringing this very deep and rich sustainability update to us today. I know a lot of work has gone into it. And I appreciate that. In general, I would hope that once we've accomplished this going forward, we're able to make changes at a more incremental scale and look for that incremental improvement just because I think it's a little bit easier for us to deal with. But I do understand the reasons why we took this approach to moving everything forward today and getting to this point. And overall, I'm supportive of the process. I think that in this county, we've been really good in the past of preserving open space, creating a green belt around our urban area, creating the urban services line to begin with. And it's really led to an incredible quality of life that we experience here. And I think we're all grateful for that. I know I'm very grateful to many of the battles that our forefathers and mothers fought to preserve that character for our community. Of course, now it comes down to actually creating the city that can support that open space. I mean, we see it even just at the most basic level and not having enough revenues to support our park system and our open space. So very literally, but we also just need more housing within our urban area to support all our infrastructure. So a common refrain I've heard throughout this process or whenever, whenever housing comes up is that we don't have enough infrastructure to support more housing. And I would actually offer an alternative opinion, which is that we actually don't have enough housing to support the infrastructure we have. And the reason for that is that it does take people to run our infrastructure, whether that sanitation managers or lifeguards for our pool or a legal council for our county. And we are having trouble hiring people across every single department because the cost of housing here. And I think it's important to understand that even if people don't have any more kids who live here, and we're not adding any new jobs, the economy doesn't grow, we still need to add more housing because our population as a whole is aging. And so people are retiring in place and not freeing up those homes for a new employee, for example, at the Live Oak School District to come in. And so that's why we're seeing such a crunch when it comes to these different job sectors is because Santa Cruz is a great place to live, it's a great place to retire. And unlike the East Coast, where when you retire from in New York City and move to Florida, when you retire in Santa Cruz, you stay in Santa Cruz. So we do need more housing just to keep our community going. I think there's another thing we'll continue to talk about as we look at the climate action adaptation plan later this year is that there's also a lot more people that keep our community going than actually live here within our county borders. And so we actually import a lot of people to help with all the various services throughout the county every day, people driving in from as far away as Los Banos or King City. And so while I think we can all understand that there is a carbon footprint associated with ordering a product via Amazon from China, we also have to understand that there's a carbon footprint associated with importing someone to do a job in our community from King City. I mean, they have to drive every day. And that is adding emissions and greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately raising the temperature and increasing risk for catastrophic wildfires. So we have to add more housing just so that people can live closer to where they work as well. I do want to acknowledge that the Environmental Impact Report that we're being presented with today, as was said, does call out the potential for increasing VMT and more car trips as one impact that we need to mitigate. And that will be a challenge. And the other being water. I think that of course echoes things that we hear whenever this conversation comes up from the public. And I think that our board can take action specifically to address those things in terms of promoting low car housing. I think the transportation demand management policy that we have before us today is a great first step in that direction. And that also we can continue to work with the water agencies to promote more efficient low water use multifamily residential developments in the future. As we have on the electricity side, the energy use side just this morning, and the adopted changes to our energy code. And requiring that all new residential construction near urban services line be all electric. So I think there is opportunity for further improvements there. Now, I'm supportive of the proposed changes that the planning department or clarifications, I should say, of the planning commissions, various proposals. And, you know, when I was reading through the planning commission's recommendations, I felt that a lot of them, expressed values that we certainly have as a community, but as restrictions. And ultimately, it's all those restrictions that has prevented housing from being built that has added to the cost of housing over time. And with all the best intentions prevented the housing that we need from being constructed. I think parking and is definitely a huge piece of that. There's a lot of comments from the planning commission related to making sure that, you know, since our transportation infrastructure develops at the same pace that we added housing. And as we also saw this morning with some of the grant applications we have out for improved transit infrastructure in our community, we are doing that. I don't think that, you know, there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. We're doing everything we can to improve the transit and transportation infrastructure, but we can't require that it happens before additional housing is created. And I think we also have to create the opportunity for people to live in low car housing if they choose to. I mean, at the end of the day, if someone has to choose between having a housing unit at all with a parking space or not having a housing unit and not having a parking space, they're going to choose housing without parking because that is the essential human need. Another way that this was expressed in the planning commission comments was in the requirement for private open space in units. And again, this is, you know, I think clearly something that fundamentally we all value as a community is open space. And we've demonstrated that in our preservation of open space. And in the creation of the open services line is already mentioned. But if we put this additional requirement on every single residential unit, it adds additional costs. It creates design restrictions when actually building multi-family housing. And I think that ultimately it will be better served if we leave it up to the creativity of home builders to, for example, potentially collectivize that open space for, you know, the entire apartment building or, you know, take other approaches that will essentially make sure that the housing gets built first and foremost, and it will provide whatever amenities we can to make it attractive. But ultimately, our entire community is one big celebration of open space. I don't think that we need to require it for every single unit that will just ultimately limit housing. So the last thing I'll touch on is some of the proposed zoning changes. And here, you know, I want to take another moment to acknowledge all the work that staff has done to do outreach to the community. I mean, the 280 public comments that were mentioned, the survey results, it's really all a fantastic example of leaning into public engagement. I think we've certainly heard from a lot of people as well. And on my own inbox, I've received lots of comments, particularly around the Portola Resonings. And I just want to acknowledge all the feedback that we've heard from people. And particularly around the conversation with the Portola Resonings, you know, what was valuable is that the feedback that the majority of the feedback that I heard from the community was not a simple no that we don't want housing, but simply that we just didn't want quite so much. So really asking for the residential urban high zoning with about 30 units per acre instead of residential urban flex zoning with 45 units base density per acre. And so I think that that is, first of all, it's always helpful when you're having a, whether it's a disagreement or a conversation with someone if they bring forward alternatives. And I really respect that the neighborhood took that approach to this conversation. And I think that they, you know, there's also recognition of the need for housing and the desire to continue to support young families and working class people to live in the plebber point area, which I appreciate. And my first inclination about this is that because we have so much rezoning to do next year with the housing element, you know, I've in many ways preferred that we just delay the conversation, particularly around the portfolio rezonings to next year and look at all the pieces at once because I think that, you know, every placement of every piece really affects every other piece. And so it's hard to really finalize what one neighborhood is going to look like without talking about, you know, all of them as a whole. However, I do realize that residents in plebber point are seeking some resolution today, as well as that property owners of these specific parcels want some clarity on what types of projects they should be looking at. And I also recognize that the planning department has done incredible amount of work to get us to this point. And so looking at the best zoning change today, I do think that on the whole, the residential urban high proposal makes sense for the majority of the parcels, I mean, actually really eight out of nine. There is one, which is the parcel at 3501 Portola Drive at 28 per parcel. It's currently zoned C2, which is community commercial. And I think ultimately that makes sense to retain this as community commercial. I mean, we allow mixed use zoning in community commercial so that would allow for residential to still be constructed there. And if you look across the street, you have Paula's Cafe over the Hillgang Saloon, Surf School Santa Cruz. So clearly already a pretty vibrant block between 35th and 36th there. And so it makes sense to retain that existing zoning that can pursue a mixed use project if they want. But I think it's important to recognize that in the residential urban high zoning, we're actually don't allow mixed use zoning the same way we're proposing with residential slacks. And so if we want to keep that mixed use type there along that stretch of Portola, I think it makes more sense to retain it as C2. So that's what I'm prepared to support today. I mean, if, you know, the board is a whole one to go back and just look at all the zoning for the county at once. I mean, I do think that the Thurber and SoCal Drive parcel makes sense as proposed, especially because we're considering the environmental issues there. We should move forward with that. And otherwise we have this alternative for Portola Drive or could look at it as a whole. Those are my comments. If there's no other comments or questions from the board, I will now open the public hearing. Yeah. And we're going to do public comment now. Yeah, we'll do public comment. And I just wanted to make one more measure cue on South County and Watsonville passed overwhelmingly. People want to preserve the ag land that we do have. And so that's another pressure. 70%, I believe, of the whole county ag land is in South County, which is Zach Friend's area and my area. And then of course, I do agree with you, open space and parks are a key element. So you got all these pressure groups coming in on you. And it's very difficult, I know. But anyway, I know in North County, they have a a wonderful park, a big basin, and that's got to be preserved too. So anything. I know you got a big responsibility. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now open it for the public hearing. So if you have a comment, please approach the podium. Hello. I'm actually going to ask you not to approve it because of various things like Kid mentioned, mainly the parking. Just because you build something or you change the policy that they don't have to require parking from places, doesn't mean people are going to get away from their cars. We're not New York. We don't have a subway system everywhere that people can just walk. I've done, I've tried. We're California. We're basically a car culture at this point. I know you want to change that for the greenhouse step. We're going with electric cars, but those aren't affordable for everybody either at this point. So at this point, I asked, we need parking. Water is the other reason, as you know, and we actually agree on that. The water issue is a big one. And I agree with you on that. The whole thing, if you're going to do this, you're going to do this high density thing because, you know, I'm super opposed to the high density thing because it affects our quality of life. Climb goes up, all kinds of other issues, property values go down, all that. But we don't have time for that because I'm limited, I know. But I ask that you don't until you get through some of those details because it's kind of a broad stroke to say, oh, you know, all these houses now are like, they don't require any parking, but people still have cars. And guess what? They're going to park them somewhere. And we need to find a balance somewhere. At least, you know, if I was a developer, I'd be licking my chops right now at this county saying, oh man, I could develop. But I also want equity across the county. I don't think it's fair. You call them transportation corridors. If you sit on Soquel, between Aptos Village and Soquel Village, it's a parking lot, a lot of times. That's not a transportation corridor. That's a parking lot. And adding bike lanes isn't going to make a difference, you know? So I don't think it's fair that, you know, you should put all the high density housing along Soquel right there between those two villages. You know, it needs to be spread out. That means Capitola and Scotts Valley gets their share as well. That's all they say. Thank you. And I would like to meet with you personally if I could have a chance, just five minutes of your time regarding parking in our neighborhood, because one of the projects that is happening is going to affect it 10 times worse that we're already having. Is there a possibility to do that? Thank you, sir. Yeah, I'm happy to follow up with you. Is there any way, like, how do you go about getting maybe permit parking for our neighborhood or something? I'm happy to discuss those issues with you. How do I go about that? I don't have my contact information already. You're welcome to walk over to the Board of Supervisors Office and speak with the meeting. Is that how it is? But it'll be something like promise. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your time. First of all, before you start the talk, can I have three minutes? This is huge. And there's hardly anybody here. How many people do we have online? Okay, yeah. We'll allow three minutes for everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Becky Steinbrunner. And I think we have to thank staff, but we also, the taxpayers have to thank do-deck consultants that we paid to do this big work. That's what really got it off the road was hiring do-deck. So they've done an amazing job too. I just want to quickly go through my comments. The open space requirement from the Planning Commission came because deck space was being considered open space. That's unacceptable. So I think it is important to have open space. Yes, while we have a lot of rural areas around us, it's not right there where people can walk out and use it in their free time in the evening. So we do need open space to preserve people's social and equity and state of mind. The parking issue was brought forth by Commissioner Shepherd, because she as a rural resident realizes that not everybody lives who comes to the urban areas, live in the urban areas, and they do drive their cars because there's no other way to get around. So the parking for those dense areas needs to stay intact. The Coastal Commission did not approve of the Watsonville land west taking away Ag land. And I hope you saw that in their comments to the EIR. They are very opposed to this. So I hope you do not certify this EIR today and look at that and figure this out. They will not approve this. And they said so in their letter. And likewise, Water Manager of the city Rosemary Menard felt the discussion of water policy was also lacking. So do not certify this EIR today. I have never been able to understand why all of these high dense parcels are in pleasure point. Portola Drive is not a major corridor. It's about to be reduced, put on a road diet. And it should not all be concentrated there. It should be, as you said, spread out around the county. Why isn't anything happening at the golf course in Aptos behind Agus? That's not on the list. How come? It's next to Highway 1. Pleasure point makes no sense. And I think it's an unfair burden on that neighborhood. The Kaiser Medical Facility is coming before you, December 15th, and there's no public transportation there. And the sewer mainline for that area has a moratorium. How is that going to work with the dense infill that is planned for the pleasure point area that I assume feeds into that sewer trunk? I really want you to adopt a flagging and staking ordinance. Supervisor Koenig, I have given you that documentation. You're going to need something like that where you will have revolt on your hands. And it's the best way to get people aware. The rail corridor should be built along because that would support, as you said, that would support the infrastructure that we need having passenger rail or PRTs. I want a better historic preservation. I want you to adopt a Mills Act to encourage people to preserve the historic resources that we have. I want to have better incentivization for stormwater collection, groundwater recharge. And I want you to really, if you're going to be increasing the ag uses to include other uses, you've got to start supporting the evacuation routes that protect those people when they're out there, as well as those who are living in the urban, the wildland areas. And I'm sorry, I'm distracted. I'm seeing this light. Am I out of town? You are in fact out of town. All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate the extra time. And I just want to say that I attended many of the public meetings. I felt that those early on meetings were so poorly attended, you really should not even count them. And I want to commend Commissioner Villalante on the planning commission for her very thoughtful, thorough comments. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'd like three minutes as well. Thank you. My name is Alex Vartan. I both live on Portola and own commercial property on the other end of the street in the heart of Pleasure Point. I walk up and down Portola daily and am supportive of the county's plan to thoughtfully modernize development standards so this long neglected street can achieve its potential as a modern expression of Pleasure Point's unique character. I'm also millennial who first became a homeowner at age 39, paying exorbitant rent until then. I support planning's aim to increase density on this street using the new RF zone so that more people my age and younger can enjoy this wonderful place and contribute as sorely needed new blood to the neighborhood as homeowners, renters, small business owners, and engaged citizens. Our county has long been facing a slow motion demographic crisis that has only accelerated post-pandemic. On trade or popular belief, there's been essentially no population growth over the past 10 years, and it shows every time you try and schedule x-rays or labs, find a capable attorney, or get plans drafted. And our hardest problem won't get solved without psychiatrists and nurses. Thankfully, Santa Cruz is an easy sell. I support RF density on Portola and believe that, in fact, this is the only way we're going to get projects that the neighborhood actually wants and our community desperately needs. More units means more flexibility in the type of units, whether that's senior living, family units, or high design studios for singles, and makes these challenging parcels, many of which are small or have environmental issues attractive to a broader set of capable developers. With more value creation, these projects can spend more on pleasure point specific design, quality materials, landscaping, stacked or underground parking, much better to address neighbors, very reasonable concerns about impact. In short, what the community wants least, cookie cutter projects that don't respect the locale, simply check the boxes on the bare minimum, the bland San Jose design and low rent construction quality. This is what we are guaranteed to get when projects face lower density maximums. What does get bill has to use the most incentives and concessions possible to pencil out, frequently adverse to neighborhood interests. Pleasure point is a special place and we all want to keep it that way. Realizing the full value of Portola's potential is the best way to preserve the neighborhood's unique character and to share it with the community, with the people, our community so direly needs. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Barton. So anyone else here in chamber such to comment? Seeing none, then we'll go to the online audience. Solar GCSC, you are unmuted. You will have three minutes to speak. GCSC dial star six to unmute yourself. Am I unmuted? Yes, we hear you now. Thank you. Our thanks goes to the Santa Cruz Sustainability Team for their tireless work. In recent memory, there hasn't been a more suited site for maximum density development than those alongside the Portola Drive corridor. The proposed properties on Portola Drive are buffered and surrounded by cul-de-sacs, linking streets, existing apartments and condos and already approved for future three-story development at upper end of Portola Drive 41st Avenue and 38th Avenue. With this type of projects in the past, the voices of the underprivileged have not been heard. Instead, the voices of a few individuals and organized vocal groups have prevailed. Oftentimes, the opposition to these type of projects stems from prejudice towards the underprivileged people of color, low income and minorities. And as a result, we create gated communities without gates. We ask the Board of Supervisors to consider and approve the Sustainability Project in its current form with maximum high density, flexible housing to help alleviate the dire housing shortage and crisis in order to alleviate this problem primarily for the underprivileged people. The Board of Supervisors is bound to present all people in the community. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I'll Kelly, you have been unmuted. You are now available to speak. Hey, this is Scott Kelly. So first off, I want to thank earlier comments about kind of the need to make sure that we're able to recruit and retain our public workforce, private workforce. We see a lot of people commuting into Santa Cruz that realistically we should be able to house more people here and we should be able to eliminate more of the rent overburden, overcrowding, everything else. And so at least for this one, I just want to say so for this, this final draft, I oppose the suggested modification from the Planning Commission that reduced the height maximums, reduced entity or add parking requirements or require more public hearings. Like we really need this housing like years ago, whereas Supervisor Friend put it 15 to 20 years ago. But luckily the second best time to plan a tree is right now. It's like it's too bad we weren't ahead of this a long time ago. And obviously, and I'm really happy with this for staff that we're going to lean towards vehicle miles travel as required and to step away from using level of service. So I agree with staff clarifications that support the use of density bonus consistent with state law and that promote alternative modes of travel, bicycle and transit access with unbundled parking as a TDM strategy. And hopefully it's clear. I think there was maybe a little bit of confusion during presentation questions. The arena allocation for the county that is before you for the six cycle housing element is only for unincorporated. Scotts Valley, Capitola, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, they all have their own separate allocation that they have to plan for, which for us means largely speaking within that urban services line is to grow up. And I think it would actually behoove us to get more of it done now so that we're able to complete our six cycle housing element on time because we're a little bit behind. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. Evan Soroki. You have been unmuted. You can now speak. Well, this is Evan Soroki. I'm speaking of in support of increased density across the county. I'm a resident of Scotts Valley, and we have a decent renail location. But really, there's places in cities like Toronto that have completed our renail allocation of like 400 units in a single project. So it's not a big deal. So I am supporting of the density. I oppose any height limit restrictions. So we need more housing. Please approve as much housing zoning designation as you believe, potentially removing all caps altogether. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Soroki. Elizabeth Madrigal, you have now been unmuted. You can now speak. Good afternoon all. Elizabeth Madrigal speaking on behalf of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership. We urge adoption of the sustainability update, which you all are aware will allow for implementation of new policies and code regulations that will support sustainable communities in the county. In alignment with previous callers, we do not support the Planning Commission's suggested recommendations to reduce height maximums, reduce density, and add parking requirements as these modifications would serve to inhibit development. I especially want to lift up previous comments made from Supervisor Koenig regarding not only the local but regional impacts not building sufficient housing proofs to the livelihoods of those in our community as well as our environment. Thank you all for your time and consideration. Thank you, Ms. Madrigal. Ryan Mechel, you can now have control of your speaker and speak. Thank you, Ryan Mechel. I'm a City of Santa Cruz resident. I just wanted to thank Supervisor Koenig and Supervisor Friend for their comments earlier about, you know, second best time to build housing is now, if not 20 years ago, and Supervisor Koenig for saying that we've created a green belt for a reason and that there's a reason we need to do infill development and not sprawl out more. I just want to call in to support what Santa Cruz EMB said about the sustainability update, opposing the suggestions from Planning Commission that would reduce height maximums, reduce density, and add parking requirements, and also agree with the staff clarifications that would support the use of density bonus consistent with state law and promote alternative modes of travel such as bicycles and transit and walking. Yeah, thank you for your time and I hope you consider Santa Cruz EMB's recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Mechel. There is no more public comment. Thank you. All right, then I will close the public hearing and where you turn it to the board for deliberation and action. Supervisor Friend. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I would be prepared to move the recommended actions with some modifications and actually I wanted to make sure that I got your modification that you were speaking on specifically on that parcel in Portola. I didn't get to write it down and so if you could help me with that when the time comes, I'd appreciate it. But what I'd like to do is move the recommended actions with but amend recommendation 4B. This deals with some of the staff clarifications so that we would adopt the proposed amendments to the general plan. LCP is recommended by the planning commission and include the staff clarification language in GP 3, 4, and 5, which is included in attachment AF, including the new chapters 1, 2, and 3 in the amendments to Chapter 5 and 7, the amendments to the glossary, and the new appendices A through M. So that's the modification is accepting 3, 4, and 5 of the staff clarifications but not accepting some of the additional staff clarifications of the planning commission recommendations. But I also wanted to make sure that I honored what you had specifically said, Supervisor Koenig, but I just didn't get a chance to write down that specific request. Sure. So the recommendation on the zoning for Portola was to zone a residential urban high for parcels 1 through 6 and 8 and 9, and to retain the C2 zoning for parcel 7 that's in the Portola Tire Resonemap. And then I believe we need a zoning or a corresponding zoning district for that. And so the recommendation would be RM 1.5. Okay. So it was the recommended actions with the modification of 4Bs I'd noted and including the changes recommended by Chair Koenig regarding the Portola area. I'll second that. To clarify, yes, that was the proposal was to accept the for 8 out of 9 parcels, the communities proposed residential urban high. So speaking to the proposal, I mean, I'm just looking through what recommendations you're effectively proposing that we leave out Supervisor Friend. So as I mentioned, I think that I take issue with removing the clarification on the TDM strategy. I do think that we should permit reductions in the required parking minimums when there's a accompanying TDM plan in place. The TDM strategy does list a number of options to do so, including shared vehicles, bulk metro passes, etc. And so obviously it wouldn't be boilerplate that we would not require parking or reduced parking, but would just simply create a pathway and menu of options for developments to really be to be low car. So that's one piece. I'm just looking, I'll leave it at that as I continue to look at some of these other recommended clarifications. So again, it was 3 through 5 that you want to include in the motion, Supervisor Friend. So I apologize, I was on mute. Yes, that is correct. Well, it's all the recommended actions that we're speaking specifically to the staff clarifications on those items, but everything else, yes. Can I get a brief clarification? I had heard originally 3, 4, and 5, and then I heard you, Supervisor Koenig, say 3, 2, and 5. I meant 3 through 5, 3 through 5. Thank you. 3 through 5. Chair, could I ask a question of Kenny? Sure. Do we need the motion to reflect the additional direction to staff or the, regarding the staff clarifications, or is that all included in the motion except for the changes that are noted? We're looking for clarification on the county code sections that we'll be back with next time. Right. I'm not sure, I'm not sure I quite understand your question, what your question is, but I am waiting to see where the dialogue on the motion goes. I do have concerns that if we are planning on changing the zoning ordinance that's been presented to the Board, that we should bring that back on December 6th with the language that your Board wants to have included rather than try to do it in this meeting. That's reasonable Council. I think that that was actually, in some respects, even what Supervisor, excuse me, Chair Koenig had brought up originally. So, since we are coming back on the 6th, I think the zoning can come back on that. To Ms. Hanson's, yeah, I'm not touching the county code component of the section of AF since you're presenting that at the next meeting. This is just specific clarification on the resolution associated with the items that are under consideration for today. And that's the general plan, the three that I'd mentioned, accepting and not accepting the others. Thank you. I was asking if the Board was interested in including the staff clarifications on the code that are specified in the staff clarifications table so that we can get those into the ordinances for your next meeting in order to have one first reading and adoption by the end of the year. That's why we were asking for that additional direction. Oh, I see. I was under the impression that that entire component of staff clarifications were going to be considered at the next meeting since we were considering code changes at the next meeting. And so, I'm under the impression that that section of AF would be considered with us at the next meeting. Yeah, we were hoping for a little bit of direction from the Board if regarding those code clarifications so that they could be included in the ordinances so we could stay on the adoption schedule. Okay, well, if that's the case, then I'll raise two flags on the staff clarifications on the county code component in there were differences from the planning commission. I mean, there was more than that but just the two that are of concern are five and six regarding the produce markets. I mean, this is something unique to my district and Surveyser Cabin district, which is the desire to restore the larger size recommendation that you would originally come forward with and not what the planning commission had done. So if need be, then I'll amend my motion to also not include SCCC-5 and SCCC-6 in regards to that second part of AF. If I didn't realize, I apologize based on what you had said that the codes were considered at the next meeting is bifurcated. I interpret that to mean that this section of this attachment also were bifurcated but there you go. Those are my concerns five and six then if need be council, I can amend my motion to include those also be eliminated. I would suggest that we move forward and vote on your initial motion including the general plan clarifications and then if you want to take a separate motion on code clarification, it'll just, I think, you know, make it easier to ultimately get to something that we passed today. Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I was just responding to a question that was presented that I'm comfortable with that as long as. Yeah, I mean, I guess to dig into some of the general plan clarifications, you know, the first recommendation from the planning commission was that basically that we consider road capacity such that new development will not exceed an increase in level of service on any road by more than five percent and the staff verification is level of service as described in Access Plus Mobility Policy AM and crossing out that five percent piece. I mean, my understanding is first of all level of services in terms of an A through F ranking. So I mean, I don't really sure how we even consider the, you know, what a five percent change is. So that's that's one fundamental piece. And I mean, the second is, you know, just and I think the next general plan recommendation gets at this, which is the planning commission suggested that building intensity land uses are approved and constructed concurrently with supporting transportation infrastructure. And staff is suggesting that we add as feasible. And I think that still gets to the intent. But, you know, sometimes it's just difficult to actually build projects, transportation projects concurrently with, you know, a new housing development, even if that's the intention and we receive, you know, funding for transportation impacts, etc., mitigation. So I would have trouble leaving both of those out for those reasons. Okay. I mean, I mean, that as feasible part to me, it opens up as feasible to whom, right? And so I think that what we were trying to do is provide the expectation that if you're going to be doing the intensification, you would also have the trend. I mean, look, a lot of this is about having some sort of multimodality associated with it. And if we're saying that, well, we're going to provide this extensive density changes because we're building a new infrastructure system and then we're adding in qualifying language. It's like, well, maybe we're not going to build it in. That was the concern about adding in the feasible language in my opinion. And I would prefer keeping the planning commission's language that creates the expectation that is part and parcel with the associated with the density if we're moving to a different transportation system in that way, which by the way, I agree with one of the speakers. I don't know how realistic that actually is. And I think that we also need to look at vehicles not in the same way. There's fossil fuel and there's non-fossil fuel. It doesn't just have to be alternative transportation means such as higher density vehicles or like a bus system or a metro system or a bike, which isn't high density, but it's alternative transportation. It could be an electric vehicle. And so I think that realistically moving forward in the system, and we're creating other elements with broadband and other ways with autonomous vehicles, etc., that we shouldn't just eliminate these requirements outright. I mean, there's a reduction already that's proposed. I think some of the elimination isn't realistic in both the topography and current design, and we're just modifying current design along corridors. And so I think that it makes sense to maintain the parking standards. I know that's a slight tangent, but on the feasibility component, I feel like that provided flexibility that I just don't know, five years, 10 years, 15 years from now, and this is being implemented and being feasible to whom. And I think that there should be a little bit of clarity what the Board and the Planning Commission were looking for at the time. And that said, if we're going to have this increased density, we're going to have the improved infrastructure associated with it. That's why I made the motion that I made. And I'll only add, I guess, that from my perspective, this is so a high-level document. Hold on. I'll come back. All right. Well, we're waiting for Supervisor Coonerty. Did you have any additional clarification on the GP1 there, the 5% level of service? I mean, how would you even interpret that? I'm sorry, please, Ms. Hanson, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. Was that for me or for Supervisor Friend, but if... Let's go ahead. I mean... Yeah, Ms. Hanson, if you want to explain why you were making the... Or I don't know, I shouldn't say you. I mean, why the department was making the modification, that's fine, the proposed modification. Yeah, it's really an implementation thing, right? Level of service is a very defined system. As Chair Koenig mentioned, there's levels A through F, and the policy that's referred to AM-6-2.1 has a minimum level of service, which is D. And it's not by percentage. It's not by degree. So it's a matter of how would we implement that. If the level of service decreases, then we have something to implement, but there's no percentage of it. It's either it goes from C to D, or remains both in the C category, for instance, but there's no percentage of that. So we found that language a little bit difficult to implement on the ground. Okay, that sounds reasonable. I appreciate you flagging that for me, Chair Koenig. So I'd be willing to add that one in. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Coonerty, are you getting your dog under control? Yes, sorry. I had a father-in-law, a dog, and kids all arrived when I was trying to make a point. I think just very briefly, I think one is, this is a high level, and what counts as transportation infrastructure seems to me to be the primary question of, are you talking about a bike lane? Are you talking about a sidewalk? Are you talking about remodeling an intersection? I think the key thing will be the first early projects where you have increased density need to be successful, or we're going to face resistance on every subsequent one. So to the extent that we don't leave that wiggle room, and people, these projects show immediately that you can have increased density and not create traffic problems or other impacts of quality of life, the better we will have an opportunity for more projects over the longer term. So I see this as a way of ensuring the success in short, but most importantly, in the long term of the goals that we're pushing forward today. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor McPherson. I guess I'll ask for clarifications from staff on GP8, this is the appendix one TDM strategy, reduced parking supply. So the Planning Commission suggested that we've removed this language that changes onsite parking supply to provide less than the amount required by SCCC 1316 permitted reductions could utilize mechanisms such as bike parking to replace vehicle parking, shared parking or development of a TDM plan must be compliant with SCCC 1316 other applicable code sections. I mean, I guess just to make sure we're looking at it holistically, I mean, I understand correctly, even without that language in the TDM strategy, a proposed housing development could still put together a TDM plan and apply for parking waiver or reduction. Is that right? Yes. A development that provides affordable units under a density bonus law has the ability, both in the code and as part of density bonus law, to reduce parking standards and to provide a TDM plan for that. That includes that. Okay, so it would be a little bit stronger if this language remained in, but does not eliminate the opportunity for affordable housing projects specifically. Correct. Okay. I mean, obviously I'd prefer that we include that section if possible, but I think that is actually the more or less gets us to the end of the general plan clarifications there. Yeah, I'm comfortable with adding number one to it, but I'm still, I have concerns with the TDM component as presented as I said. So I mean, I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say, but currently, I'll keep the motion as is with the change of adding GP1 clarifying as well. So it's one, three, four, five. All right. Any other comments? Supervisor McPherson? Yeah, that'll come back to us next, December 5th. December 6th, I believe it's our next meeting date, but I think if we approve these general plan amendments with these additional clarifications, that that would actually complete our discussion related to the general plan amendments. Is that right, County Councilor? We may be able to parse that out, but it's probably going to impact the motion, the recommended actions at this point are set up in a certain way. So it's difficult to say accept staff recommendations as modified by the board. The item four is the resolution to adopt all of the changes, including the zoning map, land use designations. Item five is the ordinance to change that and we're bringing back those things are connected to each other. And so what I would actually suggest is a recommend is taking this in pieces and look at the staff recommendations. For example, if your board is in favor of adopting the recommended action two to adopt the environmental analysis and the EIR, go ahead and take a vote on that, get that off the table. If you're looking at adopting some of staff's recommendations for the changes to the planning commission recommendations, clearly identify what those are and instruct staff to come back with a revised resolution and a revised ordinance at December 6th meeting in order to express the board's intent. Okay, I will thank you, Council, try and clean this up. So I'm going to withdraw my original motion and make a new motion. So I will move just recommended action one, two and three, which is that we conduct a public hearing that we accept the EIR and that we just consider the staff clarifications to the recommended amendments, which is what we were doing was a consideration. And then we will take, I'll bifurcate this and make a motion associated with four through seven in a subsequent motion where we can get down to the details of the modification. So this is a motion for recommendation one, two and three. All right, motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Coonerty to adopt recommended actions one, two and three. Any further discussion? Ting, non-clerk, we'll call vote please. For clarification, this is for item 13, recommended action one, two, three. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Chair Koenig? Aye. Motion passes. All right, thank you. So effectively what we've done is adopt the EIR at this point. And we've held a public hearing and we have considered some staff clarifications. We're making some movement, Chair. So Mr. Heath, have I can ask for clarification? Since we are, we're making modifications to, or excuse me, since there will be a proposal to make modifications to item four. And as you said, four and five go hand in hand. And we're making proposal to make changes to the zoning map per the chair's direction. Are we just providing recommendations to come back on December 6th? Or can I at least move items of four that we're not modifying, for example? How would you recommend that we do this? What I would recommend is that staff be provided with clear direction in a motion as to what, if any, changes the board wants to see to the planning commission's recommendations. And then embody that in the resolution and ordinance, which are the subject of items four and five and will be brought back on December 6th. Okay. Then the modification then as part of my motion of the changes that I would propose that we make to four, be specifically, it would be to accept GP one, three, four, and five. And would now also be the correct time then to make commentary. I mean, Chair Koenig, you had wanted to bifurcate on the Santa Cruz County Code, but that's now built into this item. So should we then discuss then the two, for that, it's just five and six that I would recommend. We do not accept on SECC-5 and SEC.6. And to come back on the December 6th agenda with modifications to that and Chair Koenig's proposed modifications and zoning map associated with Portola. I'll second that, although it's not clear if we're including Portola or not. So that your motion did include the proposed changes for the Portola rezoning. Yes. Yeah. Well, to come back on the December 6th meeting with those changes, correct? Right. To incorporate those proposed changes. Right. Okay. I mean, as far as comments on the code clarification section, I think that overall, I mean, I don't have a strong attachment to five and six is you said Supervisor Friend, most of those are in your district and Supervisor Caput's district. And I do appreciate the staff clarifications on I think it's what one, or maybe it's two and four, which are basically instead of to require the 50 square feet of open space per dwelling to require that for 50% of units included in the project. I mean, as I said, I would actually suggest that we not require a minimum amount of open space for any of the units, not to say that that's not desirable and that home builders might choose to include it. But I just don't know that it makes sense to require that effectively. It's just one more restriction on housing, which could lead to some funky looking projects. I've seen some proposed that, you know, you effectively have to build a U so that all the interior units now have balconies facing each other. And 50% is certainly an improvement, but I just don't know if it's necessary to have that restriction. So I propose that we change, I think what is it, two and four to just, I guess, not require any private open space. I just felt two was a good compromise by staff based on, I mean, it was a modification from, I mean, I'll say that if you listen in to the planning commission was pretty strident on this issue. And so I thought that modifying it to even what was proposed was a little bit of a break from what I was recommending in the above section. And so I just thought it was a good compromise, but I'd heard what you had said earlier. I think that you were making a valid point. And so I was feeling that the compromise presented by staff was reasonable. So I'd like to just stick on that. All right. Anyone else want to weigh in? Supervisor Coonerty? No. I'm supportive of this direction. I mean, I think for the purposes of moving things forward, somebody should make a motion to, if you want to go in a different direction, or if you want to wait till the sixth, either one. But I think either we should have a motion or we should just vote. Are you saying an alternate motion? Because, I mean, you seconded the motion that I made on this item. Right. I'm supportive of it. I'm saying if others are not, they should put forward an alternative motion. I'm not hearing anyone else step forward to suggest that they are. So I don't know that they'll be a second. So I think we'll stick with the motion on the floor. Chair, could staff provide a little bit of clarification on SCC five and six? Yeah, please. For the board. Christine, can Annie speak, please? Oh, I think I'm unmuted. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to clarify for the SSCC five regarding produce markets, the recommendation amendment from the Planning Commission would say that a larger floor area may be considered with an MUP. But in the code currently, all of the produce markets actually would require a CUP. So I don't think the intention of the Planning Commission was to have a lower level review. I think they're intended to be more protective. So I think it would create a conflict basically with this section of the code and the zoning ordinance. And it would lead to unclearity regarding whether MUP or CUP is required. So that's why we're recommending, to my mind, it really is a clarification where the zoning ordinance actually requires a higher level review. So I think it may be problematic to keep that in the code because it would lead to a conflict in the code. Ms. Murphy, my understanding was that the CUP would meet the objective of the Planning Commission. I mean, based on my conversations with my Planning Commissioner and also listening into that discussion that this came out that the rest came from staff recommendation as far as having the MUP. So that's in conflict with what you're saying right now. So that's what I'm interpreting and that is conflict with what you're saying right now. And so the reason I was rejecting five and six was because I felt that that was what was the Planning Commission was seeking in their analysis. I believe at the time that they made the recommendation, it was new to staff as well. So at the time, I wasn't looking at the uses chart to realize like, oh, but we already require a CUP. So I think their intention was to say any produce market larger than 1800 square feet should require discussion or review. But in actuality in the use chart, it already requires a CUP. So rather than making it like a higher level review for a produce market larger than 1800 square feet, it would actually have a lower MUP for a produce market larger than 800 square feet. And I don't think that was their intention. I think the intention was to be more protective of AgLand. So retaining the original language to require a CUP for any produce market would, I think, accomplish what they were intending for their amendment. Could you not? Okay. So if we made this adjustment, then wouldn't you just have to clean up the ag chart? I mean, meaning that because when there's things that are conflict, when there's conflicts within the code, as you know, since we do this throughout the year anyway, when there's language that needs to be cleaned up, then you would just have it capped at 1800 square feet, for example. I mean, I think that the point of preservation of AgLand was also that they maybe weren't intending for a three plus thousand square foot produce market. I mean, remember when we talked about this is there aren't actually very many members of the board that were around at this time. We had this discussion back in 2014. It was basically, how do you formalize some of these small farm stands literally along Freedom Boulevard and Correlatus Road? How do you allow for slight expansions for wineries or sort of these ancillary things? It wasn't to have the thing that you see down on in Prunedale or over in 101 to have these massive sized locations. And so I think that if we do reject five and six, then you would just have to come back with modifications to clean up the ag code, the ag chart that actually matched that, unless I'm missing something. Yes. The way their exception is currently written that says the floor area excluding storage should not exceed 1800 square feet. A larger floor area may be considered with an MEP. So they actually also in that language don't even have a cap of 3600 square feet. So taking that literally, it would sort of eliminate that 3600 square foot cap. So I think the existing language in the uses chart is, I think accomplish what they're trying to do, which is providing a limit on the size and requiring discretionary review for any produce market. Well, I'd be comfortable. How about this? You've heard my concern and I'm not going to, I don't feel comfortable voting for something that I don't. Hey, I think that Supervisor Coonerty's dog might take care of that. I think that what I would like then is that I would like to keep this where I understand what Ms. Hansen was saying that we want to be able to preserve the first read at the next meeting. I would like there to be on these items, my intention, and I felt the planning commission's intention was to not have massive, you know, to have not a massive stance and just to formalize these kind of informal things that already exist, which as you know, are illegal under our current code. And I feel that the modification that I'm proposing does that. I'm concerned about not making the modification that you're talking about and then learning that I've opened up the door for something. And so I guess I can seek counsel's advice on this is that what action should we take today and then come back once you've had a little bit of time? I mean, once there's some consideration of this for December 6th actually meet what that objective is? Well, I think that I think the staff understands what you have agreed upon to come back with. And so it may be best to craft a motion that would detail that specifically what the board is in agreement on come back on December 6th and also put something on to continue the discussion around these extra issues on December 6th, because it doesn't sound like you're going to get resolution on that at the moment. So would that mean that you would maintain five and six within the staff clarifications or that you would eliminate as I was recommending based on the concerns? I mean, because ultimately you could maintain it with the additional direction that the goal is to have this 1800 cap and that we're just trying to, we're not trying to have these pretty expansive situations out there. And then whatever comes back on the six provides that clarity or what would be, I apologize to be in the leads to my colleagues on this. I wasn't intending to open up this can. I just thought that this was a pretty cut and dry issue. And I guess it's not. Oh, go ahead, Stephanie. I was just going to say it actually helps to understand supervisor friends point here that what we want to do is reduce the maximums. And so, yeah, staff can come back with code language next time that aligns a little bit more closely with these numbers and we can consider. So we're moving them from your motion would be okay. And then we'll adjust the code language. Okay. And let me apologize to the clerk who's probably trying to figure out what this motion was now from four hours ago. But the idea was, I'm so I'm not going to make modifications then to the county code section of the clarifications, but there's going to be additional direction in regards to five and six in regards to the produce stands where when I listened to the your right Ms. Annie that that or sorry, Ms. Annie, but Annie, when you presented that it seemed like there was no, when I was listening into the discussion, it didn't seem like there was really an understanding of where even 3,600 square feet just sort of like a made up number. And so I mean, at that time in the planning commission, there was concern clearly for members from commissioners about what this was creating. And so I thought that this was capturing their intent that there be a cap size. And that we just formalize existing, you know, these sort of smaller deals. And so I'll withdraw the five and six objection with the direction then that a cap come back with that understanding on the six that that's what we're looking for. And I felt the planning commission was looking for as well. That's okay with the second. Can I ask for clarification? If I'm understanding this correctly, what I have right now is for item four B, we're removing the language for staff recommendation of the planning commission clarification of chapters, we're removing chapters two and seven, we are keeping one, three, four and five returning December 6th with these changes. The number five, we're removing zones one through six and eight and nine, leaving a total of seven of the 18 original recommended zones. This is sorry, repeat the zoning portion of it. That item number five will be removing zones one through six and eight and nine. Correct. And actually, just to make sure that we're there. We're rezoning them to residential urban high, not removing them completely. So instead of being zoned to residential flax, it'd be zoned residential urban high. Point of clarification, I don't think it was the board's intent not to approve the general plan chapters. Yeah, I'll get back to that. Yeah. So, Supervisor Chair Koenig, if you wouldn't mind just say from the beginning again, the zoning, your zoning statement, because I think it was pretty clear. And if you get a state one more time, make sure it's clear, then I'll move back to the general plan. Right. So it would be two, for the sort of the portfolio drives portion of the rezoning parcels one through six, eight and nine would be zoned residential urban high with an accompanying zoning district of RM 1.5. Parcel seven would remain zoned C2. Thank you. And for the staff clarifications to the PC recommended actions, which is Attachment AF, we will keep one, three, four and five. We will keep those, which means that the others would be eliminated. And on the staff clarifications for amendments to county code, at this point, we will keep all of them with the additional direction regarding caps on size for the markets to come back on the sixth. And those will be embodied in a revised resolution and a revised ordinance that will come back on the sixth, correct? Yes. Thank you. That is the intention. Right. And Supervisor Koenig, that all sounds in alignment with your second still. All right, great. Okay. And we have a motion by Supervisor Friend and a second by Supervisor Coonerty. I think it was just clearly stated, so I'm not going to try to repeat it all. But what I understood it is, is there any further discussion or any further clarification needed? The last thing I'm going to do, the last thing would be to continue the public hearing to December 6th. Supervisor Friend, would you like to include that in your motion, a continuation of the public hearing? Right. I mean, so it was for, it's for items four, five, six, and seven, that's the motion, which are the, would include the continuation of the public hearing and then with the specific notations of change that we've made. Right. Okay. Any further discussion? As I said, it's not the ideal changes to me, but I think that's something that's the best we're going to get for now. And so I can live with it. And I'm happy to support the motion. All right. If there's no further discussion, clerk, please call the roll. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Interate? Aye. Captain? Well, I'm not quite sure what I'm voting on, but I'm tempted to vote no, but I'm going to vote yes. Okay. Make a person? Die. And Chair Kohnen? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. And just to clarify that, we'll bring all these general plan amendments and code amendments for a second read. Well, I guess the general plan amendments for, I guess, the first read and the code amendments for a first read at our next December 6th meeting. So if you do find anything in there, Supervisor Caput, that you do take issue with, there's still time to change things. All right. I believe that brings us to the end of our meeting today. As I said, the public hearing will be continued on December 6th. Thank you, everyone. Meeting adjourned.