 The hour of 2.15 having arrived, the council is in session for its afternoon session on May 9th, 2023. The clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown, here. Watkins, here. Present. Calentari-Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here, sorry. And Mayor Cooley. Here, a quorum having been established, we will move on. Our item number four is a mayoral proclamation declaring May is Older Americans Month. We have some fine folks here who I will present this proclamation to, but who are also going to be making some remarks. Recording in progress. Happy Older Americans Month. Hi, my name is Kelly Mercer-Lee-Boff and I am the Senior Programs Coordinator for the City of Santa Cruz. And I have the privilege and honor each day to design programming for our senior population at the London Nelson Community Center and to partner with agencies throughout the county to support our seniors. In honor of May being Older Americans Month, I'm excited to share what the City of Santa Cruz has on the horizon for our older adults. But first, I want to share why it's so important that we take action now. By 2030, 10.8 million Californians will be an older adult, making up one in four of the state's population. By 2034, the United States will, for the first time ever, be comprised of more older adults than of children. So we have a rapidly growing senior population that we need to start preparing for. The sooner we start community planning with an age-friendly lens, the sooner people of all ages will benefit from the adoption of policies and programs that make neighborhoods walkable, feature transportation options, enable access to key services, provide opportunities to participate in community activities and support housing that's affordable and adaptable. Our current plan is to enroll the City of Santa Cruz into the AARP age-friendly network. This designation is actually the US affiliate of the World Health Organization's global network for age-friendly cities and communities. It's a public commitment to a five-year program cycle that can be entered at any time. And once in the network, there's a plethora of resources available to help jurisdictions support each other in making communities more livable for people of all ages. Now, once in the network, there are eight categories we'll be assessing in our community with the idea that the availability and quality of these programs and community features impact the well-being of older adults. The eight demands of livability framework is used by all of the towns, cities, counties, and states enrolled in the age-friendly network to organize and prioritize their work to make our community become more livable. Now, while some communities tackle all eight domains at once, others may choose to focus on fewer or combined domains. Now, this framework is also in alignment with the city's health and all policies, particularly the pillars of equity and public health. So how do we do this and what are the next steps? We've identified points of contact in each of the city departments to form a city-wide committee on aging and in collaboration with the County of Santa Cruz and other local jurisdictions. We will be conducting our community needs assessment in early 2024. From there, we will develop a community action plan based on the assessment results and the needs identified within the eight domains of livability that influence the health and quality of life for older adults. And we look forward to keeping you updated as we pursue our age-friendly designation for the city of Santa Cruz and we invite you to join us in these efforts. And if you'd like to learn more about this process and all the amazing ways we are currently keeping our seniors active, engaged, and connected over at the London Nelson Community Center through education, recreation, and technology, please don't hesitate to contact me or my team at the London Nelson Community Center. Thank you. Well, thank you so very, very much. We very much appreciate it. We're so impressed with the work that you do at London Nelson Center. I went down just before we went back into session and told you that I thought it was a prank of sorts today because today is my 73rd birthday and I thought this is a prank. A happy coincidence. But in all seriousness, thank you so very much. You're doing great work and we very much appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. We are on item five. Members, any comments on this item you'd like to make? If I could. Yes, please, Ms. Brown. I just want to say thank you so much for the presentation and for being at the forefront here of moving in this direction. I represent the City of Santa Cruz on the Area Agency on Aging Advisory Board and this is something that has been in discussion. I've actually reached out to, and I, Council Member Watkins, and I had talked about bringing something forward and I'm really glad that it's happening and that through the staff, you are coordinating with the other jurisdictions. I think this is just a really wonderful way to get a sense of where we're at, that inventory part that's part of the process as well as using it to help a lens to a lot through the PIAP lens, really to decide how we move forward with projects and programs. So thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Watkins. I'll just briefly echo Council Member Brown's comments as well as the mayors and really thank you for the work that you're doing and just how pleased I am to see this come forward. We have talked about wanting to see this move forward and I know there's been energy happening in the county and other jurisdictions to now have it come before us is really encouraging. And I think we do want to be prepared to understand how we can best support our aging population and we do need to start right now. So however we can be kept abreast of what's going on and any kind of points that come back to us for any decision-making please do and hopefully we can make this a real age-friendly community for our seniors. So thank you. Thank you for the comments. Good. Thank you again very, very much. We are on item number five and this item is a crisis consulting for the department. I'm sorry for the development of a city-based integrated health response team. Whereas Ms. Murphy here, I believe Mr. Klamers also here, but Ms. Murphy, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members. I'm here to introduce the presentation on the integrated health response team. Short, the I Heart team. Thank you, Mr. Olt for that. Just like to start off with, according to the Department of Justice, one in four people shot and killed by law enforcement between 2015 and 2020 had a mental health condition. The current mental health crisis response system relies on law enforcement and puts people suffering from mental illness through an expensive and traumatizing revolving door as they shuttle between jails, emergency rooms, and the street. A comprehensive crisis response system can prevent these tragedies, save money, and increase access to appropriate care. Last year, Council Member Golder connected Chief Escalante with the City of Petaluma's Chief and City Manager to learn more about their mobile crisis response and intervention program. Their program began in 2021 and has proven to quite successful. They connected us with their consultant, Mr. Ben Adam Klamer, who prepared an analysis for them in recommendation for a model mobile crisis response in not only Petaluma, but in several Bay Area cities. The city engaged Mr. Klamer late last year to perform a data assessment and analysis of the types of calls of service that we receive here in the city. He then reviewed existing programs since our mental health liaison program, met with numerous local service providers, including the county, and did ride-alongs with FIRE and PD, and he prepared analysis and a report on an integrated health response team for the city. And Mr. Klamer is here today to present his findings. While we're not here today to take any action, but to hear the program, there is no, there is not funding that is identified today for this program. However, there will be opportunities to discuss potential funding in the future, including at the FY24 budget process or even the mid-year in FY24, later in FY24. So with that, I'd like to introduce Mr. Ben Adam Klamer for the presentation. Mr. Klamer, good afternoon. Welcome. Thank you. Hello, hello, I'm Ben Adam Klamer, and if we could just maybe hit the next slide. Just a little introduction, although I think that Lisa did excellent job. That was fantastic. I worked for a team up in Eugene, Oregon called Cahoots for about five years as a crisis worker and as an EMT. And then I have been for the last few years helping cities all around the state of California start mobile crisis teams very similar to Cahoots, including at the UC Santa Cruz as well. Those teams have been started or I've also helped improve them in Sonoma County, Marin County here at the UC Santa Cruz, San Joaquin, Los Angeles and Orange Counties. And I have been working with Lisa and with Chief Escalante and Chief Odie and Larry, the homelessness liaison here in the city developing this report. And what I've got here is a sort of much, much more consumable summary of that very long arduous report that I wrote. So we can go to the next one. So I think just as we wanna sort of talk about what I think are general, although I think Lisa laid it out really well, the kind of problem, oh, that doesn't bend, the problem that we're facing generally as a society is that we have developed a very good response system to get to crime, violence, fires, medical emergencies. And that system is made up of law enforcement, fire department, EMS, emergency medical services, but there's so many calls that come into that system, into the 911 or the emergency response system that don't really meet the criteria for law enforcement or fire or EMS, but those calls have been given to those agencies. And some of those are mental health, some of those are people experiencing homelessness, some of those are people just having quality of life issues and some of those are just family members who are having conflict and end up in that state where they feel like they need emergency assistance, but the system that we have right now isn't necessarily designed to respond to them in the best way. So the goal really for what we're talking about here is adding into that system a response that is designed to tackle those situations. Also, we're doing Older American, that was really awesome, the Older American Month, but also May is a National Mental Health Awareness Month. I think it's really fitting that we're having this conversation now in this month. It's important to remember that mental health crises can be frightening and very isolating experiences, and especially with older adults, as their friends pass away and as their things change in their lives, there's a huge older adult mental health crisis going on. And a lot of what we do in the Kahootz model or the Integrated Health Response Team model is responding to older adults and saying, hey, imagine it's pretty tough where you're at right now and we're here to support you. In fact, this story that I'm about to tell is with an older adult, and I just wanna take a moment and recognize this month, both as Older Adult Month and as Mental Health Awareness Month. So this is a story about a man named Ernest. Obviously, there are details of this story that have been changed for the sake of confidentiality. So, but this is a story that I've encountered many, many times in my career. Ernest was an older adult living on a fixed income in a hotel, and hotels can be pretty pricey, as I can tell you right now because I'm staying in one while I'm here. And this left him very little money for paying for a roof over his head, after paying for a roof over his head, left him very little money for food and all that kind of stuff. He was taking numerous different prescription medications for both physical and mental health conditions, including Xanax and anti-anxiety drug, and he started to feel suicidal, and it was pretty early in the morning. So he took three Xanax over the course of two hours, which is too much, that's more than he was prescribed, and he proceeded to call 911 because he was feeling suicidal. Now, at the same time, he called 911 and as a good decision, he decided to call a friend for support, and he told that friend that he had overdosed on Xanax, and the friend got very scared and called 911 and reported an overdose. And this, of course, was alarming, and so the dispatchers who got his phone call for the suicidal feelings sent out our integrated health response team, and the dispatchers also got a call from his friend for an overdose, and sent that over to Fire EMS, and they sent out an engine to manage the overdose. So we can go to the next one. So in a normal city with earnest, what would happen? Usually, because of the suicidality, law enforcement is going to be deployed to do a 5150 assessment, and because of the overdose, Fire and EMS is going to be sent out as well. That means we've got at least two, maybe three officers, and then we've got up to, especially in the city of Santa Cruz, and most cities in California, we're gonna have five employees, usually three firefighters on an engine and two paramedics in an ambulance, or some configuration of that. If you're a city like Santa Cruz or like other cities in California, you might have a crisis team on duty, and they're usually riding around with police officers, so then, or they're working for the county team, so we might have another one to two staff there as well. So we're looking somewhere between nine to 10 employees who are responding to this one man. Because of his overdose of the Xanax, which is to say an overdose that's not lethal and is rarely very dangerous, he's going to be transported to the hospital by an ambulance, and he's gonna be taken to the ER before he can be transferred to the crisis stabilization unit. And in all the midst of this, Ernest was dealing with a lot of stress around money. That ambulances bill probably run him $800 to $1,000. The ER bill is gonna run him $1,400 to $2,000, which he's never gonna pay, and that's gonna be footed by somebody. All told, we could be looking between somewhere, between seven and 10 responders arriving on scene. This can be very overwhelming for a person who's suicidal, and ultimately in the end, despite all of that response, all of those resources poured into it, he ends up at the ER, which is not the best spot for him. Next slide. So what happened in reality? What actually happened with Ernest? Well, we showed up as the integrated health first responders, and we are first on scene, and we performed a suicide assessment. We also performed a rapid medical assessment to determine if the Xanax overdose was affecting his mentality, his mentation, and if he was losing consciousness or whatnot from it, he wasn't. And because of that, we were able to say to the fire department, hey, we don't need paramedics, we don't need five firefighters and paramedics, we don't need law enforcement because he's not threatening us, he's not being dangerous, and we can handle the suicide assessment, no problem. We were able to contact the CSU and say, hey, this is the situation going on, can we bring him in? And they were like, yeah, bring him in, it's no problem. And so we were able to transport him directly to the CSU, skipping the emergency room, saving a bed there, saving an ambulance and saving every one time and money and energy, which is to say with just two staff, we were able to manage the entire situation, save time, save money, and get him not only to the right place, but to the place that he wanted to go to. So a recent study in Georgia has shown that people with histories of mental health issues and their families prefer a non-police crisis response. And I think this is important, this is an important study because as more and more teams pop up all around the state, it's important to note that we try to create these teams independent of law enforcement, independent of fire EMS so that people feel like they have an independent team to respond to them, which is what they long for. And we go to next. So when it comes to mobile crisis response, we have a couple of different models and obviously I have worked in the integrated health response model myself, but I do wanna just note that there are several different models out there and then I wanna talk about, both are sort of the positive components of them and the maybe deficits of them. The most common model generally throughout the country is the corresponds model, which pairs a licensed clinician, usually an LCSW or an LMFT, which is a licensed clinical social worker or licensed marriage and family therapist. If I ever say an acronym that anyone's confused by, you feel free to stop me, there are so many. So usually that they are paired up with a law enforcement officer and their access through 9-1-1, which makes getting them very, very easy. Having the team's final through 9-1-1 system or the PSAP, the public safety access point is a very functional system and that has worked very well to get crisis workers to scenes. They also respond to a very wide variety of calls. They can respond to anything that a law enforcement officer can respond to, so which is pretty much everything, which is another positive of that model and often they do transport, although when they do transport, it's in the back of a police car, which as you may know is can be, will include handcuffs. It's not the most comfortable transports and can be fairly frustrating for somebody who is having a really bad day and now they're in the back of a cop car. So not the most ideal transport situation, but they do transport. However, they don't have medical capabilities. So I think in particular, when we're thinking about this model, especially with somebody like Ernest and older adult, this is not great for them because being put in the back of a cop car can be damaging to their health and things like that. So there's some positives to that model and then there's some deficits there. The other big model for mental health response, which I like to call it in the report, you'll see it called the county-based two-clinician team because I couldn't make it look good and fit there. I called it the clinical team. This is where you have at least one licensed clinician. So historically, it's always been two licensed clinicians, but more and more they're going with a licensed clinician in peer support model. These teams are usually run by counties. So you have them really all across the state, like almost every LA area team, every Bay area county has a team like this. They're usually accessed or almost exclusively, I should say exclusively accessed through 10-digit numbers that are run by the county. They respond very strictly to mental health calls in Santa Cruz County. They respond to mental health calls only at locations, at facilities, so they don't respond to people's houses or to people on the street. And sometimes these teams can transport, but that's usually limited. So the Santa Cruz County team does do some transports, but not very often. And then most of the time you look at them throughout the county or throughout the state, this model will use either private or city ambulances to do the transports. Again, they have no medical capabilities either. These teams do not. So then that leaves us with what I call the integrated health model, which is, I call integrated health because it pairs up some kind of crisis worker or mental health professional with a medical professional, most typically an EMT. There's paramedics, sometimes there's nurses, depends on which city you're in. When you look at something like San Francisco, they have paramedics. When you look at something like Petaluma, we just have EMTs. Again, these teams kind of combine some of the best parts, I think, of corresponds and the clinical team model, which is that they are accessed most typically through the PSAP or 911 system, which is to say they're very easy to get the teams. We launched in Santa Fe, and I'll point out some, we'll do a comparison of Santa Fe with Santa Cruz here shortly, but we launched in Santa Fe at the end of March and within a couple of days, we were responding to about nine to 10 calls a day on a 12 hour shift. So we were rocking and rolling right from the get go, but that's because the system, the calls that are already coming into the police that fit within the wheelhouse of that team, they were already coming in. So all we had to do was just send the team out. Very simple. That because of that, because of the crisis worker EMT pairing, they're able to respond to a ton of different kinds of things. So for example, very frequently, you see somebody sleeping on the street and you see them there and then you walk by them two hours later and they're still there. That frequently gets coded as a medical call because well, what if they're overdosed or what if they're really sick or something like that? But most of the time, they're just sleeping. So frequently fire engines and paramedics and all the whole crew get sent out to those calls for service. With the integrated health team, because you have that EMT, you can make that team respond to that call easily because most of the time it's an auto medical emergency but with the EMT, if it is, you've got a really easy way to start an intervention, start medical care and get EMS in route quickly. The other great component of integrated health is that they can transport. As I said, a lot of clinical teams throughout the state utilize EMTs to do the transports. With the integrated health team, we take the mental health worker and we take that EMT, we put them in the same van and then we have them do the transports. This saves a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy and like in the case of Ernest at the beginning, it's much more comfortable. No gurneys, no handcuffs, just sit in a nice seat. You want us to play some good music. We're gonna take you and yeah, we love playing music for them in the back. Whenever I transport, especially like suicidal teenagers, we always want to get them their favorite songs in the back, which are usually my favorite songs. So that's always great and then obviously, as I mentioned, the integrated health model has medical capabilities. Generally, not advanced medical capabilities, we're not doing, we're not responding to heart attacks. But we do run up on somebody who's overdosed, we can get that going or somebody who's just got wounds on their feet, wounds on their legs or whatnot, we can handle that as well. Oh, there. So what is it? Just as a sort of definition, what is integrated health first response? It's modeled off of Kahootz and Eugene, Oregon. It includes a crisis worker and a medical staff. And I also wanna say that the primary focus of these types of teams is de-escalation, support, resource referral, and then helping that person in crisis access their own internal and external resources to manage the crisis. Our number one goal, always, always, always on these teams is to help people stay where they're at, stabilize, and when they are at that spot where they really, really feel like they cannot stay where they're at, it's gonna be too overwhelming, then we have a really easy and efficient way to get them to the place where they need to go. And one of the cool components of that as well is we transport to any staffed service. So you wanna get into a rehab, cool, we'll take you there. You wanna get, you wanna go to the crisis center and stabilize there, cool, we'll take you there. We're not just gonna write you a note and say, this is the address, like this is the phone number. We're going to go, we're going to make introductions, we're gonna help that person get through that process, which can be always sometimes very overwhelming. Yeah, we can go next. So what kinds of calls specifically do these types of teams respond to? So obviously our highest priority is always mental health and suicidal folks. Anybody who's having a manic episode, anybody who's experiencing psychosis, anybody who's feeling acutely suicidal, you know, any kind of situation, even just somebody who's like, man, I feel like absolute garbage and I really need to talk to somebody but I hate talking on the phone and I would like somebody to just come and talk with me. Those are great, kind of bread and butter calls for this type of team. Substance use, honestly, runs the gamut. If somebody's contemplating going to treatment or if somebody's just drunk and needs somebody to come check on them and make sure they're gonna be cool for the night or make sure they get to a place that's a little safer, sounds great to us. People who are unhoused, a lot of times what you find with, especially with law enforcement, is that it's very exhausting going to calls frequently to deal with people who are sleeping on the street and it's not great for the person who's sleeping on the street and the officer doesn't like doing it and we don't have a great alternative for that. So these types of teams respond to those types of calls. Sometimes that's to say, hey, you know, the business called and they would like you moved along. Can we help you get someplace better? Sometimes it's just going out and making sure that someone's still alive and saying, hey, you know, here's a cliff bar and a water bottle and I hope you can have a better day. So the other big, really big ticket item for these types of teams is what we call welfare checks. These are a lot of these that we do are done on older adults, so bringing that back in as well. People with dementia, people who maybe their grandkids live out of state and they talk to them once a week and their grandkids haven't heard from them in two weeks and their grandkids call say, hey, can you go check on my grandparents? That's a total thing that we do. Honestly, those are some of the most fun calls. I really enjoy those, you know, going out and seeing how folks are doing. Sometimes that means we're looking to make sure that they're able to take care of themselves, trying to make sure if we need to file an APS report or something like that. Sometimes it's just going out and saying, hey, you know, how are you doing? And they're like, not well. And then we get to sit and be with them for a while and just give them some support. And then also, you know, not the sort of domestic violence calls, but sometimes people hear their neighbors yelling at each other and they call for assistance and really just the family's having conflict and they just need a referee of some kind. And we like to go out and do those mediations. I also really enjoy those calls so that they can last a long time. My very, when I was training the team in San Rafael, the very first call, this was a month ago, the very first call that we took was a two hour long family conflict call and it was rather exhausting, but, you know, those are the types of things that we go out to you and that can be any family. It doesn't matter if you're the wealthiest family in the city or the poorest family in the city, you can go out and handle that. So I do want to bring up the similar, yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. So we have scheduled this till. Am I going too long? Let me finish my, and you can make yours. We have scheduled this for another eight minutes. Okay. That is also going to involve. Questions. This is enormously helpful. I appreciate it. Yeah. I just want to alert you to time issues. Let's skip this slide. Santa Fele and Santa Cruz are very similar cities. Next. And it's working really well for them there. We go next slide. This is what we, what might look like a sort of proposed system of response that I, that we call like a two tier where we have first responders and second responders. Just to give a sense for this really quickly for some context, because I think we understand everything on the left side. This would mean that when there is a, we would, that the integrated health team would respond to that huge bulk of calls that come in that aren't sort of law enforcement and, and EMS related. And then when they escalate to the point of needing something like a 5150, then we would sort of include the county clinical team in that. And we'd, and the goal would be to create a really nice sort of tiered response that way. We go next. And then this is benefits to first responders. I think I've already hit everything here. And then we go next slide as well. This also benefits the community. Honestly, I've hit everything here as well. One of the, I will say one thing here, which is that I like to think of these teams as, if we think of the person in crisis as the hub of a wheel and we think of the social service agencies that support that person as the rim of the wheel, we really want our integrated health response team to be the spokes of that wheel, where they connect that person to those services. And then when those services are having, you know, need to give extra support to that person in crisis, they call on the integrated health team to provide the extra support, which will reduce their overtime costs. It will reduce their burnout of their employees and it will reduce their sort of reliance on, on extra help in their, within their own organization. There's some data, I think that we could respond to a lot of calls in Santa Cruz. I'll just summarize it that way and go next. And thank you so much. And I'm very looking forward to answering any questions. Well, thank you very much. That was an excellent presentation, very thorough, very complete, very helpful to us. I know that a number of colleagues of here on the city council have been interested in this for some time. I know the city administration and police department have also been very supportive of this and this is a real step in the right and proper direction. So thank you very, very much. Let me ask the council members to have any comments on this. You would like to make Ms. Brown. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Mr. Kleimer. And so I just, I want to say, I'm so thrilled to hear your presentation, to see you here today. I have heard you speak about this model and your experiences and how this model could be utilized in other communities for several years now. I'm just thrilled that you're here talking to us about it. I did try to move forward this process a couple of years ago and didn't have support at the time on the council to do that. So I'm just thrilled. I want to thank the vice mayor for catalyzing this and I'm really looking forward to seeing how things progress. I have a question which is really a big question about what next after getting this information and I think the cost effectiveness and for all of the reasons that you've articulately laid out it's a wonderful opportunity for us. So I would just love to get a sense of when we might hear about this again, how we're moving. Thank you. Ms. Murphy. Thank you. What's next would be to consider in your budget deliberations, either FY24 deliberations or kick it to mid-year, it is not funded at this time. So that's where it stands. And the next steps, if it were to be funded then would to be continue on with the second phase of the contract of actually going and putting together RFP. It would not be a program that's run by the city. It would be funded by the city and hopefully there would be at one point in time the ability to go after some grant funding in the future but it would be by a non-profit, most likely who would administer the program. Wonderful, thank you. And so the budget time is where this will, as you said before, thank you. And to highlight also the second part of the contract is what she means is that not only do I, when I work with cities like this not only do I provide the analysis and things like that but I also provide training to teams when they start launching so that there's somebody experienced in the whole system helping out with that. Council Member Brunner. Thank you for your presentation. And I guess I have a couple of questions regarding the Petaluma model, is that where you worked? No, I worked in Eugene on cahoots. I helped the Petaluma start their team and train their team. And so one of the things that I know we come across we have existing response models as you laid out here. One of the concerns as places for people to go which is also simultaneously being worked on. And so what, I didn't get a sense in this model how that addresses that and I don't know if you have an answer to that. Well, I think you explained it just in the way you guys the question, right? Which is that there is an important component of this which is having good locations to take people when they're in crises. And the struggle with that is that we need both the team to take them there and the place to go. So I'm the person who can talk about the team to take them there. And I think that continuing to expand those things like good crisis centers, sobering centers, when cahoots was started in 1989, they opened a sobering center at the same time, specifically so that the team would have a place to take someone when they're intoxicated. That, so having components set up is really good. And also as somebody who can say that I used to work overnight shifts when very few services were open. And so my role was to help that person stay calm and deescalate and say, okay, like we can't go anywhere right now so what are we gonna do? How are we gonna manage this? I still think there's extreme value in having a team like this helping that person sort of center and deescalate even though there might not be a place to go. And then my question might be for staff and at what point can we, are there other options that have been explored by staff based on the direction of this type of exploration? Well, I think if you've seen the report that Mr. Kleimer has explored what the other options are and lays out several different models. Currently we're in a co-response type model where our mental health liaisons go with PD. Actually they're in two separate vehicles but that's the model we have. This is the overall ones that he looked at of all of the models he looked and now analyzed. The one that we're proposing if we move forward is the most appropriate best response we believe for this city. And then one more question. So I guess on knowing that we have existing models and county is working on, for example I was in a stakeholder meeting and they're working on expansion of their responses and I just, I'm trying to understand the overlap and there are other organizations and how this all fits in. This is Ben's opinion and experience that he's presented and for city staff I'd like to see the county side, the other orgs and the whole picture and I guess in knowing, like do we need to consider a model like this that is a template basically that Ben has provided based on the Kahootz model and some of these other cities, it's a template but it's up to us to find funding, to staff it or the non-profit to staff it and I'm just wondering when we'll have the opportunity to figure out what it is we need in this realm, that's not an overlap. Well, yeah, let me say, I will say we've started teams, I've helped start teams like this in Orange County and Sonoma County and Marin County. What we find over and over again when we've done that is that the county mental health crisis response teams have at first been like, oh, well, all the work that you guys do is gonna, we're not gonna have work anymore and what they found is that hasn't been the case because these types of teams respond to calls that those teams would have never gone to in the first place because teams like that are county mobile crisis teams are almost never responding to the person who's sleeping on the steps of City Hall, they're not responding to the person with dementia, they're not responding to the person who's intoxicated, they're not responding to a whole variety of different types of things that these types of teams respond to and so what has then happened is that the types of calls of those county crisis teams respond to, they continue to respond to those both on their own independently but also in coordination with the mobile crisis team in the city-based mobile crisis team so when I say city-based, I'm talking Hunan Beach, Garden Grove, Petaluma, San Rafael, Runderparkitadi, et cetera and then when they collaborate together to respond to those types, it creates a nice continuum of care where you have somebody who's in a crisis, they get a crisis worker, that crisis worker calls the county crisis worker to come out and do the 5150 assessment or something like that and then the transport can happen either by the city-based team or by that county-based team so that throughout the whole experience of that person's suicidal or mental health crisis, they're never touching law enforcement, they're never touching fire, they're only ever dealing with mental health workers. So I do see them respond weekly, daily, often, different teams that we have so I'm asking staff, at what point can we have follow-up on determined, will this come again on an agenda to determine if we're moving forward with a model like this, if we are voting to fund it or look into funding, what is that next step? This is, I guess I have a lot of unanswered questions because a lot of what is described in this model almost makes it sound like if we added an EMT to existing teams and already that are being expanded, it could be a very similar model to this and I'd be curious what county says about this model and how that affects all of this. So yeah, absolutely, it makes sense. It is a different model and it's a model that's been proven in numerous cities to be successful with the EMT co-pair. Now, is that something that county wants to participate in that type of program? Not wholly sure, they are under a mandate to put together a mobile crisis type response program. I know they have, I sat in on the same college you did. It's very much a different program in terms of the level of what they will be looking at and responding to versus the needs of the city and it's a much broader, widely expanded program. Right now we just have two mobile crisis, well, two mental health liaisons for this city and it's not a 24-7 program. That's what we're looking to implement is a 24-7 type program. The recommendations that you see before you is the full breadth depth of what we're looking to implement. I'm happy to bring it back if we want to re-agendize and bring it back for further discussion. I think it's wholly appropriate to continue down that pathway. Again, we have worked to met with Encompass and 911, and Encompass Outreach Workers. All of them, it's a model that's far more responsive and have the ability to respond. As Ben pointed out an example where he went on a call with fire and they sat on a fire call and if you want to describe it, but it's a whole different... Excuse me, we're running really late. Sorry, yeah. No, we're running really late. For the questions on this. This is an informational item. We can get this back in front of us at some later date. Do you have any questions? That's the answer to my question. Council Member Callantari-Johnson. Thank you. I have a number of questions as well, but I'll keep it brief. And some of my questions and concerns were around not duplicating efforts and why not augment and expand what we have at the county, but I'll leave that be for now and go to some of my other questions. Are the crisis workers licensed? No, they're not in this model. How are they trained? We do probably about 20 to 30 hours of classroom training and then we do significant infield training and then they also have to come to us with at least two years of experience in the mental health field. Okay, so that's something, if we were to continue to come back to this, that's something I'd like to dive into a little more. I know that in the report it said 10% or less would be acute cases, but even if that is the accurate number, that 10% of acute cases would need a licensed clinical trained person to respond. So again, I know we're running out of time, but that's a concern I have with this model that I'd like to dive into. And then the other point that was brought up is, and I totally understand this, I have a master's in social work by the way, so this is a world that I'm somewhat familiar with, but that one of the purposes of the model is to remove law enforcement. So I understand the thinking behind that and how do we account for worker safety? We've had a lot of challenges very recently in fact with some of our public works and Parks and Rec workers when they've gone out to respond to encampments. So that's a concern and we've heard from our mental health liaisons recently from our criminal justice council report that they would like law enforcement there when they respond to calls because there are safety issues. So I'll keep it at that. I have a lot more questions. I guess one more thing I will bring up is the opportunity if we were to move forward with this because we are relieving the impact on emergency rooms and diverting folks from emergency rooms, an opportunity to partner and ask the medical world and hospitals with emergency rooms that's dignity here to provide resources. So I'll keep it there but I have a lot more to say. Very good, thank you very much. Vice mayor has recognized. We'll keep doing it in order here. I'm also gonna keep it pretty brief but I just wanna thank and acknowledge Mr. Huffaker and Chief Escalante and in addition, Jeffrey and Stacey Arl that kind of put me in touch with those folks up in Petaluma and gave me the ball to keep rolling. And I agree, I think this is a great first step. I think we have to partner with Netcom. We have to partner with the county. Get also Lupin, Kaiser and PAMF in this as they are opening hospitals in our region. And one thing that didn't get brought up but when we do bring this item back and something to think about when I spoke with partners up in Petaluma, they mentioned that not having a locked facility was a barrier. So not just facilities but locked facility for some people in some situations. And so I think again, the county is gonna have to be an important part of this conversation moving forward. And I just wanna thank you for coming and thank you for the presentation and thank you everybody, that's all. Thank you, Ms. Watkins. I too will keep my comments brief but I will just echo what my colleagues have said in terms of appreciation of the report and the work and definitely a good first step and important for us as a council and community to consider our options to not only efficiently but be socially responsible as we address some of the mental health issues that impact our community and the individuals like the old family that were deeply impacted by this. I agree with what was brought up in regards to kind of context with the county that was part of a reason why in terms of what kind of was a barrier to have this move forward at the city level years ago and that the county was already working and we were trying to work with them and so that will need to be I think fleshed out and would be a consideration for this council if we were to move forward and then the only other additional kind of insight or suggestion or consideration is as we see the state moving towards more reimbursable services that if this could be a model that could be sustained through Medi-Cal reimbursement and having these individuals who are conducting this work be certified by the state and able to reimburse for that. I think that would be helpful for sustainability. So if that does come forward, I'd like to also have a sustainability component built in. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Just a quick follow-up question. I'm sorry. Okay, just given the concerns that I'm hearing, I wanted to, just because I am very familiar with this model and I've heard a lot about it and the County Mental Health Advisory Board recently had a session about this where Petaluma folks were there, you were there. And I remember hearing, but I have no recollection of what the number was. The savings that they have estimated to the city budget as a result of this. So if you happen to know Ball Park. I don't have anything off the top of my head. I can say that in Eugene, they estimate approximately $8 million a year. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Dueson, just to recognize. Thank you. My comments will be very brief. I just want to kind of re-echo the comments from my colleagues and express my appreciation for the report and for the presentation and for all the work that went into making this, making the report and the presentation. And I think it's a great first step and thank you. Thank you, council members. Thank you both very, very much. It was an excellent presentation. Thank you so much. You are also free to email me or but not. I'm also, yeah. Thank you for being so available. Very much appreciate that. Anyone wish to provide comment on this item? Good afternoon. Hi, my name is Jeff Horne. My very good friend, Sean Oralt, is one of the people who suffered a mental health crisis and was shot by a police and died. Two houses down from my parents' house. I just want to say like, myself, tons of people who knew Sean really want dedicated services to respond to that sort of issue. I think it's super important. I don't think anything outside of that will ever be appropriate. It was kind of hard to listen to the great presentation, thinking about all the things that could have been different. Yeah, you know, it's still something I think about basically every day. Not just what happened, but what could have been done differently. There were all responsible, 100%, the entire community is responsible for what happened. And just as a community, I think that we should keep in mind that these people, this happens to, are valued members of that community. Nobody wanted any of that to go the way it went. And everyone can imagine how it could have been just better. You could still be here with us. Anyway, I really appreciate the time. I really appreciate the reporting that you all had to have them come. And I just would really, really appreciate if everyone thought a little bit about, you know, if someone they cared about deeply, how the mental health crisis, how would they want the response to look like? What would they want to show up at their house for their loved ones? To me, it's extremely clear. So I just really encourage everyone to think about that. Thanks so much. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. Hi, I read over the report when it was posted on Friday, and I would just like to say it seems very compassionate and thoughtful in that sense, but I think it's incumbent on everyone to keep in mind constitutional issues and where we are at this particular junction in history. On the one hand, I can see a good idea to not involve law enforcement in every case. We seem to be at a conjuncture in history where not involving law enforcement might mean you end up with less rights. I noticed in the report that it's mentioned that the county manager has the right to authorize any employee or anyone they want to come in put it basically to have the LPS certification so that they then would be able to determine that the person they're helping could be involuntarily taken in and put somewhere. And I think that's a very serious issue that needs to be kept in mind that it might be friendlier, but it might in the long run mean a loss of civil and political rights. It's undetermined where the locations are gonna be, where people might be taken to. And also I'm concerned with the wide scope of the applications for this. So someone I knew died a couple days ago and the police were there. And I'm kind of unnerved by the thought that when someone dies, it's not gonna be the police who interface with the community. I'm concerned that there's going to be a nonprofit organization that is going to be the interface for our outreach to our fellow citizens. And I think that these are some critical questions that should be taken into account. Thank you. Good evening. Good afternoon, rather. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and happy birthday, sir. Thank you very much. Seriously. I guess I read this information was at 32 pages on Sunday night. I took some notes today of note. I'll say stories about older adults, welfare checks and 24-7 type of programming. So in these pages, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's another number people can call and set a 911-988, which seems like it's a service number and I think that's important. But here's a pretty big elephant in the room that's on page six, so I'm just gonna read it because boy, does it set up a lot of conversations that seemed like if more people had read this, they would have made different comments. On page six of this, the primary responsibility of teams in this model is to perform risk assessments. In the state of California, welfare and institutions code 5150, WIC 5150, allows all law enforcement officers, all law enforcement officers, or anyone designated by a county medical behavioral health authority director to place someone in an involuntary psychiatric hold so long as they are perceived to be an eminent danger or harm to themselves or others. When mental health workers are granted this power, it is known as having an LPS designation where a county's mental health behavior, health authority director has liberty to determine who has this designation. It is, it typically, and this is rather important, is reserved for mental health workers with advanced degrees such as masters or doctoral degrees in social work, psychology, or counseling. Oftentimes, licensure is required. So beyond an undergraduate degree, it's two to three years in a specialty graduate degree, and my understanding is two years of being in direct observation. Or you could be a law enforcement agent, or someone could just designate you with that power. Wow. I wonder why that wasn't spoken by any of the council members or the staff that spoke. What's the time do I got? Okay. I'm done already. I appreciate the liberty, sir. And I suppose I'll leave it at that, but I had other, thank you. Thank you. Was I given three minutes? Or two? Oh, two. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Um, being out on the streets, watching some of the people out there that have mental health issues. I experienced one time where there was one person who was suicidal, a young black man. He was walking across the street from the shelter and there was a call that he was suicidal. I guess he left some place and someone called. So I arrived soon after and there were 14 cops there. I have pictures of, I have pictures and videos of it, 14. I just, I can't imagine what that young black man was going through, surrounded by 14 cops. I mean, this is a time you want to have someone who's compassionate, something like a hoods instead of re-triggering the, re-triggering trauma in this person's life when you're surrounded by police. So I highly suggest I'm very much for a hoods type program and I'd love to see it here in Santa Cruz. I think, you know, I know Port, or Eugene, wherever. He said was eight million savings. I'm sure you would like to have that. I'm sure it's gonna be lower here because Portland's a bigger city, but whatever it is, we could use that savings for housing or for shelters or for whatever we need to do. So I just, I hope you look at the savings that we can make also. And I know the Sobering Center had, you know, it's no longer in existence. It would be great to see that no matter what. The Sobering Center up and running again. I know it helped out a lot of people there. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm Joy Schendl-Dekker. Hi, everybody. I just wanna speak in addition to what Abby just said, which I have experienced meeting people, working with people who live outside, being friends with them. But also I'm a parent of teenagers. And in the last few years, there have been several friends of my children housed middle-class people who, you know, we wouldn't lump together with people who live outside or people with disabilities or people with mental health or substance use disorders in the way that we other people. And several of them have had mental health crises, children, and the police have been called. And those experiences for those children and their families have been more traumatic or as traumatic as the mental health crisis itself. And so what I argue for and many other people is abolition and a non-police alternative emergency response. And, you know, the way that this, the alternatives are being presented as far as I can tell so far is that there's still not a fully non-police alternative emergency response. You know, where there are, where we're helping each other, where it's a mutual aid response, where it's, you know, people helping people, which I think is how Cahoots originated. And I'd also like to say that three years, almost three years after the murder of George Floyd, this is a long time coming just getting to this point. So it's great that the conversation has begun. It's really too slow for my BIPOC friends, especially the ones who consider themselves far to the left and abolitionists. And I would like their voices to be heard and considered as part of these conversations as well, not just the more moderate middle of the road. You know, they've told me that they really feel sidelined. So thank you. Good afternoon. I'm just very briefly, I want to thank the mayor for opening up presentations to public comment, which have hitherto been inexcusably shut down. And we had to listen to a lot of people, often with useful information, without any access. So thank you for that. And I just want to kind of expand. I, of course, endorse Cahoots as a first step, perhaps. But the problem also remains that the rights and the actual power of treatment for people who are being removed from the streets, which of course is what really this is all about. I don't think it's really about the mental health of folks. I think it's about the fact that there's a lot of people from the community who regard the presence of homeless people as itself a kind of social illness. And they like to put it in categories like drug abuse and breakdowns and bad behavior. They've got all these categories. But the real essence of it is they don't want them in their neighborhoods. I'll be coming back to this because the mayor has given me more time to speak. Thank you. But again, thank you for allowing the public to speak here the more the better. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else wish to comment, seeing and hearing none? I do have someone online. Someone online. We'll hear the person online. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, this is Anne Simonton. It's a very emotional issue for me, having a son who has witnessed two suicides and makes him 100% more likely to kill himself. He and I both found both bodies. And this is, you know, the level of mental health, the needs are increasing. We need to understand that Mr. Clemmer's is an incredible asset and would be an enormous help to our community. And to think that we would need to wait to see what the county does, why not allow Santa Cruz to be an example? To be shining as an example of what can be done, the money that can be saved and the lives that can be helped. Because as long as, you know, Sean Alt and individuals like him, there was a suicidal man recently who had a tactile weapon shot into his home. That was astounding to me that, you know, the military use of the police department is extraordinary. And that we need to have this be immediately part of budget deliberations and to understand that Santa Cruz could be an example that would lead the way to show how this works. Obviously allowing Mr. Clemmer to teach and work with us to ease a lot of the fears would be an enormous asset. I was under the, I could never call the police if my son was feeling suicidal because he would anger them and he would be dead. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone else online? This is an informational item. We thank everyone who has participated. Mr. Norsch, let me just be clear about something. Typically we don't take a lot of public participation. This issue is one which falls in my judgment outside the normal kinds of presentations. We receive informational presentations. A lot of people showed up today contacted council members and myself saying, we're very interested in this. We understand it's an informational presentation. So at the discretion of the presiding officer, I am encouraging today for there to be participation in this presentation. I don't want people to think that every time there's a presentation, you know, Boy Scout, Girl Scout Day or whatever, we're gonna have two hours of public comment about it. We're not going to, but this one seemed to fall a bit outside the normal course of events. Please, please. I would just like to do one final comment in that the three of us and Ms. Murphy met with the president of Cabrillo and Chris Monroe and student representatives yesterday for our first children and youth summit in the city. And what bubbled to the top for all of us was mental health across the board. And so I think that we're at a pivotal point in time where not only could it be a cost savings to the city to address this in some way, but I mean, I think there was a point in time when there wasn't paramedics on the fire engines, right? It was all through AMR. And so I think that however this gets addressed, it's not about the homeless, Mr. Norris. It's about the whole community and everybody with mental health crises often suffer in silence. And we need to remove that stigma and get in front of it to help save people's lives. And that's why I feel passionately about this. Thank you. Anyone else last comment? Very briefly, again, thank you so much for this. I will say that that a way to look at this when looking at other models and the one that the gentleman brought to us today had been successful, I think it's terrifically important we are evolving as a society, as a culture, how to deal with pleas for help. Some of those are safety pleas, some of those are mental health pleas, some of those are whatever. I do wanna say this though. I don't think people should labor under the impression that if we institute this, which I think would be quite a good idea, we'd have to work it all out, but quite a good idea. I don't think we should labor under the impression that means that there are savings. Because if what you mean by savings is now you're not sending a police officer to this mental health, you cannot call that a savings. I think what it does is there's an awful lot of calls which appropriately belong over on this sort of mental health social service side. I think what that does for our police department is freeze up our police department. Every time you don't have to go to one of those you can go to something that is more serious for which you might not have time right now. So I don't think we ought to labor under the impression I think it's a way to actually make the city safer by freeing up the police officers to do more law enforcement work and have folks who are over on this other side appropriately respond to that. All in all, thank you all very, very much. We are on item number six. I want to point out that we will be returning to this item about 4.30 because we're gonna have children who are coming here who are gonna be acknowledged for their Hans Christian Anderson contest awards. We will move then to presiding officer announcements. I'm going to give my time over to council member Colin Tari Johnson. Thank you, mayor. I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge community action month may is a lot of things. It's also community action month. And this is something that's celebrated across the country, community action networks that implement anti-poverty strategies to help underserved individuals with stability and self-sufficiency. Our local community action network is community action board, which I have the privilege of serving on as a council member. I want to just highlight one data from a recent, they do a bi-annual community action plan and they worked with UCSC to do a survey and the preliminary data with this survey, which they were able to reach individuals who aren't typically reached through census data, like undocumented individuals, farm workers, individuals who speak and indigenous languages. So this data show that 56% of survey participants earned less than $20,000 a year with the majority of them being farm workers. Yeah, less than $20,000 a year that's here in our community. Community action board is one organization that addresses these issues. There's a lot of organizations in our community that do. So if you all can take a moment to learn more about the work the community action board does and to contribute in whatever way makes sense for you, I invite you to do that. I just want to take a moment to thank them for their work. Thank you, council member. We're on statements and disqualifications. Any statements need to be made? Seeing, hearing none. We are on additions and deletions. Madam Clerk, any additions or deletions to our agenda packet? Thank you so much. City attorney closed session reports are, good afternoon, Mayor Keely, members of the city council. This afternoon, the council met at noon in the courtyard conference room to discuss three items. The first was a conference with legal council concerning existing litigation. There were three matters of existing litigation that were discussed by the city council this afternoon. The first was the case entitled city of Santa Cruz versus service employees, international union, local five to one pending before the public employment relations board of the state of California. On that item, the council by motion of vice mayor Golder, seconded by council member, Conntary Johnson, the council uniformly voted to direct our outside special council to dismiss that case pending before the PERB board. Item two was the case city of Santa Cruz versus the regents of the University of California at all pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. And item three was the regents of the University of California at all versus the city of Santa Cruz pending in the sixth appellate district court of appeal. There was no reportable action on those items. The second item was a conference with legal council concerning anticipated litigation, a matter of significant exposure to litigation council received a report on one item of potential litigation under that category. And then finally, the council consulted with legal council on potential initiation of litigation on one potential item. And there was no reportable action on those. Thank you, sir. We are on the consent agenda for those of you unfamiliar items eight through 18 inclusive will be voted on on one motion. There is an opportunity now for council members to either comment upon or pull an item off of the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda or for a member of the public to do so. Let me ask, we'll move around here. Start with the vice mayor, Madam vice mayor. I just have a comment on 17. Please make that. So I just wanna thank Claire Gloglie and Matt Starkey for bringing this item forward and making some improvements along Bay Street for bicycle and pedestrian safety. They've done tremendous outreach. Ms. Calantari-Johnson and I met with them on site and they've done outreach to our parents at Bayview and to other neighborhood groups. And I'm really excited to see this project. And I wanna really thank them for their great work on this. Wonderful. Anyone else on consent agenda, comment or items? Ms. Brown. Yeah, I totally agree. A protected bike lane on Bay is a really big deal and I think we should celebrate that and more than the consent agenda allows. So thank you. I wanted to pull item 11 and I also have had a request to pull item 10. So I have a few questions on that item. I'll just pull it. Let's do this. We will pull both items 10 and 11. We will take them up immediately after taking up the modified consent agenda in the West on the consent agenda. Anyone with us today wishes to either comment upon an item on the consent agenda or have it pulled for further discussion? Good afternoon. Yeah, I'm gonna comment on number eight on the consent agenda. I'm glad that number 10 and number 11 are being moved. I have some questions on number 12 and some questions on number nine as far as the minutes for that agenda item. Number nine. Go ahead, make your comment, certainly. Oh, I will. I'm trying. Okay, okay. And resolution number eight, resolution extending the emergency declaration in connection with the December 2022 and January 23, winter storms. There's nothing natural about what happened and what's happening all around the world. There should be lots of states of emergency, but not necessarily this one. Our weather's being affected by both natural and unnatural sources. Trying to stay on subject, but wishing I had more time on the one on number five, which is of critical importance and how it relates to number eight is emergency declarations. I just don't know how I can politely put it together so I can't. I sure wish I could have and understood a point of order because I would have loved to have used it earlier. I'm sorry, what was that? Can I help you with that? I'm sorry, what are you saying? Excellent, thank you so much. About number five, we were just talking about the first step of 50 story building with what was presented in the actual information. And you said that this shouldn't be something that comes up for public comment, or I feel it is of critical importance that it be discussed by the public. No, I'm done because I'm done with the consent agenda. I am totally done, but I appreciate your time. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Anyone else on the consent agenda? Mr. Norris, good afternoon again. This is, I'll be talking about a couple of items, but when you're finished voting and so forth. But this is generally about the consent agenda, a concern that we're gonna be hearing a police auditor's report later. We've heard about mental health problems at length, which I think is a very important topic. What we don't get, and this is again something that I brought to this council before, is the ability to see what kind of claims are being made against the city regarding the police department, regarding problems that have arisen here. This is because though these are public records that are available, the city clerk and administrator has chosen to keep these secret. Let me just ask a question. Commenting on a specific item? I will be soon. Okay, thank you so much. I ask you to make some changes on this. Thank you so much. Anyone else? Anyone else online? Okay, we will take up, yes, Ms. Watkins. No, I'm just, I'm willing to move consent with the exception of items 10 and 11. There's a motion, is there a second? Motion is second by the vice mayor. Exclusive of items 10 and 11. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries the soul watered unanimously. We will take up Ms. Brown. We are on item 10, you ask that that be pulled. Yes. You have the floor. Thank you, mayor. I had a couple of questions that I wanted to ask. This item is the quarterly update regarding city council directed homelessness response programs and services of which there are a growing number. I'm really pleased to see the information in this report and I think it's really a reflection of a lot of the commitments that have been made over the past several years. So I want to thank you for that. My, and then others, there may be folks in the audience who want to speak to this. They asked me to pull it. But my questions were, I wasn't able to find, maybe I missed it, information to help us understand what's happening where these, where like 1220 and the safe parking program in particular are full. The report speaks to people being at capacity and so I'm just wondering if you could talk about what happens where people are turned away, wait lists, I mean, how do people begin to think about accessing these sites over the longer term? Good afternoon, Mr. Imwali. Hi, good afternoon, mayor and council. Thank you for the question, council member Brown, Larry Imwali, homelessness response manager. The short answer is for ongoing capacity that we have with those programs, our city outreach team, our outreach staff are really the principal source of connecting folks in the course of their work with available space at the shelters. The programs, both the 1220 and at the city overlook have been close to full capacity for quite some time now, but there is some regular turnover, both for positive housing exits. Some people decide that that's not the program for them. So while they are essentially full, there is typically some available capacity at each of those places. And so our city outreach team works through the course across the city, engaging folks who are unsheltered and really trying to connect them to the space that we have or other programs that other providers have in the community. Thank you, a quick follow-up. I read in a separate document for another agency agenda that there's a wait list for the parking program. And so I guess I'm just, if you could, I'm wondering how, I get it that the work is happening and our outreach workers are doing amazing work. They run into them out in the world and yeah, they're doing a great job. But just so people just sit on the list and then they're contacted when a space comes up or how does that? Yeah, thank you for that. The Safe Parking Program, that's our tier three program that is operated by the Free Guide and Association of Faith Communities. That program for recreational vehicles has a capacity of 15 and there actually is a large wait list of approximately 50. And so the Free Guide actually does regular contact with folks who are on that wait list to make sure that there's still a need or if there is a need to keep that list current. They're in more frequent contact with the folks at the top of the list as they anticipate openings so that they can begin to do that work. So yeah, so there is regular contact, rather ongoing engagement with those folks as well. Great, thank you. And similar for 1220, is there a wait list there or is that through your internal transitioning people into that site? Right, that is for the outreach team, exactly. Sort of as the course of their work when they engage folks. There is an interview process for 1220 as a self-managed camp that requires kind of a community set of rules and living in that environment. So they do sort of their own kind of interview and assessment, if you will, when they engage folks to see who might be a good candidate for that program. And when there is capacity, they can be considered for that program or also the overlook. Thank you. Can I make a quick comment? Because I just wanna say, in addition to my comments earlier about really being pleased to see how this programming is being built out, I think that the key takeaways here are we don't have enough capacity. We don't have the resources to provide the capacity for the level of need we have. And so I'm also very glad to see the conversations happening with collaborating agencies. So thank you. Further on this item? Anyone else wish to comment on this item? Matters, back before the council on item 10, the recommendation here is to receive a quarterly report. Motion? I do have someone online. Excuse me. We do have public comment. We have someone online. Well, there is someone online. Okay, thank you. Let's hear from that person. Good afternoon. Yes, hello. This is Garrett. Hey, as to the homelessness update, once again, that has always been the case. There's no mention of a numeric goal, time and delivery for a price of reducing homelessness that we may use to judge the program's success for cost. Instead, we just get a listing or proposals or a list of ever expanding services and workers as if ever expanding services or assets is in itself accomplishing that undefined goal and at what cost. Where is there an ongoing detailed and comparative financial analysis here of the total homelessness response cost, including staff and cost per homeless person and the cost to actually elevate someone back into self-sufficiency. And where are those totals for this quarter? How many less net homeless people are there this year at what cost compared to last year? You got me, I don't think any, but you know. And how do you define success? Do you consider getting people onto welfare and into housing via welfare as eliminating homelessness? Do you think the city of Santa Cruz should be the Statue of Liberty for the county's homeless to become the welfare Grand Central Station Population Center? Do you think growing a bigger welfare state in Santa Cruz is the road to prosperity? Do you think blowing the whole $14 million and more in one year to establish a response infrastructure without a completely approved plan to maintain it is wise? Do you think, dang, if we could just house 1,200 people at any expense, like who cares how much, or even no worries where the money will come from and put them all together somewhere, then no one else will come to take their place on the problem itself? Or are there limits and what do you think they are? Thank you for your comment. Anyone else? Matters back before the council. There's a recommendation on this one. Motion second, second by Ms. Brown. Motion is second. Mr. Norse, good afternoon again, sir. Yeah. I have to take issue with the idea that the outreach workers have been wonderfully successful and that they're doing a great job because I hear exactly the opposite from people, both who they were contacting in the bench lands, when the bench lands was being depopulated, destroyed in fact, without adequate shelter alternatives. And then of course now again, in the Pogonip area and in the Sycamore Grove area. I attempted to, yesterday I was up there watching the police dispersing the area between Highway 9 and the river and people were desperately taking their stuff out. I requested of Jeremy Leonard what the capacity was. He refused to say it, kept referring me to higher authorities. This is what he does regularly. I don't think it's appropriate to do that and I thought I would mention it publicly because I think it's important if a member of the public can't get what is relatively simple and open information, I'm wondering how homeless people are doing with this too and I've heard unfortunate reports. So regarding this particular quarterly report, it doesn't mention as, I kind of take a different slant on it than Garrett Phillips who just spoke with you, but it doesn't mention any of the costs involved and how effectively the money is being spent. And that kind of accountability has never been clearly provided that I've seen, at least it's not included in this document. I mean you hear about essentially a lot of money is being spent for a fundamentally small number of people, smaller number of people compared to the overall needs of the people who are outside. So the matter of there being optimistic assessments were working very hard. This is the kind of stuff we heard for years under the earlier councils, but of course, what's happening is a few even more than before are getting served. But for example, the broader community that was served in 2015 meals at Coral Street no longer has served meals. And that was the case throughout, of course, COVID and the people that were served meals were served meals by Food Not Bombs, often under hostile action by the police when they tried to serve, for example, under the ease of parking structures. 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds, just to give you a sense of time. You told me I was gonna have five minutes on this item. My error, you have three minutes and 10 seconds to go. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. I'm gonna cut it short anyway. I know you're trying to fit into a schedule here, which I want to encourage you to spend more time on public comment, so that's the point. So do we know the actual number of people in town who are in vehicles? It's not in this report. We know that there's a waiting list of 50, as you've just heard from Larry and Wally, but you've got a capacity which is already filled and you're gonna have your city is spending money to appeal an OVO ordinance to essentially drive OVOs completely out of town for those people who have so-called oversized vehicles. So all these things are happening at the same time as everyone is, I'm hearing praise heaped upon the HRAP program or the homeless response folks. You have to consider what is actually happening to the average homeless person, whether they're getting the most basic services or have access to them, and if they're not, why not, and how much is it costing to give the appearance of a lot of progress when in fact, it's not real progress for the majority. Some obvious examples are of for the last six months there's been no porta-potties, no services up at the Poganip area. They were pulled out. So you've had a hundred or more people up there crapping in the woods because the city decided it was somehow more cost effective to do that, or as I said before in an earlier comment, is this an attempt to use the hide out or get out strategy, which I think is a go to for the city with respect to homeless folks. I think essentially the behavior, well, the reality shows what the answer is to that question. That's it. Good afternoon. Brief. My name is James Whitman. I think I made some comparisons to the homeless. I don't know if the archives in this place are available for more than like starting three and a half years ago. But what I suggested to various people that were in service with the homeless is why don't they work on the strength of the homeless? People are getting, people are doing things, holding full time jobs. The kids are going to school and they don't have correct housing. What makes a house? You assume it's secure, you assume it's safe. But I was speaking more than three and a half years ago that we're all homeless. That has to do with the technology that's around that doesn't give us security, it doesn't give us privacy, it doesn't give us safety. So when there is actually some real emergency, we're all going to be homeless and what are we going to do? Because I think that these subjects are kind of very narrow and they could be broad. That's enough. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone online, Ms. Bush? One more. Good afternoon, person online. You are on. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. All right. This is Reggie Meisler, a member of Santa Cruz Cares. I just wanted to comment briefly on the HRAP. I don't want to disparage all of what HRAP is doing. Obviously there's a lot of money going towards a lot of very good programs. I just think that there's some problems with the balance of how we do certain things. For instance, in response to the winter storms, as we know recently with the Civic Auditorium, there was a demand to open it during the most extreme winter storms. Those demands were not answered. Instead of staffing it with one person, we staffed eight police officers to defend the Civic Auditorium from being broken into, which I find somewhat disturbing, especially considering that the Santa Cruz Police Instagram is often toting their ability to operate in a social role that they cannot be tasked with just watching over the Civic Center as temporary safe sleeping. I think that there's some interesting uses of funding here. There's what happened with the Civic Auditorium. There's the vehicle abatement contractor, which was not a lot of money granted from HRAP, but is a position that we used some of our trap funding on which works in contrary to people's, it works with the vehicle abatement hotline to start ticketing and towing and green tagging people based on this unaccountable complaint-based system and is far more helpful or harmful than it is helpful. The other thing that ties in with that is that we just recently in April got a study that demonstrates that involuntary displacement is bad for public health. So when we talk about health in all policies and we're talking about involuntary displacement, like what is being done or requested to be done in Pogonip, we have to understand that that is explicitly evidence-based, 23 different cities were looked at, I believe over a 10-year period, it increases people's overdose deaths. This is exactly what the Santa Cruz County public health officer was anecdotally describing is happening based on the data he was looking at. So when we sweet people, we are hurting them, we're killing them, we're making public health worse. And so I want the city to take this kind of data into account because if you're not, you're just working for anti-house lists, bigots and fascists, you're not actually doing good public health and good public policy. Thank you. Anyone else who is with us who wishes to make comment? Seeing and hearing none, matters back before the council. Ms. Brown. I'll move. Ms. Contar-Johnson moves the recommendation. I'll second that and if I could make one comment. Second by Ms. Brown, Ms. Brown on the motion. Go ahead and I'll go ahead. Okay, so I just, I want to make a comment in response to some of the things that I'm hearing from members of the public, much of which I agree with about the bigger social problems we have in our community as a result of extreme inequality in unjust institutions that are just, we have a lot of work to do to try to move forward in productive ways. And so I agree with all of that. And when I am laudatory of what I am seeing here, it's because this challenge, we have talked about this as an intractable problem. We have talked about this as something that we can't address, that we just don't have the ability to address. And when I see genuine efforts being made and positive outcomes for, yes, certainly not enough people, but for some people, I believe that's worth being laudatory of. And I think that with respect to the people who do that work in the field, they need to be supported. And so I just wanted to say that before we take the vote. I do understand and all of those problems still are on the table. And we have to figure out a way to work together to address them. But we also need to be positive when we take some steps. Thank you, Ms. Brown, Ms. Calantari-Johnson. Ms. Brown took the words out of my mouth, but I'll just say it my way really quickly. The problem is huge. We're not the only players. And this is exceptional work and a big thank you to everyone who has gotten us so far in less than a year. Any comments? Seeing and hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calantari-Johnson. Aye. Face Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keeley. Aye. Motion carries and is ordered. We are on item number 11. Ms. Brown, you asked this item to be continued. The floor is yours. Thank you, Mayor. So I wanted to pull this item because it, I believe it's really an important item that is a bit misrepresented in the title on the consent agenda. The contract is to remove debris, but nothing is really said here about the people. And we know at least from the previous item that there are 80 to 100 people that you projected are in that space. So I wanted to, I think that if that's the intention which I believe it is, that needs to be made clear. And so I wanted to ask if you could talk about a little bit more about this process. And I have one real specific question that's related to this. My understanding was that, and it looks like it's scheduled for May. And so I wanted to ask you about Sycamore Grove because I was told that that was noticed last Friday and that people were being at least communicated with the police were there yesterday. And so I thought this was part of the Pogo Nip, the overall. And it seems like it just has happened sooner. So I'd like to hear about that as well. Thanks. I'll address the Sycamore Grove. Sycamore Grove, that location is considered separate from the Pogo Nip closure process. And yes, it has been noticed. Yes, there's been offers for individuals to go to the Salvation Army, I believe we've transported for just recently who accepted offers of shelter. So that is in the process. In terms of the Pogo Nip, we will be doing a very similar process as we were doing with the Benchlands where we're doing outreach and we're working with the county to do outreach as well. They're out there every day. We are now making plans which includes the refuse contract to move forward. Primarily there's for several reasons for the closure. One is it's extreme fire danger. Fire department already has plans to do vegetation management, which they have done before. As we know, the storms create a lot of underbrush, a lot of growth, that's extreme fire danger. So that's a concern. And as always, the public health, public safety. The folks living there, it's a public health safety concern as well. So what the plan is to take our time from about in the next two weeks through June to do a phase closure and through that process of offering shelter, continuing to connect people to services, providing for storage, very similar in the same process that was quite successful in the Benchlands when we closed that. So that will be the process for closing and outreach is extremely important. Again, and connecting with the county to help us through this process with their case workers. In terms of this particular contract and what is difficult in this location compared to the Benchlands is the Benchlands is a very flat area, much more easier to work in. This is a steep terrain. It's quite difficult. It will take longer to close even though it's not as many tents. We have 65 to 75 tents that of our latest count. We're going out to do another count next week. So yes, that's the process. Again, very similar to what we did in the Benchlands in offering shelter. Further on this item. Any other council members wish to comment on this item? Anyone with us today wish to comment on this item? Anyone online? Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? No, I'm sorry. I just do. We do. Let's go with one online, then we'll go one here, then one online, then another one here. Thank you for your forbearance. Good afternoon. Hey, this is Garrett. Hey, I will be brief here. As to clearing the homeless program in Kentonet, I'm not up exactly where that is today, but I want to tell you and relate a story in that I recall my cat escaped from Kitty Hill Resort, which is right around there about 15 years ago. And I went looking for him for almost a month all over the place. In the process, I had an eye-opening at great many encounters with homeless campsites on the San Lorenzo River across hour nine, while looking for him mattresses, sleeping bags, trash. We're at that tomato farm homeless camp on Golf Course Drive and all along the railroad tracks. That was a really long time ago. And it sure seems like nothing has changed, meaning that for the better anyway, except the good news is I did finally find my homeless cat under that underpass on Golf Course Drive, which was a minor miracle after about a month. And I have no idea if that's a motor farm homeless camp, which is the first right as you go underpass on Golf Course Drive is still there. But you know, at the time, that seemed like a private property, you know, homeless camp-bound solution at no cost to the city. And that was working pretty well. I did talk to a lot of those people there looking for my cat. And some of those people had jobs and they seem to be doing okay. And they were just living in their tents. And I assumed that that was at no cost to the city. And I don't know what happened to that, it's still there, but I just told you that story. That's all, thanks. Thank you. Good afternoon. This morning I went to Sycamore Grove and Pogganup and walked around. Although the cops that were there would not allow me to go to the area that they already closed. But yeah, they swept yesterday. And then another area they put up notices to sweep on the 15th of Sycamore Grove. I'm curious. It's an interesting thing that happens every single time is that the camp gets very dirty and messy. And then you wanna close it. But I'm curious, like why can't a little money be spent on a dumpster and porta-potties? So it wouldn't be so messy. So you don't have to spend $250,000 to clean it. I think you've put yourself in that position basically blame it, blame it on people. And if you live in a house, you have garbage services. You have a garbage can outside your house. So all you need to do is put a dumpster, which they did years ago, but sometimes they do at the beginning and then they take it away and then all of a sudden they sweep it. It's too dirty. So that's my comment on closing. And also the main thing is where are people gonna go? You mentioned that 1220 is almost completely full. City overlooks completely almost full and as well as the armory. So, you know, Jeremy has a little closed thing where he particularly, no, he picks certain people. And a lot of the people don't last because they have mental issues or they have problems with being around other people. So they don't last in the shelter system and then they're out back in there. It's just a ridiculous system that you're putting people in. It's inhumane what you're doing to these people where they have to pack everything up and lose half their stuff. And just a reminder that just because someone's items happen to be at a location and they're not there does not mean that they gave up their items. The city is supposed to store those items. So today one person's items where he moved from one part of Sycamore Grove to the other to the upper part of Sycamore Grove and he put his items there. And I'm really worried that normally you guys clean it. So you're not supposed to clean it. You're supposed to hold it and put it in the police department or somewhere where people can grab it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we had three people now. Three folks online. Next person online, good afternoon. Good afternoon. We'll go to somebody who's with us here. He's on now. Okay, now you're on. We can hear you, please proceed. Yes, good afternoon. This is Michael, the resident of Paradise Park. And I drive through Pogunov area, the Grove area twice a day as does my wife. I'm glad we have this month, the senior month because we have a lot of senior people in Paradise Park and with the encampments near our entrance, there's a lot of fear driving through there now. We've had one guy at costed. My wife has had an attempted carjacking. All coming back to home with people who are living in that camp as far as I know. The other aspect I'm worried about, and I believe it's mentioned in your agenda items, is fire. There's a Redwood Forest there. It's not like they're in the city, next to the river, or in a parking area or any place else. They are in the forest, whether it be on the Poponik side or the Grove side. I have personally seen people entering those encampments carrying propane tanks and gas cans. And if a fire gets going in there, it's gonna cost you quite a bit of money and it's gonna be a whole lot more homeless to deal with. I'm so sorry people are homeless, whether it's a mental issue, living arrangements, friends or family, a lack thereof. I do take a sense that people calling folks bad people because we don't want them in the forest, but they don't belong in that part of the forest. Simple. It's a danger to themselves. It's a danger to society. And just recently with these heavy rains, this thick and more grove area got flooded out and 20 people had instantly had to move out and all their belongings went down the river into the ocean. And it's a terrible situation. They deserve help. They need help. But honestly, they don't belong in the forest. And one of my biggest concerns is where are they gonna go? Just like a lot of other people. Are they gonna go deeper into the forest, become more of a problem? Or is the exit going to be managed so these people are taken care of in the manner that they deserve? So thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you listening to me and I'll lower my hand now. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, sir. Yes, hello, my name's James, and I'll be brief. I went up there today. You know, from the mid 90s to late 90s, I probably rode my bicycle from Felton to Santa Cruz to Hardy and then sober up more than a hundred times. Now fortunately, where I parked today and looked around, I didn't see any hyperdermic needles on the ground. That was good. So this is number 21. It has to do with the homeless money, the $250,000 for whatever it's gonna be spent for. At some point, I'll make a connection from number five to number 21 and how it relates to number 11. You know, I think it's kind of pitiful that people litter as much as a corporation does. As I've, for years in this town, it's incredible how dirty it is that people that just don't care. Very much like a corporation because the other side of that is terrorism. That's the people who are being terrorized. I'll continue at number 21, thanks. Thank you, sir. Another person online, correct? Good afternoon. Reggie Meister again. I just want to echo a little bit about what Abby was saying, which is that there are obviously not 70 plus open shelter spaces for everyone up at the Pogonip. And so if everyone asked for shelter, you wouldn't be able to give it to them. And so I guess I'm just curious, like how do you see this kind of thing playing out with Martin v. Boise? Because you're moving ahead as though enough people will reject shelter space. What do we have like three open shelter spaces? All we need is like four people to say they'll accept shelter and now you can't sweep the can. Like, are you taking that into consideration? Cause this is a constitutional requirement of Martin v. Boise is that if you do not have shelter space, you can't sweep. So I'm just very curious about how you plan or how city staff rather plans to handle that particular situation because it seems as though similar to with the closing of the Benchlands, there's simply no consideration as to whether this is even like lawful to do. There's just an assumption that you can kind of get away with it if you do it in a particularly tricky way. I think the other thing that I would bring up here just for everyone's sort of edification or sort of, I don't know, let's say it's experiencing is that here we have, what do we hear from Santa Cruz together and Santa Cruz neighbors folks? Not in the city. Like we don't want them in the city outside city limits. Well, here they are, they're in the forest and people don't want them in the forest either, right? This is what happens when your entire like economy is mostly controlled by like the demands of people who are invested in real estate or the gentrification of real estate or the privatization of real estate is that nobody wants anything anywhere. It doesn't matter if it's in the most remote part of the woods and they never see it and that never affects them in any way, they don't want it there. And because they have the most sort of economic power in our economy right now, you're gonna probably listen to them over even small businesses who are not real estate based. So I just wanna sort of call out this sort of interesting dynamic that even in the sort of remote woods, people don't want unhoused people. So this is not, it sort of reveals so quickly how unsustainable this Nimbius logic is that, oh, they can't be there, but I don't know where they can be, but they can't be there. Like obviously we know what people want and what works, which is tiny houses, individualized shelter space, even if it's not that great. And I think you can economically pretty efficiently provide that for people. So maybe start looking into that a little bit more. All right, thanks. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, Joy Schendl-Dekker. Three of us were campaigning last fall when the Benchlands were cleared. Mayor Keely, Council Member Collentary Johnson and me. And none of us thought that the Benchlands was a good situation. We all wanna protect the people in the camps and the environment. But Mayor Keely and Council Member Collentary Johnson spoke very publicly about how it was so unsustainable for people to be in the Benchlands that it had to be cleared as quickly as possible. Now I agree, like that's no place for people to be in the winter when it floods. And the Pogonip is nowhere for people to be in the fire season. But if the Benchlands was a horrible place for people to be where vulnerable people were exploited sexually and economically, the Pogonip is not better. And now the Pogonip is being cleared and Sycamore Grove. And as many other people have said, there is no mention of where people can go aside from the few people who will accept shelter space for the few shelter spaces that are open. And that does mean that there are going to be 50, 100 more people who will continue to move around the city between spaces wherever they can. As long as people don't have space to go where they're allowed, this has been happening for at least 40 years, probably since colonization. As soon as you exclude people from the system, they go where they can survive, right? So that's one point. And another point is I think that we've spent about a million dollars in the past year just on cleanups. And for Sycamore Grove and the Pogonip, there's been little to no sanitation or waste management services for them. So $250,000 is gonna be spent again. And when they go in with their heavy equipment, they grind up debris that's left in the ground and it gets compacted, broken and compacted into the top layers of the dirt. I've seen this multiple times at multiple camps. There are better ways to do cleanups with people who live outside. There are better ways to avoid people moving from place to place unsanctioned. And that million dollars, I bet could have spent, that's a lot of portable toilets and hand washing stations and rent and other living spaces. So that's all I got to say for right now. Thank you. Bush, anyone else online? One more online? One more. One more. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me. It's Keith McHenry and I saw listen to staff say that the Benchlands eviction was very successful. And of course, the core part of that illegal and inhumane and cruel aspect of that bit, of that sweep was that those people then went to Highway 9, Sigma Grove and the Pogonips. That's where they went. So it was not so successful. So now you're gonna have those people and it may be many more people than what the city is admitting to, will be back down on the levees and in the doorways of downtown until they get swept back into Pogonip. And that's not a solution. And it's every few weeks we hear that another few million dollars is gonna be given to the city or the county to deal with homelessness. But all it is is this inhumane, tragic disruption of people's lives over and over again with no actual solutions and no intention of solutions. And the reason there is no intention of solutions as the people on this council, the people in the Board of Supervisors, the people in the higher levels of management and staff in the city and county do not perceive homeless people as people. And that is at the core of the problem. The York council has repeatedly referred basically to these individuals, these families, these people that are struggling is essentially trash. And that's why, all through the Bench lands eviction, we even for the two years of the Bench lands that we tried to negotiate with the city to actually provide real solutions, there was no will because there is a perception that these are varmints, are rats, transients, vagrants, drug addicts, mentally ill people. So they're not worth any resources on their behalf. We have, I think that Joyce underestimated the amount of millions of dollars that have been wasted year after year after year, which could have provided housing and access to addiction treatments and to healthcare and things which were never offered, never provided, and it gets down to that core thing, which these are useless eaters that at some point you're going to place in internment camps and that just saddens me that you cannot at all consider these humans as the people they really are and that to you, they're just trash and they can get put away in some internment camp somewhere else. So it's really, it's frightening that we're at that point in our history of our country and of our city and the county. Good afternoon, sir. For the record, Mr. Norse requested in a timely manner additional time. That time has been granted to him on this item. Good afternoon, sir. And a thanks to Mayor Keely for that. You know, yes, it's unfortunate that people are so afraid of homeless people as they drive through the Pogonip from the areas where you can drive at, most of them you can't from Felton, but remember there are lots of seniors who are also living in the Pogonip outside. At least I met some of them yesterday when I was there. And remember that you found out before when you attempted to move people without paying attention to the fact, it's not just you have to have a bed for everybody you move. When you look at it moving a group of people, whether you have asked them whether they will take it or not, you need to have provision for that group. This is what the injunction was granted on the basis of up in San Francisco in December. So it's not applicable here yet, but it could be so argued and probably should be so argued because this business of switching them around, musical beds that Jeremy Leonard and others are playing, perhaps under orders from higher management, this is not necessarily to blame Jeremy for that particular thing, is it's a scandal, it's disgraceful, it's beneath the dignity of the community. It's not beneath the dignity of the council, the council does it all the time and the staff makes money doing it. So that's not really the issue. But the issue is for the rest of us, it sucks, it's bad and it also tempts an injunction. So for instance, Ross Camp, when you tried to do this with Ross Camp, didn't fly an injunction, held up for a week at least. Then when you tried it against the duck pond area, held up for a year and a half, and the city decided that the actual proposal by the union of the homeless to use the benchmarks was a good one. And remember where the benchmarks came from. It came from police chief and city manager, not the city manager currently here, but the city manager. They were directed there, that's why they went there. And so to sweep them away again, I would hope that some legal eagles will in fact hold the city accountable for this and get some kind of damages because you're obviously creating damage when you do this. When you, because I've seen people trying to try scuttling to get their property out. Police officers stopping the press, which I'm a member, I do a radio show, a net radio show, and I tried to get in there yesterday. I was stopped by the armed force. Police officers said, you will arrest you if you walk any further. I said, I'm pressed, that doesn't matter. You can't go there. You can't help these people or document what's going on. They didn't say that, but that was the impact of what they did. And that's what's gonna be happening throughout the Sycamore Grove and throughout the Pogonip for the next month. And that's what this council is responsible for. Even the council members, Martin Watkins, Renee Golder, and the other ones who are not even keeping their eyes on speakers who are talking. I don't care about me, but I've been watching, you've got other things to do than talk about this homeless nonsense, I know. Focus in. I am focusing, because the council has the power. What I'd like to do is just, let's not get into ad hominem. Just address the issue. Well, I'm not trying to be ad hominem. I'm referring to the professional duties of council members here. I'm encouraging the entire council to pay attention to these speakers, or at least to pretend to pay attention. I'm gonna ask you again. Council members can pay attention in a wide variety of ways. I'm gonna ask you again. Address the issue, please. Thank you. I have been interrupted and I will continue. It is my perception when a council member isn't looking, they're not paying attention. But if they're not, if you aren't paying attention, I thank you. I will thank the council for doing that, if that's the case. But it's hard to know because the council's comments don't usually necessarily indicate that. So the basic issues have been raised. The notion of fire danger, I haven't learned about the nature of fire danger at the moment, but up in Felton, it's low. That's the situation according to the sign outside the fire department. So you certainly don't need to be going after people this last weekend like you did. But as has been pointed out, this is a pretext. And the real issue here is, for instance, as I've been told by some staff members, what happens at the shelters is they evict people who are in the shelters in order to provide room so the police can say, we have a place for you to go, get out of here, get off this area. If that is the case, it is, I would hope it's illegal. And if it isn't illegal, it's scandalous and it's abusive. And someone at this council should request it be looked into. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else online? No. Anyone else? Matters back before the council. Council, the vice mayor is recognized. I'd like to move item 11. Motion to approve the recommendation as presented in the packet. Is there a second? A second. Second by Ms. Watkins under discussion. Debater discussion. Ms. Brown, then Ms. Brunner. Well, I actually have a few comments that I've been thinking about, but I also wanna be mindful of the time we have people who are coming into the room to have a scheduled presentation. So I'll just say here, I have a long history, as you all know, of opposing encampment clearances for all of the reasons that people have, many of the reasons people have talked about in others, until we have places for people to go, we will continue to chase people around. It immiserates their lives. It costs the city money. It's a dynamic that's been going on for as long as I can remember, and I've not supported it. But I wanna say that in this case, fire danger is very real. It will become even more real in the coming months, and I think it's important that we address this problem, which some of us projected we would be facing after closure of other encampments, and including myself who didn't support that. But in this case, I think it's really important to move forward, so thank you. Thank you for there on this side of Ms. Brunner. Thank you. Thank you for all the comments today and online, and this item is a Pogonip Refuse Disposal and Abatement Contract. I walked the area and the amount of refuse that was in that area was pretty outstanding, and I think it's really important that I wanna respond quickly to a couple of the questions that were brought up, and this isn't about a closure, it's about the cleanup contract, and staff did mention earlier about the phased approach that would be happening in this area. So the question about if there's only four shelter spaces and however many people above that, what happens? Well, my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I am asking staff, my understanding, based on the earlier comment was that it pauses and then it continues, and I think the reason why that's starting now, this phased process, because it does take time before the fire, the extreme fire danger and a forced closure by fire department. So given that we need that time to do that phased approach, and so it's so sad that we are here talking about this and it's so sad to walk those areas and see people living that way, and there are comments about people not wanting homeless people in their area, and I know I talk to a lot of people where that's not the case, it's more about, or even the caller who called in, seniors living in Paradise Park and they're afraid, it's the behaviors that people have a hard time with, not the people, at least people that I've talked to and have concerns, everybody wants people to get help and whatever their needs are to have housing, we have housing coming, so I wanna keep that in mind that as we keep moving forward, there are repetitive cycles that we've seen, but at the same time, there are steps forward in terms of the long term that are happening that I think will have a positive impact and we're not talking at all either about the fact that people wanting shelter or even help in the form of mental health or any other component, it's voluntary. So as we reach out and I know that as a council member I've directed to staff that our outreach is really happening, we had the conversation with the presentation earlier making sure there's less law enforcement response and those things are happening, but there is a people component, there's an environmental component and thank you city staff for getting this area safe and clean and clear and for doing it in a phased approach. Thank you, further on this item? Very hopefully briefly, a couple of thoughts, one is I was not on the council until December and so this is my first experience with this particular activity as a resident of the city, I must say that at that point I was distressed by the situation that took place at Ross Camp and equally distressed at the Bench lands, neither of those nor is the Poganep a right and proper place for folks experiencing homelessness to try to live a healthy life. It's my understanding that when the Bench lands was cleared that something on the order of 70% of the folks who were there, something, excuse me, something on the order of 30% of the folks who were there were willing to accept one or more offers of assistance, everything from some kind of sheltering option to various kinds of social services spanning a fairly large spectrum and it's my understanding that that was a similar number with regard to the Ross Camp at the time and as the gentle lady said a few minutes ago or just a moment ago, these are voluntary actions. It does seem to me that as we move forward with the challenge of how to assist those folks that are experiencing homelessness, that we know the state is coming in and whether people will have a wide variety of views whether this is good, bad, or indifferent but the cares courts are arriving and that will be an entire public policy debate and discussion about the relative wisdom of that and how that is assembled. That is a county activity as health and human services rightfully belong for the county government. They are subdivisions of the state. They exist to provide health and human services. You can wander around this place all day and you won't find a city department of health or a city department of mental health because that's not what cities do. I think the helpful thing we can do on this is to identify those opportunities for providing safe, clean, healthy housing, shelter, navigation center, permanent supportive housing into which county government and nonprofits are going to pour their wonderful health and human services. As it relates to the current challenge, it seems to me that it is not even close question about whether it is healthy or safe for people to be in the Pogonip for very much longer given the wet winter and the vegetation and the fire danger. You can drive up to Felton CDF, fair enough. You can drive up to Felton CDF today and it will say fire danger low. That does not mean that you should keep people there necessarily and only wait until it's extreme fire danger and then start thinking about what to do on that. I do think that both the city has a greater obligation than what we have undertaken so far in that space. But I think the great area of advancement on solving the issue really does and I'm not trying to point to another government to excuse this government, but the state government and the county government are designed to do this. They are designed and intended to solve the area, the kinds of problems that many folks spoke of today that is not a city government role and responsibility. We do have roles and responsibility and we are going to get to an item later tonight, latest afternoon, which we'll go to the question of whether or not the public may wanna have an affordable workforce housing bond and what proper place in there we could locate a fund or funding source for those who are experiencing homelessness and what is the right and proper element to be included in that measure. We will talk about that later this afternoon. Clerk will call the roll. Council member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion passes this award. I think we have a bunch of wonderful young people with us. I think I can see some right back there. There's one right there. Authors. Young authors. Young authors. Come forward. We wanna see you. We wanna see you. Do you have a script in your pile? I do. I got it. So come on forward, young'uns. We wanna see you. We're so proud of you. Come on up. Come on. We're a long ways away from being able to bite you or anything, so don't worry about that. Well, my goodness, how wonderful to see you all. And so, hello. These are the creative and talented writers who are the winners of Santa Cruz Sister City Committee's Hands Christian Andersen Writing Contest. We're so proud to have all of you and so honored to have all of you in council chambers with us. Also, kind of glad that you were able to see your city government in action. We were taking up an issue which is controversial in our community. And as you can see, there's a spirit of give and take and that's what we do here on a regular basis and try to solve some public policy problems. But right now, this is your moment and we're so happy to see you here. Our winners are, and I will try to... And please excuse me if I get into your first name or your last name wrong. I'm gonna do my best on this. So Molly, hi, Griffin, so Molly, hi, Groon, with Scarlett Bird, Jasmine Harris, Shanken, with Tight-knit Wood, Mira Stern, with the document alone or the writing alone, Elina Kaplan, with Herbrook, and then in the ages 17 and up, I'm sorry, fourth grade, I'm gonna have to back this up. Let me do this again. And it's you, huh? Okay, okay. Then we have fourth place in the Division for Adults ages 17 and up. The winners are fourth place, Eves, Yuggle Nister for Goldhearted, also fourth, Shannon Bassano for firing up the old Studebaker, California Foothills, 1949, Terry Fret with Gifts and Challenges, third place, Mary Floodin, with the Magical Wishing Pond, second place, Michael Warren Mott, with Light Over the Mountain, second place, Joan Priblich, with Heat, and Janine, first place, Janine, Celfo, and I apologize, I suspect that is not the right pronunciation, with time when a super small something stopped the world. So these are exciting titles and we are so happy to have you here. We would appreciate seeing all of you. Stand up if you are one of these award winners. We'd love to see you. Thank you all. Come on forward. How nice to see you. Dear council members, thank you for having us over. We're really delighted to every year have the opportunity to have the writing contest and we have prizes for the winners, so please stay around and we'll give the awards to our wonderful writer. I have to say this year was a really good year and you'll find the fable on our website, Sister City, which is on the Santa Cruz City website and you'll find all the fables on the website as well as a ranking of the fables. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, good afternoon. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor Keely and council members. I'm the chair of the sister cities committee. I just wanted to briefly add that, give you a little context that there is an annual Hans Christian Anderson writing contest that takes place in Sestri, Levante, our sister city in Italy and what we do is we run a local competition here in Santa Cruz and then the winners are forwarded to that competition which will take place in June this summer. And so we're really excited to have all these amazing entries and we think we're gonna have great representation this year. So if we could give them a round of applause, please thank you. You two lovely youngsters right here in the front row. Would you like to come to the microphone and just tell us a little bit about your writing? If you want to, you can. Okay. Would you like to? I can't. Okay. Okay. Well, we're so proud of you and so excited that as young authors you would take on this challenge and do that good work and we're so happy to recognize you for the good work that you have done. Any other comments? Anybody would like to make comment on this? I just want to mention that last year during the international competition somebody from Santa Cruz actually won first prize. Oh, yeah. And the over 18 age groups. So we represent. And so hopefully one year we'll be able to go in person to Sestri Levante during their week, it's in June where they have that all weekly event around the fable, around Christian Anderson and it's really something we should try to and start to think about. Well, that's just great. I think what we're gonna do here is this is the conclusion of this activity here. And I think what we're going to do is we'll take a five minute break because I know there's council members that want to come down and say hi to all of you. So let us take a five minute recess right now. After a brief recess, the council is back in session. We would ask folks to come to order. Thank you very much, appreciate it. We are on agenda item number 19. This is the Coral Street visioning report. Good afternoon. I see two of our outstanding planning department staffers. Good afternoon, Ms. Noyes. Mr. Van Wa, how are you? Good, we're happy to have you here. You're on. Great, thank you. So my name's Sarah Noisy. I am a senior planner in the Planning and Community Development Department here at the City of Santa Cruz and I've been the project manager leading this project for the last few months to develop a vision for services, housing, all kinds of land uses and public realm improvements for the Coral Street area. I have also online with me, Justin Duel of Dallin Architecture. He was our consultant on this project. There he is, hi, Justin. And he's gonna be joining me in this presentation. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. So just a little bit of background about what brings us here today. So this campus at Coral Street, the Rebly family shelter and the housing matters operations have been in this location on Coral Street near the intersections of Highway 1 and 9 for many decades. Last year, the Homeless Response Action Plan was approved by your city council and one of the actions that came out of that plan was under the goal around permanent affordable and supportive housing was an action to partner, work with partner agencies to deliver a plan for the Coral Street campus and navigation center and acquire needed properties. So a little bit out of order, the city acquired 125 Coral Street and then we got to work on this visioning report to sort of guide the next several decades of time in this neighborhood and look at it with all of the various service providers and the community as well. So we're here today to talk with the city council. There is no formal action that's required on the report itself and there are some other pieces that we as staff are asking for direction about. So having the city council review provides another opportunity for your council to contribute to the vision, make any amendments or additions that you think might be necessary or wise, provides another opportunity for the public to comment and to provide their comments directly to you as the city council and then also, as I mentioned, we're asking for some direction on our immediate next steps. We did do a fair amount of outreach on this. We had two in-person community meetings. The second one of those in February was also available online in a Zoom format. The first meeting in December wasn't really a format that was well-suited to Zoom but we provided that information. The questions, the content from that meeting was available on our project website after the meeting and we got a lot of really thoughtful, rich, complete comments and thoughts from our community members. We also had two focus groups specifically with the service providers that are already working in this neighborhood to make sure that as we move forward we're keeping all of their needs and their just knowledge of the needs of these community members in mind as we're moving forward. We made a point in both of these meetings of ensuring that community members who have lived experience with homelessness had the opportunity and support to be able to attend and participate. That was a really important piece of this for us. So just at a high level sort of hitting the key points that came out of this. At the first charrette we had, the first meeting we had in December in person, some of the big themes that came out were around services, how our services provide, how does transportation fit with those? Transportation then also includes some mentions of modes of transportation. Walkability came up a number of times. This can be kind of a challenging area to get to on foot. People also talked about opportunities for career and health, housing, hygiene, food. All of these were kind of themes and topics that were mentioned frequently in that in person event. From the same content was then placed online as I mentioned and we got a lot of really thorough comments that way as well, hundreds of comments online. And again, we're seeing some similar themes. So parking is also related to transportation. We are still seeing services, housing, community, walkability, and then you'll also see the big one there is SCRS, which is the Santa Cruz rehearsal studio. They are a business that is in the study area and is very interested in staying in business in that location. So they were mentioned frequently in the context of folks wanting to be sure that they could stay in that location and continue to do their business. So just to introduce you now to the study area, this is the area that we're looking at. This is showing you, this map is showing the ownership of the property here. So we were looking at the area from River Street to the rail line that rail line kind of provides both a visual and physical barrier there. So it made sense for us to look at both sides of River Street from the rail line to, or I'm sorry, both sides of Coral Street from the railroad to River Street. And then also grab this one parcel here that housing matters is currently leasing. So the purple parcels are the city-owned parcels. This is 125 Coral Street that the city recently acquired. The blue parcels are owned by Housing Matters, who's the operator out there. And then these parcels that are shown in green are currently under lease by Housing Matters. And then these parcels over on the west side are not owned by the city or under controlled by any service provider. Those are privately held parcels. So I just want to be really clear about, site control and who owns the property and all of the things then that that may mean for the vision and phasing over time. So at this point, I am gonna ask Justin to step in and talk through how we started to look at this project and sort of what we thought about for the campus. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you to the members of the council and the mayor for hearing us today. I just wanted to put up a quick slide to kind of highlight some of the key uses and areas of the existing Housing Matters campus. Sarah spoke to the Rebly family shelter, the day services building across the driveway from that provides a number of key services. And it's the home of future hygiene bay. Sure if it's open yet or not, but we'll be there. We've also shown the Harvey West Studios project considering it a part of the campus that is already well underway. And then across the street, across Coral Street, there's 801 River Street, which has been the recent renovation that Housing Matters has gone through with seven studio and one bedroom units. And then the three pieces at 112 to 116 Coral Street that are currently leased. So it kind of just sets the stage a little bit for kind of filling in these missing pieces and creating the synergies here between existing and future use. So what we'd like to focus on mostly here are the key opportunity sites that have been identified. Site one, 125 Coral Street, I'm gonna actually talk about last to spend a little bit more time on it. The other two that we took a look at are the site of the former River Street Shelter, which is currently shuttered and as mentioned the three sites across Coral Street. So first at the River Street Shelter site, we explored two options. The first one is sort of option one here would be a kind of low-cost, easier implementation that would not preclude option two from being a future use for the site. It essentially expands that the sleeping cabin, small community that has been an outgrowth of COVID that we've witnessed being actually a really great success for some privatized space. It introduces a little bit of additional parking near the entry at the sort of mouth of the drive, as an entry point, but does it in a way that really kind of tries to preserve a pedestrian character? Parking was a key item that we heard. And it also organizes those sleeping cabins around sort of a core community open space that has a relationship in a way and sort of expands and builds on the current courtyard outside of the Reveley family shelter. Some outdoor community gathering spaces was another kind of key element that we heard come up a number of times in our outreach. Option, can go over option two, just very quickly, sorry. The option two looks at a future use for that corner parcel which would frame in the campus a little bit between Reveley and Harvey West Studios, creating kind of a sense of enclosure for this as a campus. Basically it's a podium type building with ground level mechanical and some, what we're calling programmable space to be very, very general in terms of what its future use could be. And then residential units on upper floors above. For the sites across Coral Street, we looked at two options. The first one was essentially just an enhancement of the existing spaces that are currently used for essentially storage and staging just to get a sort of a yield about how many square feet. We received a fair amount of feedback from different service providers with some specific square footage needs. It identifies that there are about 7,000 square feet that we could make use of potentially in more better utilization for that space. Option two, one of the key components that we discussed and we'll see at 125 Coral is the idea of a navigation center. We looked at a way that ideally without impacting the actual parking and circulation of the front parking area there, if we were to peel off one parcel at the end and enlarge that from a programmable space that we would be able to essentially come up with what would be about a 16,000 square foot navigation center as an alternative use for this parcel. We go real quickly through just the idea of four options that we looked at for 125 Coral Street, kind of a range of programming scales. First option, we know parking was a big deal so we looked at basically what would happen if we created a ground level parking podium with some use fronting Coral Street but essentially the balance in the back portion of the site being at grade parking with residential units above. Option two, eliminated the parking garage itself. We know that parking is a very expensive costly item to add to a building so there could be cost considerations that would, as we saw in the Harvey West studios, there is no at grade parking, they parked it on the surface. It expands the ability to provide some programmable service space by doing so and also adds a few additional residential units at the ground level. All four of these have upper floor residential units. Option three looked at the idea of the entire presence along Coral Street becoming a service provider use and that the access to the residential portion of the building would actually come from the internal portion of the campus through the existing checkpoint so you'd actually access from the backside there. And then option four, which is, as we go into a little bit more detail on the next slide, our preferred option which combines three basic programmatic uses, programmable space in a general sense, a residential lobby and then would implement the navigation center here as a part of this for a potential shorter term solution. So this just expands on that option a little bit further. What we see here is that in order to reach approximately that kind of 15 to 20,000 square foot target for a navigation center, that would span the ground floor and the second floor in order to do that. Residential lobby in this case would be accessed from the internal portion of the site creating a little bit more of a community feel to that and how that's accessed. Also at grade kind of similar to Harvey West there would be access to some programmable space which could span to the second floor. And then we looked at an option where the third level would actually could be an entire floor plate of programmable space. There was a kind of a target number from HP HP that we heard about 15 to 20,000 square feet that they would desire in a single space for their use. So that's about what we're able to yield on a single floor plate. Again, the upper levels would be residential units and in this case there would be potentially four floors of residential units over the three floors of non-residential space. The future opportunity sites, the detail on those and what we did is considered is presented in the packets that you received. It's in the visioning report as noted there and as Sarah pointed out earlier, those are privately owned. There's no control over those. Everything we did, it was a visioning exercise and it was really encouraged in some of our interaction with the service providers when we had initially really tried to focus on those first key opportunity sites that they really encouraged us to look at the entire project area as a whole for longer term development in the future, what could potentially occur. We're not gonna go into more detail on this in the interest of time, but it was encouraged that we look at the entire site and I think that was about the extent that we wanted to mention those. And then I think finally, this was a few other items presented here that we just wanted to touch on that came from the community outreach and working with the service providers. Mostly from at the community level though, what we heard was, and this has kind of abstracted the building programs to look at the space between the buildings from kind of an urban design perspective, we heard a lot of things about again kind of creating community gathering spaces that could be formal or informal. Some relationship as we see on the north side of Coral Street there, potentially to a commercial space that could be inviting to the broader community at large. Again, provide some sort of a sense of a place to go, a place to gather. So that could be potentially a cafe with outdoor seating, creating some sort of a landmark that breaks up the length of Coral Street and identifies where the main entry to campus would be, is located sort of right in the center there near the mouth to campus. And it could be done very simply with, creating a well lit space there that could enhance safety, done simply with things like paint to just to kind of create a little bit of a landmark. And then at the east end of the, sorry, the west end of the street there, kind of just creating a soft space that might be like a little parklet. Again, kind of having a sort of semi-public, semi-private interface where it provides a functional use space to members of the community where they feel like they can gather and spend time. Thanks, Justin. So I just have a couple more slides. So just to talk a little bit about what it would take to implement pieces of this vision, kind of the pieces we would have to have in place. We understand that a navigation center is a priority for the council and for the community. So there are some state laws that would allow us to use a ministerial review process to create a navigation center in this area under its current designation. As we've been looking at it, we do think there are probably some advantages of re-designating 125 Coral for a commercial use. I think that we think that expands the options. And we'd like some direction on that from your council. So we've also already begun some work exploring grant funding for design development and resiliency in this area in terms of energy and climate change. And I just wanna emphasize that this location at 125 Coral Street, it provides a unique opportunity for expanding homeless services. There are not a lot of sites like this that are well located, that would be the appropriate size to create something like shelter space and navigation and additional service space. We do have other options for addressing parking needs. So I just wanna emphasize that for the council. So just on this point, we are looking for direction about development option 4.1. That's our recommendation, does the council agree? We'd like direction to go forward and begin researching and beginning work on the land use amendments that may be needed in that area. And then we'd also like your approval to just begin pursuing funding to go forward and implement this piece of the vision for 125 Coral Street. Relating to parking, parking is a significant challenge in this area today. And as we add more uses and users will continue to be a problem and a challenge for all of the users and visitors and local residents to grapple with business owners. So there are several things that can be done to start addressing these needs on the ground for parking. New developments can use transportation demand management programs. We can look for additional offsite parking agreements. Currently there's a parking agreement with the Portuguese Hall. It's maybe a little bit far away. So we could start pursuing other offsite agreements that might be closer to this campus and provide some parking for employees, staff members. We can partner with existing businesses to maybe build some new parking supply and then have some of that parking supply dedicated to staff and guests or visitors, clients of the site. Or lastly, we could acquire land for parking. So relating to parking, we are also looking for some council direction on ideally to pursue the first three strategies in sort of the immediate term, focusing primarily on identifying partners with existing available supply and then moving secondarily to other ways that we can incorporate TDM or can start to consider building out some new parking supply in the area. So just to finish up, this is the staff recommendation. I'm not gonna read it as we've just talked through it. It's printed in the packet. And we are available for any questions. We have some slides in reserve if there's other parts of the visioning document that we didn't touch on in the presentation that you'd like to look at in more detail. Ms. Noisy, thank you very much. Excellent presentation. Thank you for the gentleman that was on the line as well. Let me ask if council members have questions that you would like to ask. Let me look around here, Ms. Colantara-Johnson. Thank you so much for the work and the presentation. Couple of questions. In terms of folks who filled out the survey and the community meetings, was there any way for us to determine how many of those folks were neighbors or resided in the neighboring area? So I don't know that we tracked, we didn't track that numbers on that specifically and we did, in our online responses especially, I know we got several comments that said, I live on Fern Street, this is my address, I live on the next block. And these are the parking challenges I'm having. Or this is what's happening on my sidewalk that's really a problem. So we did noticing to a thousand foot radius, postcard noticing for each of these events. So we did have pretty good representation from neighbors. Okay, and then I have one more question for now. I can't find where this is in the report. It says if it is determined that the county cannot sufficiently contribute to or if sufficient grant funding is not secured to go towards the construction of integrated health services space, then staff would recommend that option four without the dedicated health services space be pursued rather than option 4.1. So it's whether option four or 4.1. And I can't remember where I read that, I just cut and pasted it in my notes. So the question is, so we are being asked today to give direction on one of those options. If we give direction on option 4.1, how do we determine if the county can support in the funding of that? I mean, that's gonna be in the future. So then how do we go backwards if we can't accommodate the resources to put forward a health services space? I'm gonna invite the planning director to come. Okay. About that. Mr. Butler, good afternoon. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. Thanks for that question. Council member Calantara Johnson, I'm Lee Butler, director of planning and community development. And we've already initiated conversations with the county and they've identified some potential funding opportunities that could be used. Of course, those need to be vetted with their county partners. And in some instances, there are competitive grants that they need to pursue. If we are unsuccessful in that, then we would be reporting back to the council and we can identify for you that we don't believe that we're able to incorporate that. Here are the reasons why here's what the county is offering in terms of potential other benefits. For example, long-term leases. Initially, we were talking about long-term leases of the space for HPHP, the homeless person's health project and or behavioral health services. And just having those could be helpful in terms of the approach that we take with respect to getting our financing lined up. But clearly, this is gonna be an expensive endeavor and to the extent we've got funds for the construction, that's gonna be a primary goal of ours. And then we'll be looking to partner with the county for the long-term operations and looking for community partners to operate that as well. That's actually, you made me think of my other question is that, so we're not proposing that we would fund the operations of whatever the services will be in these spaces. We're right now, we're focusing on the infrastructure. That's correct. We would be looking to the county, likely also to our Housing for Health partnership and to non-profit partners, to grant options. But our focus would be on the infrastructure and looking for partnerships with respect to the long-term operation. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you. So, I have two questions. One of them is related to what's laid out around option 4.1, which I generally, look, I'm glad that you've gone through this process and I'm glad to see that this is a possibility for us to consider today. But I am wondering about the mix of programmable space to housing on this site, given our affordable housing crisis, given that that's such a big priority and that there could potentially be funding to support a project like that if the housing, the numbers were significant enough to make it kind of pencil out as its own project. So, I'm just wondering if you looked at the possibility of more housing and less programmable space, for example, in the event that we don't end up filling that space with service providers. Sure, yeah, so we can just go back to that slide. So one of these other options could be pursued. So this one, option 2 has just this smaller amount of programmable space so that any kind of service provider or office space for service providers could be in there and then basically all the rest of the building for however tall it goes could be housing, right? So we did, we looked at all of these options and we do have a preferred option and we wanna keep these in the plan for exactly that reason that you mentioned because we don't know exactly what's gonna happen. Gotcha, thank you. And the other question was about, the other, I just lost it. Oh, this has happened twice today. The, it'll come to me, I'll pass for now, back around. Council member, the vice mayor is recognized. I don't have any questions, just a couple of comments that I wanna be mindful of that one, this is such a highly visible intersection for tourists coming into our town and so I hope that it would be attractive to look at whatever we build and I've heard that people taking the train, they have to open the gates right now. Like, and so the train is also another one. So I liked that idea of that garden space right there that's along the train tracks where people are coming into town from the train. I'm nervous about getting rid of the programmable space because the kind of people that will be living here really do need a lot of care and wraparound services. So having that on site I think would be paramount to their success and another concern I have is I think if we can all remember before we had anything there, the population of homeless people in Santa Cruz per capita was less than it is now. So a concern I have is that it's kind of a magnet and I know people say that all the people that are here from our community, I know that's not true. I've been in public education for 20 years and so many people come to us with the address 115 Coral Street and they bring their CUME folders which are legal documents and they are not from Santa Cruz County, they're from all over the state and so I just wanna be mindful that how much of our city's dollars we're investing in this kind of infrastructure and if any of it's reimbursable at the state or federal level given the disproportionate amount of homeless people we have in Santa Cruz compared to other places in the city and the state and with that we have a lot of shelters in the city and I have been woefully disappointed by housing matters over the years with their partnerships with Santa Cruz City Schools. There's three shelters in my attendance area alone so I would hope that whoever's managing these, we have some MOUs set up where parents that are coming in to use these facilities must attend parenting classes and must get their kids to school and we shouldn't have to be going through SARB for families that are living and using these services and so if we wanna stop homelessness we have to look at generational poverty and we have to focus on the youth that are experiencing this situation and so it's while I think this is all really ambitious and great work and I know it's taken years to develop I have reservations I just wanna just say that. Thank you. Council Member Brunner. Did you have a. After you're done I remembered it. Okay sorry when you're done. Thank you for this information. I, it's a huge report and a lot of reading but I appreciated seeing all of the comments and the community meeting, post-it notes all of that was really helpful and important and in considering the options and the recommendations before us today I just want to understand and ask since you know this has been many years in the development that from what I understand and some of these options have been explored and may happen and some are just kind of there in theory or potential and I think there's some really good components in here and it definitely addresses the direction of from Council for Navigation Center which was identified from previous work as a need and the parking component is one that I'm trying to wrap my head around because it is a huge concern and I remember in previous discussions we you know maybe we prematurely envisioned but parking potential even for oversized vehicles even I mean one of our previous items was on the waiting list for example at tier three parking and what a great site potential that could be for that as well people in their vehicles whether they're oversized or not but essentially their homes and kind of that tiny home concept and so in all of these I don't really see that that is an option and I'm wondering if that was explored. Yeah so we did talk a little bit about safe parking and it was something that the community brought up at the community meetings and we did some thinking about it and the configuration of these sites makes it difficult to really create a very efficient parking lot honestly so it's kind of hard to go out there and say like there's not really room but parking garages have like pretty specific dimensions that they need to hit and the way the parcel lines are out there right now we're not really hitting them so it's not really the greatest location for that specific kind of use and I know that parking is a major concern and as we add more uses here we're gonna increase demand for parking and so that's definitely an area where we need to be pursuing more options we need to be pursuing other ideas and we need to be doing that sort of in the immediate term yeah because part of it is also exacerbated because we've lost the on street parking on Coral Street currently so trying to think about if and when we could bring that back to sort of relieve some of the pressure kind of all in the mix right now. Thank you I mean I understand that this isn't the magic solution for everything and this site can't be everything that is needed that this is only part of that big picture so it sounds like as long as that was explored and really considering all the uses and that we can fit into this site best and I appreciate the diagrams and the thoroughness of that so but the parking too I know that I received a lot of emails from surrounding residents and businesses in the neighborhood too and that was a high concern as well that parking would it seems like it's already difficult and that it doesn't get taken away or get worse because of this like so do you feel is that your recommendation represented in 4.1 versus 4? So our recommendation in 4.1 does not dedicate a lot of space to parking. There are lots of places in the immediate area or within a quarter mile where we could augment the existing parking supply. You know one of our community members came and said why don't you work with Costco to put in parking stackers and then dedicate that to staff and we were like that's actually a really great idea. Why don't we think about that right like and I think there probably are other businesses in the area that probably have something similar maybe we could work together to think about ways to increase their parking supply and then have some portion of that be dedicated for staff or for long-term residents or people who aren't like in and out and then that can let the onsite parking be more available for people coming for an appointment or coming for a meeting and sort of just relieve some of the pressure in that area. So there are lots of other programmatic things that we can do that we can look at for that. There are it is harder to find programmatic solutions for services and for housing and for shelter space. Like that's really about the land and the dimensions and proportions of this piece of property and so that's why that's our recommendation. We feel like that's the highest and best use of that property and then you know the mix of housing to service to navigation center that's kind of for your council to really discuss and debate right. I think there are trade-offs and 4.1 is our recommendation. That helps to hear that why behind that. It is easier to find parking versus that programmable space. So thank you. And my last question is I just there's the vision report and there were also a lot of there was a lot of comments on certain properties wanting to be left out of the vision report. And you know I just I understand that this site is what this is about and you can't look at one site without looking at the whole and the whole neighborhood. So I get why that you know there was kind of looking out long term what could be potentials. But I think in that process those properties were feeling like that was the intention of this city. And I just wonder if going forward we can as we move forward I hope there's more community meetings and communications that really help the understanding that around that. Sure. Thank you. Council Member Watkins. Yes, thank you for the presentation. And I had a chance to meet with some of the staff in advance to get some of my questions asked. I agree with some of the concerns that my colleagues have brought up. I work in that area and I think that you know it is an industrial area right. So we do want to maintain its purpose for workforce. And we had Joe beam now moving in. And with this development I think parking and transportation demand management is essential. That is a very congested intersection is also one of the most dangerous intersections in our city. And so when you add people you add a lot more cars and a lot more activity to an already impacted area that for me is a big concern personally. And then you add housing on top of that and pedestrians walking around, et cetera. I think we just want to be really mindful about how we're factoring in safety and transportation demand management. So I recognize the trade off with the parking. I do give him sort of this now more robust use of the space with Costco, with Joe becoming in with other workforce development opportunities I am a little hesitant frankly to not have more parking available especially as we're thinking about bringing services and housing in. I think we just want to be realistic about that. There's also only one way and one way out really too. So I know that's already an issue for a lot of people who go to the Harvey West area. You know you have to leave before Kirby gets out right. Like there's certain times that you just have to leave or else you're gonna be sitting in traffic for like a half hour. You have to factor that in. So I guess I just say all that to say is that I think we need to be really mindful of the entire area, not just the site planning and the impacts associated with adding more usage and more housing in that space. And then definitely around the pedestrian safety. I think that's gotta be essential. So those are just my comments. I don't know if I have any questions really. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Thank you mayor. I will have comments. I was gonna save those for comment portion but I did remember my other question and it's kind of related to the line of questioning that we've had here or at least expression of concern about parking and traffic flow. But also the area in general. And I think I was talking to somebody who, we've had a lot of people talking to us about this project in particular, the private parcels, which I'll comment on later. But the getting over the creative hump of connecting the north side of river. There's a lot of space there and a lot of work going on and a lot of potential there. And they're not connected. There's no way to get there safely right across River Street, Highway nine. So I'm just wondering how, have you been thinking about, I mean, I know the visioning project was for this particular area but I'd just love to hear if there are conversations, as part of your conversations or with others or internally about how we do that, how we get over that creative hump and how we can actually make use of that space to connect people, right? I mean, there's gonna be affordable housing over there from what I understand. There's gonna be a lot of other things going on. Is there, you know, and the tanneries over there and people try to get across and it's not safe and we know there have been accidents. So there's like all of those questions kind of sort of lead into my question about how are we thinking about connecting the both Harvey West with across the street? Across the street, yeah. So great question, thank you. That was brought up often at our first community meeting. We were talking about transportation and mobility and circulation. And as your council is undoubtedly aware and I'm sure most of the community here is also aware, we are trying to purchase a piece of property there from Caltrans. The current vision for that area over there would be for affordable housing as well. And so we have been thinking about how are we gonna be handling circulation in this area and how do we need to be directing pedestrians up to the light at Ensignal and cyclists to turn to cross and come down so that there's a proper crosswalk or like how else can we manage this? So we did talk about several options and at this point in this vision we didn't feel like we had all the pieces to really be able to put something complete together. And I know that our Public Works team is gonna begin working on updating the active transportation plan sometime hopefully within this year. And we wanna focus on this intersection and on this part of town as a significant component of that because we do wanna be supporting alternative modes of transportation. We know we have a lot of folks that access this area on foot, on bike. And it's really challenging right now. And I mean it's really challenging in a car already. So we talked about different ways that we could like sort of amend the existing circulation on Coral Street and there were some sort of pros and cons of that and we ultimately ended up just recommending that we keep the circulation for automobiles as it is now for a variety of reasons. And this is gonna be an ongoing issue. I think when we get to the point of actually making a plan for the other side of the freeway this is gonna come up again. Are there ways to do an overpass or an underpass? Is that financially feasible? Is that physically feasible? How do we manage a space like that? It's all in the mix right now. And yeah, I wish we had like an immediate good answer for that, but just to say it's very much on our minds. Thank you. I just keep thinking about like Bill, we're gonna be engaged in these projects and we're gonna have islands, right? And with people frustrated trying to get to either side and so I appreciate the response. For the questions or comments at this point by council members, we're glad to recognize member of the public and while you're approaching let me ask Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? We do, yes. How many? Currently two. Two, very good. Good afternoon, sir. Yeah, I lived there for six months. I got kind of placed there, kind of a special license to be there for a longer term than most people were there for like a month or two. But I lived at the River Street Shelter which is now decommissioned or defunct or however you wanna put that down. One thing that went away when they took out River Street Shelter, it's really more or less just a corner of that property right there at the intersection, it's behind it. There's like a house next to the small parking lot that there was a house and they had a laundry facility. That's one thing that's absolutely so critical. I'm not really impressed with them, them putting in greenery or like that seems less essential for a homeless people. Solar on the roofs, definitely, definitely, definitely important and useful so that they have an uninterrupted, endogenous utility access. Solar will be continuous power for them if it goes out for the city. Let me see, what else would I, I guess, suggest or recommend? I'm not the city, the county owns that rail, that rail area. The rail, I mean, it's quite, it's as wide as, almost as wide as this chamber and I feel like if you re-engineered things, you could run the train alongside some, maybe tiny homes, like going all the way out or I don't know, put a parking garage over the clearance of the train. That's the only one train that uses those tracks. I mean, that sounds kind of extravagant but you could have some kind of a parking structure that incorporated that space and then made it kind of a unitary, architecturally unitary kind of region or space. What else was I thinking? Oh yeah, you don't need to put a coffee place in. Java Junction is right around the corner. Chipotle is really the only restaurant. I think going to Chipotle and talking about it there, you're much closer to the exact reality of Coral Street in some ways, I wish it was closer to here. Coral Street, give people a little bit more convenience because there's now a four bus that goes there and it's once an hour. And yeah, access and underpass, wow, that's mind blowing. That would be incredible if there was some kind of access to Harvey West that would kind of circumvent all that traffic jam that's just trying to go to Costco and get their steamer trunks of toilet paper and get out, you know, like, that's how I view it. Yeah, I mean, it really is how I view, okay. Thanks folks, bye. Thank you, sir. We're going to hear from someone online and then we'll go with you next afterwards. Thank you. Good afternoon. And the person who is online, good afternoon. Five, four, three, two, one. Good afternoon, this is Ted Stack. You beat the clock. Way to go. And some of you know I'm the chief initiatives officer at Housing Matters and I'm here to express mine and our Housing Matters support for the visioning process for this report and specifically for the options 4.1 that includes a recommendation for navigation center expanded medical clinic as well as residential included. As Sarah pointed out, there's a great opportunity with 125 Coral and there are also the other properties that the city or Housing Matters currently own or lease, which are also opportunities for us to develop more services and some answers to issues that we've been hearing about all afternoon in the discussions regarding the Pogonip and other topics that we've heard today. And we're also pleased with the People Center design that is community oriented and pedestrian friendly. I was really thoughtful and incorporated a lot of the ideas that came out of the charrettes, which many of or several of us from Housing Matters attended alongside other community members. And just want to say that we're appreciative and committed to participating and planning for the future of Coral Street. Thank you. Thank you for calling in. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I just wanted to weigh in on the discussion as I was sitting in and listening to all the questions. And it sounds like that you admit that there are problems in this report, that there are way too many issues. I was listening to Council Member Brenner. I'm concerned about the lack of parking and I don't understand how you construct something. And then just say you're gonna have Hopium and decide later how you're gonna address parking issues. The Costco parking lot is already impacted and usually full. So I'm very concerned about that. And crossing Highway One and River Street is already a highly congested area that can take you a half hour at the wrong time of day just to cross that area. So I don't think that you guys are really considering the huge vehicle impact. So it's just a part of reality. And so I really do think that this vision report needs a lot more work before it can be accepted. And that's just my opinion. Thank you. We have another person online, I believe. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, Paul, we can hear you. Oh, great. I'm Paul Gallacher. I'm the owner of the Santa Cruz rehearsal studios with my wife, Jennifer, who is there city council chambers right now. I just wanted to say that since housing matters took over the lease at 112 through 116 Coral Street. The parking lot we now share with them at 118 Coral Street is now being used for purposes and forced to handle volume. It was never intended to accommodate. All the spaces on a daily level are maximized day and night. I'm looking at it right now. And it's just a real challenge and even a crisis for us here. And I'm just thinking that as soon as ground is broken on 125 Coral Street, where Seabird Metal is currently, this problem's only gonna get worse. And if you open up parking on Coral Street, it's gonna have to be managed 24 seven. I've been looking at Coral Street for the last 13 years, I'm here every day. And before the COVID-19 shutdown, it was a really bad situation with the parking on Coral Street. Everyone was living in their cars or living in a tent on the sidewalk or whatever reason. And you could give every one of those people a parking ticket and it would be very low on their priority list. Nobody was moving. And it was a pretty horrible deal out here. It put my neighbors out of business, polar radiator. They were a great shop. Nobody wanted to take their car down here because of that. And my other neighbor, Asher Rios, this lovely wife, Melissa, they've just been evicted. Housing matters recently gave them a notice to occupy. So they're out, it's another family business gone. And I really urge you to look at this parking situation in a realistic on the ground matter, because it's not gonna get any better, especially as I look at this option 4.1 on this great plan that got drawn up. It's gonna go nowhere with all the cars that everybody is connected to around here, the clients with housing matters and also the staff. And just being that this is my livelihood and I have everything invested in this shop, I could talk to you all day, but I won't. And I looked at this report and I appreciate your time and your patience. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time and your patience. Ms. McCoy, good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm here as an employee of Granite Rock, but also as a lifelong member of this community. So in terms of Granite Rock's position, our parcel is one of those that's within the project area that's currently envisioned as a parking lot. As was kind of discussed earlier slightly, there's been encroachment of industrial lands all across the Bay Area. And so we've been at this site for over 60 years as it stands, we would hope, we would like to stay there for another 60 years. And so to plan for, you know, parking is an issue and I'll go into that, but to plan for placing some of the much needed parking on sites other than those controlled by the city and housing matters, it creates some issues. And so my previous background, I come from working for the state as an analyst. And so I went through and kind of analyzed the projected build out of what's there currently, what's the number of units and all of that. So right now there's about 144 units that supports about 200 individuals. And that's what I was able to gather from public information. From what I can tell, there's about 10 off street parking spaces or so maybe dedicated to staff. And so under the projected build out, I was able to use essentially a conversion factor, which was the per square foot of residential, you're able to determine the approximately the number of units. And so I was able to project that right now, there's about 200 individuals there. In the future there would be about 420 units, housing 500 or more individuals with about 50 parking spaces. And that's not including 50,000 square feet of the homeless, this HP HP. So I wanna be clear that we completely commend the city for trying this, all the discussion that's occurred today. This is something that needs to be resolved, but I don't think that completely maximizing, pitting, providing services against parking is the answer. I really think that this report can and should not judge how much parking should be provided based on square footage or what's required by the state. How many staff members currently are there that need a place to park? How many residents approximately have cars? How many based on the clients that are coming to access services have cars and will need a place to park? Or else there will incur more impacts in the surrounding neighborhood. And so then it kind of leads into the fact that right now the focus has been potentially on expanding within this project area on parcels, not controlled or owned by housing matters and or the city. So we would like to highlight the fact that there's, you know, this has come up, you know, potentially slated for affordable housing directly in the other side of River Street from the project areas around four acres of land. Around two acres of it is owned by the city itself and it would require no acquisition cost and would thus start to minimize some of the costs to develop some of these facilities which is already so limited. And so as Granite Rock, we've discussed with our operations folks the topography itself from one side of River Street on the other, a perpendicular to coral, lends itself to an underpass. There's actually a steep, you just would suggest that opportunity or that be evaluated further. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? Okay, we'll hear from that person then we'll hear from you. Good afternoon. Hey all, this is Kim Salisbury, resident of Santa Cruz and former social worker at County of Santa Cruz, working with a lot of these folks. I just wanna bring up a few things. I know Harvey West is supposed to be expanding their swim center coming soon and that will likely draw in a lot more people. And even as it is now, a lot of families and children go there for summer camps and throughout the year. So back to the traffic issue and also just making the area as safe as possible. I've taken my grandkids there before and it could be a little rough in that area. So whatever can be done to just consider that for the youngsters. And I was just thinking about, it is very difficult getting out, in there isn't as hard as getting out of there, but if there could be some way of a safe walking path along River Street, I don't know maybe with a little like a corridor or a fenced area, because I'm always terrified that I'm gonna hit somebody coming out of there making that right out from the shelter. And then especially if you're going right, no matter what you're doing, but just if there could be either some secure walking paths in there to make it safe for everyone. And yeah, I'm hoping that this will be good improvements, whichever decision is made and that it be an area that can help move people on to the next level and like it can be a rest stop and maybe not a permanent location so that people can move on to work and find housing outside of that area since it's already so congested. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Kim. Good afternoon. By prior arrangement, you're Ms. Gallacher, correct? And by prior arrangement in a timely manner, you have eight minutes rather than the shorter period of time. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I promise I won't use full eight, but I'm happy to not have the clock going. So my name is Jennifer Gallacher. I am the co-owner of Santa Cruz rehearsal studios with my husband, Paul, who you heard over Zoom, located at 118 Coral Street. If you're not familiar with our business, we're one of a kind, hourly band practice space, the only one that is operational in Santa Cruz and pays taxes. We're utilized by hundreds of local musicians every week and have been doing that for the past 13 years. Last year, the city launched the Coral Street master plan and I was personally shocked to see our private local business within the outline of the master plan to which at that point, we had no relationship or knowledge of. I attended the first community charrette on December 12th and was similarly shocked and pretty upset to see 118 Coral Street cheerfully presented as a future opportunity site within the housing matters campus. I watched slide after slide presenting all the different ways our building could be visioned out of existence. But at that meeting, what I did not hear was that they didn't own the sites. What I didn't hear at that meeting was that so much of the plan was based on property they had no control over. There was no mention of the impact on local businesses already well established in the area. In this plan, nobody talked about who would be displaced. I set this stage to remind you all of how this master plan launched because the city housing matters and the planning commission would have you believe that including us in their master plan is not affecting us. That rebranding into the softer visioning project will help people understand that it's just an imaginary thing that could happen in the future because that's what I've been told and that's what I've heard at every one of these community meetings that I have attended. And I'm here to tell you that it's not true. What I'm here to tell you loud and clear is that we are being negatively affected and impacted by this plan and being included in this plan today because we share a parking lot. Even before this plan, staff and clients of Housing Matters assumed that our building was under the control of the campus which it is not. We own our building. We are not associated with Housing Matters. And this plan has only exacerbated these assumptions which has led directly to increased entitlement to our private business. So, I just want to share with you a little bit of what entitlement looks like to us on a daily basis. It looks like Housing Matters clients parking in spots clearly marked Santa Cruz rehearsal studios and then being fully outraged when they're politely asked to move. My husband has been screamed at, threatened and defamed on social media because he has had the audacity to ask people not to park in bands designated for our business. It looks like contractors blocking our parking lot during business hours while dumping a pile of dirt from Housing Matters Victorian construction on our front lawn because, and I quote, they had no room for it. Since Housing Matters took over the parking lot, you heard from my husband about the volume and how it's not even able to accommodate it at this point. It's often impossible to discern which Housing Matters clients is using the parking lot to access services across the street and who is parking there to go by narcotics around the corner because often time, frankly, they're doing both. The result, this result in vehicles staying in the lot for extended periods of time, tying up parking spaces our customers and other staff can use for legitimate reasons and reasonable lengths of time. I commend Planning Commissioner Dawson and Commissioner Maxwell who made a motion to adjust the boundaries of the visioning project area to exclude the three parcels on the western boundary of this project area that are held by private property owners like myself, yet that motion failed to pass. I'm here to ask the city council to stop this plan from negatively affecting our essential local business and remove us from the planning area. Aside from my personal stake in the direction of this project, I also urge the council to force the city to not just give lip service to the need for increased onsite parking, but actually insist on a realistic solution. Seeking to maximize space dedicated to homeless services on the site at the expense of increased onsite parking is truly at the expense of the entire neighborhood and the businesses that I feel the council is supposed to be protecting. The city and housing matters have not been able to solve the parking problems of today, so I have very little faith in their current vision for solving them tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone else online? One more. We'll take that person's testimony now. Good evening. Person online, good evening. Yes, hi, good evening. Yeah, a previous woman mentioned what I had been thinking of how not much has been spoken about as far as the parking impacts on Harvey West. Not just the parking impacts, but the impacts on Harvey West neighborhood, the park, the pool, the children's activities, sports teams, people are gonna park there and impact access to people who wanna use the park at sports fields, et cetera. And frankly, I just read the Santa Cruz local report on how badly managed the millions and millions of dollars have been for homeless services. And it's really shocking. So in a perfect world, you know, this would be a great project, but in reality, I have my doubts. So good luck. Thank you. Thank you very much for wishing us good luck. We appreciate that. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? There is one more. Two more. Good evening. Good evening, thank you for your time and thank you all for not just the council members, but everyone that contributed to all of this. I know it takes a lot of time and a lot of work. So thank you for all that went into it. I just wanted to speak and say, you know, homelessness is the result of policy choices. Our housing and homelessness crisis are the results of decades of intentional planning to exclude marginalized communities from housing and access to our economy and our services. And a problem that took decades to create is not going to go away overnight and it is not gonna go away without deliberate long-term planning and significant investments who address those decades of problems and those decades of discrimination. So while it is totally true that there are all of these problems that we've heard about today, these are problems that are not the result of the people that are being blamed for them, but rather the policy choices that predate many of us but that we have a responsibility to address. And while I hear a lot about parking, I just wanted to say parking should not come before people. It is absolutely true. We need to address impacts on the community. Doesn't mean that those impacts come before the wellness of people. And finally to say that this is a problem that isn't going away. It is not a problem that is the result of providing services. It is a problem that is the result of a failure to provide sufficient services and to get people back into housing. And so when programs are able to offer a pathway back to housing and we push back against those programs, we don't avoid the problems that people are talking about. We perpetuate them. We allow them to get worse. If people are parking where they shouldn't be parking, it's because they don't have a place to go. And that's not gonna change by denying them access to services. It is going to change if we expand services and we get those people back into housing. So I would just encourage everyone to recognize that these are problems but these are problems that can be solved by investing in homelessness services. And they're certainly not going to go away and are only going to get worse if we don't make those investments. Thank you all. Julian, thank you very much. Ms. Bush, we have one remaining, is that correct? Thank you. Good evening, Person Online. Welcome. Good evening Mayor Keighley and City Council members. I've been watching this City Council meeting for the last three and a half plus hours and I'm always really interested in how you guys debate very controversial issues, including this project. I'm the CEO of the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce, as many of you know, and this project puts us in a place between a rock and a hard spot. We have many, many members that are in the Harvey West Park area, including our team Watkins' employer, Grant Rock that spoke earlier, Joby Aviation that's moving in there and a number of other companies, including Costco. That area of the community has always been impacted. I must also mention that Housing Matters is a member of the Chamber of Commerce as well. We have over 400 members that represent 25,000 employees across the county. I've been through many charrettes and council meetings and programs come up with a really well-planned project. There's nothing that the city staff has done wrong. It's just, I think there's a missing queue and the public comment you've heard this afternoon has arisen that level of the queue. When you do a charrette and it's on a community meeting on a specific date, you get a certain group of people that it can. And that is a small percentage of actually the community that's being represented in that region. I would encourage the city staff to go back and pull through a survey, the businesses that are in there and their employees. You need to do a short survey, maybe six or seven questions that come out of this conversation to give you a better understanding of the impact that could happen, whether it's transportation, whether it's traffic congestion, whether it's safety on highway one, congestion getting in and out of Harvey West Park. All of those concerns are gonna be magnified by a very well-planned staff report. I'm not against this staff report. I'm not against creating more housing opportunities for the homeless population. We've been there for day one working on that problem for 15 years as a chamber. But I think the strategy is that you need the community input, but you need also the partnership of the community, including the business community when you make this decision. Thank you for your time and thank you for your hard work that you do for us. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. Good afternoon on this item. Welcome. Thank you, Councillors. I'm very pleased with hearing all the information. It's very informative. I just want to applaud the most recent speaker, but one, for laying it on the line, we can't sacrifice people for parking. And all the problems it looks like, Coral Street Project may not be possible to really serve people and everyone else in the Coral area. So it's very important to consider whether that whole thing should be put aside. But if that done, then you have to find another place. And I don't know whether it's available, but my daughter and I were walking along out the west in the industrial estate, almost out. And there were these, there's huge fields along the way and you're walking out in that area. You know the town better than I do. There must be other places, but people are what we have to serve. And so far, I don't see myself a clear way that that's going to be achieved by what's been offered so far. But I hope you will diligently look for that really fundamental solution. It's a shame that we, it's not only just Santa Cruz, but our country is failing the poor. Thank you, sir. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? Anyone else wish to provide testimony? Last call on that. Matters back before the council. Ms. Brown is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I have a motion which I've shared with Bonnie, which hopefully she can put up. I'll read it before saying another word. So the motion is to accept and file the Coral Street Visioning Report and provide the following direction to staff. One to pursue option 4.1 as the preferred development option for the property at 125 Coral Street to initiate a process to more fully evaluate potential changes to the general plan and zoning of city owned property or properties, I think this should be housing matters as well on the south side of Coral Street to facilitate the preferred project, begin pursuing funding to support full design and construction of the preferred option for the site, including evaluating the funding for long-term operation in coordination with the county and other community partners, continue to work with neighboring businesses and other stakeholders to find ways to mitigate parking impacts and identify parking resources in proximity to the Coral Street neighborhood. As laid out on page four of the staff report, I didn't include it here, it's pretty long, but those three items that you've asked for to pursue and parcels, excuse me, and then five, this is the, I think the difference between the staff recommendation and what I've got here, adjust the boundaries of the visioning report project area to exclude the three parcels on the western boundary of the project area that are held by private property owners. There is a motion, is there a second? Second, under discussion, Ms. Brown. Thank you. So I just want to say a few words about the project area it is in ostensibly in my district, I live quite close, although I'm across the highway. And I believe that this area is an area that has experienced a very high impact and it's struggled and it is an industrial area and I want to make sure that we maintain those functions and workforce opportunities. I also believe that rationalizing this area will address some of the challenges that we see there where we don't have, it's limited kind of activity and monitoring and so having a fully built out campus there in a navigation center I think actually will help mitigate some of those behavioral issues. And so I think that it's really important that we move forward. I do support moving forward. I am very, very concerned about the potential impacts to business and the neighbors as well. And so I added a little, I tried to make the parking items add a little bit more there to suggest that we really need to focus on mitigating the parking impacts and identifying those possibilities for parking locations nearby. And then the final thing I'll say is that at least for now I may have a response if people have other things to say, but for me this question of including the private properties that are in this map, I've shared this. I recognize that the staff has a rationale and the consultants have a rationale for doing that, but I want to encourage people to think about what it feels like to be in, or just to think, imagine if you will, be listed as an opportunity site in a city that has pretty recently eminent domain a property across the street. And so the idea that this is a property that is in our sites is producing a lot of anxiety within the community. And I think it's unnecessary anxiety. We don't have site control. We're not gonna have site control. And I would like to see those parcels removed. I'm happy to provide more rationale for that if I'm not persuasive, but that's just what I kind of wanted to try to get on the table for discussion. Mr. Collin Targ Johnson. Thank you. Thank you for presentation and all the speakers. We spent almost the majority of this afternoon hearing from community members around how our, the challenges in our community around on-house is just exponential and growing. And we heard a clear ask from the community that we need to respond. We are responding, but that's what I heard. I'll speak for myself. That's what I heard. The concerns that are being brought up by community members on this item are very real. Ms. Jennifer Gallagher who spoke about the issues around the behaviors and how her and her husband are being treated and people feeling entitled to park there. Those are really real. I'm unclear as to how removing this, the site from the plan will address those challenges. And I hope that I would like to follow up. I hope that we can follow up to address the challenges of Ms. Gallagher's business and other businesses around there because that's unacceptable for any of our businesses to be treated that way and to go to work in that kind of a working condition. But I don't see the two of them connected. Going back to what we heard earlier today that the issue is complex. The city has a role. We need to look at things holistically. And I think that's what this vision document brings forward to us. There isn't a commitment that we can't have a commitment that we would do anything in these opportunity sites because it's not ours to say that we will. But it's an opportunity for us to step back and see what's possible 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years down the line. So I absolutely hear what you're saying, Council Member Brown and the concerns of the community. But I do think especially given everything we talked about and heard earlier today, we have to look at the bigger picture. And so for that reason, I do support these parcels being included and perhaps something we can add to if you if. So I don't think I would support this motion as is with number five in it, but if maybe this is diverging too much, but I would be interested in adding something to the motion that looks at the problems that are happening right now with the businesses in that corridor and putting an action plan and supporting those businesses. But that's maybe diverging too much. So those are my thoughts on the motion that you've put before us. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Watkins. I have a question for the staff. So if these parcels were removed from the vision plan, could they be added at a future time or how could that impact the vision if you will for years to come? So the vision document isn't really a living document like our zoning code or our general plan. It's sort of like, we did this exercise, we have the vision and now we're gonna move forward understanding the partners and issues and concerns and goals. So I don't know that like, I kind of can't envision a way that we would amend it again in the future. So in terms of what it would mean for this, I actually was gonna ask for some clarification on like, so removing them, are we talking about like removing them from every map and then deleting the two pieces like that show how those sites might change in the future, like everywhere, okay. So yeah, so essentially what that would mean, we would remove page 40 and we would remove the top part of page 41 of the visioning report and just not show those parcels. So we'd essentially just have one site as a future opportunity site and it would be 803 River Street, which is currently leased and really only has sort of like one, it's a very small property. So there's really only one way to develop that. And yeah, I mean, we would eliminate some of the components that are called out as desired for the area but are only shown in those options, right? So we would lose the open space components, we would lose this piece of commercial property that could provide some connection to the broader community. You know, those would no longer be shown. Oh, sorry. This really becomes a guiding document that maybe it's looked at 10, 20, 30 years from now with a new council and new staff and certainly parcels could change over time but it's something that if those properties are all struck out now, this conversation around whether they're in or not. Matt, I see you. Matt took the words out of my mouth but just to put a finer point on it. You know, over time, given that this is a long range vision were the uses of those parcels to change or the appetite of those property owners to change with regards to what the site could holistically redevelop over time? Whether they're technically in this document or not with your approval tonight would not preclude exploring those opportunities in the future, so I wanna make that clear as well. I guess maybe a thought for the council or just in general, like if it could be shared that these are not areas that are targeted for incorporation, but at a future time, if say they want to move or there are circumstances that lead to that, or maybe that just over-complicates the situation. We would defer to the will of the council on that when it comes to the motion itself but it is sort of accurate to say that those properties are not currently being pursued. Yeah, okay, I don't know, I guess I mean, I'm trying to reconcile that what I do agree with and understanding the bigger picture and vision for the long term, so I don't know if there's something that can meet in the middle there. And then in regards to the neighboring businesses and other stakeholders to mitigate the parking impacts, there was a suggestion by the chamber to have a survey go out, and I was wondering if that's something that the staff is interested in pursuing or had pursued potentially prior? Mr. Butler. Good afternoon again, council. Yes, that's certainly something that we can do is coordinate with particularly the businesses in that immediate area, and we've continued to have conversations with Housing Matters. They recognize that particularly as the pandemic occurred and we moved people from inside of those buildings due to the social distancing requirements into the pallet shelters. Those pallet shelters took up parking. And so we have been in continuous conversations with the Housing Matters team about how they can approach that and those are gonna need to continue. But the implications for the parking on site there have implications for the immediate area and the broader area. And I think that's part of what we're seeing and hearing from the community is some of the challenges that we've had when we're trying to balance the real issues of are we housing people or are we providing the spaces for vehicles to park? Both of them are important. The businesses need that parking to survive and when we had the social distancing requirements, we did not wanna turn people out onto the street. And so we made the deliberate choice to put pallet shelters in those parking spaces and we're seeing some of those challenges bear out. But it's not just in this, it's not just on Coral Street, right? On Fern Street with Shanti Shack. And as you were mentioning, Council Member Watkins over by the County Office of Education, the larger area, I think we will need to look at it over the long term and even in the short term, how we can address some of those challenges. We've talked about the development at the Northeast corner of Highway one and nine. That is a real opportunity as we look to develop that to also provide additional shared parking resources and benefit from some of that economy of scale and working in the construction that's going to be happening there. But even that's not the most convenient location to get back and forth. And so with some of these options, we need to look at potential transportation to and from if we're looking at options that aren't in immediate proximity. So it's a challenging issue and something that we are happy to work with, both the immediate area and the broader Harvey West area on. Yeah, no, I appreciate that and I agree. The only other thing I'd say is that we're exploring offsite parking. I observe families and parents with strollers walking and it's not ideal environments for a lot of families in that area. And so if we're adding more people and then having them park away, I think we also just want to factor in their safety and how we're thinking about that overall environment. So I'm just saying that I think holistically depending on where we go with this, but I think safety in that area for those residing there, those driving there, biking there, I mean the incidental intersection is dangerous. Straight up is dangerous. And I've bikers and that right turn it's tight. I do it every day. So I think we, I appreciate the vision and I understand where we are limited and I totally get it. And we really need to think really broadly as we think about the just overall impacts to the area and the people that frequent it and live there. Thank you. Madam Vice Mayor. I'm really conflicted about this and I didn't think I'd be so conflicted at this point, but I think the community benefit of providing more services and homeless shelter spaces, obviously something that we need, but the community benefit of businesses and our industrial zone that also provide a tax base to support those other services and things we just talked about are also really important. I also think about a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about parking and we were saying that the market would correct itself and people wouldn't build things without parking because people need parking. And now here we are, we're the people, we're the developers or we're the potential developers and we're saying, well, we'll figure it out later, we'll put it somewhere else. And so I'm just, I'm really torn right now. And I don't, I don't know where I'm landing right now if I'm going to be honest. Mr. Newsom on this side, I'm sure. Yes, certainly. I'm conflicted as well. I'm really conflicted about, or number five, but I think there seems to be a good bit of community concern around these three parcels on the west part of the project being added or included in the site. And it seems like given that they can still be potentially included in the future, it seems like there's community concern around that. There's also concern around, and legitimate concern around issues around parking wasn't taking place in the sites too. So I'm not sure if this is possible or not, but a way to almost bridge Councilmember Brown's motion here, number five, action with Councilmember Calantari-Johnson's direction of wanting to give staff some direction to look at ways to address the issues around parking and the very legitimate parking issues that Ms. Gallagher brought up as well. But I don't know if that's possible or not, but some way to kind of bridge that. I just had one other thought. I think another concern is that by essentially doubling the population in that area, it's the behaviors that come with the population and then would it drive out the businesses? That was another concern. And we did just have Joe be moving to the neighborhood and all this stuff. And so it's just like, it's concerning. Mr. Calantari-Johnson. I'm having a hard time understanding how this item, the fifth piece of the motion solves for parking or solves for the impacts to businesses. That's, and it limits our long-term scope, so that's. Ms. Brunner. We'll get there. Ms. Brunner. Okay, so my understanding with excluding those parcels and I think I brought it up earlier is the understanding from those private parcels, the anxiety that was brought up of seeing that their parcels are in maps in a discussion around some ideas of this area. And really, I think going forward, it just, it needs to be clear. Apparently it's not clear that these are ideas if those businesses no longer own that property or were no longer located there, that there's potential ideas. And it is a little not clear right now. So I think, again, looking at the whole picture is important and I understand why those parcels were included in any discussion around this site and this area, but I think to make it very clear that they're not part of the recommendation that staff is asking for direction on, I mean, they're included in the community meetings and the maps and so, and that at some point if somebody, and I know you, Council Member Brown, probably want to clarify your intent on number five. But my question here is is there a timeline on this, do we have to vote on this tonight? Can we give direction to do the parking survey, come back after Public Works has looked at this more holistically, all these concerns are connected and really, I think we can make really good informed decisions with more data addressing all of this. So I didn't know if there was something driving this decision to be made tonight. So I will invite the Planning Director to come up because I can't hear him whisper through this barrier. And I will just say our timeline was mostly driven by potential funding deadlines. So we wanted to have this vision in place so should Project Home Key funds become available again, we would be positioned to be applying for those to start design of the 125 building. So that's kind of the timeline. Mr. Butler. That's correct, thank you, Sarah. The one thing I might add is that as we proceed, making a decision on the vision report here is not a final time that the Council would have an opportunity to look at this. And in fact, as we proceed, I would expect that we would be providing updates to the Council on here's what we are anticipating with respect to our ability to meet various grant opportunities and those grant opportunities could even shift some of the programming that we seek to include within the project. And so it's a balancing act of matching the funding with the project and then also the timing. So we do anticipate Home Key round three coming up in the next few months. And we don't know all the parameters around that, whether or not a project like this would fully qualify. But timing is an important consideration when we're looking to apply for those grants. And Council and Mayor, if I may add to these comments and also just speak to you the very valid concerns around the tremendous parking demands that are occurring as we zoom out and think of the Harvey West area more broadly, including being able to make connections to and move through this area in a safe manner in ways that I know we all experienced, whether we're making a visit to Costco or catching a little league game at Harvey West Park. So if I may just zoom out to respond to some of the parking concerns, we have serious parking challenges in this area. There's no question, no doubt about that. And we also have some really exciting opportunities to I think solve those challenges more holistically. We're not gonna solve those challenges with this project alone, as we're talking about today. And I think we all acknowledge that. But we are gonna be embarking on a Harvey West Park master plan aquatic study, as well as moving through the development of Highway 109, as well as looking at safety improvements in terms of how folks are visiting this area as they're traveling to downtown and back and the challenges we've had around safety concerns in the past as well. I think all of that needs to happen concurrently with this work we're doing on the vision and effort. And I would hate for the parking concerns alone to hold up what I think is a really exciting opportunity to leverage really kind of once in a generation state funding for these types of projects. So that's the time sensitivity around it, not wanting to diminish in any way that those parking concerns are valid and something we need to continue solving for on a parallel path. Thank you for, I'm glad you reminded me and us of even the bigger scope of Harvey West and that whole process and looking at that and how that all relates, it is concurrent work for sure. I think it's just a little more, it's just vague and I think the community is looking for some more concrete information. So as much as we can drill down on that, I think would be very helpful going forward and yeah, there's a lot here in this area. There's a lot here in this plan and thank you for all the work that you've done thus far to bring a navigation center plan and vision for this whole area. Does the city have a role in supporting that parking lot at that address and supporting the issues there or is that a private neighbor to neighbor issue, 118 Coral? No, the city is not involved with that. The city doesn't own it or lease it. So yeah, those are conflicts between the property owners. Okay, yeah, I just wonder if there's any way or any support that could be offered or direction for them? We can certainly engage with Housing Matters leadership regarding some of the issues that were raised today whether or not we have a direct involvement in the parking lot across the street. They're a major partner in this work. We certainly want to ensure that as the current operation continues as well as future plans, that we're able to do it with a healthy ecosystem with the adjacent businesses. Can I also ask in the future if there's any crisp reports for traffic concerns in that area to also or at least for staff to look at that as well, the community requests for service portal? Council Member Brown. Thank you. I don't know that I can remember the things that I was gonna, I haven't been typing them, but I'll just circle back to the initial question that was asked about how number five is gonna address the parking issue. It's not, that is not my intention with this item. My intention with number five is to make a move that helps existing businesses that are having the other issues that you, and I agree and I wanna work on those. So I'd be happy to include something else to address that, but I am gonna draw a line in the sand here for myself about removing these three parcels. I hear my colleagues saying, well, can we, how do we keep them in the maps and assure them that that means nothing, that there's no threat to their properties? But then we hear a response from a staff member saying, well, if we don't keep those in, we're gonna lose XYZ, we're gonna lose the amenities, which means we think we have them and we don't. So I really feel strongly that if for those who want to actually eliminate that anxiety, the only way to do that is to remove them from the map. And I just don't think it makes any really political sense to keep them feeling threatened by keeping them on these maps. So that is really where I'm gonna draw the line in terms of the question about how to work with neighbors, neighboring businesses, residents, others who are affected by what's going on in the area. I'd be absolutely love to see an additional direction about that and would support that, but I'm not willing to remove that number five. So I just wanna make sure I'm understanding. So the intent of number five, the problem we're trying to solve for number five is relieving these businesses, these valued businesses with the anxiety and stress that they're experiencing with it being in the plan. So I hope that that would accomplish it, but I think in order to actually solve for the stress that is upon them right in this moment, there needs to be further action and further movement. I mean, whether we are a facilitator of the parking site or not, we as a city can play a role in that. So what I'm saying is it's a yes and for me. If it's a yes and for you, then we could merge them. And if it's not, then- Let's do a yes and because I wanna support this. So let's do a yes and. I don't know what the friendly amendment looks like, but some direction to address the real concerns that were brought up by the businesses. The behaviors, the entitled parking, have them written in my notes. I'm not articulating it very well. Let me see what I wrote down. I gotta find my notes. But I think you get the gist of it, is that direct staff or the appropriate departments to work directly with the businesses within the Coral Street visioning area to address the current problems that are occurring. And then I wonder if there's another part. Hold on just a second. Let's make sure that Ms. Bush gets that and then we'll continue on. You got it? We got it. Ms. Calantari just- And I'm just wondering if there's another piece to it, like a good neighbor piece, a condition that we integrate somewhere either in the visioning plan or as we move forward, that services that are being provided there need to act as good neighbors. And we can define what that means. Acceptable. Accepted. Okay. Ms. Bush, captured that. Ms. Calantari Johnson, that's the extent of your amendments. Yes. Those are agreeable to the maker of the motion. It's agreeable to the second of the motion. I might make a couple of comments. First, I thank you very much for this. I think it is, I have some skepticism. I've expressed it to you before about the charrettes and so on, having more influence on this than they ought to have. I think that the charrettes are okay. I don't think they're terrific. I attended one. This has nothing to do with you folks. It has nothing to do with the consultant. It has to do with my sense that anything and everything that was brought up by anyone, including a five-year-old child, was written down on, literally, was written down on a put on post-it notes and written down and integrated into this. I'm not saying it's bad. It's okay. I don't wanna give it more weight than it deserves. I do think that what we see here is exactly what it says it is. It's a visioning process. It's a visioning document. In order to get the motion passed here, I understand the desire to go down a little deeper than perhaps we might customarily go on a visioning process and something we might take up in a rezoning or a general plan amendment process. But I think in the spirit of collegiality and moving this along, it makes good sense. I do think that any notion that we are going to, as the city in the next 10, 20, 30 years, going to have some place other than Coral Street where we locate our primary homeless services, whether that is shelter, navigation, housing, homeless people's health project, whatever it may be, it's going to happen at Coral Street. It is not going to happen someplace else. There may be a building someplace else that does something or a service provider or whatever, but by and large, this is going to happen at Coral Street. It's been established there. It's part of the fabric of that neighborhood. It's going to continue to be the case. I do think that it may be also helpful in this, somewhat similar to what we're doing South of Laurel, which is we're taking this 4,000 housing unit number from the state and we're saying some 40 to 45% of it's going to go in your district, Mr. Newsom, because that's what cities do, is that they grow up in their urban areas. I think that that's a similar approach we could make here, which is that there may be boundary issues going this way, there are not boundary issues going this way, which is to say going vertically. I do think that it would be quite helpful to have this be four stories, whatever they're doing over there, three stories of housing. We should maximize this site going up, going vertically, not going horizontally, is my sense of it. And I think there's a sense on the council, maybe that might agree with that, might agree with that. I'm fully supportive of taking out the two private property owners, and let me explain why. We have a local business, a husband and wife local business, very unique business, not something that a trinket shop that you can go two stores down and find another one. This is a rehearsal studio. There isn't another rehearsal studio. They've invested their time and their money and their belief in building their customer base and so on. I don't think this city or this council needs a very sympathetic small business owner to be opposed to this and to try to rally others to be opposed to what we're doing here. If at some future date, some future council wants to revisit this, that's fine, but I do think that it makes very good sense to take this out at this time and not to consider it, not considering putting it in any other time, but take it out. I think that on Granite, there's a separate reasoning, at least from my point of view. Granite has been there forever. That is an ideal site if you were going to locate a sand and gravel and cement plant and a whole bunch of cement trucks driving all over the place, you would do it right there. That's exactly where you do it. Highway one, highway nine, highway 17, access north, south, east, west, perfect site. They have an idea, they use their property the way they want to use their property and as best I understand it, they're in full compliance with air quality district emission issues. We don't have any zoning general plan issues. We don't have a bunch of folks filing complaints against that entity. That's where they belong also, it seems to me. And again, from a political point of view, given how much I know this council will want to put all kinds of things at Coral Street, let's not buy a problem with either a very large industrial use or a very small family use. Seems to me to make good sense, take them out now. This is a visioning document. I like the idea that our vision is constrained to essentially the city and the housing matters properties. That makes a very good sense to me. I think the motion is a good motion. I think the additions that you've made make it an even better motion. One that I would be glad to support and the clerk will call the roll. I can get one point of clarification before we call the roll. Certainly you can. I just want to make sure that within the outreach component of the motion is to have the staff further discuss and kind of connect with the businesses around some of their input with the plan. Okay, just making sure. Thank you. The clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsome. Aye. Brown. Aye. Lutkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. Robinson Sirwater. Let me check with my colleagues now. We have two remaining items. They're likely to take a bit of time. I think we can perhaps do item 20 in hopefully 20 minutes or so. We'll see how that goes. Item 21, maybe not 20 minutes. A suggestion here would be let's take, let's make a rapid dinner break. Let's go for, yes. I think there are people who would be here. Maybe we'll take those before the dinner. Is that your suggestion? Okay, and then when we do, we'll take oral communication and then we'll take a, let's make it a half hour break for dinner. Is that all right with everybody? Are you okay? Everybody okay? Half an hour break. Okay, without objection we'll, no objection. Okay, without objection we'll, at this time we'll move to oral communications. Then we'll take a 30 minute break and come back on items 20 and 21. Anyone who wishes to address us or under oral communication, let me explain how that works for you. This would be, you can address the council on any item under our jurisdiction but not on today's agenda. Is there anyone online, Ms. Bush? Nobody with their hand up yet. Okay. Seeing and hearing, are you, let's go. You're certainly welcome. Hi, my name is Shelly Silva and I'm a homeowner. Let's pull that microphone just down, there we go. Now we can hear you. Okay. Thank you. I'm a homeowner on Frederick and Bromer Street and there's a notice out there that you guys are gonna be bringing in those jump bikes back there and I feel like it's not a safe location for us. I have pictures if anybody wants to. If you submit those to the clerk, we'll pass those around. And you have a very soft voice. Let me ask you to just pull that microphone a little closer to you. It's really just a high squeaky face. You're doing great. Okay, so what I'm trying to do here is safety. I live on the corner. It goes around Frederick and Broadway and what they did when we moved in in 2018, they had the bikes there. But what I noticed is there was a high level of crime, like our cars got broken into, my mail was stolen, there was a pipe in my son's window. But that's one issue. It's right out my kitchen window. I measured it's 20 feet and what I'm trying to do is on those pictures, you can see the bikes go right around Frederick which the street is at an angle like this and there's flooding. So we get all this water and then your bikes are at an angle like this and there's about 20 bikes in that picture and it's clogging my drains. So then it's flooding my yard and so it floods that whole Broadway street. So I talked to her name is Claire in Public Works and I told her about this issue in 2019 and she said, well, you have to call jump bikes directly but there's nothing that we can do with this. It's just not part of us. So anyways, what I did is I kept calling them, had them come out and do a cleanup of it but it still didn't fix the problem, so. I don't know, if you need to take couple more seconds, go ahead. Okay, I'm just trying to say a safety issue is when you're getting those bikes, you're going into the street on Broadway and people don't stop at that corner. I have a camera there. You can see that they just burn around those corners. And so I feel, as a parent, you're doing your phone to get the bike to work and their kids are like, doing, doing what, you know, they're not paying attention and they're pulling it right into the street. I feel like this is just not a safe location. So I told her about this and I said, can you just move it somewhere else? This is a residential, we need the parking. It's around the corner, nobody stops her and she's like, this is where the permit is. And so I said, I need to talk to your supervisor. She got mad on the phone. He's also in public works. He's an engineer. And so hopefully with your help, his help, you could just move it down to the park down there. There's that Frederick Park, the dog park. So at least it won't be high traffic. You have four corners there. Nobody, believe me, nobody stops her. Okay, thank you very much and let me, I don't know that you've appeared here before, but let me make sure you understand how this worked. So this particular part of the council meeting, what we can't do is, so take any action or commit anything to you because, well, but we sort of can, which is my guess is the city manager heard everything you had to say. My guess is you're gonna hear a follow up on that. I'll provide a really quick update, although we don't typically do this. I did receive a chat from our staff that they're already in process of relocating that station. That's what, thank you. Because it was just not smart, it was just like, I could hear people trash bottles out my window. And it was just like all night long, who wants that? Thank you, thank you. It's all good. Thank you very much. Did you keep my picture? Thanks for coming. That's okay, thank you. We appreciate it. Ms. Bush, anyone online? We're gonna take one online then we'll take you, sir. Good enough. A person online? Good evening. Hi. Mr. Meisler. Yep. I just wanted to really quickly just make a quick point about health and human services. About what? Say it again. Health and human services? Certainly. Yeah, so the health and human services while it is traditionally not a city department, there are some cities like Berkeley that do have a health and human services department. And one incredibly valuable reason to have not necessarily a fully functional county level health and human services department, but at least the smaller version is that when it comes time to open up emergency shelter, for instance, for the unhoused, we can have a dedicated staff member that can very quickly respond to such emergency service requests. Because that was the reason that was cited why we couldn't do the Civic Center during the last emergency shelters that we were sort of in a holding pattern with the county to provide staff for that. If we had a city health and human services, we would be able to rapidly respond to emergency health and human service needs. And I think that would be much more appropriate in trying to have some sort of rapid response coordination between multiple levels of government. So yeah, just something to think about there. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Meisler. Good evening, sir. Yeah, I'm kind of confused to hear that jump bikes are back. When they went away, I was like, okay, jump bikes are gone. I could have predicted this. So it's like the couch is dead along the couch. Okay, great, jump bikes. I call them jump bikes because you have to jump over them when people leave them in the middle of the sidewalk. Let's see. I've been reading a lot about the George Floyd. Let's see. The George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which they were pushing for early in the year. January, February, you were hearing about in the news. I haven't heard much about it. And the articles that I've been able to just casually on cursory manner look up on the internet, you don't, I mean, you don't see that they've made progress with that. Which is too bad because yeah, I mean, the way we police our communities is pertinent to everybody's health and safety. It's one of the things off the White House.gov website says it's like criminal, like an interest in abating crime and an interest in social justice are not exclusive, they're mutually reinforcing goals. I like some of the things that you could really, you could really kind of apply some of these goals they have in the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. Like mobile, let me see, mobile crisis response, de-escalation training, anti-bias training. Let's see. Help prevent crimes from occurring in the first place, mental health and substance use disorder services. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Anyone else online, one more online? Good evening, person online. Yes, this is good. The last time the Westbrook Drive response plan was presented, many people felt the attitude was one of oh well, climate change, the road fell in, better make it one way, Laudita, cut and run retreat is the plan. I hope and sense that the attitude is changing to take a firm stand in assigning a first priority to protecting valuable homes and valuable public transport and recreational property by holding the erosion line at the most vulnerable Westbrook sites with additional and stronger revetments while considering traffic changes only if they constitute an improvement. Unless there is an engineering or unsolvable reason, I don't see why the line to hold shouldn't include the now missing pathway to allow the maximum use. Why give up anything? I attended the London Nelson Center Westbrook Drive event which was much needed, but I still didn't quite hear that commitment but almost. What I don't want to see or hear is some phony public engagement and a phony study where the decision as it seemed before has really already been made to do the least actually a retreat where it is made to look like all the public wants is a bike lane. It warmed my heart to see nobody was at the climate change table because nobody except the fringe wants to see Westcliffe drive fall anymore into the sea without doing 100% of whatever it takes to prevent that happening. The save Westcliffe leaders are pushing in my opinion and historical and false history lesson claiming 350 yards of Westcliffe has a road in the last 100 years citing aerial photos. Well, I looked at that evidence and that 1928 photos shows a fuzzy picture of cliff or factors of when taken over to Tide's time of year or whatever at a low sea level make accurate interpretation difficult but is real clear where the ocean is and we haven't lost more than 50 yards. Okay, since Delaware Plateau Alto all existed back then they're laid out on perfect hard yard intervals. My measurements indicate again about 50, 70 yards of woodrow has been lost in those 95 years, not 350. That's still 854 inches a year, not six feet and I wish I could say more but very precise measurements of erosion have been taken with high res LIDAR and the erosion's really one in two and a half inches a year, not two feet. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Good evening. Again, for listening, I wanted to read something from the Brown Act and that's in relation to the invitation that I'm benefiting from now of talking about something that is not on the agenda. The question is whether there should be that restriction of not allowing the agenda but that's the question I want to ask about doesn't the Brown Act really require the council to have an agenda which is open to the public to ask about the agenda? That is to focus on and understand the deliberation deliberations of the council when it's making all these decisions. I found that all the discussion here very interesting but let me read out, the Brown Act starts out by saying the legislature finds and declares that the public councils and agencies in the state exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. And it goes on later. The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. Therefore, every agenda for regular meetings shall provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the legislative body on any item that has been described in the notice for the meaning before or during consideration of that item. It seems to me like that's an explicit requirement under the Brown Act that the council be open to comment from the public about items on the agenda. And I, my personally, I hope will accept that and I would very much benefit from and I'm sure other people would as well if to, so that we can monitor, the public can monitor the debates and the discussions better. I would very much, I think it'd be very efficient if each meeting would start out with each member on a controversial issue giving their initial. A minute over your time, so wrap it up. Okay, I will make a suggestion that when there's a controversial issue on the table that each member say very briefly at the beginning of the debate why you are inclined currently to say yes or no to the motion on the table. Thank you so much. Thank you, appreciate your participation. Thank you, sir. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? No. No. We stand adjourned for one half hour. We will return at 730. The ticket could last year. Maybe that second pair of hugs was for you, Renee. She's being buffed. We'll see you on Wednesday. She's covered like that. It was a size six. Thanks for the money tonight. Oh my. 17. Santa Cruz City Council is back in session for its evening session. The hour of just after 730 p.m., we are on item number 20 on our agenda. This is an item related to a potential 2024 affordable workforce housing bond. If I might introduce this item. Council members, you hear when you were candidates and since you've been in office for years, some months and some years, we know that certainly housing and housing affordability across a range of incomes is if not the highest ranking issue among voters, it's certainly one and two with housing and homeless and the challenges around all that. And in listening to you folks, since December the 13th and hearing your priorities in many of these conversations on many issues, it seemed that perhaps it might make sense for the council to see if there is a way that the public might consider advancing a bond measure to the ballot with the assistance of the city government facilitating a process which could lead to that. Had meetings like you all have had during your time in office with the city manager, the city attorney, our bond council, our financial advisor, keeping it within the context of the Brown Act with some of you. I've had a direct conversation about this item with two of you and wanted to bring this forward. The thought is that the March ballot might be a good ballot to have housing bond on there. It's not a great ballot. You all run for office, you know what difference is between a March primary and a November general turned out. We're gonna have a lower turnout in March and a higher turnout in November. But in thinking about that, it appears as if maybe the city might wanna do something in November of next year, which like other jurisdictions may do that as well. So the March ballot might be a less cluttered ballot, but then the question is it's a lower turnout ballot. So is there a way to help the community move forward on a ballot measure? In discussing this with the city attorney, he will certainly speak for himself. I received at council that there is a path to approval of an Avalorum property tax bond measure on affordable housing, on workforce affordable housing. We'll discuss that issue this evening as well. If that arrives on the ballot by way of citizens gathering signatures, as opposed to the legislative body placing the measure on the ballot. So thinking that combination of March ballot might be good because it's less cluttered, but it's a lower turnout. Is there a legal path to look at a different voter threshold, the answer that I've received from council and which you will hear tonight as well as from our bond council and from our financial advisor is that that path is a worn path. And the bond council which certainly shall we say they are conservative in nature. And financial advisors are conservative in nature. We had a zoom call with them the other day in which they supported the city attorney's view and said that from their point of view in terms of the marketability of such a bond that would be put to the voters and the voters who pass on a majority vote that from bond council's point of view and the financial advisor's point of view, they're not concerned about that. They believe, in fact, they believe that that is a worn enough path that they would have no issue with a bond issue. There's some questions about when that should happen. We can get into that a little later. As to process, it, again, in listening to you all, it occurs to me that the voters of the city, if they are participating and they are the leaders of assembling a bond, they put it together. We help them in facilitating their work, but they are putting this bond together. And in effect, we hand it off to them, sometime probably around the end of this month, perhaps. We hand off the product that they have put together that we have helped facilitate. And then it's up to them, gather the signatures. That's a second test, I think, of the voter sentiment. First one is we'll do some public opinion polling and we'll have a public transparent process to facilitate the community putting together a bond. We have another opportunity then to test the voter mood through signature gathering. If there's a market for this, people will sign it. If there's not, they won't. And then the third test is obviously the election itself. In terms of the content, I think that it's been pretty clear, again, from things said by council members over the years and certainly since I've had the pleasure of serving with you, that there are a rather broad variety of needs. The reason I call it, have slapped the label of workforce housing and that doesn't have to stick. This is a characterization for tonight, for this item, is that I think we know that although there's probably not a legal definition yet of workforce housing, I think there's a practical definition. Some people would include in that definition some of our own employees. People who work in this government and have a hard time finding housing or they have to travel great distances. We certainly know that the makeup of our economy here has a very significant component for the service industry and those folks have a big challenge in living and working in the same community. I also, I don't think it's a stretch to say that there are folks, we know this to be true, who have jobs, are working, and are living in their cars. I've heard you all talk about that since I've been here. We also know that there are folks who are without homes who would like to work, but the instability of not having housing gets in the way of being able to move forward in that regard. So when I say workforce housing, I mean that broadly, very broadly, and leave it up to the community who will show up at these meetings if we do this to say how many buckets are there and how much goes in each bucket. Let them make that determination as we move along. I want to thank Council Member Newsom, Council Member Brown for agreeing to co-authored this. As it turns out, we also constitute the Budget and Revenue Committee for, subcommittee rather for this body. And it may, I'd like to at least put it out there as a possibility that if you want to move forward with this, that perhaps this subcommittee that you've already established, that we get portfolio to go conduct those meetings. So there's a context in which the meetings would happen. We would do it just like any other subcommittee of this body, we would be there and essentially be conveners or presiding members, and it would be taking input from the community. Let me pause at this point and see if Council Member Newsom, Council Member Brown would like to make comments on this and then certainly entertain that and then we will also entertain public comment on this. Mr. Newsom. And thank you, Mayor Keely. So housing is obviously a great issue in our community and especially lack of housing and especially affordable housing. And this item will direct staff to start a process of engaging the community on an affordable housing bond and affordable workforce housing bond and helping craft it as Mayor Keely said into a process of bringing about a bond. And so I'm happy to support this agenda item with Mayor Keely and thank Mayor Keely for his work on us so far. Thank you, sir. Yes, thank you. I'll just say I have been during my six and a half years on the city council and prior to that for many decades, really immersed in efforts to get affordable housing built in our community to ensure the preservation of affordable housing stock. And so the idea of a local funding source that can help close the gap on projects that can help us achieve our goals in getting housing built and getting housing built at a price point that is affordable to our workforce and low income people in our community. So I'm just thrilled about the possibility of exploring this with the community. I think it makes sense to really get out there and have a real community engagement in the process having been involved in citizen initiatives as well. It is a lot of work, but it is an opportunity, as you've said, to get a better sense of where the community is at. I think the polling, the idea of polling is really important. And with respect to this being a really open community process and the city's role in leading that, I think is really important. We've seen initiatives over the years that are full of good ideas and aren't fully vetted. And a lot of time goes into trying to use this process to, you know, for people to get good things they want. And this is an opportunity for us to get what we all want. And so I'm really happy to be signed on and to move forward. Thank you. Council Member Watkins, and then certainly Vice Mayor, we'll go around the table here, Ms. Watkins. Yeah, no, thank you for bringing this to us. I know that there's been talk about something like this coming forward. I guess my question is just more of a clarification question around what the motion is, which is to look at us placing an affordable house. Okay, so if I could get clarification, because what I heard was that we'll do the research, we'll direct staff to do the research and we'll invest in some polling. However, what I think I heard from you, Mayor, is that then that information will inform a community initiative. But I don't, so I'm very comfortable with getting research. I think we should really absolutely 100% try to get a poll set in our community in terms of where they're at with what they're wanting our funding or their funding to go towards in terms of priorities. But I just wanted to get a point of clarification on the recommendation. And we're going to do that as we move along here this evening. I see. Wrote that out at first. This is an evolving iterative conversation. I see. So you're exactly right. This will change the evening. Potentially, okay. And if I could, in terms of the outcomes associated with that, just knowing, especially with the work with children's funds, that if you have a petition ballot initiative, then you would only need 50 plus one really to get dedicated resources. Whereas if it was put on by a legislative body, you would need the two thirds majority, correct? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Others? Madam Vice Chair, excuse me, Vice Mayor. Thank you. It's no secret in this room that I don't not like taxes and especially property taxes, but I do think it's important to bring this item forward so that the community can weigh in on the issue. And so I think the polling is a really important component. And again, the signature gathering, if it comes to that, and then let the voters weigh in. And if that's where people want to spend their money, that's what the will of the community is, then that's where we should go. So I'm prepared to support this. Thank you very much. I know that that is not an easy issue philosophically for you. And thank you for seeing your way clear on that. Can we have one more question? Certainly. I did have one more question. Yeah, we will go around one first round and then we'll do another one. Ms. Brunner. Thank you. And actually, Council Member Watkins asked my question to you on what the motion was. I wasn't sure if it was, but investing, I think it's important. There were no attachments with this. And I had a couple people reach out to understand $35,000. What is that for? What is polling? And it costs that much. And so I think it's really important for folks who don't understand that process to know that polling is a randomized selection of voters that get a call usually. It's usually done via phone. And I just wanted to take a moment to explain that. And they have a chance to answer some questions that are put together by a polling firm. And they can weigh in. And if there's a great majority that in that polling says yes, we absolutely want to want the city to pursue an affordable workforce housing bond, then that helps inform the next steps. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was out there for those that reached out about that process. And it sounds like a lot of money, but I think that is the important step in us moving forward in this. And I know from being on that revenue and budget committee, it's your job to really find ways to fund needs of the city. And I think housing and workforce housing and affordable housing, all of these terms, like you said, like with workforce, no legal definition, but we can all identify that that is a need. So I think it's great to explore this further and see what the polling suggests. If I might, in response to that, provide a little more information. The thought with respect to the public opinion research work is that, and Mr. Huffaker and his staff have been working on this as well, it is that if we're going to have a very open, transparent public process, whoever wants to show up shows up and we publicize it broadly. When they get there, I think a way to put some sideboards on everybody's expectations is to show them the results of a public opinion research document, which says, well, they're inclined to do this, but not this, they go this far, but not this far, whatever it may be, the poll will help them, people sort of regulate their own appetites, I think, and see what is real. It's a great way. And based on that, plus what people want to advocate for, then hopefully a bond comes together. Ms. Contar, Johnson? Sure, yeah, I don't have questions, but I'll just make some comments. I really appreciate you, Mayor Keely, and Council Members Newsom and Brown, bringing this forward. I think this is absolutely the right process to gauge the community will and readiness for something like this. I personally know that there is a need, and again, we've talked about it all day today, and I think the Citizens Initiative, I love how you outline the first test is the poll, the second test is the signatures, the third is the votes. And I think that's the appropriate process. So I'm happy to support this, and that's it. Oh, I had one more thing. During this process, I think it will be important to define what we mean by workforce housing. Of course. And then, as you said, we'll see how the polls come out, but what will this pay for? So I know that'll be outlined clearly, but specifically defining workforce housing, because that term gets kind of thrown around. So, thank you. Certainly. So if I might just comment. Yeah, we're right with you. We're right with you. With regard to this public opinion research, so again, city manager and others have been working on this with FM3, there are several good polling firms around California that I believe you can rely very much on their research. It's not advocacy polling, it's genuine public opinion research polling. As to the questions that are being asked, how to construct that, we're going to be having another meeting tomorrow morning on that. But again, it is designed, let me say it this way, FM3, my experience with FM3 and the reason I like them a lot is some polling firms will cut the poll in the favor of the client, right? They'll cut it slightly. Not a lot, not that you can't rely on it, not that they're dishonest or something, but there's polling methodology and there's polling methodology. And what I like about FM3 is they slightly cut it against what your interest is. They make it harder for you, which I think is a very good thing. But anyway, Mr. Huffaker, would you like to talk about how the poll is being assembled at this point? I think you described it well, mayor. And I know Councilor Bruner was asking about process. I do want to just make clear that we collected quotes from several nationally recognized polling firms. FM3 is one of the top three firms that does this work. As the mayor described, it is statistically valid research, which means that they will be including a sample size that gives us a good read on how the community feels about a number of issues. We're approaching this work broadly as we will look at the range of options around our community's housing needs. And I think most importantly, we want to hear from the community in terms of what areas within the broader envelope of housing there's support for wanting to pursue revenue options. So that's really the intent of the poll and allowing the findings of the poll to inform where the council and where the community go from here on the issues. That's the first step. Eventually, depending on the findings of that and moving forward with the next step, there will be a handoff to a community coalition that would have the responsibility of then going out and doing the signature gathering and ultimately coming forward to the council for consideration of placing a measure on the ballot down the road this next year. So this is early days and that's where we're at in the process. Ms. Watkins. I appreciate that. And I did have a question about the polling and so I appreciate the fact that we're gonna have a really reputable firm working on this because I do feel like the framing of the question really matters. I guess my question is around the community handoff, essentially, is that necessarily the path that we're committing to this evening and okay, I'm seeing Tony Shaker's head no because I think there's two ways, right? You can put it on. You can either do the gathering, the signature gathering and or the legislative body could potentially put it on. And I read this originally as if we were gonna be potentially considering it for putting it on. Not that I'm opposed to a signature gathering process. I actually, I think that's a really great process to help educate and get a pulse from the community as well. But I'm just kind of curious where that shifted between the agenda report coming out and tonight kind of moving in that direction. Because it's a lot of work to put a ballot measure on. I mean, I know in terms of a lot of the research I've done, it's a lot of work to get something on the ballot that way. I'm sure the mayor and council member Brown and Newsom will have some thoughts on this as well. I'm obviously reaching the 50 plus one threshold as attractive in terms of voter support versus a two thirds threshold. Having said that, the path towards placing an item on the ballot by voter initiative is heavy left. And so I think, again, leaning on the findings of the poll to get a better sense of how strong the community support is for some of the elements we might consider will also influence what process makes the most sense. And if I could, I'd just say also if it's community initiated then the community also plays a role in crafting the language essentially. So we relinquish that responsibility or that choice essentially to be able to craft what we think would work for our city as well. So I'm not prepared necessarily to say without information and data, which direction to go at this moment, but I appreciate kind of the options essentially. A couple of other points. One is if I can go back to polling for just a moment. The way that these legit polling firms work in terms of who do they sample is that first of all, they are only sampling likely voters in next marches primary. That's what they're doing. The next thing they do is they then model what they predict that turnout to be. How many Democrats, how many Republicans, how many declined to state, how many women, how many men, how many homeowners, how many renters. What is that likely voter pool going to look like? They poll that group and they poll until they get that group. And that's how you can have some confidence in at least that snapshot at that moment of the electorate that might come to the polls in March. Secondly, at least it's my view of this having been the author of a couple of statewide bond measures that a poll is a snapshot. A poll and a couple of tracking polls is a movie. What you really wanna see is the movie. And so as we move along in this, likely part of the handoff is to hand off the tracking polls to the public as well, to some entity that will be for all intents of the campaign committee, if you will. One other comment on the signature gathering. The reason time is short here and we would like to do three of these meetings a week from Thursday, the next Thursday, and the next Wednesday in open public ways is so that we can get this and hand it off to them. They're probably only gonna have 85 to 90 days to gather the signatures when they typically have 180. That goes then directly to the question of this group of somebodies out there that's gonna participate in this, that we say here it is. They are going to have to have a very aggressive campaign because I think that volunteer signature gathering is only gonna get you part way there when you only have 85 days to gather them. I have a question about that. So if the timeline and the process that you're outlining doesn't play out and they aren't able to gather those signatures, then are you assuming that that could potentially come back to this legislative body for placing on the ballot if the polling is favorable? Yeah. I don't know what we would do. I really don't know what we would do. Yeah, yeah, okay, sure. I will tell you, my own political judgment would be if they can't get it done, I don't wanna place a ballot measure on March that we can't attain the threshold vote to approve it. And if the community is not favorable in terms of the polling and information you're receiving. Exactly. Okay, so we have other touch points where we'll meet as a council to be, okay. That's what I would, that's what I would, yeah. Great, thank you, because I wasn't reading that. Okay, let me ask you a question. I'd like to ask Mr. Kandadi, would you take a moment and share with the public and the council your opinion on this matter and then also report out the conversations with both the bond council and the financial advisor? Yes, happy to do that. Thank you. Mayor Keely, members of the council. So what we're talking about here is a tax measure that would be used to finance a bond issue where the proceeds of the tax would be designated for the purposes set forth in the measure. And that's called a special tax under California law. And so what this implicates is Proposition 218, which was enacted by California voters in 1996 and it amended the California constitution to add articles 13C and D. And what it essentially does is it places procedural and substantive restrictions on city's ability to raise various taxes and fees and assessments. And so in a very grossly oversimplified way, a special tax under Proposition 218 is required to obtain a two-thirds majority vote in order to pass. A general tax, on the other hand, only requires a simple majority under Prop 218. However, unless the tax is based upon a unanimous declaration by the city council of a fiscal emergency, that the tax has to be placed, the general tax has to be placed on the ballot to coincide with the city council election. Special taxes can be on any ballot. It was a case in 2017 decided by the California Supreme Court entitled the California Cannabis Coalition versus the City of Upland, in which the California Supreme Court essentially said that a general tax measure that qualified for the ballot by citizen initiative, it was a tax on cannabis gross receipts that Upland could use for any general revenue purpose, did not need to comply with the requirement that the election coincide with a city council election. Court essentially said those procedural and substantive requirements were not imposed on the voters, they were imposed on the city council, which led many people to speculate as to whether or not other requirements of Prop 218 were similarly not applicable to a citizen initiated measure. And the question as to the simple majority versus two-thirds majority vote was answered in a 2021 decision by the first Appellate District Court of Appeal involving the city and county of San Francisco where San Francisco voters placed on the ballot a tax on corporate gross receipts to fund among other things services for the homeless and other special purposes. And the first Appellate District relying on the California Supreme Court's decision in Upland concluded that also the two-thirds majority vote requirement is not applicable to a tax placed on the ballot by citizen initiative and it only requires a simple majority vote. That decision was subject to a petition for review before the California Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court declined to review it indicating essentially the Supreme Court's acknowledgement of the validity of that decision. So that really provides the legal framework for how a citizen initiative could be placed on the ballot and pass with a simple majority vote. My concern when this initially came to my attention is that I know that the bond markets are sometimes fickle. And so I was concerned that if we did this somewhat novel approach to a bond issue, would it spook the bond markets? And so I consulted with the bond council that we've used for many years, Jones Hall and we met just last week and the attorney from Jones Hall, his name is Chick Adams basically stated that his firm could write an unqualified legal opinion supporting the validity of the tax measure which is what the bond market would look at when bond investors are trying to make a decision about whether or not they're going to risk investing in a municipal bond. So an unqualified opinion from bond council is what bond investors would look at. We also have a financial advisor that we've used most recently in connection with the water department's issue of certificates of participation and the financial advisor likewise said that they thought that that was a viable path forward. One caveat is that there is a measure that has qualified for the November 2024 ballot put out by the California business round table that would close the loophole created by the upland and San Francisco cases. However, if we are successful with a measure in March, in other words, if a measure is placed by the voters on the March 2024 ballot and Garner's a simple majority but not a two thirds majority vote, the CBRT measure could undo that. However, if we've already gone to the bond market before the vote has taken place then under the contracts clause of the California constitution, those bonds would not be subject to a legal challenge even assuming that the CBRT measure passes. So that's the legal framework that we have sort of plotted out as one option for the council should you decide to move in that direction. The other option obviously would be a lot easier because it would just entail the council ordering by resolution a measure put on the ballot for the same purpose. That would however, again, require a two thirds majority vote to pass. I might add finally that the city of Oakland placed a general obligation bond measure on its November 2022 ballot sort of along the lines of what we're discussing and it got something like 75% voter approval. So it passed with a very comfortable super majority vote. So I think the intent with regard to the polling is to test voter sentiments here in Santa Cruz as to both the magnitude of the issue as well as the projects that the public wants to see the city pursue with the funding. Other questions or comments? Ms. Watkins. Thank you. Just because I've been tracking a lot of this especially as it related to a lot of the children spending. So I'm very familiar with these legal circumstances that were within. It's very interesting that the timing is of what it is in terms of the November potential threat to this. So, and then you answered my question in regards to the bond. So I appreciate the legal context because I think that really informs why you made your comments to what you did. There we go, all right. Let me see if there's anyone with this evening who would wish to comment on this item. Good evening. I've been in the trades 40 years. I've been a general contractor for 35 years and I'd like to invite you to get out of the weeds and look a little broader. Housing is a mathematical equation. Cost to the house and the ability to pay equals home ownership. This city has done nothing but focus on housing which lines the pockets of developers with cash. And you have totally left alone the ability of the citizens of this city to pay for that housing. You haven't tried to raise the minimum wage. You haven't offered a down payment program where the city floats a bond to make qualified buyers the advance of the down payment to establish a mortgage. You only worked on one side of the equation and as long as you do, it will be a big problem for the people in this city. For the people coming from over the hill, no problem. They're making lots of money. I defy you to get in any one of your social groups and ask how many of you are making $143,000 a year? The median income for this city. And I bet you you'll see very few hands raised. Thank you, Mr. Brokaw. Anyone else who's with us this evening wish to testify on this item? Good evening, sir. I suppose I have a couple of questions but this is about a bond measure to get funds for the city like the income of the city has somehow dropped. Well, when the personal businesses were destroyed due to dogmas of Brock Chisholm, what's really going on? Are you guys gonna take bonds from the BRICS currency? Because the US dollar is really not doing so good. I'm not quite sure what to say. I learned some things. I'm gonna probably just, I'm gonna leave it at that because there's other things to talk on but this is quite somewhat confusing but I wasn't kidding about the currency because what is coming in the next coming months to the United States? Thank you, sir. Good evening. Good evening. I got lost in your discussion. It seemed to bounce around all over the place. I'm just gonna address what I see which is the affordable workforce housing bond. I've lived in Santa Cruz my whole life, was born and raised here and when I was young, the way you bought a house is you saved up 20% down payment. You had a good reasonable job. You put your down payment down and you made payments and then somewhere in the late 90s the predatory lending schemes came out where they just gave everybody money and then suddenly everybody was getting into a bidding war because they had these all this fake access to funds and we saw the prices of housing jump significantly. We've been through several cycles of booms and busts and booms and busts as the gentleman before me indicated. People have lost their jobs through engineered shutdowns of small businesses which I don't think is fair. My biggest question is we've spent six hours here listening to a housing crisis which I think fits the problem reaction solution and I can see you all already have a solution in mind for everybody who's experiencing the reaction to the problem that was brought here in Santa Cruz. I'm not seeing any factual data and statistics on how many of the homeless people are actually native residents of Santa Cruz. People who grew up here went to school, the kids, everyone in my genre, a lot of people my age range grew up here, many were able to stay and a lot of people got priced out and had to leave and I've listened to the lamenting stories about kids who grew up here but can't afford to buy a home here. We had big tech move in during the COVID lockdowns and they jacked the prices up even more. Rentals of a home here are around $6,000 a month. That's untenable for most people but it's because all the Menlo Park and San Francisco kids came down here with their big tech money. Where is the data and the statistics and prioritizing native Santa Cruzans? Would things have been differently if say people who owned homes here didn't just sell out to the highest bidder but prioritize their community members? People who grew up here, we might not have such an overly inflated false pricing in the real estate market. These are my concerns. Thank you. Anyone else who's with us? We have two folks online. Is that correct, Ms. Bush? Certainly, let's take the first one. Good evening. Yes, hello. Well, what the double speak words, affordable workhouse housing bond really means is when control deed restricted, all property owners and other renters will subsidize government housing with zero benefit to them and will be forced to go into long-term debt in a move to destroy the free market and housing and make it a socialist-style government-controlled housing paid for with an end around Prop 13, ever higher property taxes, paying on a debt of principal plus interest for most of the rest of their lives. For everyone who pays, it is worse than your past socialist giveaway subsidies of public property building incentives because at least then no one goes into debt over those, they just lose public property access. It's not a tax on current income. It's not a tax on economic sales activity. It is placing the entire public an expensive long-term debt at a really bad time for that where a vast most will get less than nothing for it. As to the worker housing angle, occupants as easily may already be on welfare, which this is just more of. It's people who can't afford to live their housing and will increase government dependence and invite poverty to come and stay in the city, your specialty. Once dependent, they will be loathed to move beyond dependence just like welfare, which it is. But in this case, you don't have a legitimacy of the federal government to provide for the public welfare, you overstep and misdirect your mission. It's almost all the public paying forever for a few somebody else's subsidy or rent control. There are already plenty of housing projects underway that will greatly increase the vacancy rate worth waiting for evaluation. You ignore the risks of overbuilding and will population decline or housing bubble burst at expensive spy high interest rates, no less. And you know the vast majority of all extra housing built will at best only accommodate planned expansions of UCSC students and the staff when that happens. Students obtaining college degrees or staff aren't the sob story low income targets you're selling this on. I eat hot dogs and beans, work, took out loans in college, and I never thought anyone owed me anything. The mostly broke Bernie and cultural Marxists will be happy to fill out your biased expensive surveys and perhaps get signatures. They worship the government and do as told others think for themselves. The word useful idiots comes to mind. If this is a general tax, it's the same as voter rejected failed measure F but with a swap grab for property taxes instead with no insurance of any purpose except lining the city's budget. Do you know the meaning of no? That was like seven months ago. Did the people get their money's worth on the consultant surveys and cost to put measure F on the ballot? You could have lit a match to that money, no difference. If this is a special tax, it's a two thirds vote needed. Although you've got a sneaky way of trying to get around that. Let's not waste the money either, which is far more than 40,000 to put a housing bomb on the ballot that in the past has been a coin flip to approve. But in today's world, people have had it. Up to the Chrome Dome would ever hire. Today people tell the government, no, you've controlled and mismanaged enough of my money and my life is right here right now today. And is why the people voted measure F down because they've had enough. Thank you, sir. We have a second person. Is that correct? Two more now. Two more. All right, let's take the next one. Good evening. Good evening, Councilman McKeeley. First, I'd like you to clarify if this is a, the purpose of this is for workforce housing or permanent supportive housing because it is buried in the staff report says permanent supportive housing. Those are two very different types of housing. And I think the support for each one would vary greatly. So you shouldn't have to clarify that. I am in favor of workforce housing. I do wonder though, since the city has been bragging about being only 6% of California city to meet its arena goals for the current cycle, why we need to put a bond on when we're already in at least the top 6%. So that's another question to answer. And then I think you really need to look at the cause of the high price of housing, particularly rental housing, and it really is UCSC. And so any, although I support workforce housing, really any city initiative is going to be all along by UCSC currently with the LRDP, the plan is to increase enrollment by 8,000 students, 4,000 of which or more will be living off campus. You know, we've got student housing west, that's going to be a net of 2,200 student beds. People toss around the 3,000 number, but that's the gross number. The net will be 2,200, a few hundred more, maybe for Kresge, but you can already see that the deficit. And so, you know, if we produce a few hundred houses, that's great, I support it, but it's not the real cause. I mean, either we should be, you guys should be pressing UCSC to put up some money to build housing, or you should be pressing the legislature to get UCSC to build more housing on campus, but housing that's affordable because student housing west prices are not affordable. So even if they built more at the current prices, they wouldn't be able to fill it. At 2023, 24 UCSC apartment rates, student housing west would go today for $3,959 for a one bedroom apartment with cramming three students in there, up to a five bedroom apartment at $11,856. Finally, this end run around the two-thirds majority, Mr. Grandotti neglected to inform you that there is an active legal theory, and I think it might have even been tested, that if the city council does what you're talking about doing, which is in effect, acting as private citizens to get around that two-thirds majority, that can be challenged in court. So you might wanna do some more legal research to make sure that what you're playing on doing will really fly if anyone challenges it in court. That's all I have to say, thank you. Thank you very much. We have one more second. Sir, would you like to testify on this? Come on forward, and then we'll take the last person online. Good evening. Oh yeah, I just had to jump up. When I said they need to build more housing on campus, and I just don't think that's a remedy. You've got real severe housing insufficiency at UCSC. The campus has the highest, I guess the percentage of students which are have been or are homeless, but at the same time, the state wants to overenroll. I think we're pressured to take more and more students, and it's somewhat unfair to people like workforce, people seeking housing, people seeking affordable housing in the city when they're crowded to adjacent communities, or I mean, I feel like, I almost feel like saying, if you do get this money, linking last meetings, maps of the perspective areas where things could be built. I almost feel like suggesting if you do get this passed that you consider utilizing it in sort of a creative way by building housing a little bit further away from UCSC, so it's not seen as a possible place for those students to co-opt. Sorry to, I mean, if any, I'm stepping on any toes or making anybody uncomfortable by saying that, but unfortunately it is sort of a blind spot for many, many people that the university just can't continue getting arbitrarily larger in terms of its enrollment numbers. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Ms. Bush, anyone else? One more. Good evening. Thank you. Good evening. Julianne. Good evening. Thank you. So I just wanted to echo what the very first person speaking for public comments said. I think that's such an essential point that what's needed is not just affordable housing, but a multifaceted approach that makes sure we can afford to pay rent and save and eventually purchase a home. And affordable housing is one component of that, but it can't be the only component. So I wouldn't view it as an either or, and I would commend the housing bond that I would just say that definitely, if you're doing that, also do the other things that will make that housing bond super successful. Look at ways to lift up those who really need deeply affordable housing. And then I have some questions about this that hopefully y'all can speak to. So one is what exactly would need to happen on the community side? As council member Watkins pointed out, it's a lot of work to get something on the ballot through voter initiative and a cynical take, not my take, but the cynical take might view this as punting to the community. So I'm curious if the city has the means legally to help facilitate a citizen led ballot moving forward. I get that the community feedback and polling is a lot of money in my work that the city would be doing here. I don't want to minimize that, but I'm curious, does the city have means to do anything else after that or does it really then fall to the community? And then as far as the process for community feedback and polling, I wanted to encourage that you pay special attention to the populations with the greatest need for affordable housing and those at the greatest risk of displacement, especially from the downtown plan. Part of polling is looking at what can pass, but if what passes doesn't reflect what is most needed by our most at risk community members, then we're not actually making good policy. We're just making policy that will pass. And those are two different things. So if as Mayor Keely pointed out, the polling groups are looking at likely voters in next March as primary, then my concern would be, are we looking at political feasibility or are we looking at community need when we think about how to design an affordable housing bond and what it might specifically fund? And who are those polling groups gonna say is likely to show up and how many of those likely voters are actually going to live in or need affordable housing? And I get it's a tricky balancing act to look at feasibility versus need, but I wanted to raise this as something that deserves a lot of attention and discussion, whether it's a citizen or a city council originated affordable housing ballot that ends up on our ballot in March. And then finally, I just wanted to vocalize support for deeply affordable housing and affordable housing that emphasizes multi-bedroom units that will be available to families. And I just wanted to ask, did I understand it correctly? The plan is to hold these feedback meetings in the next three weeks or maybe I misunderstood that. Thank you. Respond to the gentleman quickly. Yes, sir, you do understand that correctly. Starting a week from tomorrow and for, I'm sorry, week from day after tomorrow, a week from this Thursday, Thursday, the next Thursday and the next Wednesday, probably something like 5.30 to 8.30 or later. We will, you will see in a moment, I've got a revised motion here that I think more accurately reflects the desire here of the body. But yes, sir, you do have that right. Let me suggest a motion and see if anyone would like to make this a motion to direct the budget and revenue subcommittee of the city council and staff to initiate a process to engage the public in consideration of an affordable workforce housing bond measure via public signature gathering on the March 2024 ballot, including engagement of a research firm and scheduling community meetings and outreach. I will wait for a moment and be glad to, any part of that you need me to work through. You need to repeat it again? Certainly glad to do that. Motion to direct the budget and revenue subcommittee of the city council and staff to initiate a process to engage the public in consideration of an affordable workforce housing bond measure via public signature gathering on the March 2024 ballot, including the engagement of a research firm and scheduling community meetings and outreach. You willing to make that? I will make that motion. You willing to second? Sure. Second by commentary Johnson. Okay, good. We're good on, yes, please. Ms. Watkinson. May I ask a question for clarification on your motion and that you are identifying that the petition gathering is a component of that? Do you want to specify that in the motion? Yeah, so what I've put here is via public signature gathering. The idea there is so it is clear that our role as the city is to facilitate the public's ability to assemble a bond if they want to, that would then arrive on the ballot via signature gathering by the public. Okay. Yes. Okay, just making sure. Okay, good. Question, Ms. Brunner. That's my question as well. The way it's worded, it's to initiate a process to engage the public via signature gathering. So it sounds like we're engaging the public via signature gathering. Is that how it, I just, I don't see the language yet, so. Okay, let me see if in a moment, Ms. Bush will put that up and we can work on this together. So I believe maybe what we could do there is after the word workforce measure, put a comma. I'm sorry, yes, put a comma. It's an extra public. And strike the word public. And then on for the March 2024 ballot. The very end is, so you have that right. And then it is, and scheduling community meetings and outreach. And scheduling community meetings and outreach. So thank you for the maker. Yes, yes, I can see over here. I realized the word public was in the wrong place, but I think it should be inserted after via. Okay, thank you. And mayor, if I may just ask a question to make sure I'm understanding intent here clearly. Given that we are going to allow the polling to determine whether or not the process is one of which is a citizen's initiative versus a question that comes back to this body for consideration of placing on the March ballot. Would it make sense to just simply strike via public signature gathering? On or for the March 2024 ballot and keep that broad to keep options open. That's the question. Here's my concern about that is, I'll be probably the most surprised person in the city if polling shows that on the March ballot, the two thirds of vote measure. I mean, we'll wait to see what the reason says and we'll wait to see what the public says as they show up at these meetings. I think by saying that the outset that via signature gathering, we are committing ourselves sort of belt and suspenders to committing ourselves to this public process as opposed to the legislative body. I mean, frankly, one of the criticisms of the empty home tax or our downtown, our future was that those measures got to the ballot via signature, but they were done privately. One of the criticisms was no chance to iterate that, no chance for public participation, et cetera. So I think people like the signature gathering way of getting something to the ballot. We're curing, I think, the private nature of people who get items to the ballot via signature, that the product that they're asking people to sign is not a publicly vetted process. So I'm trying to sort of belt and suspenders these so there'll be no question that this measure, we will give them a draft to work on when we give them polling data, briefings on housing conditions and so on at the first meeting. We're gonna also give them a draft so that we're not holding a series of affordable housing salons. We're holding a series of drafting sessions with the public. And they can amend that any way they want, but it is their product. Questions, comments? I think I had a similar question to what Matt brought up in terms of is that restricting our options essentially by having that, but I hear your thoughts on that and your perspective and I understand. In terms of the framing of it, it feels to me that to initiate a process to engage the public and comma, including engagement of a research firm in scheduling community meetings and outreach is sort of before then regarding a consideration. So I would move that, yeah, I'm sorry, I would move that up because I feel like engaging the public really is about the, so it would be, so after ballot of March 2024 ballot, the comma including engagement would go after public, engage the public comma, including engagement of a research firm and scheduling of community meetings and outreach and then comma, regarding a consideration for these purposes because it feels like that's sequentially the process. Right, right. That's my mom coming through. Isn't it? Is it English teacher or an editor? Yeah, or you as an educator, yes. Principal, school principal, why didn't you figure that out? Looks better, seems better. I know, get with the program. The comma after public, right? We good, look at this, are you good? Is this what, Ms. Watkins, is this what you were looking for? You could put a comma after public if you'd like. Okay, with the maker of the motion. Okay, good second, I believe I might have seconded. Somebody seconded. And Ms. Comtar, John, are you okay with that? Okay, good. For the debate or discussion on the motion, let me add one final note, Mr. Huffaker has assembled a team of city folks who will in effect staff those three public meetings held at the police community room. And thank you for that. And this will be an additional activity on people already having lots of activities and responsibilities. So thank you for doing that. And thank you to the folks who, if this motion passes, will assist us in that regard. For the questions or comments, Ms. Comtar-Johnson. So the three of you are Brown acted on this. If other council members want to attend any one of these community meetings, but not converse with other council members, what would you advise? I will give that some thought and communicate with council members individually. I think it's permissible to attend and not participate, but it always makes me a little squeamish when that happens. So stay away if I need to, but I'm interested in attending at least one of them. So let me do that analysis and I'll be happy to get back to you. Thank you. Thank you for the questions or comments. Clerk will call the roll. Council member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Pellentary-Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Kuhl. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes and so ordered. We are on item number 21, Independent Police Auditor Report. Good afternoon, good evening and good night. Who is presenting on this item? Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Michael Chinaco, your Independent Police Auditor. There we are. Hello, good evening. And I will be doing a high-level presentation along with my colleague, Sam Armarian, a Santa Cruz resident and a part of the IPA team. Welcome to both of you. Thank you. And council, it's good to see some familiar faces and new ones as well. We are going in the interest of time to do a high-level presentation of our report. Thank you, Ms. Bush, for putting up our, a very brief PowerPoint presentation that will guide this report. Just to remind folks about our responsibilities, one of them as the IPA is to provide every year a report of the activities that we have done as your IPA along with our review of the cases, the complaints that were received during that, annual, during that one-year period. And what we have found with regard to how the police department in your city has dealt with these complaints as well as any other recommendations we come up with to improve the process, to improve guidance to officers and to comment on how well the investigations have been done as well as whether the results of those investigations, the dispositions of the complaints were evidence-based and reasonable. Can we go to the next slide, Ms. Bush? These are just summaries of our role in your city. One of the things we do is that we provide an opportunity and an ability for those who are interested in potentially filing a complaint against the city police department to give them an idea of what that process is to assist them in accumulating the information or getting the information to the police department. Sometimes we provide a mechanism to do that. For those who may feel uncomfortable about traveling to the police department or going through normal channels, regular channels, we provide another offloading way in which that information can be collected and then received so that the department can go forward with the investigation. Another part of our responsibilities, as I indicated, is to take a look at complaint investigations and evaluate how well the department did, how thoroughly the department investigated the case and whether the investigation was objective. Finally, with regard to serious incidents, unfortunately your city does not have many of these. I don't think we had any during this reporting period, but any deadly force incidents or incursity deaths, we are also assigned to do a review and report on what we find with regard to that review. Next slide, please. We also provide input on police department policies and procedures. This report talks about some of the recommendations we made over this past calendar year to suggest, make suggestions to improve the police department's policies and procedures. We meet at least quarterly, but usually more often with a police department, just as a check-in to check in with them to see how we think they're doing and to see whether there are any particular enforcement challenges that the department is dealing with. We are, we provide an, we provide public engagement opportunities for community members and advocacy groups. And then in our report, you can see where we've reported on the work we've done in that regard for the past year. And then as tonight, we report to your council on an annual basis with regard to what we're finding. You're on the next slide, please. So these are the activities that we have done over the past year. We have talked with complainants as indicated in our report. We've met with community members. The chiefs has an advisory committee. We attended one of their meetings to advise them about who we are and the resources that we provide as an independent police auditor. And we have met quarterly with the chief and command staff. You can go to the next slide, please. In this period, we reviewed 33 use of force and complaint investigations. That's a high number and is explained in our report. And I think for those who may recall our appearance last year, the department got behind a bit with regard to completing these investigations in a timely way. And as a result, had to catch up. As a result of a new sergeant being assigned to the responsibility of investigating these complaints, he was extremely diligent over the past calendar year. And caught up. And so now we are pleased to be able to report that the department is caught up with regard to the complaint investigations and no longer is behind with regard to them. We have been working particularly on some particular parts of the department's policy. One involves the way in which complaints are received and handled. And the department has been receptive to recommendations we've made in that regard. We obviously last year present our second report and drafted our third report. With regard to the report itself and some of the key parts of that report that is in the package, part of your agenda package, I'm gonna turn to my colleague, Samra, and have her discuss our findings and some of the high level aspects of that report. Samra, can you take over? Yes, thank you. Good evening, Mayor Keely and city council members. My name's Samra Marion and I work with Mike Janako on the independent police auditor team. And thank you for the opportunity for us to address you tonight. Some of our observations from our review of last year dealt with the way in which the department was able to improve its system for documenting, monitoring and completing investigations. So much of our previous report had focused on the challenges that the police department had in completing their investigations in a timely manner. And we saw throughout last year that the department took very important steps to tackle the backlog of cases. So that they were able to enhance their complaint process by capturing time, date and manner complaints are received. They also enhance their procedures so that complainants receive a disposition letter and that the improvements or reforms that arose from those complaints are included in those letters. And as Mike mentioned, the department now has a new sergeant and is meeting regularly to monitor the timeliness of investigation. So last year we saw that type of significant progress. Some other observations that we had was that we saw that the department continued to be receptive to our input so that we had the opportunity to talk through recommendations that we had made in our previous report and the department took actions on those recommendations. And we also had the opportunity to provide feedback on some of the department policies. We saw the department also use incident review as a mechanism for improving its own processes. Next slide please. Thank you. So as we reviewed the 33 use of force and public complaint investigations, we found that many of those investigations were thorough. We agreed and found that the conclusions were sound and it also provided us an opportunity to identify areas for improvement. So we made 21 recommendations in their detailed in the report that's available in the city council materials. I just wanted to highlight a few of those recommendations. First, we made several recommendations to improve the police department's taser policy. And this was an opportunity to provide officers more guidance about standards for use and also some of the risks that are involved, especially concerning vulnerable populations. We also made several recommendations to strengthen the police department's use of force review process, such as including more documentation concerning when officers use the escalation and a process to evaluate that those de-escalation efforts and where they warranted. We also suggested that supervisors play a much more significant and active role in the use of force incident review. And we recommended that supervisors' roles be delineated in their policy. And lastly, another recommendation we made was that the department consider adopting children of arrested parents policy. So that officers have more guidance when they're dealing with the complexity of their role when they're arresting a parent in front of a child. Next slide, please. Since our report, we've had many positive discussions with the police department about our 21 recommendations and the department took prompt action on 16 of those recommendations and materials that have been filed in conjunction with our presentation are the police department's revised personnel complaint policy, their use of force policy, and their taser policies. So they're available for review by the public as well as all of you. And these revised procedures have addressed, as I said, the vast majority of our recommendations. We're still in discussion with the police department about just the few remaining discussions and those discussions have been quite positive. So that concludes my comments about the annual report. And I'll back to you, Mike. Thank you, Sandra. So that is a very, as I said, high level presentation of what we have found. I have to say that we have been pleased with the receptiveness of the police department, the support of the city. And I think that the work that we have done has been very productive work in moving all in a positive direction. This is all about getting better. It's also about ensuring that there is accountability but really improving the way in which the department provides its policing services to your residents. And I think we are pleased with the activity and the results of the past year. There's always more to do. And we look forward to continuing to engage with the department in a productive and positive way. We're obviously here to answer any questions that any of you might have or hear any statements or direction from any of council. So thank you, mayors. Thank you, council members. I know it's been a long day for all of you, but we appreciate the opportunity to present to you and also to hear from you regarding this report. Well, thank you, sir and your team very much for the comprehensive report. Let me ask council members if you have questions or comments on this item. After public comment, okay. After public comment. Anyone who's with us in chambers that would like to comment on this, this would be your opportunity to do so. Anyone who is joining us online and you would wish to make comment. You can do that online as well. And we will alternate between folks who are here in chambers and folks who are calling in. Good evening, Mr. Brokaw. I would like to get into the weeds. And I would recommend that the council read case number 16 on page 32, where they were called to a situation where there was a custody dispute between a husband, a wife and a daughter. The daughter continued screaming for her mom as her mom was led away in handcuffs. Officers, she continued to cry and scream after she was handcuffed. Officers lifted her from the ground and attempted to have her walk, but she resisted walking and continued screaming. Officer one pushed her against a patrol car, requested shackles and did a leg sweep on a child, pushing her face into the ground and shackled her ankles. While trying to put her into the police car, they knocked her head against a plexiglass that separates the back seat from the front seat, and then they put a foam helmet on her head to protect her after they had already hit her. The unseen mental health liason, this ties into the cahoots that we talked about earlier today. The lauded health liason was on scene the entire time, and what did she do? She put the child in for a 5150 psychiatric hold. That, to me, is unconscionable. There was another incident, case number 31. I encourage you to read it. Starts on the way my pages are listed. It starts on 27 and goes to 28. There was a guy in a shelter. I'm just gonna paraphrase. The officer, he said he was handicapped. The officer one replied, I don't care if you're handicapped. And then he said, don't grab me like that, bitch. And this is still officer one. She said, actually, I prefer cunt, so thank you. Okay, that will, you know, I'm just reading. I'm just reading. It's important that you people hear the language that comes out of the officer's mouths when interacting with the public. Okay, that's all I have to say. This is just a bit. Mr. Brokaw, excuse me. I'm not gonna permit that to be spoken in these chambers, are you finished? Yeah, I'm finished. Thank you. It's important that you hear that. Thank you, someone online. You're next. Good evening. As you all can imagine, this is a very difficult and emotional topic for me to discuss because I am the mother of that complaint of case number 16. And I am very unhappy with Mr. Jenneko's report. I think it has a lot of bias, misogyny, and supports patriarchy. I would call your attention to the uploaded documents. There are 61 pages. Pages one through 11 are the heart and bones of my complaint on this auditor's report. And if you look at 60 and 61, I do know that a retired police chief of 41 years did write in and he was very eloquent when he described how this report does not get to the heart and bones of the matter. Nowhere in your report, Mr. Jenneko, did I see that you recommend prosecution for violations of California Penal Code 832.7 F1 that was published in your second report that we heard in chambers in February. Nowhere in your report did you recommend prosecution for 18 USC 241 and 242 violations, which is kidnapping under color of law. And my child was wrongfully beaten, strangled. Nowhere do you mention Ruben Badeo kneeling on her neck. And then you seek to shame her for defending herself. And you claim that she was assaulted to the police after they strangled her, tore her away from her mom. Nowhere do you put in the report that the dad drove from three counties away and permitted perpetrated violence to us. You couch it as if it was just an arrest warrant, as if that gives any man wearing a badge and a gun to beat up an innocent woman and child. What about VAWA? Where was VAWA and this mental health worker? My daughter and I have family members in the area. Where was the decision to put her in the care of a trusted family member instead of locking an innocent child away for three days and then putting her into a psychiatric control program with MKUltra and child threats with the reunification therapy of the other two children who've been kidnapped in Santa Cruz. And all of you here have been ignoring it. And this is not okay. I reject this report. It's a disgrace. It's shameful. You should be fired. Read all the comments because my complaint was 358 pages long with hundreds of pages of supporting documents of nefarious behavior by many people. This is unacceptable. No more kidnapping children and you guys need to do your jobs and rescue my daughter and the missing two other lame kids. Anyone else online? We'll take the next person online. Good evening. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Welcome. Hello, my name is Justin Lang. My two children are the children that the previous commenter mentioned. They were taken with the help of the Santa Cruz Police Department from my mother's home. They were assaulted in front of the police. The police stood by and did nothing as my children were assaulted and dragged away, kicking and screaming in the night by a private company. I urge you to take action to form some sort of independent investigation of this. The investigation that I just heard mentioned seems to be an attempt to exonerate the police department. And anybody who has seen the videos of the previous commenters' daughter being taken or my children taken in front of the police that time and by the police, in her case, knows that this is a crime against these children. And for anybody with the authority to do something about this, to sit silent and do nothing is a travesty and a crime against humanity. And I urge you to take some sort of action on this. Thank you. Thank you. We should testify. Yes, I want to thank the previous two speakers. They made the points so clearly. And especially, and then I want to go back to the one where the Taser problem. It was not mentioned that it should be looked at again in that report. That man was having a medical problem. The police shouldn't have been happened. It should have been a person who's dealing with the medical problem that should be there. But he did say, yes, I'm crippled, I'm disabled. I don't care if you're disabled. And then he was tasered. Never having done, as far as I can read the report, never having been a threat, a physical threat to anybody. And I hope the council will make it clear one way or another that no Taser should ever be made unless it is in the context of the observation in principle of a reasonable person who thinks that they are in physical danger. Only a physical danger to another person is there in the context, in the mind, as observed by a reasonable person should the Taser ever be used. And the report, sugar coated all that, it seems to me. And it's unacceptable. We have anyone else online, Ms. Bush? Good evening, sir. Some people think that tasers are named after that terrible, awfully expensive tea. They serve at Starbucks. But actually it's the Tom Swift electric ray gun. And they are actually very, very painful and non-lethal. They're a tactical thing. I don't know how cruel it is. It's never been tased, I'm sure they are painful. Because they cause a technique in all your muscles at once. So it's just like, ah, anyway. I mean, I'd volunteer, just if anybody wanted to demonstrate what it's like, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't seem that awful to go through it, but I mean, I've seen videos of people who've had it done it, it definitely looked like they didn't enjoy it. It doesn't stop certain people, which is disturbing. Technical stuff about tasers. Yeah, you know, I mean, I was heartened to see that there was no major high level thing, no high peaks that rose to the level of them saying it was some kind of, you know, I mean, obviously many of these things spoken of tonight are really significant issues. I personally have been subject to shades of levels of police brutality I personally have been thrown to the ground. I personally have had, you know, choked, held down, things like that. And it's always, well, a question of whether they misconstrued something or if, I mean, so yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm glad that we have this thing. I remember back in the, I think it was the 90s when they first sort of had, I mean, you know, I see it's the third animal report, but I mean, it's been maybe three decades since they've had the police oversight, you know, body. Anyway, I know you like me would rather be, would have rather been at that wharf musical event that they're having every second Tuesday of the month. And I don't know who planned it that way, but maybe it's someone who wasn't thinking about us. Thank you. Good evening, sir. Nice to see you all again. Wow, the talk by these professionals kind of reminds me of the talk on number five. I didn't realize you gave me more time at the time, but it sure is fascinating to have some witnesses that really contradict the information. You know, without law enforcement, we actually wouldn't have laws. And who would you call? Why have so many citizens become so passive and not involved? Oh, we could talk about that for a long time. Anyway, you know, what's happened yesterday has happened. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't mean there shouldn't be accountability. I wish that I observed more citizens actually helping each other out, being polite. Maybe I engage more with law enforcement than an emergency responders than most people. I know I do. But it seems when you engage with anyone and you give them more respect than you expect them to give you, you know, positive things often happen. I mean, I've kind of gone over this citizen's rulebook. I was able to give a man in this county, this is the doctrine of the lesser magistrates. This book has some pretty interesting things in it. You know, if he was an original constitutional sheriff, he would have the power to arrest a standing president. But since that constitution didn't even last two years, what we have is this corporate pirate flag and a completely different set of rules than the two flags that are right outside. And so the people are really being bedazzled. And you guys are going back and forth on all kinds of subjects. You know, I was gonna make a joke before, but I didn't, but I'm gonna say it now. Boy, I sure would love to get an internship at 1313 60th Street in Chicago. That's a direct reference to you city council members are really have been supposedly elected. We could talk about voter fraud. That's not on the subject. But the city and county managers actually control what you guys do. And that's the location of the CFR council of foreign relations. So happy birthday to you. It's nice to be here. I miss public comments by probably 30 seconds, but whatever. Nice to see all of you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else wish to testify matters back before the council? No one else online. I'm sorry, Ms. Bush. No one else matters back before the council. Ms. Colantara Johnson. I will move the recommendation to receive the annual report from the city independent. Cities independent police auditor, OIR group, and I have comments. This motion is there a second? Second by the vice mayor on your motion. So thank you for the report and the presentation. And thank you to our police department for working with what I understood was there were 21 recommendations made and 16 of them are already in progress. I do wanna speak to case 16 and maybe the appropriate staff can also come in and share. I know several of us council members have followed up on the challenges around reunification camps and what we as a city can and can't do. I think it was last month that our city council unanimously supported a letter of support to our state legislators to pass state policy around reunification camps. This is not something that we as a council support and we're making that known to our state legislator. I believe individually we've also written letters. In terms of how our Santa Cruz PD response to these calls that are mandated by a judge. So there is very little we can do in terms of what the judge has mandated. What we can, what I see what we can respond to is when there is a minor involved, how we enter that call and how we prepare ourselves to respond to that call. You know, one of the recommendations is the department should consider adopting a children of arrested parents policy. And I'm no expert in this area, but I would like us to look and see what options are available for when we are responding to any call, not just for when a parent is getting arrested, but any call that we are aware of that there's a minor involved. Again, I don't know what policy options there are, but that's something that I would like our department to pursue and explore is how do we prepare ourselves, mental health clinicians? How do we prepare ourselves to enter that, to respond to that call and enter that physical space when there's a minor involved? I think I'll stop there, but I don't know if anyone can or needs to comment on what our role is and isn't in the specific response to reunification camps. I don't know if Tony, you have insight or if Chief Escalante, no, yeah. I mean, I think it is just that that we, it's a judge court ordered mandate that we have very little purview over. That was my understanding, yes. But I don't think the city has a really viable mechanism for regulating that type of issue that is ordered by a superior court. But what we can do is take a really deep look in how we respond to those calls for services. That's correct. Yeah, thank you. Further, thank you. Further on this item? Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report. I'm gonna be really honest here and just say a few words. I really, I don't really have words to respond to the contents of this report. I appreciate your work in bringing it to us. I appreciate the work of the police department in helping to facilitate making this available. And but I just don't, I don't, I cried as I read about what the subjects in these investigations endured. And I really couldn't help but think that our city could very well end up on the national news for a Taser related death if things continue to go the way they're going. I appreciate that there is an interest in policy changes that those changes are being made. I think we need to do more. In these cases, what I see is escalation, not de-escalation. The description, others have talked about some of the other incidents which also disturbed me. The description of the first incident that case 10 was so concerning. As the auditor pointed out, I would say quite earnestly and politely, the use of a Taser and the way it was used was unnecessary and probably illegal. And it was concerning that the department's investigation justified those actions. I, it's, I'm just, I just don't understand it. I think the proposed policy changes, I'm really glad to see those. I'm, I think it's the least that should be done in a, at the end of the day, you all have a tough job. I'm talking to the police officers here. You have a tough job and it's not made easier by having to justify your actions and having that level of scrutiny. But the, but it's important. And I'm really glad that we have an independent auditor. I recognize their questions about the level of indictment involved in that. I'll just end by saying, because I just have no power sitting here as one council member to do anything to change this. And I know that if we had a CAHOOTS model non law enforcement response program that incidents like this would be far less likely. And so I really hope that people will take that seriously looking at that model and not rely on the way we've been doing things because clearly there are problems. So I just have to say that I have to be real honest about it. Thank you for being here and thank you for following up. Ms. Watkins. Yeah, no, I appreciate your comments at Council Member Brown and Council Member Killetary-Johnson. And I recognize the, just, you know, how challenging these are real life situations that are happening in the community. And I guess my, maybe it's a comment in terms of a suggestion in that absolutely some of the policies, but I do know that we have a younger workforce, a younger population of incoming officers. And similar to how you would do with teachers and new teachers is you have mentors and you have a way to help coach and train them. And I don't know the dynamic within law enforcement in that way, but I think there is a playbook out there that could be looked at in terms of how some of the younger officers who are coming on are mentored and supported and coached by others to help avoid, especially, I don't know their age. I don't know, not necessarily to these circumstances, but in general, I know that that's just the overall trend in terms of the workforce. So perhaps a suggestion internally for mentorship and coaching for some of the younger folks. Anyone else on this item? Ms. Brunner. Thank you. Thank you to the independent auditor for looking at these situations and these cases and reviewing and providing the recommendations. And boy, was that tough to read through some of those details and hearing some of the situations and the recommendations that were made, I'm glad that you also addressed what I was gonna say, but I'm hoping that it says that there's 16 of those recommendations have been implemented into the updated policy. And I wasn't clear on the other five, if that is in progress of being worked on and I'm wondering if you could answer that. Good evening, Chief. Yes, good evening, Mayor and Council. To the other five recommendations, they are all a work in progress with the auditor. As an example, the child of arrested parents policy has actually already been sent to Samra to kick around a draft. And I think we've gotten some comments back. And so that's in motion. All the ones that have the asterisks have already been addressed as a result of their original report. So there's been, and most of that work was in the taser policy and the use of force policy as well. Thank you. That answers my question. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Click, we'll call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Vodkent. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. For the business, come before the council. Ms. Bush, for the business, come before the council. Motion to adjourn, be in order. The vice mayor moves. Ms. Watkins seconds, not debatable. Those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries and so ordered, we stand adjourned. The pigs are spinning your whole birthday with us. I know, what a way to celebrate, Fred. Sorry.