 Council Member Newsom, Council Member Brown is currently absent. Watkins is absent. Brunner? Present. Calentary Johnson? Present. Vice Mayor Golder? Here. And Mary Keely? Here. Having established a quorum, we will move on to Recording in progress. All good. Least to hear. We will move to public comment concerning our closed session agenda for folks who are unfamiliar with that. We will be going into closed session to discuss matters that could be related to personnel litigation, that kind of thing. And we will be then coming back out of closed session, making any reports that are necessary by our city attorney. But this would be the opportunity for anyone who is with us either in chambers or online to make comment on our closed session agenda. The items we will be discussing are enumerated in the Council's agenda, both online and in written format. Let me ask anyone with us in chambers. Seeing and hearing none, Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? Nobody online now. No one online. So we will bring a close to the public comment. What we will be doing now is we will be adjourning into that closed session that I mentioned. We will come out and be back in regular session, open session at 12.30 or later, no earlier than 12.30. We now stand to recess into closed session. The hour of 12.30, having arrived, Santa Cruz City Council will be back in session and the clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Council Member Watkins is currently absent. Brunner. Present. Callentary Johnson. That's it. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Keely. Here. Quorum having been established, we will proceed to oral communications. This would be the opportunity for anyone to address the City Council on a matter not on our agenda today, but under our jurisdiction generally speaking. And we will recognize speakers for up to two minutes. We will alternate in the event that there are folks online who wish to participate in oral communications will alternate back and forth by between folks here in the Council chambers and folks online. Good afternoon. Welcome. Thank you. I'm civilly Simon from New Way Homes and Workbench. And sometimes some of you have asked for suggestions on what the city could do around housing and housing crisis. And I have one I wanted to share, which is, you know, it's one of the first times in a long time that there are multiple big construction projects going on in Santa Cruz. And based on applications, we'd expect that's going to continue for quite some time. And it's come to my attention that the building department staff doesn't have enough capacity to do inspections at the rate really required when this is going on. And so some of our staff have managed large construction projects in other parts of the Bay Area. And experience where, you know, if you're building at 200 units, there might be a period in construction toward the height of it where you've got a city inspector on site six hours a day, five days a week, because there's so many things to check off. And it's my understanding, for example, one of the larger projects in Santa Cruz today, the developer says that there's going to be about two months longer timeframe to the completion of that construction project because of need for more rapid inspections. And my point of bringing this up now is that we're going to be going into budget season. And also that the other thing I would say is that projects pay for this. You pay for staff time with inspections. So I don't think it's necessarily a huge ask. And it's something maybe you want to get ahead on planning if the building department isn't already doing it. I just thought of this one to come share it that, you know, that's really expensive for projects to take any number of weeks longer in construction. Huge cost. So they'd be happy to pay for, you know, inspectors to spend more time more frequently on site and move projects forward. So I just want to think I think that's a part of building department planning that's needed because it just hasn't needed to be a lot of staff in the past in Santa Cruz who had multifamily inspection experience. Thank you very much. And thank you for all the good work you do to increase housing affordability in the city. We appreciate it, sir. Do we have anyone online? Why don't we take the next person online? Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council. You know, yeah. Hey, this is Garrett. After last meeting, I felt really bad for the council while I have given the council myself some attitude by over the last five years. I have never witnessed such organized outrageous behavior as I witnessed last meeting by that mob who employed intimidation and suggested others should fear and acted in violent fashion toward a council and others who gave everyone beyond words. More than time to express their free speech rights, no matter how one sided or logical or senseless their aims, considering the reality is the council is powerless to do anything of substance in the Israeli Hamas conflict. They wanted to us who served the council authority to promote their ideological aims and those in my opinion have little to do with children bomb but to hijack any issue to raise the level of chaos in our city and to make it unstable while destroying western values. I commend the council on their actions. Well, maybe not the one sided original ceasefire resolution, but the patients, the open forum and the promotion of peace, the majority of you thoroughly and finally expressed. You deserve a shorter meeting. I condemn the DSA and all who support them by those means the USC woke, UCSC woke indoctrinated and their groomers and any others who supported or perpetrated that disgraceful display last meeting. Perhaps those rude people holding up fake dead babies and bodies in effigy thought they were at a Halloween party or in addition for weekend at parties, or perhaps they were just acting out the usual so-called social justice adoptive grievance, mongering, ugly, seemed as your, but it was purposely shocking and nowhere near civilized. I feel sorry for you and all who were offended, a great friend or terrified by it that had no place here. I wish you a productive peaceful meeting. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else wish to address us under all communications. The former mayor city council member and all around civic engagement. I'm going to need just as unfamiliar as you are with this. Yes, thank you. I was looking for it. The hat today is as a member of the committee for a safe healthy Santa Cruz dot com and that as you all know is the combined campaign between the city of Santa Cruz and the county of Santa Cruz to pass revenue measures that will sustain and improve the essential services that we need. I have very exciting news for you. We have just received our yard signs and we have 400 of them. And as you also know, getting a campaign going early campaign season, ballots will drop in two weeks. A lot of people don't even know there's an election and they don't know how important this is for both the city and the county. So I'm hoping that each of you will, I believe you've all supported this. Find a way to grab a bunch of these, get them around your neighborhood, promote them to your friends. I know some of you are already doing this. You know how to get ahold of me. But for those of you who are seeing this and don't, it's safe, healthy, Santa Cruz dot com. Log on, endorse, grab a yard sign, support walk districts. Okay. Thank you all. Well, thank you so much. Your leadership over the years on so many issues in this particular were greatly appreciated. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone else online? Let's take the next person online person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Hi, thank you. I would like to express my concern about California State Assembly Bill 873, which requires California students to engage in a potentially problematic curriculum and media literacy. I'm attentive. I believe to the question of jurisdiction. And I know that you guys already have some stuff on your plate. And in the email that I've sent to Mayor. I've sent it just a couple of things I found online about the importance of collaboration between city councils and school boards and how that can be something very positive and collaborative for for the community. I'm concerned. And I'm just a retired person with a lot of time on my hands to follow the news and a former educator, but I also have some expertise in the fake news. It's something I've published in my in my scholarly work. And I'm concerned with California Assembly Bill 873 sponsored by Mark Berman. Because as I've read in the LA Times, which I've included in the email, there's a specific reference to treating issues around vaccine conspiracies or the events of January 6th as as misinformation or dangerous malinformation. And I realize these are contentious issues, but I think that these are always in times like these where things have yet to be adjudicated. There's a teaching moment and there's a great danger in treating something in a in a doctrinaire way. And, you know, every day we find news that comes up the CDC has its published in the Epoch Times has reported things as misinformation, which were factual. And there is basically what met IEB the journalist is called a censorship industrial complex. And so as this comes up in the future, I hope that you'll be attentive to maybe giving a view to the dangers here. Thank you. Thank you very much with us in chambers wish to provide comment under all communication. This would be your opportunity to do so. Do we have anyone else online, Miss Bush? No, sir, do you wish to address us under all communication? This would be your opportunity. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. As you remember, I was here a week ago. And I said, you who sit here, you are the ones that have to fine tune what it is in Santa Cruz to take on one block in one neighborhood. Between that two minutes and today, did anybody do research on what it would be like in that particular invitation? And if not, I haven't sent you emails, but I do know Fred, I saw you on stage. And you know what sent no said, we got to all come together. So those that know me know I don't get paid. I live on 16,000 a year. But if you come to my house, where I have an office, and we sit down, I'll give you Starbucks coffee promise. I'm Richard Lewis for you who don't know me. And I won't mention who she is, but I believe in her and I know everybody's running to be elected. We've got to change what it is, starting with the rainbow vets to serve vets. So I know someday please put on the agenda a revisit to the kind of youth commission that only the city of Santa Cruz could make with empowerment. And I appreciate what it is that it's going to come from family. And those who don't know me know my brothers Bob and Jack and Jackson Brazil. If we can all come together, if you write down victory outreach, you'll see a pastor from Watsonville. Don't reinvent the wheel, because they can take I saw the chief and the assistant out there. They take kids that have been on probation and parole, and they change their lives. So I didn't know if there's still time left. Aha, I did good. And Fred, now you remember my first name. Yes. All right. Bye bye. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. We appreciate it. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? Okay, anyone else who's in council chambers today wish to address us under all communication. Last call. Thank you very much. We are finished with oral communication. We are on to agenda item number three. This is a age friendly city designation. Kelly Mercer Leboff of the Recreation Coordinator will make a presentation. Good afternoon and welcome. And thank you for your good work. Thank you. Excellent. All right. Well, hello, everyone. My name is Kelly Mercer Leboff. I'm the senior programs coordinator for the city of Santa Cruz, and I have the privilege each day to design programming for the senior population over at the London Nelson Community Center and to partner with agencies throughout the county to support our seniors. I wanted to provide a brief update on the activities of the aging committee since I last presented in May. Now, as a reminder, by 2030, 10.8 million Californians will be an older adult, making up one in four of the state's population. Right here in Santa Cruz County, that estimate is one in three. And by 2034, in just 10 years, the United States will, for the first time ever, be a country comprised of more older adults than children. Now, 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. That featured key transportation options that enable access to key services and provide opportunities to participate in community activities and support housing that's affordable and adaptable. So today, we're going to be reviewing the local policy initiatives that are creating these opportunities to assess the landscape of aging right here in our region. I'll update you on the city of Santa Cruz's aging committee activities, the master plan on aging governance group, and the age well Santa Cruz County survey. So without further ado, let's get started. So because of these anticipated surges in the senior population, there are two parallel aging initiatives. In 2020, Governor Newsom launched the California's master plan on aging with five goals for 2030. The master plan on aging has mobilized our region, the county of Santa Cruz, city of Capitola, Watsonville, Scots Valley to come up and the seniors council and the area agency on aging to work together to come up with a localized playbook. And meanwhile, the age friendly network designation is actually the US affiliate of the World Health Organization's global network for age friendly cities and communities. And it's a public commitment to a five year program cycle that can be entered at any time. And now once in the network, there's a plethora of resources to help you create and implement an action plan. Now, many of the jurisdictions that are working together for the master plan on aging are also applying for the age friendly designation. And I'm happy to share that as of August 30th, 2023, the city of Santa Cruz has become an age friendly designated city. So I just want to acknowledge the city of Santa Cruz's aging committee for their contributions to our successful application and now designation. Yeah, we can do a round of applause. Yeah, it was well. Okay. But as you might have anticipated, this is where the real work begins. We now entered the five year program cycle. We're just past the enrollment phase. We formed a city wide committee, which will be including older adults in all stages of the age friendly planning and implementation process. And now that we're enrolled in the network, a community has up to two years to complete a community needs assessment and develop an action plan based on the assessment results and the needs identified that influence the health and quality of life of older adults. Now, since both the master plan on aging and the age friendly network both have a community needs assessment, the county has hired clarity social research group to conduct this community needs assessment. Since June 12th, they have been working with a steering committee of Santa Cruz County residents with diverse backgrounds who have a deep knowledge of community needs and resources, either through service or lived experience to help guide and shape the survey. They have also conducted three focus groups to help inform the strategy. So you might be wondering, well, what is that survey going to be covering? Well, there's a survey and a flyer coming your way right now. But in addition to collecting basic demographic information, our areas of investigation include housing. What are the types available? How suitable is the housing? How affordable is the housing and the challenges of maintaining houses? Transportation. What kind is being used? What is the cost, the accessibility, reliability and frequency? What are the need for help and services of our residents? What type of help do people need? What existing services do they use? And do they have to go outside of Santa Cruz to get those services? Caregiving. How, what is their access to caregivers? What types of care is needed? The degree of difficulty in caring? The quantity and quality of caregivers in our community? Ratings of health. How easy is it to make an appointment with your doctor? How would they rate their quality of health? And what is the degree of health challenges that they face? Community resources and social engagement. What is the amount of social contact they have with someone? Do they know who their neighbors are? And how would they rate their community overall? Safety preparedness and emergency preparedness. How prepared are our residents in the face of elder and financial abuse? Natural disasters and area crimes. What is their overall satisfaction with their community? And how are they planning their future right here in Santa Cruz? So the H-Ball Santa Cruz County Survey is currently live through the end of March. It's available in English, Spanish, and large font, both online and paper versions. It only takes about 10 to 12 minutes to complete. Now residents of Santa Cruz County who are at least 40 years of age will be surveyed. And that younger age point allows us to better understand the needs of caregivers as well as our residents plan for aging in our community. And while there have been other efforts to gather information about aging, the California Department of Aging Survey, this survey is much more localized. And it really focuses on the steering committee's areas of investigations and the needs expressed in a series of focus groups. And in order to get the broadest representation of residents possible, we're pursuing a boots on the ground approach. Steering committee members have created a survey outreach and recruitment plan and they're recruiting community partners to host the survey, businesses, and other partners to publicize a survey. And this approach allows us to include a diversity of voices so that a broader palette of needs is gathered. So you're probably like, all right, Kelly, I get it. How can I help? Well, first off, if you are over 40 and you live within the County of Santa Cruz, you can complete the survey. You can also help hang one of those flyers up. And in some locations such as cafes and laundromats, doctors and dentist offices, they'll be posted flyers with those QR codes or the survey links or a request for a paper survey to be mailed to you. In other locations, we'll have a sign, a stack of papers, and a return box like this one. And in more engaged locations, we'll have all the above materials and someone like me helping people complete the survey. We have a robust list of 150 partners, including community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, local businesses, and, of course, government agencies for survey outreach. And if you have a location that you want to make sure is on our list, please let me know. And so if you see the Agewell Santa Cruz County Survey out in the world between now and March 31, please encourage responses. We'll have access to the information specific to the City of Santa Cruz, which will help us create our Citywide Action Plan. So we look forward to keeping you updated in the age-friendly designation process for the City of Santa Cruz, and we invite you to join in on these efforts. And if you'd like to learn more about this process and all the amazing ways we're currently keeping our seniors active, engaged, and connected to their community through recreation, education, and technology over at the London Nelson Community Center, please don't hesitate to contact me or go to our website, cityofsantaacruz.com, forward slash seniors. Do you have any questions for me? Well, thank you so very much. Very comprehensive. Good plan going forward. Thank you for coming here to publicize this. I suspect that those Council members who, like myself, who are approaching middle age, will... It's a good thing to think about our future. So thank you very much. Let me ask if there are more serious conversations or comments here. Ms. Brunner. I just have a quick comment, and thank you for providing the survey in print form and electronic form in Spanish and across some of the questions that really dive into demographics. That data is very important in how we inform and shape our policies and how we can know how to best support our community, our residents, and our aging population. And I'm so excited for this. And this is great work. And thank you so much. Other comments? Ms. Brown. I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation and for all of your work to move us through as a city the application process and really develop those networks to think about how we're going to use the information that comes out of the survey. It's a great tool. I've seen it. I've been working with it and with the folks at the county and as your representative to the Area Agency on Aging, obviously this is something we've been promoting for a long time. So I just want to thank you for that. It's great to think about the way this tool can be used. I want to also just thank Supervisor McPherson in this case for really jump-starting the effort to get some resources at the county level to be able to support other jurisdictions and network us so that we really are moving forward together. It's a great time to be thinking about funding, how we're going to use funding and what kinds of programs are needed for serving. The senior population, our aging population. I don't know if I've said this before, but one of the conversations we've had at the AAA has been that we've seen a real change at the legislative level in terms of the willingness to really make progress on resources through the master plan for aging. We talk about it in the sense that we have this whole cadre of legislators who are dealing with this with their parents right now. So often those legislators who are like my age are really pushing this forward and there's so much enthusiasm and even in the face of significant budget troubles this year we are going to hold pretty steady with this funding and I'm just so thrilled that we have a community, we have a space to do this with the resources or some of the resources we need. We'll be having a solution summit to talk through a lot of this in May of this year so look for an announcement about that and thank you again. Sorry I went a little long, but I'm just so excited about this. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Very best wishes to you on this project. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. We are now on item number four. This is a mayoral proclamation declaring February 2nd, 2024 as Rosemary Menard Day in the city of Santa Cruz. I'm so happy they're doing that aging thing because unlike you mayor I'm not middle aged. Exactly, there will be a day. That's right. Ms. Menard, we're going to do something a little different which is you and I have had about a year together experience. I'm asking Vice Mayor Goldert to actually make this presentation who's been with you a lot longer through your director work at the water department, your interim work as city manager work again. I will say this very briefly that I was so happy that by the time I got elected as mayor and you had laid out all the tracks, all the policies for how it is we have a sustainable water future. That is a remarkable accomplishment and thank you for that. With that, let me turn it over to the Vice Mayor. Thank you. I'm going to be reading parts of this proclamation written by the mayor and on behalf of all of us up here. I also just want to thank you for your tremendous contributions to this community. I don't think people realize what goes into that including being up in the middle of the night when the landslide takes out the pipeline or making sure that the water is potable and treated, making sure that the electricity is running down at Neary Lagoon so it can get treated. Your innovation with the re-pumping of the wastewater back into the aquifers was mind-blowing to me and I just really can't thank you enough on behalf of the citizens and the community that you've contributed so many years here working for us and so with that I'll read not all but parts of this proclamation. So whereas on January 27th, Rosemary Menard arrived, I'm sorry, January 27th of 2014, Rosemary Menard arrived in Santa Cruz to assume the role of water director following a decades-long career in the water industry with Stinson Seattle, Portland, Wanoche. Washow. Washow and Reno whereas Rosemary's commitment to exploring all possibilities in water resources including recycled water, earned her the characterization of Rosemary Poppins by a local cartoonist and whereas Rosemary Menard's unique ability to identify and weave together political policy and community issues allowed for the robust development, prioritization and implementation of work to meet the water department and city goals. Rosemary is also celebrated for her baking skills that led to the water department throughout is that, did I read this right? Baking skills led the water department to the water supply advisory committee process. I haven't tasted your baking but maybe someday. Successfully achieving the green card vote adding several pounds to committee members waistline and establishing a course for water supply reliability for Santa Cruz and whereas Rosemary brought valued experience to financing utilities to develop long-range cost of service analysis and rate setting design that led to the transition and operating budget from 20 million to 40 million and a capital budget that went from 70 million to 360 million. Rosemary never met a process that she did not want to improve and a sentence that she could not turn into a graph or a concept that she could not convert to a confusing chart or graph whereas Rosemary led the water department throughout the historic drought storms plague locusts earning Santa Cruz national recognition as one of the most water conserving communities in the world now therefore I, Renee Goulder on behalf of Mayor Keely and the council do thank you for joining me February 2nd 2024 as Rosemary in the city of Santa Cruz and I encourage all citizens to join me in honoring her recognizing her contributions of her work to ensure public health and safety providing clean and safe reliable supply of water to our community and wishing her well and her retirement. Thank you so much and I appreciate the part about short was never my long suit in terms of writing anything so I always, yeah go on and on maybe I wanted to say a couple of things one is this has been a really happy arrangement for me been here 10 years now and it's been I remember meeting Dick Wilson on the street one day after I've been here I don't know a year but you know this was a match made in heaven was sort of meant to be was like bringing the right skills to the you know with the right mix of things problems and issues and for me that's just been the perfect way to bake a really nice cake and frankly all the recognition that's been sort of coming my way in the last few months and years has really been a really wonderful way for me to sort of close out a long career where I've had I think some really wonderful opportunities to make a difference in communities which for my point of view is like that's that's the gold standard right you can't have anything better than that so I really appreciate the people in the water department they're fabulous they work so hard they get over the last decade that I've been here and I think that you are really lucky we are really lucky to have those folks working for us I said in a meeting with them a couple of days ago that you know I they didn't work for me I worked for them and that's really how I feel so I want to say thank you I worked for you also and I'm thrilled to thank you for that I think there may be other comments let me recognize others for comments miss Brown thank you rosemary for all of your all of the years you've invested in us in the city in our community and for doing it so brilliantly and so with so much care and understanding to I feel like it's a little easier knowing that Heidi is going to carry on in your tradition but the way that you've approached the work the way you have worked with council members with your water supply advisory committee and the water commission and to help us understand what you know a very complex system and I could say a lot of things about that but I think we're to so so competently help us understand enough to believe that we really are securing our water future that is not just a slogan what you have done and where we're headed is you know ecologically sound sustainable resilient and just can't tell you how much we'll miss you but really such a well deserved take a break thank you appreciate it Ms. Contari Johnson is recognized thank you council member Brown said it well you make what's really complex and technical and intricate look as easy as turning on the faucet and having water come out so thank you for that but I also just want to when you were interim city manager I was fairly new to the council and I want to thank you for really holding down the fort here at the city and with us council members I just have a memory of calling you at one of my kids soccer games something had come up and it was a weekend and I texted and said it seemed really urgent at the time I can't even remember what the issue was and I texted you and you said I'm available right now and so you just you really held us together you held the city together and you do this all just so gracefully we will really miss you and just thank you for your commitment thank you you're welcome it's been my pleasure council member Brunner thank you so much and I just want to also acknowledge what stands out most for me is onboarding in 2020 and how comprehensive your slide presentation and information was and how you were able to break down everything about the water department into bite-sized pieces to really understand the work the great work that your department has done is doing the historical context and where we're at and going forward in our future and that secure future slogan so just understanding the needs and the projects and what it takes to have sustainable water thank you for your financial wisdom around a long-term plan and the whole rate change that happened and also I think the national water recognition was mentioned but also little things like the work traits day that you led and really opening up to the community and to our youth and high school students to really connect and get closer to city job opportunities in different fields and I think it just speaks volumes about how you think of things holistically and how you're able to articulate it all for us to understand for the public to understand your team is so wonderful thank you Heidi for taking on and leading forward Rosemary you will be missed but we are so happy you are here and I'm honored to have had the privilege to work with you thank you thank you so much I appreciate it Miss Menard Godspeed and thank you so much great thank you I'll be back I told the city manager a while ago that I'll be one of those people calling in on the horrible communication so just you wait thank you we are on item presiding officer announcements I have no presiding officer announcement statements of disqualification this would be an opportunity for a council member to make a statement if there's an item that you will not be participating in because of a conflict of interest do we have any seeing and hearing none we will move to additions and deletions Miss Bush do we have any additions and deletions to the agenda we do not we do not we are on city attorney report on closed session Mr. Condati good afternoon good afternoon Mayor Thiele members of the city council this morning the council met in closed session in the courtyard conference room convening at 10 a.m. with council member Watkins absent there were seven items of real property this morning's closed session agenda first two involved potential acquisitions by the water department in connection with some water infrastructure projects property addresses are 6,000 La Madrona Drive Scotts Valley and 175 Sims Road Santa Cruz on those two items property owners are Scotts Valley fire protection district and the Yates family trust respectively the council received a report from and gave direction to its negotiator on those items items three through seven involve city of Santa Cruz own property owned properties and specifically negotiations between the city as landlord and different commercial enterprises as tenants those properties are 17 D municipal wharf tenant Santa Cruz Bay Company 17 a municipal wharf tenant name surf life property at 501 upper park road in the city of Santa Cruz tenant name Santa Cruz Shakespeare real property at 307 church street also known as the civic auditorium negotiating parties are the city and the Santa Cruz symphony and property at 1020 Cedar street city and negotiating parties are the city and Atlantis fantasy world there was no reportable action items council also received a report from legal council on two potential initiation of litigation items received a report gave direction there was no reportable action thank you Mr. Condati we are on council meeting calendar Ms. Bush anything you would like to draw to our attention no changes no thank you we are on the consent agenda for those of you taking up item 6 through 20 on one vote and so this would be the opportunity we will start with we are going to give council members the opportunity to comment or pull an item let me start on my left Ms. Brunner any items I had a comment on item 9 and 10 please provide that comment and I'm sorry excuse me and 17 and 17 why don't you proceed with those comments let's see let me go to the title item 9 authorization for application and acceptance of California interagency council on homelessness grant funds for encampment resolution funding program round 3 and that I just wanted to say thank you to city staff for seeking out funding opportunities and grants and that can help in this area and really help support some of the work and collaborating with the county on this so thank you item 10 is severe weather shelter pilot program and this one I also just wanted to say thank you for working to facilitate the operation of a severe weather shelter program for our community and people who need it rather than one off something a little more consistent and also in collaboration with county services health and human services so item 17 this is the Murray street bridge seismic and barrier replacement and this one is to the Murray street bridge this project as was already in process way before I don't know how many years way before I came on to council but my understanding is that because of federal funding and other funding opportunities that we have an opportunity to send out to get another bid that's not so high so I know this work is important but it's also important to be fiscally responsible in this as well so thank you Mr. Colton George Johnson a few just quick on 9 and 10 for pointing that out I just want to point out that we've come so far in our city's response to those who are unsheltered and the impacts of having unsheltered community members in our community so just an acknowledgement and a thank you for all the great work item 11 which is state legislation on rental application I want to thank my colleagues Mayor Keely and councilmember Newsom who I served on the housing element subcommittee for signing on to this just a note on this we've been working with COPPA and they've brought to our attention that there's real disproportionate high fees that are imposed on renters during the application process so I'm hoping the council will support this item and that we can continue to work with our state legislators on bringing something forward item 15 the tobacco grant award I worked in the public health field and I still do have youth and use of tobacco and other substances and these have tremendous outcomes so just want to acknowledge the past work and thank SCPD for their continued commitment to divert youth and young adults from use of substances including harmful substances including tobacco and last item that I wanted to comment on is 18 I'm going to butcher this application plan hopefully I didn't butcher it too much or the HCP and I think it's fitting we just recognize our water director Rosemary Menard that this item is here just a couple of things a tremendous amount of work that's gone into bringing this forward and the regional collaboration that had to take that had to be part of bringing this work forward I want to call out some of those members and give them a thanks their resource conservation district of Santa Cruz County the county of Santa Cruz the California Department of Fish and Wildlife the National Marine Fisheries Service Caltra the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project and I think there are many others and it's this type of collaboration that is really what contributes to our ability for water resource management program and our and our stewardship of our watersheds again I want to thank the leadership of Rosemary Menard and the entire water department on this huge accomplishment and huge milestone and your continued work on watershed protection and the restoration of watersheds and ensuring that the when we turn the faucet we have high quality water that comes out and that we're protecting the water and we as somebody out there we remember Brown said securing our water future isn't just the tagline. Everything we do including this HCP it's embodied there thank you for your work. Natasha Viss with COPA and others who are working with tenants in some of the projects that where they're experiencing a real high burden related to these rental application fees. And so I just wanna say that we're also at the county, there is a conversation about trying to work with our state legislators. So I'm hoping to connect with you all or some of you so we can make sure we coordinate those efforts. Thank you for addressing this. It's a serious problem for low income tenants. And I mostly wanted to take the time to also speak to item 18, which is the recommendation to approve the negative declaration for the anodromous salmonead habitat conservation plan. Conservation plan, I live in that world a little so. I just wanna say a couple of things. I think it's really appropriate to take a moment, even though it's on our consent agenda to comment about this and I won't repeat what council member Callentary Johnson has shared, but also wanna add that this is a plan that has been more than 20 years in the making. And it really positions the city now that we've made it to this point to obtain long-term permits, providing for long-term regulatory certainty for the operations and maintenance of our water system and for other city functions related to public works and the flood control channel from both the Federal National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. This is, I can't say how critical this is. Having experienced the challenges over the years as a agricultural water user in my previous life, had to working here at the city. Also wanna point out that Water Department staff member Chris Berry has just really called out the work that he has done. He's led the city's effort to develop and implement a sustainable plan for managing water supply and demonstrating that the city is committed to economic stewardship. It's part of the reason I included that ecologically sound comment earlier when we were speaking to Rosemary's retirement. This is really, through a 30-year career, Chris Berry served the city and really deserves thanks and for his work on this as well. And to the whole team, thank you. I'm not always, I'm often critical of negative declarations off of a CEQA document, but in this case, I'm just so pleased that we've accomplished this. And I really believe in how we're moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Neuse, the minister recognized. Thank you, Mayor Keeley. I want to very quickly just associate myself with the comments on item number 11 and thank my colleagues, especially Council Member Colletary Johnson for bringing this forward and for letting us support this and for signing on to this. I also want to very quickly just make a comment on item number 12. I want to thank Director Lipscomb and Housing and Community Development, DeWitt for bringing this item forward. This item will help facilitate the construction of 128 units of much needed affordable housing in our community, and will help make the Pack Station North project a reality. And I'm just really excited to see it and thank you. Thank you. This would be the opportunity for anyone who is with us in our chambers or online to make a comment up to two minutes on all items you may wish to comment upon. So let me ask if there's anyone with us who wishes to comment on any item on the consent agenda. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? We'll take the first person online. First person online, good afternoon, and welcome to the council meeting. Yes, this is good again. Seriously, Mayor, you're going to cut comments on like 20 items down to two minutes, please. Anyway, as the item nine, while it is true, you originally set up an expensive three-year homeless response plan without all the money to see it through, regardless of that fact, also true the state recently has promised additional big dollars will go to the homeless issue and okay, maybe you should get your hands on some of that. However, this item casually mentions hiring someone to write the grant at unknown cost to us without any actual details of the grant presented. Suggest hiring when not stated here, the actual additional numbers of other new personnel at what unknown cost and hired only presumably paid for by the grant really doesn't say, also in an effort not just to continue or address past planned financial shortfalls, but to expand homeless services once again, without any means to sustain these when this kind of money runs out once again. You should not be so sure that people of Santa Cruz want to turn into an expensive ever burgeoning cesspool of homeless government dependence, but some the lesser level of support does exist to prevent large homeless encampments, which would be the consensus I think. It would seem our current response could become more efficient and still continue to do that without the unattainable lofty goals of ending homelessness for the county taking on future larger commitments that are currently unfunded. This is another example of making future expense commitments without knowing future fund availability long-term, which is a core fiscal problem resulting in the city's unsustainable fiscal position resulting constantly and going to the public with initiatives to grow the government bigger and more expensive despite being told last election that people don't want higher taxes. Where do I get a no on L yard sign? Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Bush, anyone else online? Nobody with their hand right? Last call, please, this would be your opportunity. Good afternoon and welcome. For this opportunity, my name's Moral Craig. I am homeless, but that's not really why I'm here. I'm here because regarding to when I was in custody, there was a civil case, 26 unlimited real properties, a summons, a minute order stating that I was there when in fact I was incarcerated, okay? I'm not gonna have enough time, but in doing that. Let me ask you a question. Yes, please, thank you. So is this, does this address one of the items? Yes, it does. Which one? Well, I think it does because I'm not gonna tell you which one, I don't know, but I know that it has to be. And what I'm going to do is I'm gonna give you 30 seconds. Okay, no problem. Very good. So there's an address, I'll give an example. So civil case, a minute order saying I was there when I wasn't, there's the red flag. Sounds outlandish I know, but in my research at the recorder's office, the assessor's office and the civil department there, I found a document stating Murl Craig, the grantee of California Street. When I did that, I went down to the assessor's office. I hid in California Street as a name. Up came 808 River Street, okay? Connects to 809 Center Street. That's the mailing address. So my concern is, who owns that land? How come I was never summoned? I don't know, I have a connection to it somehow and I need some help. And I get a lot of resistance in this town because look who owns it. Thank you, sir. Ms. Bush, we still don't have somebody else online, correct? Last call, if anybody would like to address us on the consent agenda, seeing and hearing none, a motion to approve items six through 20 inclusive would be in order. Council member Newsom moves, is there a second? Count the vice mayor seconds under debate and discussion. Seeing and hearing none, clerk will call the roll. Thank you, mayor. Council member Newsom? Aye. Brown? Aye. What can this absent, Brunner? Aye. Calentary Johnson? Aye. Vice mayor Goldert? Aye. Mayor Keeley? Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. Next up. Mayor, can I just ask a quick question? Please. I just don't know in process. Normally, we have public comment. The last speaker who spoke, it seemed more of an oral communications comment. I wasn't sure what it was relating to on public comment, but I'm wondering if there is somewhere we can direct that person because they're asking for help and they're not understanding of the process. So I'd just like to, just if there's a minute, if someone can help direct where we can direct that person. Is the gentleman still here? Yes. Sir? Yeah. Let me ask the person, I think either in front of you is Lisa Murphy and assistant city manager. Perhaps you could have a discussion with her. Ms. Brunner, thank you for bringing that to our attention. We are on items 21 through 25 inclusive. This is the consent agenda public hearing item. This would be the opportunity to take up for council member to comment on these items. Let me ask council members, do you wish to comment on, and we'll start now on my right with council member Newsome. Items 21 through 25. Any comments, sir? Ms. Brown. Vice mayor, Madam vice mayor, Ms. Calendar Johnson, Ms. Brunner. Is there anyone with us who wishes to comment on one of these public hearing items? Seen here none. Let's take the first person online. First person online. Good afternoon. Yes. I don't know if this is the time to, I wanted to make a comment about the removal of the redwood tree on the corner of Walnut and Lincoln where they intersect and that, I'm sorry. This is, we're not on that item. Excuse me. If I could ask you to be kind enough, we'll be on that item in a matter of minutes, but that's not where we are right now. So if you would just stay online, we'll get back to you in a few minutes when we're on that agenda item. Thank you for your forbearance. May I ask if there's anyone else who wishes to comment on one of the items on the consent agenda public hearing? This is for item 24, right? Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Council members, my name is Kirsten Paulson with Unite Here Local 19, which represents hotel and food service workers here in Santa Cruz. This LCP amendment paves the way for the development of a high-end hotel on Front Street, the developer of which has written to the Coastal Commission arguing that it should not provide either low cost accommodations nor paying in-lieu fee for such. That is inconsistent with the Coastal Act's mandate to protect, encourage and provide lower cost accommodations. Rather than increase opportunities for housing, this LCP amendment proposes a meager in-lieu fee for building higher than 50 feet at the hotel project site. And when asked by Coastal Commissioners how this $5 per square foot fee was calculated, the city had little to say. $5 is too low, and we would not be discussing this change today if the Coastal Commission had thought it was adequate. At this extremely low rate, the project would only contribute around $220,000 to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is not enough to build even one unit of the affordable housing the project would claim to fund. Yet, if you had not removed the housing requirement, this project would have required several units of affordable housing. Removing the housing requirement and setting the fee so low drastically reduces the future availability of affordable housing. Even from housing to leisure, Santa Cruz remains wholly unaffordable. Santa Cruz has a higher median rent than San Francisco, and affordable visitor accommodations are extremely hard to come by. Our members who work at Santa Cruz find that they are unable to live where they work, and our members who live and work throughout this region find that visiting Santa Cruz is prohibitively expensive. After you approve this LCP amendment today, please carefully consider the cost of allowing a hotel development that provides neither affordable housing nor lower cost visitor accommodations in the face of such unaffordability. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Please say thank you also to Enrique, who I serve on a board with, and for all the advocacy that H-E-R-E does for folks at the low end of the wage scale. Thank you very much. Appreciate your participation. May I ask if there's anyone else who wishes to make comment? Ms. Bush, do we have anyone else online? Anybody with their hand up? Okay, very good. That completes public comment and motion to approve the consent public hearing agenda item would be in order, and the vice mayor makes such a motion. Do we have a second? Ms. Brown makes a second. Is there a debate or discussion on any of these items? Ms. Brown, you are recognized. Just want to make a quick comment and recognize the concerns that were expressed related to one of, indirectly related, but related to the ordinance change that we've made and the related LCP. I agree that we are not asking enough of the developer in this case in return for offering the ability to use density bonus for commercial purposes. However, I supported the change because of the inclusion of the possibility of negotiating some affordable housing contribution, and I support the coastal commissions move to change that language to state that the $5 per square foot is a minimum and that future councils on future projects can and I believe should negotiate more for those kinds of accommodations, let's say. So in this case, I'm going to support that, but I absolutely support the coastal commission's response and look forward to talking about the particulars of projects in the future. Thank you for the comment. Seen here none, the clerk will call the roll. Thank you, mayor. Council member is Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins is absent. Brunner. Aye. Lenten. Aye. Maricolder. Aye. With a no vote on 22. Is that okay? What? No on 22, but aye on all the rest. And Maricully. Aye. Your vote is so noted. We are on item 26. This is an appeal of a tree removal permit. As we begin this, we will set some ground rules here. The matter that is before us has been in front of us on a previous occasion. And when we sit in this capacity, oftentimes the city council sits in kind of three capacities in a single meeting. Those of you that remember the three branches of government, we will sometimes be a legislative body when we adopt an ordinance. Sometimes we're an executive body when we approve a contract. This is where we sit in our quasi-judicial capacity is in these kinds of appeals. We have limits on us that are imposed because of the nature of an appeal. We are bound more by rules of evidence and that kind of thing than we are generally speaking when we address an issue. So I know that both the applicant and the appellant are clear about that. I also wanna make sure that the public is clear about that as well. So how we will proceed this afternoon having this item before us on previous occasion, we are going to ask the appellant, Mr. Frenzen, to open up after a staff presentation in terms of the public participation. You will have up to five minutes to speak. We will then provide Ms. Johnson with five minutes as the applicant to speak. We will then, council members will ask questions. We will take public comment at that point for up to three minutes per person. Matter will be back before the city council and we will take an action. So everybody's clear about how we're going to proceed tonight. Excuse me, this afternoon, I will recognize both Mr. Kandadi and Ms. Keely for any opening comments and good afternoon. Yes, thank you, Mayor Keely, members of the city council. I also appreciate the introduction. This is, as you pointed out, a quayside judicial proceeding in which the council is required to listen to the evidence and make a decision based on the evidence that's presented to you today. There is a standard by which you are... Well, first of all, let me say that we have a heritage tree ordinance which allows the removal of a tree under our ordinance that's found to pose a threat to other trees or to the community in general, pursuant to the criteria and standards that are adopted by the city council by resolution. And under the resolution that the city has adopted, containing those criteria and standards and relevant to today's proceedings is the following. Heritage tree or shrub may be altered or removed if it has or is likely to have an adverse effect upon the structural integrity of a building, utility or public or private right of way. So that's the question that's before the council today and there is the possibility, based on the decision that you make, that a legal challenge could be brought by either the appellants or the applicants based upon that decision. And in the event of such a challenge, the standard of review or the lens through which a court would be required to examine that challenge is called the substantial evidence test. And essentially the court must find in order to uphold the decision that there is substantial evidence in the record to support the council's decision. Now standing the fact that there may be a contrary or competing evidence. So the council has both the ability and the duty to base its decision on substantial evidence. Now what is substantial evidence? That may be found in staff reports in expert opinions of which there are several in your packet and hopefully you've had a chance to review. Also may be found in comments of staff with expertise on the subject. We have today Leslie Keady or Urban Forrester who has several decades of experience in this area. And it also can be based on statements of lay witnesses, individuals who have made personal observations, but only on non-technical issues. You cannot rely on a lay opinion to make a decision that requires expert opinion, like whether or not there's a substantial evidence of a threat to the structural integrity of a building is an issue that requires expert opinion and a lay person's observation about that does not constitute substantial evidence. Let me just point out briefly, you're going to hear from our Urban Forrester was a lot of information for you to evaluate. And then of course from the appellant but what is not relevant to today's discussion are issues that do not go to the heart of the question whether or not there's evidence, substantial evidence that the tree in this case poses a threat to the structural integrity primarily of the building. It's obvious to everyone involved that the sidewalk has been severely compromised by this tree. The recommendation of the staff is based on the issue of the structural integrity of the building and the roots causing damage to that. What is not at issue is for instance, the relative worth of the tree compared to the building as an asset to the community. That's not a relevant inquiry for today's purposes. The value of the tree versus the replacement trees required by the city's adopted mitigation requirements in terms of carbon sequestration. That's not a question that's before you. Whether or not the trees that might be used to mitigate the impacts should you grant this application would sequester as much carbon as the existing tree. The salvage value of the lumber that could be recovered from the tree if it is removed or which came first, the building or the tree. I think there's evidence in the record that fairly conclusively establishes that the building was constructed sometime by 1963, meaning that, and the tree was clearly not present at that time, meaning that the tree is probably not older than me. But that's not a relevant inquiry as to whether or not the tree existed before the building was constructed or vice versa. In summary, there's a large amount of information in the record and under the standards that you've established for evaluating tree removals, the question is whether there is substantial evidence that this particular tree has or is likely to have an adverse effect on the structural integrity of the building. Again, there's several expert witness reports in your packet and I would also encourage the council after you've heard the evidence, if you have any questions or need clarifications to look to staff and particularly our urban forester to who can answer those questions. With that, I will turn it over to Ms. Keady. Thank you, sir. Ms. Keady, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Leslie Keady, urban forester. And Ms. Bush, do we need to figure out how to do this share on Zoom on the bottom of the screen here? Would you like us to share the presentation on Zoom? Okay, all right, thank you very much. Okay, Parks and Recreation Department oversees the heritage tree ordinance and I, the urban forester, I'm the inspector for that. This is not right. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, this is the appeal of the Parks and Recreation Commission approval of application 230089 to remove one coast redwood. This is the redwood looking at it. It sits at the corner of Lincoln and Walnut at 339 Walnut. It is a co-dominant or a two-stem tree that shares one individual root ball findings. The redwood tree is healthy, vigorous, and of normal size and color. The trunk is sound and solid. Two stem tree carry or sharing one root system. No insects or disease present. Additional findings. The tree has cracked the public sidewalk curb, gutter, street, the tree has cracked the sidewalk around the fire hydrant, which could possibly impact associated water lines needed for reliable fire response. Sidewalk repair is not the staff rationale for tree removal, permit issuance. The sidewalk area concerns can be addressed, but it's possible they would reoccur. This is the, on the left, it's the Lincoln Street frontage and on the right is the actual intersection, damage at Lincoln and Walnut. This is the Walnut area frontage and over the last approximately 10 months or so that this discussion's been going on, the sidewalk damage along the Walnut frontage has actually gotten worse. Largely because of the volume of rain last winter, trees are growing very quickly still, and once the water gets into the cracks, then the roots exploit those defects and grow larger and more robust with more moisture getting to them. This is the street damage and the curb area. Findings, tree roots are in contact with the building foundation and brick veneer causing cracks and damage to both. Roots are causing sewer and utility damage. Roots have cracked the wood framing and lifted the mud sill off of the foundation of the apartment. There is past evidence of a sewer leak under the home caused from the tree. The building damage, in my opinion, cannot be mitigated through root pruning. This is not the brick veneer on the outside. This is looking at the corner of the building from the Lincoln frontage and you can see exterior cracks in the foundation. I climbed under the home or the apartment into the narrow crawl space and was able to personally view the cracks in the foundation from the interior of the building. And so you can see there's two notable cracks in that area and small associated cracks that are adjacent to those major cracks. This is the wood framing. You can see that pressure from the root collar of the tree is pressing on these wood structural members, cracking and pushing them slightly out of alignment. And in your right image, the mud sill, which is the wood framing on top of the foundation that's concrete, is lifted. This is evidence of a sewer leak that has stained the foundation of the building as viewed from the interior. You can see the cracks at my arrows, the staining from the septic leak or I'm sorry, the sewer leak. And also, which is difficult to see in this image, but the wall is also bowed slightly on the underside of the foundation from the interior as well as the exterior. And in your right image, you can see again, relative to that crack, the mud sill is being lifted from the foundation. This is an image where they had cut a small hole on the backside of the brick veneer adjacent to the sewer pipe, probably to do some sewer repair. And you can see how the roots have gotten in between the grout areas of this brick area and are damaging that area, which is attached to the foundation. There are roots, and granted, these are feeder roots. So there's two types of roots. There's anchoring stability roots that are larger diameter that anchor the tree. And then you have all of these small diameter feeder roots. And in redwoods, these matting, or these roots create a matting, and then they also exploit cracks and build kind of a denser mat. And obviously, these roots are tiny, and they're not ones that can crumble or damage a foundation, but as these roots mass upon themselves, they can do something called root wedging, which also exacerbates any cracks or defects or weaknesses in the foundation. Again, from under the house, I'm sorry, apartment, you can see there are a number of surface roots. One of the reports says that tree roots don't like it under foundations, but it's quite obvious that in this circumstance, and also partly associated to the species of tree, there are roots under the foundation. There is another picture of roots in the area up against the foundation. And this is a picture of the exterior to show the proximity of the tree to the brick veneer. Another image showing that the brick veneer is separating from the building. One thing I didn't mention is that, again, there's roots that are in all of these cracks, and I think I pointed those out in the slides. So report from a structural engineer has been submitted by the applicant. We had that structural engineer define structural integrity, and also confirmed that the tree has damaged the structural integrity of the building. Additional engineering reviews were submitted by the property owner on 12, 13, 23, after the request for additional information. And then yesterday, another report came in on that. The trees cause minor structural damage and is likely to get worse as the tree grows larger. This tree is obviously genetically predisposed to get quite large and is, again, fairly young in its age. The brick veneer is attached to the foundation. Both are damaged, foundation's cracked into locations. Floor joists are rotting where the soil is higher adjacent to the tree. Root growth is evident in the crawl space. This is shown from the engineer for the property owner, her images of the foundation cracks. Findings of a continued report from a private arborist has been submitted as a second opinion to support the city staff arborist opinion that the tree requires removal. And in request by the council at the last meeting, this arborist, Mr. Don Cox, did some additional air spade work where he blew dirt away from the roots of the tree near the foundation to clearly make the nexus that it is roots that are bowing the foundation and causing these cracks. And then a second private arborist also reviewed the information for the property owner. That person didn't actually visually see the site, but talked to the owner about proximity of the tree, the species of the tree, and from the images that they saw stated that the trees cause damage and will continue to grow, leading to more damage. The International Society of Arboriculture, their guidelines or their formula for root pruning is that at a minimum you want to root prune three times the diameter out from the tree trunk because pruning more closely can reduce tree stability. The best management practices for root pruning reference that severe loss of stability is common when cats are made at a distance that are less than 1 to 1.5 times the trunk diameter. So the cuts that could be proposed by the appellants arborist are not exactly in line with the best management practices as written. The tree is too close to the foundation to perform this root pruning work to industry standard or to protect the building foundation. And that's my arborist opinion. There was also a report that I hand delivered to you today from another arborist named Mr. Nigel Belton who also believes that root pruning would not be a solution in this case. There's limited space to do that and decay will set in and it'll potentially lead to tree instability. And then there's really no, in my opinion, and also the arborist that I've worked with the applicant, there's no reasonable option to save the tree or prevent ongoing damage to the structural integrity of the building. Additionally, a root barrier cannot be installed to protect the foundation without significant root loss and tree instability concerns. Since the last meeting that we had the arborist, Mr. Don Cox, after doing the air spade work and some probe work confirmed there was definite contact with the wall of the building by expanding root crown of the tree as further evidenced by the appearance of a bow inward curvature on the brick siding at the points of contact. And then also I saw that same bowing when I was under the home. This is Don Cox performing his air spade work where he eliminated a little bit of the dry material and soil that was between the tree and the wall. And you can see that it's in contact for the most part with the building and what you can't see here was confirmed with the probe. I also personally got in there with a shovel and knocked around a little bit in this same area where he probed and the shovel was in contact with wood in contact with the brick veneer. This is Mr. Cox probing the area confirming that wood is in contact with the veneer of the building attached to the foundation. New information from the report I hand deliver today from Nigel Belton dated 120 to 24 recommends that the subject tree be removed to prevent more significant damage concerning the adjacent building and sidewalk. He believes that shaving the root collar at the base of the tree is not viable management option in this situation. And that's largely because of the confined area between the building foundation and the trunk. New information from Jody Collins came in on 12, 13, 23 and tree roots and trunk are already in contact with the building, the foundation walls cracked and bowed replacing foundation with alternative types of foundations is not possible while maintaining the same building footprint. So further, she looked at this and made the assertions that for the tree to remain and lessen further damage potential to the building while anticipating future tree growth, the building would have to be moved approximately 10 feet or more from the tree. This would eliminate two apartments, required design engineering performed to current codes, requiring new wall bracing framing floor joists and first and second floor framing. And this proposal would be very costly and result in loss of income for the units that would be vacated and also theoretically or hypothetically eliminated. More information from Ms. Collins, the engineer, which would be a third review were submitted today and I hand delivered those to you folks. She reviewed the three foundation and retaining wall options. Excuse me from Cascadia engineering, which was prepared for the appellants report on 1824. She concludes that each of these three options would allow for no growth of the redwood tree in the direction of the building and would require portions of the tree's root system to be removed. More additional new information came in after the last meeting. There's a leak in the septic area. I keep saying septic sewer area and it's a $14,000 sewer bill to dig up and replace where roots have intruded into the sewer lines and how they would go about doing that repair to a cost of $14,000. And then I did wanna just kind of bring in a little tree biology. This is from UC Davis Arboretum and these redwood trees have shallow roots and they have these roots that extend approximately 50 feet out in some cases. On either side of the tree for anchoring, they drink, they breathe, they stabilize the tree and as you probably notice, redwood leaves are flat and they wick fog out of the air and drip that water down into their root area and that is one of the ways that they drink and they have a lot of these roots that obviously anchor in addition to small matting feeder roots, which you saw that were invading the cracks of the foundation area. When you root peruna redwood so close to its root collar or root flare, and this is an image of root peruning that I worked with a contractor to do on chestnut, when you cut it into this wood, you end up getting decay, wood decay organisms. You can see the rot and how the roots are dying back here and termite activity. Another slides, set of slides here that show the sidewalk was repaired in 2011 and you can see it looks great in 2011 by 2017 you can see, which was obviously six years, the sidewalk is beginning to be damaged from tree expansion. Also just shows that the tree is still growing very vigorously. Granted, that root repair may or may not have been reinforced. It's still damaging that sidewalk area. The sidewalk, when the appeal discussion began in 2022, you can obviously, if you were out there today, you can see that within that year point of time, everything has gotten significantly more damaged. The sidewalk repair estimate, as council had requested, the public works engineering came up with a detail and a price on what it would cost to move the sidewalk out into the street area and this would require new ADA areas and moving hydrants and street lights and those amenities that are there in the sidewalk be 127,940 approximately and again, as this tree continues to grow, this design will not prevent further building damage. This is the design that they came up with and we do have public work staff here to answer any questions on this design. In one of the reports that the appellants submitted, they talk about different sidewalk materials but they are not adopted by our public works department as being our standards for safe passable sidewalks so we don't do anything other than concrete and that is why we came up with this single detail in response to the city council's request from our information. If the tree were to be removed, then the sidewalk repair estimate is at 8,900 for which the property owner would be responsible versus the 128 approximately $1,000 for moving that out into the street. There was a lot of discussion and conjecture so to speak on the tree's age and there was one that said it was 100 or 150 or 200 years old. This is an image from 1950 that shows in the red circle that no tree was there before the building was built. I found this in a yearbook photo for Santa Cruz High School from 1959, again in the red circle, no tree and another aerial image from 1963 that you can see in the red circle there was no tree which obviously indicates the tree has very quickly expanded. It has very good soil in that area and lots of organic nutrients and then a good amount of water that is in the area that is making this tree grow quite rapidly. Staff recommendation that the city council upholds the parks and recreation commission decision to approve heritage tree removal permit application 230089 and deny the appeal. Professional findings have satisfied the city council resolution criteria and standards that Mr. Kandadi referenced for tree removal and again, how I do my job, the standard that the commission has weighs the evidence on title 9.56 municipal code resolution. The heritage tree has or is likely to have an adverse effect upon the structural integrity of a building, utility, public or private right of way or the physical condition of the tree, health or disease or infestation warrants, alteration or removal or construction project design cannot be altered to accommodate heritage trees and it's my opinion that the property owner has submitted enough information to defend that the tree requires removal. Thank you very much. Ms. Kedi, thank you very much. How we'll proceed from here is we'll hear from the appellant, then the applicant, then what we'll do is council members will have the opportunity to ask questions, we'll then take public comment, then the matter will be back before the body. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. I have a PowerPoint. All right, thank you mayor and council members. I feel very grateful that this tree has gotten time in front of the council. It's immense size and ecological value, demands, respect of us all. We have used the last 90 days to reach out to legitimate experts asking the question of how to preserve this magnificent tree. We've also started a fundraising effort where we raise over $2,900 from local citizens who care. If this tree gets protected, these funds will be available for any work that gets done. In our finding, we have detailed reports from two certified arborists, their expert opinion is that there are indeed remedial efforts that can be done. Let me go to the next slide. Yeah, basically, can you put the last slide up in the meantime, is that possible? Okay, sorry, okay. The last slide has the accreditations of our two arborists and the two engineers that came and gave their expert opinions on this. In the video, Monica, one of the arborists says her qualifications where she works in tree risk assessment, this exact specific thing. And her opinion is that there is work that can be done in our reports. One of the challenges for, what we've been trying to do is we did not get permission from the property owners to go on to their property. So all of our expert opinions have been what they can see from the street. If we were, would have been given permission, we could have had an arborist engine engineer look at at the same time, which would constitute a phase three, sorry, I'm forgetting the word inspection, which is where actual information can be found because both arborists and engineers need to work together on any sort of work like this. It is in my opinion, the tree should not have to pay the price for lack of proper maintenance and lack of any preventative measures in the decades prior, but it is not too late. Engineer Mark Ritzen's report states that the damage is minor and there's likely other elements at play rather than just roots. Dave Bolcher's engineer reports discusses legitimate methods to reinforce a building without removal of the tree or any of the buildings units. Mayor, council members. My name is David Bolcher. I am a structural engineer and I'm licensed in California and Oregon. And I'm here because Keelan Franzen hired me to visit 339 Walnut to see if they were, I believe it's in response to the Jody Collins letter that said that there was simply no structural paths forward and I went out there and did a visit and in my opinion, there are at least three paths forward from a structural engineering standpoint. I can go through them very briefly here. The first one is a concrete pure and grade beam system. That is just fancy engineer talk for putting in a concrete beam and then supporting the beam at both ends by a concrete column that would extend into the grade. This would mean that the floor joists of the building are no longer dependent on what's happening in the soil beneath them. In a similar vein, item two is a cantilevered joist system where the existing joists run horizontally. They have a foundation on each end. In that one, we would remove the foundation that's closest to the tree and pour new foundation someplace in mid span. And again, that means that the floor joists in the interior space are no longer dependent on the interactions of the redwood tree with the soil. The third option is a concrete retaining wall which is just what it sounds like. A big retaining wall with a big footing anchored into the upslope side to keep the tree on the outside of the building. And I think the other two things I wanted to share is that on my visit, it was clear that the existing foundation needs work. It was also clear that it did not appear to need emergency foundation intervention. And so we do have time to consider these and other options. And the last thing I wanna share is in response to the letter by Jody Collins from today. The first thing I noticed from her letter is that we appear to substantially agree that my three proposed methods are legitimate and worthy of consideration from an engineering standpoint. Beyond that, she has some conclusions in there that are really about what an arborist or a licensed contractor would think. And I encourage us to view her letter in the light of the expertise conferred to her by the stamp that she has on that, which is simply structural engineering and not project cost or tree behavior. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Dave. It is fundamentally true that if this tree is protected by the choice of the city council today, these solutions will be implemented. If Santa Cruz City cares about its awe-inspiring trees, it will put in the work needed to protect them. We know that it is possible. It is important to think of the future where this Sequoia Sempervirens still stands above our city hundreds of years from now. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We will now hear from Ms. Johnson or her representative. Very barter. Good afternoon. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. I'm gonna be trying to read from my computer. Don't move that. Now I'm not sure we can. You need to move the, there we go. Thank you. Is that good? There we go. Okay, let me try to bring this up. I was told I only had three minutes, so I wished I had known that I had more because I have not prepared more. Okay, well, let me, for the record, say that I advised everyone via email on Friday and on Monday exactly how much time everybody would have. But that's, it's okay. Take such time as you need. Well, you have up to five minutes. Okay. Hello. Nice to be here. I'm Mary Barter, the owner of 339 Walnut Avenue, an 18-unit department building that has damage from redwood tree roots. This damage has been previously documented by Donald Cox, Master Arborist, Jody Collins, Henry Structural Engineer, Leslie Keady, Arborist and Urban Forester, and more recently Nigel Belton, also an Arborist here in Santa Cruz. Photos from Ms. Collins July 17th report, which you should have show most of what we are talking about, not including the sidewalk. But I think Ms. Keady got even closer and under the building and has more pictures, which you saw. Refer to photos. So the cracking of the, you know, I don't even really need to read this because you've seen a lot of that. The wall of the building does have a slight inward bow and now we know that it's, you can see it from the inside as well as it's obvious from the outside. It's hard to believe that that was constructed that way. And it's right at the tree. The soil elevation adjacent to the building was higher due to the roadward tree roots have raised it up. And it's blocking two foundation vents adjacent to the tree. The brick veneer and the separation of the veneer of the building is shown at the top. You can see that at the top, right at the tree. The floor joist ends are starting to experience rot at the ends where exterior soil elevation was higher adjacent to the tree in photo eight. There were also two cracks. We noticed initially in the stem wall of foundation adjacent to the tree where the tree is closest to the building in photos six and seven. See one vertical one quarter inch wide crack and the other crack is a Y shape one half inch wide and those were also seen on the inside. Oh, my computer just did a strange thing. Nigel Belton's report is recent. I don't really have his key findings. I think he helped talking about the feasibility of the root pruning being so close to the building. I mean, you've seen in the pictures, it's literally like that between the building and the tree. We've needed to fix the sidewalk for almost a year now. Whatever we do, the tree is huge now and will continue to grow in any direction it can. These trees, as Leslie talked about, they like to send their roots out in all directions so that they can create a mat of stability which they're adapted to do in the forest because in the forest, they'll meet up with other roots and they don't just mesh. They actually, the tree roots entwine with each other to provide stability. Those shallow roots will not do that and this tree is encumbered in a space about like this just between the sidewalk and the building is a very, very small space for them to be able to grow. The rotting joist shown in Ms. Collins' Henry's photos would require excavation to repair and that damage shallow roots. The rea... Oh boy, I think I get it. Okay, I'm gonna skip that. So we can't really do those repairs very easily that I know of because the tree is right there where we need to repair. The tree has damaged the joist which we need to take out and repair and the tree is right there. I think we've already had that. The appellants have floated numerous ideas to save the tree from knocking down two apartments and rebuilding as two separate buildings to make space for the tree. They were gonna be able to gain 10 feet on either side of the building for the tree but that wouldn't really be sufficient down the road because the tree would wanna grow further than that. Okay, the two, let's see. And another idea that they had is to raise up the entire two-story 18-unit building that is presently supported by steel beams and post 18-unit building and 18 space parking garage underground. And that parking garage is presently supported by steel beams and posts and holding up the two-story apartment building. So they wanna raise up the entire two-story 18-unit building. Also now about root cutting. So selective cutting of roots. So here's what we're gonna do. Okay, sorry. The appellant went over by about a minute and a half or so which is just fine, not a problem. All right. You take another minute and a half and wrap up. Thank you. Also root cutting, selective root cutting of roots at the building. Root cutting is known to cause physiological stress even when done well. Actually, Monica Buxo, the consulting arborist hired from Pennsylvania by the appellant says that if any roots are cut, removed or shaved, a plant healthcare management plan should be developed to ensure the redwood's survival, structural integrity and health. The redwood should be monitored for at least five years. So it's serious business with potential for destabilization as mentioned by Donald Cox toppling. I wish I had more, but that's what I've got. And I think that I want this, I guess the tree root cutting, I don't know why it's not on this page, but the tree root cutting is a very risky procedure because what Leslie said about you can't cut within 1.5 times the diameter of the tree, this would be required to be much closer cutting because how the tree root, the tree and the building are so close together that you can't even get that far apart. So this is not what's being proposed by the arborist of the appellant is not to industry standards. It's not advisable and it subjects us, the owner, if we were to do that to considerable liability and perhaps other people, the liability also, it's something that we find unacceptable and we would like the city of Santa Cruz to honor its roles and standards and to find in our interest. Thank you so much. What we're going to do now is we're going to see if council members have questions of staff before we take public comment when the matter is back before the council after taking public comment, we can still ask some questions based on what we receive. So let me see if there are questions, Ms. Brown. Thank you. I guess I'm trying to understand the question. I don't believe that I have the information I need to understand the question of slope stabilization. I really focused on this in the previous round and it was raised in Mr. Bulger's letter so I want to ask about it here. What is the, I mean, the difference in elevation between the street and where the apartment is located reflects it's built on a cut and that was what it looked like to me, right? So and I'm concerned that without that tree, the stability of that slope is in serious jeopardy and I worry that there could be significantly more damage due to slope failure without those routes in place to stabilize the slope. I mean, I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. I'm not trying to sidetrack the question but that is a very significant concern for me and so I'd like to just better understand what the, and Leslie, I'm looking at you but it's not your will because you're talking about the tree and the bigger kind of picture questions related to the property but I'm talking about city liability and city work that's gonna be required to stabilize that slope. What are, so anyone who could try to help me better understand this, I'd really like to understand this. Leslie Keedy, Urban Forester. So obviously my discipline is our boriculture but I've been a certified arborist for God going on 30 years now and so there are some engineering questions and these types of things come up and because obviously roots do drink a lot of water and anchor soil. If the tree theoretically were removed then there's two options. You can either leave the stump intact and do a topical herbicide treatment to that fresh cut and leave those roots intact. Which they would slowly degrade over time and as they degrade and the moisture comes out of those roots as they rot they turn into some degree of soil and take the place of the roots. If the roots are at depth where it's anaerobic and there's no oxygen to decay those roots then those roots would largely stay in place. So whatever retreat or volume reduction you might have from roots would be something that wouldn't be immediate it would be over time. The other thing is between all the buildings and the surface there is all paved so it's designed to convey water out into the drains and along the street so as that settles you still have water conveyance on the surface. The other option is to do a cursory stump grinding which would probably be only to 10 inches which would leave those roots in place to gradually decay. So that's how it works from a tree standpoint and I don't want to belittle that argument but neither the engineers for public works because we did discuss this or myself feel that that would be something that the city wouldn't be able to manage and it would be something we would over time be able to see change that we could address through backfilling or repair those types of things. Thank you. Just another quick question since you mentioned having time to consider the potential unintended consequences of the slope and just if you look hydrologically I just would say that it's not all runoff right? I mean there is water moving underneath down that slope underground as well. So I just wanted to say that but also just ask the question what I've also heard is that we have some years to figure out how to manage the tree and so I guess it's not really a question it's a comment. If we've got time to figure out the engineering solution to potential slope failure what infrastructure needs to be put in place? We also have time to identify ways to manage the tree. I'm just wondering if you think that might be the case. Well I think there's two different issues that you're discussing. One is the engineering of the slope and how to address that and then the structural integrity of the building and obviously there's differing opinions as to what that damage is, the extent of that damage but now that we have cracks in the foundation with roots that are invading those cracks those roots are going to continue to make that foundation damage worse which is more costly which could then create further instructional integrity issues with the building. So that's my response. Thank you, I have one last question. How, because we're talking about there's been kind of projections but nothing specific about how rapidly this tree will grow and how quickly its root system will grow. How, like on average per year how, what kind of expansion are we looking at over the next five years? Yeah, so the imagery that I found on the internet dates the tree at being about 60 years old. So if you have a tree of that size now then it's growing at a very quick rate and 60 years it has become a very, very large tree and I think that that growth rate will continue. Now of course we just discussed the amount of water that comes down the slope, that whole area. If anybody who walks the top of Lincoln Street constantly sees water coming down the hill. So there is that, I think also we're going to be mitigating and putting in more trees that are gonna re-knit that slope together to some degree in that vicinity. Now granted we're not planting trees of this volume or magnitude because we have to pick trees that are going to fit in that confined growth space between the sidewalk and the building. But we will be adding new trees, young trees take in much more moisture as they grow. They're going to be drinking a lot of that water that's there. Any questions? By council members at this point before we take public comment, Ms. Collin Tari-Johnson is recommended. Thank you for the presentation and the work, Ms. Keady and to the appellants and the applicants. The appellants, I'm sorry I forgot your name but the appellants engineer was speaking about the Dave three options, three options and three paths to move forward. I wonder if you could just speak to those three options. I didn't get, it was really technical so I didn't get it all down but what if you could speak to that and it's probably hard to tell but what the cost of those would be and I would assume that would be a cost to the applicants, the owners of the building. Yeah, so again, I'm an arborist, not an engineer but I work with the planning department on pretty much any plan that they present on any building in the city. These foundation types, you are looking at some degree of root severance to retrofit with either retaining wall, bridge beam foundation or the cantilever. So you'll have some degree of root severance. You don't have a lot of room to work with because the tree's already in contact with that so hypothetically if you do appear in grade beam then you're pushing out to some degree not only for your trenching but for the installation of that new foundation type. It's much more difficult to retrofit a building than it is to do new construction and so when we as arborists work with the planning department to do new construction it's absolutely typical that we look at these measures and we do these types of alternative foundation especially if we're in 10 feet of a tree. But these are very difficult to retrofit an existing large apartment building that has a lot of steel in it. It just doesn't seem reasonable. And then of course our findings or our charter hears to is the building damaged or not. That's what I'm looking for. These would be very expensive compared to the modest repairs that are required at this time. I would say hundreds of thousands of dollars possibly to retrofit this foundation with these designs in tandem with other professionals to make sure it was done properly. Wherever you submit the piers for your bridge beam or your grade beam foundation you have the tree very close to the corner of the building so inevitably if you sync up here there to span that root zone you're still very close to the trunk and the root collar you'll have to probably shave the root collar as their arborist has already suggested you should or could do and then as that tree continues to grow it's gotten this big in 60 years and another 40 years or 20 years or whatever it probably will be in contact with any of these proposed foundation alternatives not to demean them at all. They're very functional but to retrofit a building rather than new construction is a different kind of worms so to speak. For the questions, comments by council members before we take public comment. Mr. Kundani maybe I could go back to you for a moment. You showed us or you spoke to the issue about substantial evidence and so on. Let me ask a couple of questions. So when an applicant comes in applies for a permit to remove a heritage tree under our ordinance as it exists today if they, let's say they show damage and there's a causal relationship between tree and foundation for example. That's right. I wanna take this up to a slightly larger view of this without respect to this issue for a moment. So applicant comes in, there's a tree. They show a causal relationship between tree damage foundation. Under our ordinance is there before applying for a tree removal permit is there a legal requirement that the applicant do something to try to mitigate that damage before they apply for a tree removal permit? It's not a requirement as a prerequisite for applying for a tree removal permit. The city has the ability to condition approval or to deny an application if it finds that there are reasonably feasible mitigation measures that could be implemented in lieu of removing the tree removal permit or removing the tree. I would just offer that as Ms. Keady has been here almost 30 years and I have been here for the past 30 years. I'm very familiar with the process by which this occurs and it is typical for a person and I've done this myself to call the urban forester out and say can you take a look at this tree and it looks like it's causing damage to the foundation and I'm wondering if I should apply for a tree removal permit and what typically happens in that situation and more often than not the conclusion will be there are plenty of measures that you can take to protect your building and your tree so don't bother applying because I'm likely to deny your application. If it looks like there's a substantial issue as occurred in this case the city would typically require a report from an expert hired by the applicant to support the statement that the tree is causing damage to the structural integrity of the building and then if Ms. Keady evaluates that and agrees with it then an application could be brought forward with her recommendation to grant the permit as occurred here. If the evidence is questionable or if contrary evidence is produced then there's a process that we go through and that's what we have here tonight or this afternoon whereby the council is called to weigh the evidence and make a decision based on that evidence. I think the key is alternative mitigation measures can be imposed if they are reasonable and feasible in light of the costs involved and that sort of thing but also point out that we have standards for removal of sidewalks if a person applies to or if a sidewalk becomes damaged under our city ordinance the adjacent property owner is responsible for the cost of repairing that sidewalk and if a damaged sidewalk causes injury to a person they are also liable for the injury if it's due to the creation of a dangerous condition caused by their failure to maintain the sidewalk. If however they've applied for a permit to repair and it's been denied by the city then that liability transfers to the city. I also think that there's an issue of fairness here in terms of the cost of repairing the sidewalk. If the cost to repair with the tree in place is orders of magnitude higher than the cost to repair in a normal sidewalk replacement scenario then the question is who should bear that cost is it fair to put that burden on the adjacent property owner when the city is essentially saying that the value of this tree to the community is greater than the cost of implementing an expensive repair. So those are some factors for you to take into account. Thank you. Miss Keigh, do you look like you want to add on that? I do, okay. So of course there's a lot of things written in our ordinance. There's a lot of things that are in this resolution as the tree has are likely to cause a damage to the structural integrity of a foundation a public right of way or utility. In a lot of cases, you know, you could look at it and say, gosh, you know, over time almost every single tree in our city could result in seven degree of damage. And there's a lot of people that say, Leslie, that tree is lifting the sidewalk and I need that tree permit. And I say, you know, you're going to work with us on the heritage tree grant. We're going to do some modest route pruning at a good distance from the tree or we're going to uncover everything and look and see what we can and can't do. We may end up doing a combination of leaving some routes, reinforcing the sidewalk, pruning some routes, but there is no guarantee that they're going to get a permit even though the language in the resolution says that, yes, it's damaged their sidewalk, they get a permit. We would work on the grant to repair it because it's a reasonable action and we save trees that way. And that happens in every community everywhere. And in addition to that, the utility. Now trees grow into power lines all the time. I don't give tree permits for those. Trees grow and break old clay pipes and cause lots of different sewer backups and defects in health issues and those types of things with leaks. What I would suggest in that case, even though the ordinance says we give a tree permit if it's likely to or has damage to the structural integrity of a utility, we just do an ABS collarless pipe, we install something. So even though things are written a certain way, I try and use that reasonable person mentality. But I think in this case, the mitigation measures not only leave a lot of people subject to liability if the trees to topple. Hypothetically, if we force them to route prune in a situation where the tree is this close to the foundation and in contact with that foundation and the tree falls and somebody dies, then the city gets brought in, everybody who's touched it is then at least asked questions in this scenario. So I feel that it's very expensive. I think with the best engineers and the best designers and everything and best arborists, sometimes you can do these types of measures but what is the reasonability of that and then if it's, it just feels like in this case, it is onerous for this property owner to have sustained cracks in their foundation that are this large leaks already that have occurred in their septics or their sewer system, just the type of damage and the expense to repair. I think warrants a permit. Thank you, Ms. Keady, let the record reflect that council member Watkins has arrived at the hour of 2.36, please do, welcome. Thank you, I apologize for being late today. I had to work conflict but I wanted to, after consulting our city attorney, let the community as well as my colleagues know I was listening to this item on my drive from on array to here and he suggested that that is considered rehabilitation enough to be able to participate in this item. So I've been paying attention to all that has been said and I appreciate the opportunity to begin. That's correct. Very good. Thank you, Mayor. Well, thank you for dialing into the right radio station. Good for you, appreciate that. Thank you for the answer to the question. I appreciate it, both Mr. Condati and Ms. Keady. Unless there are other questions before we go to public comment, other questions before we go? Okay, let's open this up for public comment. Anyone who wishes to address the council on this matter, this would be your opportunity to do so and in the event that we have folks online, we're going to toggle back and forth. Mr. Meiberg will take you first and then we'll take someone online and we'll toggle back and forth. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Council people. I hope I can get this in in three minutes. I lived on California Street across from the high school. So I wanna talk about hydrology. I try to put in a gate post and the 18 inches depth. I hit water, a running stream. That stream continues through the high school and leeches out the high school wall. A lot of it's subterranean and continues down exactly where this tree is. So if you look at what's happened to the sidewalk there, it's not only been lifted, it's subsides in areas that has never been addressed in anything that I've heard why the sidewalk subsides. I know what a sidewalk looks like when it's lifted. This is also partially subsiding, indicating there's something going on under there that is removing mess. So I would introduce this as a major new introduction of information that Condati, city attorney, was saying was a condition. The second one was in the time that I lived there for 25 years, there were two major car crashes into the building exactly where this curve is, where the tree is. The one required rentals to be temporarily suspended. I think there were people in the building when the car crashed into it. So as far as the warping on the inside of the wall showing pressure, yeah, could have been the car crash. It was substantial. So that brings me back to some of the benefits of this tree over here. One of the benefits is it protects that building because that is a very difficult curve to negotiate. People go too fast, especially when it rains. When it rains, that tree, in addition to that, and I think this point comes up, is stabilizing that area, the amount of effort that'll have to go in once this tree is removed will be enormous. I've done a lot of retrofitting construction, and I have to say with all due respect, I have a lot of regard for Leslie and her opinion. She doesn't know construction. So that takes me back to the information we got from David Bolger over here. To do those remedial actions of cantilever or bridging are not that onerous and for Leslie to come up with figures like a couple of 100,000, I think Mr. Condotti said that unless you have expertise in an area, it doesn't count as evidence. I think that counts. Now, in terms of besides stabilization of benefit, is a tree of that magnitude, is a self-sustaining, let's go finish this one. It's a self-sustaining, self-inventing production plant. It turns carbon dioxide into oxygen. There's an enormous amount of traffic there. There's a high school there. So in terms of a community benefit, sure, it's just a tree, but it's more than that. It's a production plant. So please do everything because our heritage ordinance states we should do everything, do everything in favor of it. Also do not make a decision today until hydrology has been done. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. For those of you who want to provide testimony, it's two minutes, it's not two and a half minutes, it's two minutes. If you get to your two minutes and you need to wrap up, take another five, 10 seconds, that's all good. Please don't abuse the rule on this. We have someone online. I do, but I also just want to clarify. I gave him three minutes. You want three or two? Excuse me, three minutes. Keep your comments inside, three minutes. Let's take the person online. Good afternoon. Hello, my name is Shalom Dreampiece-Compost. I have a couple of comments to make. I would like to refer the city council to pages 174 to 175, 26174, 26175, and also to 2635 and 2636. Mary Barter has stated that she is the owner of the property. In August, she stated that her and her husband co-owned this property with Dr. Jonathan and Karen Fielding and said they were involved with a group that advocates for trees, I don't know the exact words. So I just, I went to the assessor's office. I looked up the ownership. The ownership is Barfield, LLC, which I assume stands for Barger and Fielding. And then I note that the Fieldings are members of the board of TreePeople, TreePeople.org. And when I look at, you can look at their website and you see that they're members of the Board of Directors. And then the webpage about us for TreePeople says, our work and I bolded some stuff when I put it into the agenda packet or I emailed it. Our work, trees need people, people need trees. Born in 1973 from the hopes and dreams of a teenager, TreePeople is now one of the largest environmental organizations headquartered in Southern California. We have inspired, engaged and supported more than 3 million people and I bolded here to take action for our environment by planting and caring for trees, unbolded in forests, mountains, parks and I bolded our neighborhood. Our unique, engaging and proven model and powers communities to plant a more resilient future and to take personal responsibility for greening these neighborhoods. What I would like to hear is that the, that what I'd like to hear from the Fieldings. The Fieldings have a specific, do I say agenda when we talk about reasonability of the conditions for removing the tree. I think the Fieldings are sitting in a whole different plane than Miss Keedy of the City Council, Mary Barter. I appreciate everybody's work but I would like to see the Fieldings speak up to get something in writing from the Fieldings to say whether they want this tree removed or not. I know, I wanna make sure the Fieldings get the four reports that the appellants submitted because they were talked to, I think that's all I need to say. Thank you, Shalom. Good afternoon. Welcome. Hi there, my name is Onika. I'm cutting my speech a little bit so I can keep to three minutes. Firstly, I want to say that when making the decision on whether or not to cut down this tree, I want to try to encourage you to set aside the politics and look at the facts. The facts being that mitigation solutions here are possible and might even be possible without damaging the tree. We'd have to look further into David's evidence he brought up. It's been stated by multiple professionals and the community is asking something of you here today and we hope that you listen. We don't want this to turn into a he said, she said, we know there are multiple professional opinions stating different things on the appellant and applicant side. There has yet to be an arborist and a structural engineer working directly in conjunction together, which is typically what might be recommended for this kind of situation. And we ask for your consideration of collaboration between these professionals and city staff to find a true solution. After thoroughly reading all of the agenda reports submitted by city staff and the property management, I believe that mitigation solutions have been ignored in order to retain the status quo. I believe that mitigation, oh rather already, the motion to proceed made on September 26th directed staff to conduct additional analysis exploring alternatives to tree removal. But the report written by Parks and Recreation didn't even mention any of these potential mitigation measures or budget adjustments to support those measures. I don't really think there is a question of if there's evidence of damage. It's clear that there might be potential damage. The question is of time, how much time do we have? And the question is of how do we find out how to mitigate it? For this report by the Parks and Recreation to successfully explore mitigation options, there should have been independently hired professionals explicitly given the task of finding solutions. But all the reports quoted are from professionals specifically hired by Santa Cruz property management, making them inherently biased. The main report quoted by Jodi Collins even states that the property management specifically asked her to quote draft a letter stating facts that there is no way to keep the building the same size and build alternative foundation types. So that was her directive, just by the way. After a few emails with Leslie Keady, who I do really appreciate, what I have realized is that staff members choose to rely on standards written 20 plus years ago, in 1998, tree heritage ordinance, without questioning them or attempting to diverge from code written when society was still using dial-up. The unfortunate reality may be that time and resources have gone to waste in the last three months in the collection of data for this meeting, which was indeed just to set it up for failure. We did our due diligence to hire professionals with the exact directive of finding mitigation measures and even with limited access, we were able to collect viable options for mitigation which do not impact the footprint of the building and support an ADA compliant sidewalk. Hopefully, you've thoroughly read our submitted reports and suggested mitigation measures that demonstrate proceeding with the protection of this redwood tree truly is possible. I personally quite enjoy seeing these redwood trees on our city skyline and the protection of these large specimens is extremely important and the thoughtfulness before we're moving in. If there are systems placed to aid people, Santa Cruz will be better in 100 years than it is now. Thank you, I'm sorry about that. Do we have anyone else online? We do. We'll take the next person online. Good afternoon and welcome to the city council meeting. Good afternoon, thank you so much. I appreciate you all taking the time to hear this issue. I would like to share some things from the EPA's website. They actually recommend green infrastructure as one of the biggest ways to mitigate the flooding that's occurring from a lack of rainwater retention due to higher UV index and also soil erosion. So what they recommend is actually auditing city codes. They say that anything as of 2023, anything with the words roof, curb, edge, or tree needs to be audited in city codes. And the reason they recommend for this is because local codes are not in accordance with their recommendations for green infrastructure. The city of Santa Cruz has historically done a really wonderful job of preserving green infrastructure. But I think there are some concerns that potentially that's not gonna be maintained in the future. So as of right now, what was brought up was that young trees can actually take in more water. That's actually not accurate, unfortunately. Old growth trees, which this tree is not an old growth tree, but it is 50 years old. Older trees actually taken more water during heavy rains. On their website with green infrastructure, the EPA suggests that pavement is a huge barrier to groundwater. All of the asphalt there that's being suggested as being repaired as well as the concrete is not gonna halt rainwater runoff. So some of the water damage that's causing, potentially causing those roots to grow under the foundation is not gonna be mitigated. However, public works has graciously put forward a really beautiful crosswalk design, pardon me, that actually matches the design that the EPA has on their page for low impact development and green infrastructure. There are ways to reroute the sidewalk. The question is whether or not the city is willing to look at public works, whether or not our lovely city manager, Matt is willing to look at ways to negotiate those funds, whether or not we're willing to take the time to look a little closer. And so far during this meeting, unfortunately, we haven't heard any strategies put forward by the council, by the arborist or by anyone directly being paid by city funds. I so appreciate the efforts that the council makes to hear a lot of really important issues, but in the age of climate change, whether or not it's legally accessible for us to talk about carbon or for us to talk about the longevity of a tree's life, it is very important for us to think about. The EPA suggests that we can save $31,000 a year or more by navigating this and creating green space. So thank you. Afternoon and welcome. My name is Laura Tate. I moved to Santa Cruz when I was 12 years old from the LA and I was just astounded by the natural beauty here. Not just up in the mountains where I lived in Brookdale, but also throughout the whole county. And I have come to know Santa Cruz as a place where the community and the government protected its natural environment. However, over the past several decades, I have seen more and more development and more and more trees cut down, including redwoods and heritage trees. It is important to protect our natural environment, to protect habitat for a wildlife and overall life, and to protect the legacy of our, the Santa Cruz legacy as storage of our natural environment. And this is why I support the effort to save the redwood tree located at 339 Wallant Avenue. As to what came first, the building or the tree, I submitted photos to the council from the UC library archives that are dated from the 1920s and it shows the corner where the tree is and silver other trees, but not the building. The photo shown earlier by the city shows the wrong corner. Also, a letter submitted by Gillian Greensight, a member of the Sierra Club Conservation Committee. In her letter, she noted that she was out on a walk at the UC campus and came upon researchers who are measuring growth of redwood trees. They've been measuring these big trees for a five-year period and she wrote, I asked about the results. Over five years, the big trees had grown in circumference from a low of one millimeter to a high of eight millimeters. One millimeter equals 0.1 centimeter, in other words, a very slow growth. And at that rate, this redwood tree in 20 years will have increased in circumference at the high end by 32 millimeters, which is one and a half inches. So that's the letter she wrote, it's submitted with a packet. So while it was noted that the tree's environmental values should not be taken into consideration for your decision, I want to note the reason redwood trees are so critical to their environment is they capture more carbon emissions than any other trees in the world, including in the Amazon. And it's because of their longevity. Sadly, 96% of Santa Cruz's old growth trees are lost to logging and development. It is critical to save trees that are so important. And there are alternative solutions proposed that will save this tree and protect the building. It is possible if the city and this community are willing to take a stand in support of our natural environment. The parents have held fundraisers to hire structural engineer and arborists and to propose these viable solutions in the community has stood behind them. The appellants and the community are committing to holding more fundraisers to help pay for these available alternative solutions. And the community is there to support them. I urge the city council to take the lead and show the world that we are close towards our environment. And we will do what is necessary to protect it when it's possible. Thank you very much. Do we have someone else online? We'll take that person online. Good afternoon and welcome to the city council meeting. Hello. Hi, this is Jacob Pollack. Can you hear me? Yes, we are. Oh, great. Yeah, this is Jacob Pollack. I'm on the perks and recognition, but I'm not here on official commission business. Just a second. Let me do something over here in my other front that's destroying my concentration. Okay, so I think the Santa Cruz community is better with trees. I mean, it's part of what makes this Santa Cruz and part of why people live here. It seems to me that the basic question we're looking at is whether we value the tree enough to try to save it more than the profit that can be made from a rental business. The tree, I mean, sorry, the building under its footprint can be modified to accommodate the tree. It will cost money and it will cut into the profit, but it can be done. If someone wants to make a business profit in our community, from our community, they should respect the norms of our community. Trees are one of our norms. We have an ordinance to protect them. This ordinance should not be seen as like a technical nuisance to development or a piece of red tape to overcome when it's desired. For the above reasons and all the reasons put forth and both because the tree and the tree ordinance were there, when the property was purchased, I don't care about when it was developed or built, it was purchased with the tree there. The business owners should have to conform to the norm of our city's love for trees and absorb the cost of protecting the tree as part of their business plan and part of the protecting the community they've chosen to do business with. I believe we can preserve the tree. I also believe it's in the city's best interest to accommodate the tree through paying for sidewalk repair. Finally, I fear that allowing this tree to be destroyed for the reasons stated will imply that every redwood tree in Sandwich Creek should be destroyed. I don't believe this is in the city's best interest. Please accept the appeal and save the tree. And just as an aside, I feel like the city has gone to quite a lot of expense and trouble to make the case for the applicant. I would like to have seen the city go to a lot of trouble to make the case for protecting the tree as well. Okay, thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting. I'm Joseph Schultz. A lot of stuff has been said here has been to the point. I'm glad that it's difficult to cut trees at all and I'm proud that Santa Cruz has a heritage tree ordinance to make it somewhat difficult. It wasn't difficult enough for the tree in front of my former house and it went down with very little, and so I feel, especially guilty for not working hard enough to protect trees. I think it's important for us to see that the intent of this heritage tree ordinance was to slow down the slaughter of trees around the county. But anyone with a cursory knowledge of history in Santa Cruz recently knows that we've lost a lot of very precious trees. The specifics of this particular case obviously are important, but staff has gone to great lengths to make sure that we do not look at the larger picture here but only at whether this particular tree caused a specific kind of particular damage. I think it's important that we go back and see what are our larger societal goals here? We need to be thinking about the common good as well as an individual property owner's good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Joe. Someone else online, Ms. Bush? We'll take that person online. Good afternoon and welcome to the city council meeting. Yeah, this is Garrett again. A real quick one here. In reference to the first speaker's lay opinion, as to there being an underground river causing sidewalk subsistence, I guess it is, since mention was made of a broken sewer line, I can say for sure in those cases, a bit of soil falls into those cracks, the sewer cracks when it rains over time and it's washed into the sewer system which undermines the sidewalk or street and is a more likely explanation for the sidewalk falling in as well as the streets and you see that all over town. Also, when extraordinarily heavy trees put their increasing weight over time on sewer pipes if they happen to be located next to them and the tree grows over them, yeah, it can break them but it can also push the whole sewer lateral down creating slope problems and flow clogging problems and also it can even, if enough of that goes on, it can even then pull the lateral out of the main sewer connection causing a similar subsistence effects in the center of the street. This I suppose can happen over and over and over as the tree goes heavier, even if you replace the sewer in the same spot somehow. Thanks. Thank you. Good afternoon, welcome. Well, this is a little bit unusual. I am a tree talker, I'm a tree whisperer. There we go, now we can hear you, thank you. My name is Andrea and I'm really happy to live here in Santa Cruz. This is a little bit unusual. I have channeled information from Tom. I spoke to him, I'm a tree whisperer and a tree talker and I'm here to give you his message. Esteemed mayor and city council members, my name is Andrea and I am a tree talker. I'm here to represent Tom. The dream question, whom the landlord and the city wish to remove based upon a complaint you received or complaints. I'm here to tell you that I spoke to Tom directly, people videotaped me. And it was in regards to a fundraising event that happened on January 9th on Walnut in 2024. Tom is precisely 254 years old. He told me, personally, he's six years older than the founding of this country. He is greatly appreciative of having a chance to be heard and these are his words. Hello, I am Tom, a 254 year old California redwood. The city of Santa Cruz was literally built around the surviving trees, my brothers, that were not cut down during the clearing that took place before the city structures were built. I have seen many changes in what is now the city of Santa Cruz. I'm one of the few remaining redwoods of the city. I'm a guardian of the city as are the other redwoods that still exist in the area. We look after the city energetically, bringing forth energies of protection and love to Santa Cruz and all of its residents. I have happily been in my spot until now. Andrea has been very kind in helping me to speak to all of you city council members. I ask you now to please do not remove me from my home. This has been my home, my place, since birth, 254 years ago. There's no need to remove me. I pose no threat. My roots are very strong and I pose no threat to anyone. The city council needs only to please fix the sidewalk. There is running water underneath the sidewalk that loosens the cement, erodes it from underneath the apartment building. Your city council arborist and you as council members are invited to hear what I have to say directly. To you through Andrea, she's my official representative in this matter. I again urge you to not cut me down as it would upset the balance of the trees in Santa Cruz because guardian trees are not as plentiful anymore. Not as plentiful as they used to be. I urge you to come speak to me directly with Andrea as my representative and translator. Hear me out first before making your decision. If you do decide to cut me down, the trees in the area will not recover and a sickness will take hold among the trees and they will choose to perish. Just let me finish this. Leaving an opening. Take about five seconds. Leaving an opening for many negative things to be in the area of Santa Cruz. Andrea will concur on a time and meeting space. Thank you very much. And directly, well, just let me finish. No, I'm not gonna let you finish. You had your time. Thank you very much. You're 22 seconds over. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. We're gonna take the next person online. Is there someone else online? Thank you. We'll take that person. Good afternoon. All right, well, okay. Let me, before I leave, will you all meet with me? Your comment, your opportunity is finished now. It's not an opportunity. I'm asking, I'm actually extending an invitation. If we don't engage you in a conversation, your time is over. I know my time is over, but I would like to know if- And please step away from the dyes. I just need to know if you are willing. No, we're not engaging you in the conversation you want to engage in. Please step away. It's just a question to all of your members. We're not doing that with you. I just need to know if you would meet with me. Please step away. Look, I just need to know, would the council members be willing? Can you- Okay, cut off the microphone. We stand in recess. We're not gonna do this all day, but the city council is back in session. We are on item 26. We are under public comment. And before we resume that, the council is back in session, following a brief recess. I am going to repeat myself for the sake of the people online. You have three minutes to make your comment. You do not have three minutes and one second. Three minutes and 15 seconds. Three minutes and 30 seconds. Three minutes and 42 seconds. You have three minutes. At the end of three minutes, stop your testimony. That is how much time you have. If you don't stop your testimony, your microphone will be cut off. Good afternoon. Please proceed. Hi, my name is Emily Love and I've been here for the last meeting and the meeting with Parks and Recreation as well regarding this issue. And I agree that it seems like not all the options are really considered before approving the application to remove the tree. I think going in forward in the future, there should be more due diligence when considering removing a heritage tree, which is why they have that designation in the first print, first place. And it shouldn't be based off of the appellants and community members that are going to the effort of trying to find alternative options. I think that local government should be responsible for finding all the options and not just coming to a quick conclusion of remove the tree. Excuse me. I think that there has been a lot of community support. Shown through public comments previously and today and all the funds that were raised for this issue. So I think that there is a lot of evidence that this is an important issue. And also it seems like removing the tree isn't the perfect solution. There is that river running underground and it could cause a lot of problems. So I think that there should be all those issues should be considered going forward. Thank you. We have someone online. We'll take the next person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting. Good afternoon. My name is Veronica LZ. And just in case anyone was not at the September meeting, I am the blind person who complained about the sidewalk and how challenging it has gotten. And I just want to say that I love this tree. I love this town. I'm a long time resident of Santa Cruz. I'm not a tree expert. I don't know anything about the geology. I really don't know the answers, but I do know that please remember that part of this discussion is pedestrian safety. I kind of cringed when I heard Ralph Meinberg describe the intersection and how scary it was. As I go walk out in the street and then guess at some random point to get back up in the sidewalk. And I don't know how far it is to a driveway. I just know my dog now takes me to some random spot and we step up on the curb. But I don't know what that's like for someone who's using a mobility device, how far out of the way they have to go. And I just, at some point during my lifetime would really like to be able to just cross straight and have a nice sidewalk, however it looks. And I, like I said, I love these trees, but even just since it's been cordoned off, everybody's telling me how much messier it's getting. And like I said, I really don't know the answer and I appreciate everything I've heard today and what I've learned. And I'm glad that the discussion came up again about the Hill, but please remember, it's not just a community versus a profit center, it's pedestrian safety and someone who really wants to be able to safely enjoy this wonderful town we live in. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Anyone with us in council chambers wish to provide further testimony, sustained and hearing none. Do we have anyone else left online? How many? One. We'll take that person. Good afternoon and welcome to the council meeting. Hi, my name is Connell Wilson. I lived in Santa Cruz all my life. I lived downtown just by the clock tower for several years. And I remember when the Willow Tree on Squid Row was cut down, I know that that was certainly a sad event for a lot of the community. And from what I understand, this tree being cut down will again be another tragedy kind of for the community and a major loss in terms of our kind of culture and community up being definitely a forced area and a very nature loving community. I just wanted to take the opportunity to say that I remember growing up with that tree. I loved having it there as I had my youth in downtown Santa Cruz. And I hope that it's still there when I get a chance to move back. I'm actually calling in from Denver, Colorado right now. But this is such a part of the community. I've heard about it even being out of state now. And I hope that I'll have the opportunity to still see that tree when I come back to Santa Cruz to visit. Thank you for your time. Thank you. All testimony having ceased. The matter is back before the council. Are you trying to get my attention? You good? Okay, all right. All public testimony having ceased. The matter is back before the council. Recognize the council member for an action. Anybody offering a motion here? Mr. Newsom is recognized. Thank you, Mayor Keely. I'll make a motion to approve the staff recommendation to deny the appeal and uphold the Parks and Recreation Commission's approval of tree removal permit. PR 23-0089. But I do wanna also with the added direction that's presented here on the screen. One. I'm sorry, I'm through y'all. I've reformatted it to be consistent with our motion language. Okay. The first part is the staff recommendation and then two and three are your ads. Okay. So with the added direction or I'd like to place the added direction in addition to planning of three required mitigation trees, direct staff to plan an additional six trees in the city by the end of 2024 and if necessary, make the budget adjustments to do so. And the appellant may work with the Parks and Recreation Director and Urban Forester to help choose the six additional mitigation trees and to direct staff to bring forward a budget item providing an additional full-time assistant Urban Forester in the Parks and Recreation Department during fiscal year 2025 budget hearings for a council consideration. There is a motion. Is there a second? Second by the Vice Mayor. Under discussion, Mr. Newsom, please open on your motion. Thank you, Mayor Keely. I first wanna appreciate the appellants and their concerns for this beautiful majestic redwood tree and I wanna thank them for all of the work that they've done on this appeal and for bringing an attention to this tree. This is not a decision I'd like to make or particularly enjoy. However, we now have several reports that show that the tree is having an adverse effect on the building, three arborist reports, two reports by structural engineer, report by a plumber and one of the structural engineering reports that was provided by the appellant shows that it is having some effect on the building. So I do support the staff recommendation. I do though think that the mitigation requirements for removal of this beautiful tree should be increased substantially or at least by threefold. And I want to invite the appellants to have a say in the trees that will replace these trees in our community and for our Parks and Recreation Department to work with them on this matter. And I also want to point out that the city has started working on a goal of planting 3,000 new trees by 2030 through our Street Tree Master Plan and through our Climate Action 2030 plan. Yet there's only one urban forester in the Parks and Recreation Department to try to oversee this monumental task. So I think we should explore adding an additional full-time urban forester to our Urban Forest Department during the fiscal year 2025 budget talks. And I will be advocating to accept this budget item at this talk as well. For the debate or discussion, Madam Vice Mayor. Thank you. I appreciate these, this additional language that you brought forward before us today. And I will be supporting this motion. This isn't a decision that any of us I think take lightly. And I think last time we were really persuaded by the testimony of the public, but when taking the time to understand the direction before us to consider within our ordinance the expert testimony, it's clear to me that the tree needs to be removed at this point in time. And it's unfortunate. It is a beautiful tree, but given the evidence presented before us, this is what I feel like we need to do. For the debate or discussion, Ms. Brown. Are you? Ms. Brown. Okay, thank you. I have a couple of comments I wanna make here. I'm not gonna support the motion. I appreciate the spirit in which it was brought forward. And I do think that are very excellent knowledgeable urban forester could use some help. So I'm not opposed to that and we'll look forward to considering that in the budget time. And I'm not making this decision lightly and it's not out of any questioning of your expertise. I understand the confines in which the decision is being made. I don't think we need to contain ourselves as a counsel to those confines. I don't believe there is substantial evidence to make the findings today. We have conflicting expert reports made more challenging by the lack of access to the site. I'm disappointed the property owner would not allow access, particularly now that I understand that one of the partners has a very high profile and very public commitment to urban trees. That's disappointing. The best practice of that phase three inspection would, I believe, given us some additional information that could be useful to us in making this decision and in acknowledging that the mitigations offered are indeed reasonable. I don't believe that mitigation measures were considered at all really by the city. I'm disappointed the city seemed to have spent more time working to affirm the justification for cutting this tree than looking at the space and the circumstances more holistically that location and what the dynamics there that go beyond the tree and property rights. And I don't believe that those alternative approaches were seriously considered. To deny this appeal is doing the expedient thing and we don't have to do that. The heritage tree ordinance does not require us to do that. That is a choice that we can make and I'm not willing to vote to do the expedient thing because it's gonna be cheaper and in the distribution of risk it's gonna help the city. I believe there are other reasons to be concerned about this and I don't believe we have the information that we could have had we been more committed to doing so and what I had hoped that my original motion would that I made back in October would elicit. It didn't but here we are. I just want to say really quickly I would challenge any of you to find building that was built around this time or earlier that doesn't have some cracks in the foundation and certainly the facade of the foundation. This is not a situation where there is great risk aside from consideration of legal risk. That's what's happening here. So the mayor mentioned on an earlier agenda item and I just have been thinking about this. What is it like to when we're making these decisions play checkers or chess? This is a checkers move. It's an expedient move. I can't support it. I wish we had a little bit more will to consider how to move forward in a way that I think we could find with these property owners. Oh, I'll be voting no. Council Member Brenner. Thank you, Mayor. I had a quick question regarding the motion and that was on the additional direction for full-time arborists and I'm wondering if anybody at Parks and Rec can just briefly speak to that. Is that something that has been discussed or is in process already? I really don't know. And I was just curious that that was put in. Thank you for that question, Council Member Brenner. Travis Beck, Superintendent of Parks. The Urban Forestry Department in the past had more robust staffing. We had an urban forester, a field crew leader and supporting parks maintenance workers and administrative staff. All of the staff were lost during several rounds of budget cuts. We brought before the Council in 2021 the Street Tree Master Plan. One of the recommendations of that plan was to restore necessary staffing to the Urban Forestry Office and the assistant urban forester position was one of the positions called out in that report which was adopted by Council. Additionally, it's something that we have included as a possible item in our budget and budget narrative for the Urban Forestry Grant we've received from the Forest Service. So there may be opportunities to get that at least partially funded through that grant. Thank you. I do remember the Street Master Plan and now that you mention it, there was talk of that. So thank you for that. A couple of things I remember at our last hearing on this item, we have the determination to make on this tree and I didn't feel there was enough data to really support making a judgment and making a decision on this tree. So I appreciate the additional information and the additional data that has been presented. I kind of found it interesting to learn and read on the engineers peer and grade beam foundation, the Catervillier floor system, the retaining wall system. It's pretty fascinating although I think despite how everyone feels about the tree and despite some of the opinions or the statements said, we have to go with the expert data and really it has been clear that the root ball is responsible for the foundation to the structure, to this building, to these 18 homes where our residents live and there is a huge safety component or public safety issue here that's very concerning and another thing I learned too is that there are many heritage tree removal requests that come forward that are resolved at a staff level and we don't even see those because they are denied at a staff level because I was curious how often does this come up and so thank you for speaking to some of the process and how when these requests do come up there are mitigation measures explored and not just an immediate acceptance of a heritage tree removal and in this case as the city attorney has laid out, I will be supporting the motion because it does clearly define that there is structural integrity due to the tree so thank you. Ms. Watkins is recognized. Thank you. I too want to thank our community members and my colleagues for the thoughtful discussion. I mentioned this at the last time, I don't like these items, nobody wants to cut down the trees in our community, they're extraordinary, they're beautiful, we all love them and we are stuck in situations like today where they don't interface with our environment and our neighborhoods and I was reminded by the woman who came forward who had tripped because she was visually impaired and we're weighing all of those considerations. I want to thank my colleague for the additional recommendation. I want to thank our urban forester, Ms. Keely, I think I've sat here in a number of these and I know confidently that as a professional on this field you do your fine work to assess it, to make sure that we aren't unnecessarily brought these decisions before us because nobody wants to do that. So I wanted to make those comments. I did have either a suggested addition or just consideration is what I've heard also is when these trees are removed that there leaves a void and I was wondering if we ever track that after removal to understand the impact and that could be a consideration that we have in place or how that's factored into the science for a lay person's kind of language associated with that. So maybe that's just a potential suggestion. I don't know if it needs to be a formal addition but I wanted to bring that up and I'm seeing. I think that's a great suggestion but I think it can be just a... Okay, a consideration. Formally, given to staff, I don't think it needs to be part of the motion. Perfect, okay, great. I just wanted to bring that up. Anyways, so in understanding the challenging components of these types of decisions, I too plan to support the motion before us. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Ms. Colton, sorry, Johnson is recognized. Thank you, I'll keep it brief. I will also be supporting this motion. It's really difficult to vote in this way. I think we've heard that across the dais. If I'm glad that we took the pause, I'm glad that we went in the direction that we did because several months ago when we looked at this, I didn't feel that I had enough information and I really appreciate the work that went into providing us with that information and I don't see a feasible path forward. I don't think we are responding blindly. We've done our due diligence and unfortunately I don't see a way for us to be able to maintain this building and move forward. So I'll be supporting sadly, but I think it's the right decision. I'll be supporting this motion and I do wanna thank Council Member Newsom for the additions. For the debate or discussion. Council Member Newsom, Ms. Bush, if we could put the motion back up. Thank you. Under your third item there, would you accept the following addition? It's one word between, it would be direct staff to bring forward a proposed budget item in that we don't make, we don't predetermine budget items. Second item is where it says fiscal year 2025. The actual budget is the fiscal year 2425 fiscal year. If you would take those two as minor technical amendments that'd be appreciated. Would that work for you? Yes, accepted. I'll go for the second one. Okay, thank you. There's an issue in your head and an issue in your heart. I think for most people here right now and I think the issue in our heart is we love this redwood tree too. The issue in our head is that we have this quasi-judicial function that we have to perform here. I had the great privilege of serving for 12 years on the Board of Directors of the Semper-Pyrans Fund, which is the state's oldest forest conservation, non-profit organization founded in 1906. And the sole purpose of that foundation then and today is to preserve redwood habitat, redwood trees and redwood habitat because it is in such a narrow band where it can grow, which has now with climate change, things are even more challenging. The redwood really depends upon a regular twice a day fog coming in and out so that the evapotranspiration, which is to say watering the tree through its limbs and its leaves, that that's a very big part of how it survives and as climate change moves along, that band of where redwoods can grow is getting narrower and narrower. So I think that the notion of saving redwoods and their habitat, what we can do on the climate change side, what we can do elsewhere is very, very important. Also, when I was in the legislature, I was at the two largest park and environmental protection bonds in the nation's history. And we set aside, that was a $5.3 billion. And in that, we set aside a half a billion dollars for redwood forest conservation, preservation, and enhancement. The reason I say all that is to say, I don't think there's a lack on this city council by any member about understanding the environment in which we live and what we appreciate, what we try to do about that. I do think that in this quasi-judicial capacity now about this one redwood tree, I think that based on the evidence by experts, which is we were told by our city attorney, it's interesting to hear someone say, well, there's a river going under something. That person didn't purport to be an expert. Doesn't seem to me we can weigh that. Someone's not an expert, doesn't assert to be an expert. A lot of assertions were made. I think that what we're constrained to is the actual evidence in the record supported by documentation and people who have the requisite knowledge, licenses, et cetera, to weigh in on this. And for my part of this, I have the same reluctance, I think other council members have. In my heart, I wanna see it there. In my head, I don't see how, given the current ordinance, how we can do anything except deny the appeal and approve the applicant's application to be able to take down that tree, sadly. The city clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown? No. Watkins? Aye. Brunner? Aye. Calentary Johnson? Aye. Vice Mayor Golder? Aye. And Mayor Keely? Aye. Motion passes and is ordered. We are going to take a 10 minute recess. We will be back here at 15 minutes to four. And we'll stand in recess until such time. City Council is back in session following our afternoon recess. We will now take up item number 27. This is a community-wide climate action plan 2030, one year progress report. Dr. Weiswes, thank you and your team for very, very good work and please proceed. Thank you very much, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council Members and Mayor. Tiffany Weiswes, the Sustainability and Resiliency Officer for the City of Santa Cruz. I'm gonna be talking today with a little bit of background, remind us of our targets, talk about our progress update and hit some highlights on what our work plan is for this calendar year. I wanna begin by acknowledging our internal sustainability team, our external community-wide climate action task force and a multitude of partners, both on the local and regional level that make this work possible. Climate is highly collaborative and we will not achieve the transformative work that we need to without these partnerships. So I really wanted to start with that and also thank you for your continued support. Santa Cruz remains a leader in climate, both amongst our peers locally and across the nation, if not worldwide. And that doesn't happen without your support and leadership. So I'm gonna share with you today the highlights of our progress report. We did have a very dense agenda report and I wanna thank those groups again for helping to refine them in addition to the department heads. So just by way of background, for those of you that may be new to the climate space here at the city, we did first adopt our climate action plan in 2012. We followed that up in 2022 with our 2030 plan that we are now implementing. Importantly, we adopted at the same time a three-year implementation work plan which guides us as staff, our work both internally and with our partners. Another notable thing that happened this past year is that we were one of the partners that stood up, I serve as vice chair on the Monterey B Regional Climate Project Working Group, which last year wrote $30 million in grants alone for transformative climate work in our region and we continue to work this year on, particularly in the environmental justice space and electrification of buildings and vehicles. I also think it's notable to mention that between 2021 and 2023, we achieved for the first time an A or an A minus rating with the Carbon Disclosure Project which is our effort at being transparent in how we are approaching climate and what we're doing, everything from emissions mitigation to climate adaptation is what we report on and we stand among the top 10% of all reporting cities in the world that report. You can see, and it's not a big surprise on the right-hand side, our latest greenhouse gas emissions inventory is from 2019 where transportation by large measure is the greatest source of our emissions for those sectors that are regulated. So there are other sectors, particularly around carbon sequestration and trees that are not regulated by the state, but we do include in our climate action plan. I also wanna note that every department does have a one-year work plan that we set at the beginning of the year that again tears off that three-year implementation work plan. In terms of our emissions reduction targets, we do of course have a legal target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% from 1990 levels by 2030. That's this first column you see here in orange. And also recognizing the aspirational nature of both our leadership and our community, we do have an aspirational target of carbon neutrality, meaning no net emissions, zero emissions by 2035. Right now, we're unable to say whether we are on track with meeting our 2030 target, being only one year in. We will be completing our 2022 greenhouse gas emissions inventory over this calendar year. Unfortunately, the data lags quite a bit. We just got our energy data from PG&E and so forth. And so we're not able to really say are we on track for our 2030 target quite yet, but next year at this time, I will be able to update you on that. We do have 152 actions in our climate action plan, which supports 18 quantifiable measures. And notably, and I know health and all policies next, I'm with you for a while today, 91% of our 152 actions supports health and all policies, the three pillars of public health, sustainability and equity. And so that's really a testament, I think to the process that we went underwent in developing this plan with our equity lens, our equity advisors and our equity focus. So I'm gonna spend a little time on this slide because this is really kind of where the rubber hits the road in terms of where are we making progress and where are we maybe lagging a little bit behind. So this is called a wedge diagram. And what you're seeing here are 2019 emissions over on the left-hand side. And then where we wanna get to make our climate action plan target, which is 181,000 metric tons, which requires us to reduce 76,000 metric tons of carbon. All these letters here that you see correspond to the different quantifiable measures that we've adopted. BE is around building electrification, building energy, T's transportation, W's waste. Again, these are the sectors that are regulated by the state. So starting with building electrification, we are behind on achievement of our emissions reductions from building electrification. As you know, we did have to suspend our natural gas ban, which put us, had a gap where we had new mixed fuel buildings come in. However, you all did adopt a replacement reach code, which is good news for us. But in the meantime, we had to peel off existing building electrification, which I know is gonna be very challenging for us. We're picking that back up this year and we will be adopting or bringing forward some programming or ordinances by the end of the year on existing buildings. But we are a year behind on that. So with building electrification, we're slightly behind on the achievement of BE1, BE2, and BE3. In terms of transportation, it also is hard to ascertain progress here because of the data lags. And we do know that the data that we have is mostly from the COVID era, where telecommuting went up and all of our different mode shares went down, biking, public transit, and so forth. However, we also know that our public works team is making so much progress on grants, infrastructure and programming, our community partners are helping with that programming. And so I do expect to see shifts the next time the census data comes around. So we will report on that when we have that next. Also, so those are measures T1 to T2, T4 to T6 pertain to electric vehicles. And unfortunately, we are not where we should be in the first of eight years of implementation yet. We had a large grant with the Monterey Bay Regional Climate Project Working Group for $15 million to try to scale up our public EV infrastructure, which is the enabling condition that we as a municipality have control over. And we found out just this month, we didn't get it. However, we will leverage that grant proposal and we're gonna go snag some of the IRA funds that are left over. So while we are a little bit behind here, we do have things in place to get that money and get that infrastructure in place to enable electric vehicle procurement by our residents and our business owners. Lastly, in terms of our waste measure, which is the sole W on the screen here, we are on track and that's thanks largely to our food scrap collection program that Public Works has put in place in compliance with state law. So I'm very happy to report on that. One other high point, and this is bittersweet coming kind of after the item that you just heard is that although carbon sequestration in trees are not part of the state regulated sector, we do have a target for those. And we are on track with that, with the 3000 trees that council member Newsom mentioned in the prior item. And I wanna highlight the $1 million grant that Parks and Rec did receive that's really gonna allow us to ramp up the installation of the planting of those trees and the care of those trees. Notably, we also are building tree planting into a lot of our other grant proposals like for example, our pump station number one rehab project. So to the extent and the HUD pro housing grant that you all heard late last year. So to the extent we can, we're trying to kind of leverage other grant and project opportunities to put more trees in. So just some highlights there, although we have kind of a mixed report card when it comes to the quantitative measures from a qualitative standpoint, we have a really good story to tell here. And I'm not gonna review all of these kind of key high impact activities, these are the activities that achieve the greatest emissions reductions, but suffice it to say that there's a lot going on here at the city. We have three new solar PV stations, lots of energy efficiency work, lots of active transportation improvements. We notably in something this was council was very interested in the past is the fleet electrification plan or roadmap. We do have a big grant pending with our regional climate project working group that would allow us to procure 31 electric vehicles and all the charging, taking us through compliance with state regulations to 2030. So across our fingers, we're gonna be getting that grant. We of course have the new reach code in place. And then we're doing some of this program like this partnership with the library on electric induction cooktops, a loaner program that people can check out so they can try them out if they're in the market to buy. And then of course I've already highlighted the food scrap collection. I've mentioned already the collaboration with the climate project working group, but I also wanna note the nascent Monterey Bay climate justice collaborative that's launching. And I wanna thank Mayor Keely and council member Watkins who are gonna be participating in an upcoming grant funded project to deepen relationships with environmental justice groups and evaluate how we can bring them into decision making in a more holistic kind of way around climate investments and what kinds of grants we go for and what we fund. So that's very exciting happening and thank you once again for that. And then lastly, just a little preview on what's ahead in this year, what's on our work plans. And this is not everything, but we have the active transportation plan update coming up. We have again, tons of electrification going on for our fleet and charging. We are right now trying to get funded our municipal facility decarbonization roadmap. And there's several kind of offshoots of that happening. I've already mentioned existing buildings. We are also looking at a gas leaf blower ban which you will be hearing more about over the next six months. And I've already mentioned planning lot of trees. The other part here that I really wanna emphasize here is that we've picked off a lot of the low-hanging fruit here at the city. We've done it all. And what's ahead is really gonna be difficult and the change management piece is super important when we have kind of taken advantage of all the easy kinds of things. We really need to institutionalize processes, policies, and accountability. And that's why we have, through our carbon fund, we're going to be funding a change management project to really look at how can we institutionalize processes, policies, and accountability that really is gonna support us and create those enabling conditions and achieving our climate goals. So lastly, I will say not, I think the other really, the wonderful thing about this space with climate is that not only are we seeking to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions, but we know that there are so many co-benefits that go along with this. New jobs, improved indoor and outdoor air quality, which means better health outcomes, and community resilience. So again, I wanna thank you for your continued support and I'm happy to take any questions you might have about this report and I do have our staff recommendation here for your convenience. Well, Dr. Weiswes, thank you very much and thanks to the folks who serve on the task force that works with you in this regard. Let me open this up to council member questions, comments on this item, Ms. Brunner. Thank you for that update. I was really happy to see where we're behind and where we're on track meeting our goals. So that was really helpful. I guess my question is what kind of communications out to the public and the community are we doing around this progress report? And can we make sure that we're sharing wide and far these updates? We can do so certainly. We didn't have anything planned, but I can work with our team to create kind of an infographic or a snapshot, so to speak. That would be great. Thank you. That we can put out through our social media. One thing we do have planned that unfortunately we were not able to do, even though we had committed to do so last year due to capacity constraints, is have our community round table on climate. And so now that we have some support from the communications team, we have our management analyst on board. We're already in the works of planning that for late summer. And that's gonna be really a time for us to showcase all of the myriad of climate work that's going on, but also have some productive conversations, sharing progress, but also kind of hearing from our partners and the community on various topics. Okay, great. And is the city webpage still up with all that? Yeah, information, great. Yes, in the webpage is current. All of this will go on to our webpage as well. And I also encourage folks to participate in our community wide climate action task force. Folks are able to come on every other month onto that meeting where we're really getting into the meat on the nitty gritty of our work plan items. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Council Member Collentary Johnson is recognized. Thank you. Thank you so much for the report and all the work. I think one of the reasons why we are on the leading front of this is because of your contributions and your leadership. One question I have is, and maybe you covered this and I missed it. What are the different indicators for the transportation measure? Sure. So there are several transportation members. T1 and T2, T1 is active transportation. So bikes and walking. T2 is public transportation. And T4 is related to things like landscaping equipment and other off-road equipment that uses gas. T5 and T6 are related to electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging. So those are transportation related measures. Well, hopefully we'll see that T2 shift tremendously with all the work the Metro is doing. Yes. I hope so. And green hydrogen, must be green hydrogen. We got it talked, yeah. Yeah. Council Member Watkins is recognized. Thank you. Thank you so much for the report and the work. And also just for your transparency and wanting to keep it a transparent document, but also our ability to accomplish a lot of the low-hanging kind of items that we could accomplish easily, but knowing that some of the big, more challenging issues are before us, so I really appreciate that. I have two questions, and one's kind of a big question, so if you can just say it's complicated, that's fine. And that's in regards to, I think, what is kind of percolating around the concerns around the sourcing for electrification and for the batteries for electric vehicles. So that's sort of the first question, and I know there's discussion and debate about that, obviously a complicated answer, so only if you so choose to go there. But I think it's something that people are hearing about, and so how are we thinking about that? And then in the other is with the environmental justice, as we're thinking about the infrastructure, and I know you said this is forthcoming, but are we thinking about building the charging stations and areas that are less resourced and how are we prioritizing those? And I think that's what I know, or you're alluding to when you say that, but I think it's great to think of the tangible examples of that, so if you have any more, that'd be great. Absolutely, well thank you for asking about the batteries. We definitely have an item in our climate action plan that pertains to end-of-life of both EV batteries, even solar PV panels, which are considered hazardous waste at the end of the life. So first of all, our landfill and our resource recovery folks, they do deal with the solar PVs and make sure that those are dissembled and sent in the right way. In terms of EV batteries, it's not a well-known fact that here in California that recycling of EV batteries is, there's actually a market for that. I don't have much more than that, but I can certainly bring that back. It's not something we've been focused on. However, in some of these grants that we've been applying to, we've been putting that in as a placeholder of something that needs to be addressed. So for example, the FHWA grant that we didn't get, that was written in, and then our California Air Resources Board grant, that has that written in as well. So we are hoping to be able to address that with the existing markets and try to support legislation around bolstering those markets. In terms of environmental justice, you have it spot on when we worked with our partners in the Climate Project Working Group across the Monterey Bay, understanding where they were disadvantaged or low-income communities. Technically, we don't have what's the CalEnvirus Green disadvantaged communities here in Santa Cruz, but we do have low-income census block tracks. We prioritize those first. Now, there is a complication to that when you think about the beach flats. Parking is a premium there, and so how much are you going to sacrifice parking for electric vehicles? There's a very fine balance there with that, and that's something we've been in communications with both Ecology Action and Community Bridges who are working on the outreach to the Latinx community and specifically the beach flats, and we've kind of come to the conclusion of as they're walking folks through the procurement process to buy EVs, as they come on board, we know how many chargers are going to be needed, right? And so let's try to keep that matched and synced up. So it's certainly something that's a priority for us. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Tremendous work, as always, and I'm really struck this time as I'm looking at the quantitative progress summary, the measurements, the complexity of just trying to track this stuff and the work that you all have done to try to make that legible, right? So when we talk about transparency, it's like how do we even present, how do we even analyze what's happening and what are, so great, just an incredible work, just leave it there. And I'm going to ask a question that something that my students have been asking me recently in some of my classes, and I hate the question, but I'm going to do it anyway. We've got, there are a lot of areas in which we have work to do. And you've suggested that the low-hanging fruit, and we've done an incredible job in large part due to your leadership. I'm so glad you're getting more of a team these days. What's the, if there was like the one most difficult thing that you think would be the most impactful that we really have to work on, I recognize they're all important and you're not going to dismiss any of them, but what's the one thing that we need to focus on to make the most impact? It's transportation, without a doubt. Yeah, so in the realm of transportation, we have a lot of carrots to try to get people out of their cars. We're not, we can't tell people don't drive your car. I can't even tell myself sometimes when I know I'm not supposed to, or I shouldn't be. So electrification? Yes, if you look at this wedge diagram that's on the screen here, you see the biggest reductions are under T4. That's electric vehicles. The other two, T1 and T2 are related to active transportation. I did see Claire come on, I maybe was gonna add some color there and I totally would welcome that if she does want to, but that is where we're gonna see our biggest emissions reductions. But again, right, we can't mandate folks by electric vehicles. We have to create the enabling conditions and that's the chargers, that's advocating for the incentives at Central Coast Community Energy and at the state level. It's applying for those big federal grants and landing them so that our partners like Ecology Action can do the advocacy and the engagement. That's everything that we're doing and it's just a matter of scaling it up. And I don't know if Claire has anything she wants to add, but the active transportation piece in public transportation is very important as well. Absolutely. Thanks, Tiffany. Claire Gallegli, Transportation Planner in Public Works and to tear off a little bit of the thing about electrification, we work a lot on active transportation infrastructure and programs to make walking and biking easier and more accessible to people of all ages and abilities and so we've been investing heavily in the types of infrastructure that we know help people make behavior changes. You see the rail trail, you see investments along the river walk, you see us investing in our sidewalk and bike lane network and so removing barriers and then having those carrots for incentives for downtown. We have our GoSanicus program. We give out free bus passes. We give out free bicycle memberships. We give credit to use our bike lockers. We give people downtown dollars for using alternative transportation and so making it as easy and accessible to choose to travel outside of single occupancy vehicle is one of our big goals and I think our team kind of across the board has tried to make that as wraparound easy as possible. Thank you. Thanks, Claire. One other exciting thing I think I'll mention just because you asked the question about electric vehicles. The city is receiving a formula grant from the Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant Program. It's a federal grant program. It's only about $130,000 but over the past year, we've developed the concept of providing a rebate to our lower income employees here at the city to enable them to buy electric vehicles and it's something that was an idea that sprung out of our energy project coordinator, Andy Shatney had that idea and we moved it up through our leadership and found support all the way through. So it's something I'm really excited about and we're giving a generous enough rebate to bring that cost down so that the monthly payment will be affordable at our folks that are at lower income salaries here at the city. Thank you very much. Mr. Newsom. No, thank you, Mayor Keely. I just want to make a brief comment to just thank Dr. Wise-Wefts for all of her work on this plan and for pushing us to achieve the goals in this plan and also all of her work on the Climate Action Task Force. I've been very happy to be on the task force and we've done a lot of great work and it's really great to see the progress that we've made on a lot of our goals and especially, you know, say in planting trees and planting and on track to plant 3,000 new trees and by my kind of calculations on this, it looks like we've planted around say 300 trees over the last three years, which is really great and hopefully we can continue that but just really great work and just really want to thank you for that. Thank you. Mr. Butler. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor Keely and council members. I wanted to, I'm Lee Butler, director of planning and community development for the city and just wanted to add one additional perspective on the transportation area that Dr. Tiffany Wise-Wefts was mentioning as well as our transportation planner, Claire Gloigli. From a land use perspective, we have both state laws and local laws that are reducing the number of parking spaces that are required as part of new projects and while we recognize that this is a difficult transition where we're moving from a more auto dominated and auto-centric society to one where we're promoting more biking and more walking and more public transit use. From a land use perspective, the reduction in the number of parking spaces is helping to encourage that choice of additional costs to own a vehicle, additional challenges to find a parking space, a premium that may be paid for renting a parking space rather than automatically getting one with a apartment. All of those are also contributing to the increased use of bicycle transit and pedestrian transportation. So just wanted to add that land use perspective in as well because they all fit together in our climate efforts. Absolutely, thank you for that, Adam. Thank you for the questions or comments at this point. We're going to go out to the public and receive comments on this. Anyone with us today in chambers wish to comment on the report today? You would have three minutes to do so. Anyone with us? Ms. Bush, please come forward. Hello, good afternoon and welcome. Good afternoon, City Council. Good to see so many friendly faces. Just wanted to remind everyone who introduced myself. My name is I.O. Banjo. I do sit on the City Climate Action Task Force, pointed by Mayor Keely. I get to serve with Dr. Wise West all the time. I just want to say that I completely 100% support this package that she has proposed, not only that, but part of our job as a task force is to kind of figure out what the community, like how to implement these plans the best way that really reach the community and that affects them in the most powerful way. And I think that part of what we're seeing and part of my assessment in our conversations with Tiffany is to see, you know, what are we missing in her team, in her office that can help her to execute these goals more effectively to reach these goals, to be able to scale these goals. And so one of the things that we've found that's needed is an increased staff capacity. There's two particular positions that I'm really interested in seeing City Council take investment in. One of them is an energy manager and the second one is a resilience planner. The energy manager would be kind of responsible for developing sustainable energy solutions that would help to reduce our carbon footprint. And this is something that's gonna be really impactful for the team in terms of understanding, you know, how do we actually implement some of these energy goals that we have for 2030 and beyond? The resilience manager is really, you know, gonna be in charge of kind of responding to some of these CCU fires, responding to the flooding that's going on West Cliff, making sure that the city is always at the front edge of being the most prepared in charting multiple different alternatives and solutions to their approaches. And so these two particular positions I think will help to not only ensure that we have the staff capacity to meet and reach our goals, but also to make sure that we are presenting ourselves as an environmental leader for not just the city, but the state and the nation, and that we fulfill our responsibility to the community by doing that. So as a Climate Action Task Force member, I think this is a really important investment that the City Council should be taking into consideration. And as you're drafting your budget proposals and you're thinking about what are those investments that you're trying to think about for the next couple of months, I think this should be a critical priority to help us reach our goals. And I just want to say thank you again to the City Council and to Dr. Wise-West for all your work. Mr. Banjo, thank you to you for your service on the Task Force and your other good work in the community. Thank you very much, sir. Anyone online? One person with their handrails. We'll take the person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Council meeting. Yes, hello. Yeah, this is Garrett. Well, just nothing personal, but just listen. The high up charter poison is more leftist ideology on steroids, now trying to take credit for any improvement in well-being conditions without proof of correlation, actual positive net accomplishment, and missing reliable comparative data. This report notes high up policies should embrace a forced racist DEI diversity discrimination without apology or remorse and promote spending public monies to support DEI indoctrination efforts in an attempt to, well, in a front to free peoples. Assigning public budget monies to spend to these ends will destroy American values and beliefs, which is the aim of the cultural Marxists. You ignore your job is providing common city services, not publicly sponsoring anti-American values via mind control and creating a defective economic system of undeserved rewards that will cause harm and be an injustice. Your missing baseline data makes this so-called progress report an illusion of fakery, while tracking well-being is fine. Assigning high up credit for any improvement while disregarding correlation to decreased well-being would be a cultural Marxist con. For instance, inflationary income increases happen anyway, and the passing of ever higher undeserved living wage increases don't acknowledge the lost jobs and entry-level opportunity that you destroy. When you mention your anti-discrimination progress, you'll admit your own prejudice with outright discrimination intense toward white people. Racism comes in all colors and authorities. Another high up of misuse to your is promoting the current globalist threats of humanity of climate change, existential crisis exaggeration, which will threaten the global food supply chain, energy availability, and draining the public of necessary monies for their well-being and typical totalitarian power fear mongering. You spend public monies indoctrinating public employees at public expense with your high up propaganda when the city is in financial crisis of your doing and would benefit from a priority shift. You misuse the defective high up to justify socialist inroads into destroying free markets and housing and the doublespeak of affordable housing. You explore opportunities to apply high up to compensation and hiring policies, which defy a merit-based people opportunity approach which has served the country amazingly well until it's planned destruction by DEI and high up illogic. Now, similar policies threaten our national defense and public safety promoting unqualified and over-compensated people to positions they are not qualified for except by diversity, race, or gender. Harvard Diversity Hiring brought about an unqualified, plagiarist president committed to DEI Asian discrimination. You throw the slur against all white people or white supremacy around, but you don't define it or give wide evidence of it. Your faulty CO2 emissions fear mongering doesn't alter the fact nothing Santa Cruz does will ever control the climate of the planet Earth. It's all big time. It's all big time, so thousands of people promote central control authority. Thank you. Anyone else with us? Good afternoon, welcome to the council meeting, sir. Hi, my name is Cosmo. And I was thinking that maybe I expanding the capacity of maybe climate employees and things that I heard were just talked about would be a very good way to bring outreach to maybe younger people, college students, and everything that could maybe be talking about excluding diversity. I know that that could also be a way to kind of negate what some people think about climate and I don't know how it goes with, but wage disparities in terms of, I don't know, some people's reservations, bringing it to the youth is there could be temp positions, all sorts of things like that that could, I don't know, kind of help maybe negate some of the reservations that we just heard or something like that. So I think the expansion is kind of on the right track. I don't know how to speak in terms of like how to address maybe some of the comments we just heard, but I think that could be a good, like, restatement to talking about maybe what some people we just heard said. Thank you very much for sharing that with us or we appreciate it. Anyone else online? We do. Let's go to the next person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Just put the hand down, all right. Anyone else with us who should make comment on this matters before the body? And there is a recommendation, Ms. Weiswest, Dr. Weiswest, if you kind enough to put the back up, I believe it is to accept the report. I'll make that motion. There's a motion by Council Member Watkins and a second by Council Member Newsom to accept the progress report under debate and discussion, if I might for a moment. Dr. Weiswest, thank you. This is very good stuff. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it, we know that. You're measuring it, we're managing it, we're making progress, that's great. It'll never be as much as we want, but we're always pushing hard to get to that net zero place. As you know, you, City Manager and I have been in a bit of a conversation given the importance of this issue to perhaps consider taking the task force, given how broad it is in terms of touching virtually every department of city government in terms of taking care of business ourselves and being good in that regard as an institution and also reaching out into the community and encouraging broad-based participation in that public sector, private sector individuals and so on, we've been in a bit of a conversation that maybe it is time to consider elevating the task force to a commission so that what we're doing is it has the standing inside this institution that other important subject matters have, our Planning Commission, our Parks Commission, our Public Works Commission, our Parks and we're going to go through appointments to those in a little bit today. But the idea of elevating this to a commission which I think underscores the city's commitment and I know that we've not worked out every detail on that but I wanted to daylight that to council members and to the public and thank Dr. Wise West for her participation in this conversation about how we take this and as a gentleman who's talking about and people online have said how it is we make a deeper reach into the community. They know what we're doing, we're soliciting their participation and so on. So I don't believe that what we need to do is add any language to the motion but instead to thank and encourage both Dr. Wise West and the city manager to work with me to determine whether or not that kind of elevation makes sense on this subject matter and if it does, we will be back to the council in a month or two to review this question with the entire body but again, Dr. Wise West, thank you very, very much for all of your very fine work, I appreciate it. You're welcome, Mayor, thank you. Thank you. Any further questions or comments and the vice mayor is recognized? Thank you for the presentation and while I was listening to you, I kind of overheard a side comment about green hydrogen technology and I've been, I don't know anything about this but I've recently learned that my sister's professor up at UCSC, Bakhton Singaram and some of his colleagues have been working on this development up at UCSC and I'm not sure if you're aware but we have an initial meeting set up with them and I'd love to invite you and I just think it's really exciting that some of this new technology is being developed right here in our own chemistry labs. Sure, I'd be happy to participate in that. Thank you. Yeah, I think it'd be really cool. Thank you. Thank you very much. Further questions or comments? Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I would just add, I've already said thank you, you're amazing, keep up the good work. We want a team for you. I think that Mr. Banjo's recommendations make sense. I'm not sure how you've been working on that or talking about that in your task force but I want to see, to the extent that you have thoughts on how we can actually support you with additional staffing, rather than for example myself just saying it every time you come here. I want to support that specific proposal so please bring it and I also very much support the idea of moving towards a commission for level for this purpose of determining how we move through our climate action, how we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all the things. So thank you for raising that. I've supported it in 2017 when it didn't get passed at this council but I will support it when it comes before us next time. Thank you. Yes, if I may, we are updating our research on that. We have twice brought this in front of the, this is body, not this body specifically but over the last eight years. So we're updating our research and we're targeting March to bring that or to have that continue that conversation. Very good. For the debate or discussion seen, hearing none. Clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Republican. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion passes and subordered. I am going to abuse the privilege of the presiding officer. Earlier today we had conversation about aging in the community and how that all works out and as somebody who's ahead of most of you in that regard, it's all good. There's hardly any problems when you get older. But I will say this, I'm on a note of personal privilege here. I had the good fortune, my father who passed away quite some time ago at the end of his life for two or three years, he had a very happy life and that was because he married my stepmom and I have a couple of step siblings and they're wonderful people and I have a brother who is a wonderful person and my brother who in addition to being very successful back in the day in the Silicon Valley is once and always a Marine and my family has come to really depend on my brother in so many ways over the years and my stepmother passed away last week at 92 and my brother came out from New York and he's been managing a lot of things in her life as she's gotten older and my step-sibs came to town. For the end of her life last week, it was pretty foreseeable where she was and how things were proceeding. So when we were discussing that earlier today, I joked around about it a little bit, that was to keep me from probably crying during that conversation but the reason I bring all this up is because my brother's here. My brother came into the chambers and he's here from New York and the Marines have landed and they took good care of everything that needed to be taken care of and I just want you all to welcome my brother, Terry, to the council chambers. Brother, I love you over there. And because he's my older brother, I will prohibit him from speaking to you. There we go, we are on item number 28. This is health and all policies and we're gonna get an annual report here and we have three council members who will take us through that. Your name is listed first, Ms. Contari-Johnson. We'll start with you. Okay, I wasn't completely prepared to kick us off but I will. Oh, did you? We have a brief presentation and that I was going to show on your path, literally five minutes and then I think you all were gonna jump in with Comma. Does that work for you? I'm happy to take it whatever order. That's perfect, please. All right, very good. Let me do so then, let me share this for you. So just real briefly, similar to the climate action work, we wanted to share a little bit of background for those of you that may be new to the health and all policies world. Talk about the progress update, the work plan and the recommendations. So this work dates back to 2019 when council member Watkins was mayor. In that time, we were able to adopt an ordinance, a city council policy that prioritized equity, public health and sustainability in our government policymaking and decision making. In 2021, we adopted a three-year work plan which is what we tear off of for our annual work plans and in 2021, there was a complimentary anti-racial discrimination resolution adopted that not only recognize the existence of racism and white supremacy in our community but revive the health and all policies city council committee that's been meeting for the past two years. In addition to that, we've adopted health and all policies community wellbeing outcome indicator metrics which we update every two years. We're getting ready to complete that update in February of this year so we'll bring that at our next annual update and we do have annual work plans for the committee. In terms of progress, these are just the major highlights, the specific things that we had on our work plans but there are other things like the age well designation that wasn't even on our work plan, right? That we are doing that supports health and all policies. So we joined the government alliance for racial equity and that has served as a wonderful resource for us for technical assistance to be able to engage with our other colleagues across the country. Our management analyst regularly participates in those fora and has helped us to tailor staff training. We of course put together the HUD Pro Housing, Affordable Housing and Climate Resilience Grant which I'm very particularly proud of. We have a lot going on with workforce development and we implemented the city like me recommendations for increasing diversity and representation in city committees and commissions. A lot of this work is ongoing and in particular this last one here. We're really just sharing a snapshot here. One thing that we have made just a bit of progress on is making sure that we integrate health and all policies meaningfully addressing the pillars in the agenda reports. Only 11% of the council agenda reports coming forward addressed health and all policies so that speaks to some internal training that we need to do to ensure that you have all the information you need to be making decisions and policy. On the right hand side you can see some of the results of our Santa Cruz city like me recommendations. One of which is the committee is recommending to the council adopting targets for increasing Latinx and renters participation in committees and commissions. So that is one of the recommendations that you'll see at the end here. And we continue to explore the integration of youth into committees and commissions along with some other committees that the city is that's really taking the lead on the youth piece. So coming ahead we have core. You've heard about core coming up. I'm really excited about phase two of health and all policies in the budget that you're gonna see this fiscal year for decision making really exciting and I got to think finance on that HR will be working. HR has been able to ramp up their capacity to address this has been on our work plan for some time the diversity equity inclusion and adding accessibility initiative and statement. Again, continue the Santa Cruz like me recommendations and then also exploring the creation of an equitable citywide gas power leaf blower ordinance which the health and all policies committee really wants to see through over this year. So that is the presentation and there are some recommendations here. I want to turn it over to the committee members and thank them for their support. And I know that they might have some words to say and they wanted to add a motion which is in red on the screen here. Thank you, Dr. Weiss West. Back to you, Ms. County Johnson. Now I'll jump in, yeah, thank you. Thank you for all the work that you've put into this. I think what I want to add is that I had the privilege of working with council member Watkins when this came forward before I was a council member and this is something this is a framework that she and I have been engaged in for decades in this community. So to see it here in our community and not just a commitment to it but to really actualize and operationalize it is really something. So we are once again a leader in this. We've been asked to present with other communities to show not only how did we get here to adopt the ordinance but what are we actually doing to again, operationalize it? So Dr. Weiss West showed some of the actions that we've accomplished over the last year and many more. The couple pieces that I really want to point out is that the commission work that's being done right now that will be done in the coming years is going to be transformational for our community. The implications of this is that we are really fostering diverse leadership through our commissions. So the implications and the impacts I think will be really tremendous. The other piece about the agenda report, one can look at that and say well okay that's a check mark but it's beyond a check mark. When I have worked on some agenda reports and I need to integrate equity, health and sustainability it really makes me think about that. It makes me think about what is the nexus? What is the alignment? How are we doing or not doing this? So I think that's a really key and important piece to see that percentage of agenda reports go from 11% to, I can't remember now. No, from 8% to 11%. 8% to 11%. So we got some work to do but we're heading in the right direction and then the other piece I wanted to pull out was the work with youth integration of youth voice in our practices and policies. That's really overlaps and is aligned with the Children and Youth Bill of Rights that our council has committed to. So those are the pieces I wanted to pull out and again just thank my council colleagues and thank Dr. Giffney Wise-West and Bernie and other members of the team for the work. Ms. Brunner. Thank you. You're welcome, nice to be here. Thank you and I'm really happy that we're able to bring these recommendations forward to the full council. I stepped into this role in 2021 when I worked on the racial equity resolution that we adopted and directed some specific initiatives around equity and our systems and we're still ongoing work with that and it's in the agenda report and we will continue to keep that as a high priority going forward and we had to look at taking bite-sized pieces that we could really operationalize and get at but at the same time, I really appreciate Tiffany Wise-West your, the way it was listed out and the status of each part of this work is ongoing versus completed. Some are ongoing, some are a one-time action and it's all laid out and we really, it's going slower than I hope but there's so much work and again, I support the staff capacity and any work we can do but we have to go at the pace that's realistic and so things aren't overnight but like my colleague, council member Collin Tari Johnson said it will be transformational and I hope everyone in our community has a chance to read through some of the action items that we've been working on. It crosses so much in our community that affects our people and our residents from workforce development initiatives to all of the kind of well-being metrics and data that we've been able to collect and working with the county of Santa Cruz too who's also on some parallel tracks with us in some of the work to really identify and get the data to really help make steps forward. So thank you. Council member Watkins is recognized. Well, gosh, to add to my colleagues who've said so much, I'm just so pleased by these progress reports as much as I know there's an interest to see us transforming systems more rapidly. We're transforming systems in an amazing way that I think really reflects our values as a council, as a committee, as a staff and as a community that I know we all heard and that we were just talking about in regards to sustainability, environmental justice specifically, thinking about equity in our decision making, how to really transfer what I know is a value of equity into specific tangible outcomes that will move the needle on equity is what this is. And that's what is so powerful about this framework. I wanna thank the council's current, previous contractor at the time. And most certainly I wanna thank Dr. Tiffany Weiswest. I really want to appreciate your professionalism and your commitment to data as well as accountability and transparency with the outcomes we set for ourselves and when we're not meeting them. And that's for me, one of the best things about having something like this in place is that when I'm gone next year, this lives on and hopefully feels like everybody's fingers have touched it in a way that feels reflective of our community. We don't do public health, but we certainly have a role in creating the health and wellness of our community, whether it be through land use, through our commitment to racial justice, thinking about transportation, equity, infrastructure, resilience, you name it, we have a role in that. That is also how we think about how we're transforming our systems with thinking about who's involved in our commissions, how they can be involved and things like that. And our responsibility is to do something about that to make that happen. And this is what health and all policies is doing. So I feel really pleased. I'm really excited to see us move forward in thinking about budgeting. Budgeting is, as I know our mayor knows well, is a reflection of our values, health and all policies through the lens and planning our budgeting in that way is truly another amazing way to have a transformative system here. So I'm really pleased and thank you to the finance department who wherever you may be at this moment, I appreciate that they're interested in wanting to see that move forward along with the other divisions and departments also. Yeah, and I just wanna thank the ongoing support of our council and my committee members for their work. So thank you so much. And I'm happy to move the recommendation when the time comes. Thank you for the questions, comments at this time. Let me invite members of the public, except for my brother, to make comments that they wish to. Anyone who is with us in chambers, let me see if there's anyone online, Ms. Bush. We'll take that person. Person online, good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Good afternoon. Person online. Good afternoon, mayor and city council members. My name is Maria Cadenas. I am the executive director of Ventures and nonprofit that works for the shared and equitable economic future with zip code, race, gender, or immigration status, the net-dicted income or wealth. Over the past few years, we have partnered with the city and County of Santa Cruz to help paint the picture of their respective boards and commissions. The effort started as a recognition that different lived experiences and help inform and shape policy and governance to ensure our city and county are resilient, prosperous and equitable. We're grateful for the city, the health and policies committee and city staff for their leadership and commitment in moving this work forward. At this time, we would like to express our support for the adoption of the health and health policies recommendations to support targets to increase diversity in city committees and commissions, as well as commission or committee member compensation policies and processes. As part of this, we recommend the universal up-out compensation stipend model aligning with the counties approach where compensation is offered and members can choose to decline it. Compensation will lessen financial barriers that might prevent working class individuals from participating, ensuring access to a broader range of community members. This addresses economic disparities and will help the city build board committees that more accurately respect the diversity of the community and allows for a broader representation of community voices. Ventures fully supports this initiative. We recognize this as a transformative step to fostering a more inclusive city. Thank you for considering this proposal and we look forward to witnessing the positive impact it would undoubtedly have on our shared community. Thank you so much for calling in. We appreciate it. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? We'll take the next person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting. Hello, Reggie Meisler here. I just wanted to take this moment to just remind city council and the public that while health and all policies, I mean, it's a valiant sort of thought process, but it's kind of based on a faulty assumption that the city cannot do public health. The city can do public health. Berkeley does public health, has a public health department. Oakland, I mean, sorry, San Francisco has a public health department at the city level. This is not impossible. Like this is just a choice that was made by a bureaucracy that can be made differently. And like, well, it's nice that you guys are trying to do something with health and all policies. We could be doing a lot more. We could actually, we know that we have, we're already doing a lot of public health stuff. We help do shelter programs for the unhoused. We like have our community set aside grants. Like we do like multiple things. And so this is really just a technicality that folks are like operating off of right now. So just a reminder, this, we don't need to be like super careful about this stuff. This is totally just a choice that people are making. Thank you. Well, thank you. Do we have anyone else online? Thank you, Ms. Bush. Matters back before the council. Motion would be in order. I'm happy to move the recommendation with the added language as presented our staff here. Council member Watkins moves the recommendation with additional language that we put up on the screen in just a moment. And I'll second. Council member Callentary-Johnson seconds. Ms. Brunner thirds. We will, is there a debate or discussion? We're going to put this up on the screen to make sure that everybody can see it before we vote on it. I just want to kind of preface. I'll share my screen, but there was some changes or differences between the staff presentation or the staff agenda report and the presentation. I just wanted to find out what that. Okay. So I made them in red, the difference. So let's take a look and make sure that the maker of the motion agrees that that's the motion she would like to see in front of the body. Good with that? Second. All good. Is there a debate or discussion? Seeing the near none, the clerk will call the roll. Thank you mayor. Council member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Hopkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Callentary-Johnson. Aye. Vice mayor Goldert. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion carries and is ordered. We are on item 29 economic development strategy update downtown and east side district activation and direction. We'll be pleased to hear about downtown and east side district activation. Ms. Lipscomb, good afternoon. Ms. Unick, good afternoon. Thank you for all your fine work. The floor is yours. Thank you, mayor, members of the council. I want to actually acknowledge this is a joint city council and economic development item. And it was actually the three council members, council member Callentary-Johnson, council member Watkins and council member Newsom who first came to us in the city manager with wanting to bring forward several initiatives and direction around activation activities and just some needed areas for attention. And after some conversation, we decided to do a joint item and bring with it some updates to our ED strategy because many of these items were directions that council in some form had provided a few years ago, but several years forward additional attentions needed. The pandemic has happened. A lot has changed in the downtown. And so I really appreciate the opportunity to provide an update in these areas today and to take further direction from council. And with that, I'd actually like to turn it over to the three of you for any opening comments. Ms. Watkins, just recognized. Thank you, mayor. I'll keep my comments brief because I know we have a presentation. I just know and want to recognize my colleagues. I know the full council as well is very committed to the work that's happening in all of the different areas that there are recommendations. I know our economic development team is small but mighty, working so hard and doing amazing things, many of which are behind the scenes or we're getting little updates here and there. And one of the efforts around what this agenda report and presentation is trying to do is really to daylight the work that's happening to get affirmation in regards to the direction we hope to pursue and continue to go on and have checkpoints for us as a body and as a community in regards to accountability to see those move forwards and or a shift in direction if needed. So I know it's full but I appreciate the collaboration between my colleagues as well as our department to bring forward these topics to this evening. And I appreciate the opportunity and of course, my colleagues can say what they have to say. Sure, and I'll- Council Member Collin, Tari Johnson is recognized. Yes, I also appreciate this partnership and collaboration and bringing this agenda item forward. And I'll just add that I think this is a really important time in our community with coming out, well, we're still dealing with COVID but coming out of the pandemic and ensuring that our downtown and our community is vibrant and thriving and all the changes that we're seeing with development and housing development downtown. So it's an important time for us to pause and reflect on what we've done, what's worked, where there may be gaps and where we see our future. So it is just bringing it all together and getting on the same page. And as Council Member Watkins said, setting some touch points to make sure that we continue to support our local businesses and that we create a really welcoming, safe environment for community members and visitors. So. Council Member Newsom is recognized. Thank you, Mayor Keely. My comments will be brief as well. I just want to associate my comments with my colleagues, Council Member Watkins and Council Member McAllentary Johnson. Just thank you so much for your work on this and to Director Lipscomb and Economic Development Manager unit for their work on this. And as my colleague, Council Member McAllentary Johnson said, it's more of a pause, look at where we are and look at where we can move forward. And as the report says, our downtown right now is experiencing a true revitalization, but there are ways that we can improve and as well with the East Side Business District as well are looking into that aspect as well. So very excited about this agenda item being, very excited about this agenda item being before us and I look forward to the presentation. Thank you. Ms. Watkins is recognized. I just want to call attention to the East Side and Midtown reference so that everybody has, hopefully I know. That's for you, Mayor. Thank you. I'll make sure you saw that. I didn't doubt where that was directed. All right, please proceed. Thank you. Okay, so where we're going to start out today is just some context and putting this in the framework of our economic development strategy. So the economic development strategy was a community-driven sort of participation process that Council weighed in on. They were involved with us for, I don't know, I want to say six months in sort of vetting and looking at some of the strategies or all of the strategies and actions that came into this, what is basically a work plan for the next five years. We started this in 2021, so we were in the midst of the pandemic. At that time, we thought it was almost over. So it's really interesting to have the opportunity today to do exactly what the comments that the Council members just made of taking a pause and saying, okay, where are we? Because the anticipation when we finalized this work with a consultant in the community was that, okay, we are almost done with the pandemic and we're going to have recovery and then we're just going to keep on going. And I think here we are at the beginning of 2024. And as you'll hear through some of the presentation, I mean, there are many businesses, and you've heard this earlier in closed session, that have recovered fully. There are others that are still struggling. The environment has changed for businesses and our downtown environment and our Eastside Midtown environment are undergoing changes and changes to really help those businesses survive in a post-pandemic world is some of the things that we're looking at today and revisiting some of the strategies and actions that are in the economic development strategy update. So when you look at that, and it is a very detailed report, it is attached in the staff report. And I will also say that as we go to the presentation, Rebecca's going to sort of give us a quick overview of where we are in the context of the directions that are coming today and the recommendations. We'll go through those rather quickly. They are very wordy because it's actually taking text from the strategy actions and updates. So, but all of that context is in the report, which is pretty thorough. So if you have any questions, we can pause and go back to them but we'll probably breeze through those pretty quickly so we can spend more time on the recommendations themselves. And with that, I will turn it over to Rebecca. Ms. Unick, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Thank you for your good work. So as Bonnie mentioned, we'll give sort of a highlight of a lot of the progress that we've made so far. So kicking it off with our strategy to develop a pop-up program in our downtown. So this was something that we had anticipated, we had tried to do prior to adoption of the work plan and the pandemic really provided the perfect environment, unfortunately, but fortunately to test this out and really get something going. So we have successfully ran a pop-up program, it's still ongoing. And we've also made a lot of advances in working with our city departments to streamline some permitting requirements, modify some zoning to really make it easier for these to occur. So in April of 2021, I brought to the council along with Bonnie a proposal for our pop-up program. This is sort of the landscape of what our downtown vacancies looked like at the time. As you can see, all of these orange circles represent vacancies, they're almost on every single block in our downtown. It was really challenging time in sort of the heart of the pandemic period. And so we brought forward the proposal to create a mechanism to lease out some of these vacant spaces, provide subsidized rent to local businesses and be able to give them an opportunity to activate the spaces and see if it would work. So through this program, we were able to place four businesses, Tara and Self, MK Contemporary Art, previously known as Curated by the Sea, Childish and then Rev. We're really excited to see that MK Contemporary Art continues to be in that space. They're operating long term there. The businesses Tara and Self and Rev did a test case in those spaces and there's now a long term tenant there. And Tara and Self has actually got a full lease space on Soquel Avenue and this was an opportunity for her to do some business before her long term space was available. She was building out that space. So it got some name recognition, was able to make some sales and then transition into that longer term space. So that was really exciting. And then Childish, we're really excited to see that business expand from the Midtown area. I've heard that's a generational divide so I'm gonna go with Midtown. And they were able to expand and reach into the downtown and have shown success. So they've been in there since November 2022. We're actually looking at extending a longer term lease that's under review right now. They've been really successful and really been a great addition to our downtown as the only real dedicated children's toy store in our downtown community. So transitioning to sort of a more current picture, this was an analysis we conducted in November of last year. And as you can see, those colored dots have really started to change. We've had a lot of businesses open, more than have closed from the pandemic have opened. And we're releasing a lot of progress there in terms of activating those vacancies, but we do still have some areas that need some ongoing investment and lease out. So shifting to our next strategy, outdoor dining, when we were working on the ED strategy, we were operating our temporary outdoor dining program and seeing the success of sort of creating that more streamlined approach, giving businesses the opportunity to just expand outdoors. And so there was really a dedication to make those permanent changes, streamline our permit processes and bring that forward. So really excited to say that we were able to complete the Parklet program ordinance and that's now in effect. We launched those applications in May of 2023. We've received 19 applications and we have 12 of those are for the pre-approved designs that the city invested in building those out so they'd be a more streamlined approval, or sorry, invested in doing the design work for those so that the businesses could build them out more easily. And then we have three applications for custom designs and four for retrofits. So we've got five of our pre-approved designs under construction now, hoping to see those come to completion end of February. And then the custom designs, one is completed, one's under progress, hoping to be done in the next week or so. And then the retrofits are in between of being completed but majority aren't done. So we're excited to see that come online. You're gonna see some really beautiful Parklets permanently gracing our landscape. A couple of pictures here on the left is a bad animal on Cedar Street. They're getting close to being completed there and then Hulas is fully complete and theirs is an expansion of what they had pre-pandemic. They're sort of the test case. So excited to see those going forward. And then on the private property side, we have been working with a city council subcommittee to make modifications to those private property permitting processes. So that work is well underway. We're hoping to bring those modifications to the council and planning commission in the next couple months here. And that's really looking at reducing the number of permits that are required, the cost of those permits, the intensity of sort of modifications that businesses would need to make to those private property spaces so that a lot of them are operating now perfectly well. So looking at how we can reduce those permitting requirements to allow them to just keep what they're doing and come into that permanent approval. So moving to our next strategy, this is focused on a lot of the downtown business improvement districts. So prior to the pandemic in 2019, we were looking at potentially creating a consolidated improvement district in the downtown. So combining our property based improvement district that we have now and our business improvement district into one organization to try to maximize our resources. We kicked off that campaign in 2020. So we weren't able to move that forward. But both of those organizations decided that it would be beneficial to just look at modifying their existing district boundaries and rate structures to be able to provide those resources that we need. So that has been underway and was completed last year. And then we've also done a lot of work towards improving and streamlining some of the coordination for downtown maintenance and services. So I'll give a little bit of an overview of that activity. So as I mentioned, last year we were successfully able to approve the expansion of the downtown management corporation as well as some modifications to their rate structure. The property owners valued that investment and that was successful. Similarly for the downtown association, the business improvement district, they were able to modify their rates and provide some additional investment that's been really beneficial. And we're already seeing the results of that investment in some of the stats below. So I'm really excited to see DTA was able to provide ribbon cuttings every single month. They sold a record setting $100,000 in downtown dollars last year, which is an excellent investment. Those can be used at a number of stores downtown. So really excited to see those numbers. And then the ambassador program, which is funded through the downtown management corporation and operated by the downtown association, they had doubled staffing from our expansion of the district and those changes to the rate structures. And so they were able to actually triple their hospitality interactions. So over 40,000 hospitality interactions, over 3000 business contacts, over 43,000 pieces of litter removed. So that's really the heart of our clean, safe and welcoming services in the downtown. And just within a six month span of sort of having those increases, we already are seeing that payoff. Thank you. I just wanted to add that between the two district increases, between the downtown management corporation and the downtown association through those, we've added about a third of a million to the overall budget for downtown services. And that will only increase in the next few years as more of the properties develop downtown. We do have residential and the commercial retail frontage that is included in those assessments. So we're pretty excited for that increase in investment that we'll have in the downtown over the next few years as development goes forward. And then on the city services side and sort of where the city is aiding in that downtown maintenance and services. We've had a lot of increases in dedicated Santa Cruz police department staffing and CSOs for downtown. Public works is able to consistently keep our sidewalks clean, make that a welcoming environment to visitors. And then parks and recreation, if you haven't taken a stroll downtown, the Pacific Avenue tree wells and planter beds have been really beautifully maintained and improved. And so they've been really committed to keeping those vibrant, just really helps with the overall streetscape, look and feel. And then we're also excited to see the downtown design standards begin implementation. So this is aligning new street furnishings and then paint schemes that match our wayfinding system so that we have that more cohesive look and feel downtown. So the parking meter poles have been painted already last year and this year we're looking forward to seeing the light poles, all the street poles downtown, planter bed fence being painted, we'll have new benches and new trash can receptacles downtown. So those will be some really tangible improvements that we'll see in the next year as well. And then looking at more of the business mix downtown, we have a strategy that's focused on improving that entertainment, dining, nightlife experience of downtown, being able to fill these vacant spaces or the new spaces that are coming online with the development with something that's exciting to attract folks to the downtown. And then also looking at how we can make those permitting processes for those uses that maybe don't fit within our traditional zoning code easier. And alongside that as well, creating partnerships with the commercial broker community, making sure that we have the communication around what spaces are available and connecting those with prospective businesses. So we've made a lot of progress there. One of this photo that you're seeing is a broker tour that we took with Anton Development Corporation for the Front Laurel Pacific Project to be able to look at the new retail spaces and the progress of the construction. It was very fun and just really exciting to see this new development come online. We had, I wanna say about 25 people join us for that tour, just a lot of excitement in these new spaces. And we were able to build out a quarterly broker breakfast meeting this past year to be able to do a lot of information sharing and just open that communication around what's happening in the commercial real estate space downtown, how we can help. And then a lot of the policy updates and changes that we've made that they should be aware of when they're working with prospective tenants so that we can make that process go more smoothly. Okay, and then as economic development, we tend to do a lot of marketing for the city and sort of promoting us as a place to shop and dine and spend locally. So that's always an effort that we take on. You may have seen around town our shop local banners and bridge signage. And so that was an effort that we took on and worked with the Downtown Association as well for an excellent holiday campaign a few years ago and visit Santa Cruz. So we're looking at bringing forward some new banner designs this year. They need a refresh. So just keeping that messaging going and looking at other opportunities to sponsor and support those shop local campaigns. Okay, so we have, and these are outlined in the report, the seven council and staff recommendations. And I just wanted to take a brief pause again before we go into each of the recommendations and turn it back over to the council members to see if you wanted to highlight and talk briefly about any of the specific recommendations and direction. May I ask if the council members who wish to do that? Sure. Do you want to say something? I'm not sure what to make of that. Council Member Clark Johnson is recognized. Thank you. I'll just pull out a couple of these. All right, I got to straighten my eyes here. Yeah, okay, I'll pull out just a couple of these. The empty storefront, I mean, as Rebecca unit showed, we've made quite a bit of improvement in that area. I think that's a huge accomplishment and success. And one of the reasons why we want to continue to assess this and look at this is because there are still some major sites that are empty and it causes challenges in our downtown area. There's illegal activities and the beautification that we're doing that was pointed to that sometimes goes out the door when there's an empty storefront. So we want to just look and see what are some other strategies that we can put in place to address what's remaining. And then I think I will pull out, oh, the placement, well, you know what? How about Council Member Watkins? You talk about the placemaking and activation in your baby for a while. Council Member Watkins is recognized. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Calantari-Johnson and for the presentation. Yes, certainly placemaking and activation has been something that we've been talking about for many, many years as long as I've been on the council actually. And it's that feeling when you are downtown and you're in a certain area and you are experiencing something and then say, you know, you end up in Pearl Alley and it's a different type of place or if you're in other communities, sometimes there's areas that are really centered around youth or kids. And those are the types of placemaking that in activation strategies that we want to explore as we're in this transition time thinking about these investments that makes that special culture and uniqueness of different areas within the downtown. So I'm happy to see this on our recommended list. And if I may, while I have the floor for a moment, also just the east side and Midtown, I know we're gonna be talking about that. It's been really exciting to see the Midtown parties happening, what that brings to my hour neck of the woods in terms of folks from all over the city and county to come and experience the Midtown, certainly also supporting the businesses. And one of the strategies here speaks to that a bit with the assessment and thinking about that with the businesses. And then just lastly, if I may, you know, I know that there's a lot of discussion, there has been a lot of discussion around where we are with the development of the new library and then certainly conversation around the current library facility. And one of the conversations that's been happening is what would that look like? And I know there's steps that we'll take obviously prior to any major changes or direction there, but making sure that we're really transparent with our community, that this is not something we're not thinking about. And certainly it's something that the farmers market is thinking about locally in terms of a permanent farmers market potential. It's an option. And also just a permanent space for a public market. And so, you know, as we're thinking about these things which have come before us in the past, how are we maintaining ongoing transparency and engagement with our community in regards to some of our next steps? I'll leave it there. Thank you. Council Member Newsom, you look like you're reaching for your microphone, sir. Thank you, Mayor Gulley. I just wanted to really reiterate what my colleague said. Very excited to see these recommendations, especially in the storefronts. As the agenda report points out, the vacancy rate in downtown right now is at a historically low rate. But as Council Member Colletary Johnson pointed out, I think we'd still need to look at further avenues to lower that rate further than what it is. And also recommendations to help the east side slash midtown businesses and the business association over there and place making and activation and continuing to further push for downtown to be a vibrant spot for a vibrant place for our community. The Vice Mayor is recognized. Thank you. I really want to thank my colleagues and staff for working on this super complete comprehensive package to support our local businesses. And I really admire all the entrepreneurs out there that help support our local economy. I had been meeting with west side, lower west side and west side industrial neighbor business owners and building owners over the course of the past couple of years. And there has been some expressed interest in basically the exact language in five. And so I'm wondering if it's possible to just, and I don't want to put too much on staff but to add east side, midtown and west side. That's the direction I just wanted to. Council Member Bruner is recognized. Thank you for laying out these specific directions to staff and to staff for all the continuous work in all of these areas. It makes a huge difference. And I really applaud the economic development and housing team. And I just wanted to say the midtown east side businesses, I've worked with many of them on different topics over the past several years that I've been on city council. And I just wanted to share that in terms of resources for that general area, I know that some of them are very interested in forming or exploring what it would take to form a business association officially. When we call it a business district, but there's no formal mechanism or structure in place for them to pay into and decide and have resource and funding to support what some of their goals are. So I understand also there was a survey that staff sent. So would that also be included in the next update coming or is that, do you have that information now? We're going to, yeah, we're going to go through each of the recommendations of some detail and provide that survey data. Okay, and I think that's it for now that I just wanted to comment on. Thank you. Council Member Brown to record. Thank you, I'll make my comments afterwards, but I did want to ask, I appreciate the update on outdoor dining and all of the work that you have been doing. I just can't thank you enough. There are particular needs for different configurations and different store or restaurant owners. It's incredible the amount of work that you've put in to make that work. And I just wanted to ask, given the number of applications, do you feel like you've been able to work through the folks who want to move forward with a permanent setup? Or are there still kind of problematic ones or a group of them? Where is that at? I'd love to hear a little bit about that. Yeah, great question. So we do still have some that we're working through. So the five that I mentioned of the pre-approved, those are the ones that we've got set and they're ready to go. The remaining seven of those, there's some challenges in terms of ADA access and we determined that all of our roads have different cambers to them and that makes it really challenging to pour a four inch concrete slab and have it not be high above the sidewalk. So we've been working through that and just navigating that with the businesses and so being flexible in terms of how we're getting them through that finish line, the retrofits just working through and making sure that they have the resources, information that they need to make those changes. So yeah, there are still some where we're seeing, figuring out what that path is for them but we are making some good headway. And yeah, 19, it's pretty incredible and it's really exciting to see that those businesses wanted to take it on. That's almost all of the ones that we had in the temporary. So I think that's just been really nice to see and fun to work through even if it's a little stressful sometimes with those road hikes. If I could, we've kitted around for 13 months now because it's my hobby horse about Midtown. You win, you win. The reason I say that is a couple of things. I think what you have done with regard to the marketing strategy about Midtown is actually quite helpful. And so on a going forward basis, you'll never hear me again make fun of Midtown for a reason. Not because I decided to give up on it but because you've convinced me that there is a designation in our community that makes sense with a community, excuse me, with a business community that they themselves self identify that way. And so I think that is quite good but I want you to know that 13 month running joke is now ended on my part. You win, I lose but for a good reason. So thank you very much for your very fine work on this. Back to you. Okay, now we're going to go just into a little detail on each of the recommendations. Yeah, so I'm starting off in terms of the placemaking recommendations. I was mentioned earlier with some of the council members comments around the alleyways. I think that where we're looking at with this is what are our public spaces in the downtown that are maybe underutilized and can have some additional activation. So there's an image here of Pearl Alley when Stripe and some of the adjacent businesses were doing events during the pandemic and just seeing this alleyway completely transformed and having people being able to enjoy it and spend time with it, looking at where we can duplicate those types of activities in some of our other alleys. They also have the festoon lighting which is something that the city and the businesses work together to fund and install. And so we do have some funding available that we could look at adding some of that lighting into the additional alleyways. And that's something we want to work on getting moved forward in this year. Similarly, Fraser Lewis Lane, had a lot of great success activating that with outdoor dining during the pandemic. And so looking at, you know, there's a new restaurant that's open there, seeing if they want to be able to expand into that alleyway or looking at other potential uses there. And then I provided an example of sort of some more passive activations. We have excellent murals already in our downtown. Other cities, you know, employ sort of these photomural opportunities. This is from my hometown. It's like a tour when I was visiting for the holidays. And so they have this Monarch. You can see I'm closest on the right where people can go up and take photos in front of it and look like they're a Monarch butterfly. Just fun things like that or opportunities. And just wanted to add here that, you know, Rebecca mentioned, we already have some funding in our budget. We have a downtown alley CIP line item that we've been holding for several years. We just haven't had the capacity to move that forward to the timing with some of the improvements and the coordination with the other departments is right for this year. And with your council direction, we do have that funding at a minimum. We want to put the festoon lighting, as Rebecca mentioned, in the alleys. We do, and this is also with some feedback from council member Bruner, want to do and make sure we are, and that's where I think this mural from Riverside comes in as well, sort of right sizing and doing the right activation for each alley. So some of the feedback we had is, you know, there's like a quiet zone in Pearl Alley. And Plaza Lane, thank you, Plaza Lane. And so just being sensitive to the businesses and the residents, the different users of those areas and making sure we're doing that community outreach and have, you know, a public engagement plan prior to us moving forward with whatever activation and place making we're doing in each of those areas. And then we also have a specific area that we've been working with the downtown association that they really brought forward as one of their priority areas, you know, next to new leaf in that center area, that public space. So that would be another area that, in addition to the alleyways that we would be looking to engage in some activation and place making over the next year. And then moving over to the Midtown area and looking at the city owned parking lot. It's called lot 32, but I know that we've spoken with council members in the past around the Midtown Plaza or something, you know, that can really be a more permanent public space in that area. So we've had a lot of success with the Midtown Fridays events. We're looking at bringing that back this summer, sort of a shorter time period, but still the awesome activities that event Santa Cruz puts forward. And then, you know, we're looking for some, you know, direction of, do we want to look at some more infrastructure that would create more of a permanent public space? You know, this picture is an example of the similar parking lot that's been turned into this more town square in Hayes Valley in San Francisco. And so this is ritual coffee that operates out of a shipping container converted into, you know, a kiosk. And so looking at are there ways that we could do some of this infrastructure in the Midtown parking lot and lot 32, but that would take some investment in terms of getting water and electricity and sewer and restrooms to be able to have these, you know, 24 seven activities. So seeing sort of what those costs would be and how we can move that forward. There's been a lot of interest and support in that and having a daily activation rather than just the weekends from the businesses. So looking to explore that further. And then on the vacant storefront, you know, we have had a really good grass sponsor what the current landscape is just because of tracking them through the pandemic. And so taking a deeper dive into where we currently stand, what's the current status of some of our longer standing vacancies, what are maybe the barriers to getting them least. Some of them are still in shell capacity. They don't have bathrooms or maybe be a very big investment for a smaller business to take on. And so they're just waiting for that larger potential tenant and where are ways where we could step in and maybe help reduce those barriers or help incentivize them to make those improvements so that they can be more easily leased. I think those are some of the things that we'll be exploring. Also sort of the beautification side are there window graphics that we could put up temporarily that maybe make it a more attractive and do some of that marketing messaging of shop local, shop Santa Cruz or downtown Santa Cruz branding or things like that. There's a photo here from Los Gatos they have these really cute little cat graphics that they put up on some of their vacant store fronts and just sort of create some more seamless experience or maybe not as eye catching as an empty window it maybe has whatever conditions inside. So exploring those things and then also being able to support and show that there is business activity coming in. Sometimes downtown Pacific Avenue right now you could walk down there and think that there's a lot of vacancies but there's actually a lot of those spaces that are currently leased and they're doing their TI's or their tend improvements or they're waiting for their permits or in their various stages. And so while they're an empty store front now there is something coming and so being able to promote and celebrate these things that are coming maybe with some graphics that advertise for them. Just some examples that we've seen and we wanna look at some more best practices there. And then a large piece of it too as Council Member Kalantar Johnson mentioned looking at how can we address some of the maintenance issues that we have. Sometimes properties are not well maintained there's broken windows or graffiti or repeated issues. And so how can we strengthen sort of our code enforcement arm of things or be able to have some tools in place that can really help take care of those issues in a more streamlined and immediate fashion. So just looking at those different resources. Okay recommendation three is around planning for future use of the existing library space including a permanent home for the downtown farmers market. And some of you may recall the report we had Project for Public Spaces with Group 4 conduct in June of 2021. And that ended in a report to Council it was a pretty intensive community engagement process. And it ended in a report which Council accepted which basically narrowed it down to three preferred options. And they all included public space, affordable housing. And Civic Plaza Park which should also be a home for the farmers market. But it's a concept at this point. And so we kind of you accepted the report and we moved forward on the project. Now here we are three years later we're still working on the project but I think it is time we're getting a lot of questions. I know Council definitely fields a lot of questions about what is the status of this process? I will say for the last three years we last three years, yeah actually last three years we have been going through a process particularly in the last two years with the farmers market board and the farmers market leadership. And so we did approve an MOU with the farmers market board that it has us focusing first on the temporary location. So we've been working pretty actively over the last year. And I'll just show you those of temporary layouts for the farmers market for an on street activation and some combination that we're vetting of on street and off street for temporary home. And when we say temporary that's at least probably two years could be a little longer. Once we need to start for the staging for the downtown library affordable housing project we will need to make sure we have a home that works for the farmers market. So we've been vetting these with their vendors with their food trucks in various areas we have a third one that we're also looking at that's a, you know has some additional challenges but it'd be super cool. We're not quite ready to show that one at this point but these are two that we're actively vetting right now. We also have one of the sites for temporary and potentially also for permanent that's been fully vetted with conceptual renderings. This is just one of the many renderings that we have and this is on lot seven. Definitely the farmers market board while this will work for them is at least while there's construction going on downtown is not their ideal preferred site because of construction staging activity. They really are excited about being closer to the city hall campus and the library campus and the idea of being included in the reuse of the existing library site is something that really appeals to them. And so one of the directions that we have is that action two is working with the farmers market leadership stakeholders and community input is really stepping up. Once we finalize those temporary layouts and figure out where they're going for the temporary is to really switch gears and go to both action one and two where we then pick up those concept plans where we left off re-engage the community on what does the future of this of where the library is now look like and engage the farmers market in vetting including that permanent home there as well as other potential options. So those are our next steps around those. We don't have that level of specificity in our ED strategy. So that's also why it's one of the recommendations here is to include that in that work plan. And then recommendation four really comes in the acknowledgement of how much downtown is changing how much has changed just even in the last couple of years. And one of the things we've noticed as these construction projects have gone forward is how important it is for us to be communicating with the businesses, with the developers with DTA and DMC our partners or organizational partners in the downtown of what's happening in these changes whether it's just from transportation, construction impacts to how are we going to actually integrate the new downtown residents into the downtown environment. So we have some very specific actions that we want to work on including making sure residents know about all of our amazing businesses and giving businesses an opportunity to have promotions for residents as well. And then continuing to communicate. It's just, we realize that we can't under communicate about the impacts of road impacts construction. Specifically when we look at the interim operations plan for Metro for our Pacific Station North project how important it is to make sure the businesses understand when we're changing for two years the direction of the traffic and that buses are gonna be on street how important it is for them to know that. So that will be ongoing but we don't have currently have specific direction or recommendations in our ED strategy and it's just, it's very important. Okay and then recommendation five is Midtown Business District. So thank you. So this is something that we've sort of been building to I really have to give credit to the Midtown Business Association this group very informal group of business owners on Soquel Avenue and Water Street that have really banded together and done cooperative marketing and done a lot of events together and really are trying to make a name for it and I think making a lot of progress which has been really exciting to define this commercial area and really carve it out as a destination in our community and so they don't get the same benefits that downtown businesses get. They don't have trash cans on the sidewalk or benches or pedestrian level lighting and so there's a lot of sort of streetscape improvements that could be made or different investments that could be made that are facilitated downtown through these improvement districts. So we wanna look at exploring that. We did some initial outreach with the businesses just last week to sort of present the idea and start getting at percolating in everyone's minds and sort of the process that we need to go through for this is really entails sort of hiring a consultant. The city can do that. The districts can do that. It does take a lift. There's different strategies for sort of how we fund that initial step and then it's a lot of stakeholder engagement talking with the businesses, understanding what services they want and are the priorities for them in that area, defining the geographic boundaries. I think that's something that's always been a conversation of where do these boundaries really make sense? There's an interesting business mix of a lot of auto related uses and then the traditional retail restaurants. Where does it make sense within that area to have a consistent boundary and make sure that you've got the businesses that wanna pay into this assessment. It's really a self driven thing. It's not something that the city is bringing to them as a city tax. It's really they're voting to tax themselves and create this assessment on themselves. So that's a lot of the piece. And then pulling that all together and deciding is this a go or no go? Is this something that we really wanna pursue and is there support from the city and stepping this up and from their fellow businesses and then going forward into the petition process and doing the actual vote. So there's a lot of legwork that's involved but we did sort of present some information. We did a rough survey. It's not been out there even a week. It'll be a week tomorrow, but we had some good representation with some of the most I'd say present businesses in the business association. So we've got 15 responses, majority business owners, three that are both business and property owners. We asked them to rank sort of what services they're most desiring in that area. They really ranked neighborhood beautification as a high. As I mentioned, they don't have a lot of the basic infrastructure that a commercial district usually has. So being able to have those supports, public safety, and then marketing sort of being those top three tools. And then I gave them the best of my ability in giving them an overview of these really complex districts and just sort of ask them, what is your initial feeling of what type of district do you think would be best? Overwhelmingly, Business Improvement District. This is heavily business respondents to the survey. And so, but I think it's a great testament that they feel that this is something that they would want to pursue. As you can see, question five, we did have a lot of very supportive responses, people that do want us to explore this path. And I think that the group that was in attendance in our outreach are sort of the champions that would be the ones to carry this on and promote it to the other businesses and help with that outreach and engagement. So it's a good sample size, I think just of where they're at right now and something that clearly they're in favor of us looking forward to. Okay, and so just wrapping up our last two recommendations are just to amend the economic development strategy to include these additional actions as recommended above into our eds. And then to return to council with an update on progress during the current fiscal year, including any related additional actions or recommendations needed for implementation and funding. So as Rebecca mentioned, for the business improvement district, the bid, we need to get more survey responses, more businesses so we can work with the Midtown Business Group on getting a more robust response and see where we land if it's still leaning towards a bid versus a property based. And then probably one of those next steps would be returning to you in the future with an action item to go out for a consultant and the project engineer to help us start drafting that what that bid looks like. The most of the other actions, at least for the current fiscal year can be achieved within our existing budgeted funds, including our CIP funds. So this would be one area that we would need to come back to you within the current fiscal year. Well, thank you very, very much as quite thorough and quite helpful. Questions from council members, we've done one round of this, we're going to take public comment then the matter will be back before us for an action. Any additional opening comments? Seeing, yes, please, Madam Vice Mayor. I do have one comment when you're talking about the place making, other things that I've seen in other communities and I know you and I have talked about it, some patriotic stuff around Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Fourth of July, or even holiday lights, a tree lighting, a menorah lighting, something like that, I think brings people out to and makes it a fun environment for just seasonal things. Thank you for that comment. Other comments before we hear from the public? Seeing none, we will now go out to the public, anyone who is with us in chambers wishes to comment on item 29, this would be your opportunity to do so. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online who would like to comment? Nobody with their hand right. Very good. Last call, please, please come forward. Welcome. Good evening, sir. But as far as Santa Cruz is developing the economy of Santa Cruz, the first thing I would think is to lower the rent. I was talking to people today, yesterday, they said if the rent prices keep going up, they're gonna move to Watsonville, it's called Valley. If you lower the rent, like the square of foot per, you know, if you lower that, I think the gas price would come down. So what's, and number two, you have to deal with the unlicensed vendors out here. You have to have a better policy how to deal with those people. They're hurting the economy of Santa Cruz. Number three, you need a more police presence on the mall. Four, let's see, hand handlers. You gotta handle with them, deal with them. You get too aggressive. I mean, I'm a homeless person and there's no need for them to act the way they act. Okay, I mean, I'm just like one of them. And there's no need for them to act the way they act. And I think what's happening, Santa Cruz, I think everybody knows it. Santa Cruz is turning into a tourist trap or it is a tourist trap. You have to lower the rent because the people are moving out of Santa Cruz going to Watsonville and Scots Valley and Bonnie Dunne even, Belton. If you wanna attract business people to Santa Cruz, you have to lower the rent. If you lower the rent, it's gonna lower the gas prices. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Anyone else under oral communication? Excuse me, wish to testify on this item? We have someone online. Okay, we'll take the person online. Good evening and welcome to the city council meeting. Welcome, person online. Hi. Good evening, this is Judy Grunstra. And I've got a couple of thoughts about this as someone who participated in that revisioning for the library site process about three years ago. Now we're gonna do it all over again. So I hope you will read that report, including all the way to the end where people express their wishes for that site. Now, place making is something I've been reading a lot about over the past years. And there's also an additional concept of place keeping. That means to retain what we have here historically. And unfortunately, a lot of that is getting mowed down and cut down and paved over. I'll always think that the best place for a town commons would have been lot four. So now we're considering that on the library site. Now, there are problems there with the police department. They need access through that street. So how much of a public space that can be? We don't know. And a lot of, I totally support the farmers market, new ventures and new directions and expanded services. That'll be really great for this town. If they wanna reuse the library building, a lot of cities do reuse their existing buildings. I mean, I could see a food hall and all kinds of great food related things there along with the farmers market, but I'm not the one making the decisions. And let's not forget the antique fair. When you're talking about the farmers market, which was on lot four, I hope you'll remember that the antique fair also needs to be considered. Let's see, sorry for the scattered approach here, but I have a lot of assorted things to say. So just right about in San Francisco, they have a vacant to vibrant approach to revitalizing their vacant storefronts. I know, you know, I passed the written house building and see this brown paper in the windows. That's really terrible. Something should have been, you know, done to encourage them to put some sort of artwork in those big windows. I think I'm coming to the end of my thoughts here, but I look forward to a new farmers market location, some kind of common public space. And thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Gunstra. We appreciate your participation. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? We'll take the next person online. Good evening. Welcome to the city council meeting. Thanks for letting me speak. This is Sonia McMorrin. I own homework in Midtown, and I just wanted to pop on to voice my support of trying to create a business district in Midtown. I think it's long overdue and the Midtown Business Association has been kind of trying to fill in voids where we can, but we really need a kind of more organized way of growing the neighborhood. I think Midtown has such an amazing possibility for growth. There's so many opportunities there. And I think over the last few years, especially with Midtown Fridays, we've seen what an amazing community space Midtown can be and how it can bring together the locals that live not only in the neighborhood, but around the county. And I think that if we had a more organized group to create, you know, real change and really improve the area for the community, it would be beneficial both for locals and for visitors. So I just wanted to type in with my support. And I also wanted to just say that Rebecca Unit is a gem and I love her so much and she is such a hard worker and I just really, really enjoy working with her. Just so kind of you. Thank you. We feel similarly. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? Yes. We'll take the next person online. Good evening. Welcome to the council meeting. Good evening. Hi, good evening. Well, first of all, thank you for doing this plan and especially I'm very excited to hear about the Midtown Business District. As the previous caller mentioned, there's a real camaraderie amongst businesses on SoCal and water and they've had to do that because they haven't really had a formal structure but it's been going on for years. And the other interesting thing is that there's a certain vibe about Midtown from downtown. And I, since I've lived on the east side for a long time I'm probably a little bit biased here but I used to go downtown all the time. But a lot of times now I work very late and when I'm looking to see, you know, just to wander around or go downtown, and a lot of the businesses aren't open but there are a lot of businesses that are open on the east side up to 11 o'clock. So there's a lot of eating activity already happening. And also there's a lot of new restaurants and, you know, breweries and such. And it's inviting a lot of people to walk from the neighborhood and the biking parties I've seen where people are, you know, groups of 30 people are heading over for a pizza for a big birthday party. So there's a lot of really interesting activity that's happening in Midtown, it doesn't happen in downtown. One thing that the businesses are very vulnerable on though is that because there's a lack of structure, you know, like they mentioned benches and trash cans and any kind of patrols, a lot of the activity in downtown was pushed into east side when they started pushing people out and the businesses weren't prepared for that. So they had to sometimes lock their doors and then invite people in to the businesses rather than having the doors open and things like that. I just wanted you to be aware of that. Anyway, I just also wanted to mention one more thing. When you do your plan, remember that it was originally called Brand Supporting Business District and it was called the East Side Business District. So there's been a lot of legacy there and I hope you can bring some of that rich historical context into the Midtown area and not just business only. I think it's a really wonderful area and a lot of wonderful business owners, many of them women own, so thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? Nobody else. Last call, anyone wish to provide input on this? Matter is back before the council. Council Member Watkins is recognized. Yes, thank you. I'll move the recommendation as presented in the staff report. I'll second. I'll second it a bunch, so I won't. Okay, there we go. This is second by Council Member Newsom. You may open on your motion. Great, thank you. I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to have this presentation to go through where we've been and also outline some of the direction that's being proposed this evening. I know there's immediate needs that we always have to take care of at the city level and there's often things that come up that require a diversion of our attention to be fixed. But what this looks like for me is outlining what we want to see in our community, what activation looks like and what makes Santa Cruz such an amazing place to live, no matter where you are. For us in Midtown East Side, but to every district we represent that this is outlining how to move forward. And we also know that a thriving downtown is a really great reflection of a community's vitality. And so we want to see all of our downtown thriving. And it's so great to see how it is already and where we can go moving forward. So I know that this is a big lift. I also know that we have limited resources. And so I know in seven we have coming up if there's adjustments or needs, that those are shared with the council. And if this is truly a priority, then we need to have those difficult decisions at the budget level and how we want to invest in seeing some of these things through. So kudos to you and the work that you do. I know it's expansive. And if you need more support, I guess that's what I'm saying, then let us know. Anyways, I'll leave my comments there and just appreciate the meeting and the discussion. Thank you council member. Other comments on the motion? The vice mayor is recognized. I just would like to add a friendly amendment to recommendation five to include Westside as well. Yeah. Good. Acceptable. Acceptable. Okay, very good. Let, pull this up. Let's make sure we know exactly for Ms. Bush where we're going to insert that. I believe that it is on item... Oh, do you have it? Okay, great. It's item, exactly. I believe it is item five, correct? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I see. It would be under E, one E. So it'll be Eastside, Midtown and Westside. Okay. Without objection. That'll be added to the motion. Very good. Just to clarify, it would be Easttown Midtown or if we're calling it Midtown and Westside. It would be two different ones we'd be pursuing. Thank you. Very good. Everybody good with that, the way it is? And the districts just pass at the end of that. Mm-hmm. Very good. Do I, sorry, do I add it up here too? In one? East, Midtown. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Okay, from purpose of uniformity, since you capitalized Westside, what's capitalized? Seriously, from the sake of consistency, Eastside and Midtown need a capital in number one there, where you are. Capital E, capital M. And we'll be good to go. There we go. Good. Council Member Brenner. We might then consider changing the word two to three districts. Very good. Towards the end of the first paragraph. To further activate the three. Thank you for that. Good catch. Others? Are we all good? All good? All right, very good. Is there further debate or discussion? Seeing and hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown? Aye. Waterton? Aye. Brenner? Aye. Vice Mayor Golder? Aye. Mayor Keely? Aye. Motion carries and so ordered. We're on item 30. This is military equipment purchase request and policy update per Assembly Bill 8, excuse me, 481. Chief, good evening, sir. Good evening, Mayor Keely and Council Members, Bernie Escaloni, the Chief of Police. So we have a presentation for all of you. We have Kathy Brothers, our Principal Management Analyst from the Police Department. We have Sergeant Trog from the Police Department. We also have Sergeant Burrell who will all be participating in the presentation and for the sake of time and we're gonna get started as soon as they're ready to go. Thank you, Chief. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. As the Chief mentioned, I'm Sergeant Josh Trog, City of Santa Cruz Police Department. While we're working on getting the presentation up, I will be speaking to the AB 481 aspect of our request related to this piece of equipment that's in my capacity as the military equipment coordinator for the Police Department and then Sergeant Brad Burrell will be discussing the proposal in more detail related to the equipment that we're requesting. Thank you, sir. So the background on AB 41 was effective in January of 2022 establishes the requirements for purchasing, raising funds, free use of items, demilitary equipment. We have to obtain approval from the governing body and establish policy and posting requirements and we must cease use of items that are not approved. Our recommendations for this introduced publication and ordinance amending City of Santa Cruz Municipal Code Chapter 9.90, AB 41 military equipment use. If the Council approves the recommendation, number one, recommendation number two is to adopt a resolution amending the fiscal year 2024 budget in the amount of $170,942 from the police asset for Fitcher 214 fund. And our recommendation number three would be to approve a five year purchase contract with Axon Incorporated. And I apologize, I have to back up slightly. We have representatives from Axon Incorporated available remotely for questions, as well as Stephanie Duck with the city attorney's office who has worked with us in the development of all the draft policies and the proposal. So our current military equipment policy is covered under policy number 705. This policy includes the definition of military equipment, military equipment coordinator and the responsibilities, how we coordinate with other jurisdictions, covers the approval, annual report, community engagement requirements, and the public complaint process. What we are requesting to deal with in this proposal is the current military equipment inventory. If it was approved, we would be updating it to include the equipment that we're requesting. This QR code that is on the slide is a direct link to our transparency portal and all of the associated items with military equipment policy and the complaint procedure. So the piece of equipment that we are discussing this evening is the Skydio X-10 unmanned aerial system. It falls under category one of the requirements of AB 481 and military equipment. They're also referred to as drones. Some of the capabilities of this piece of equipment has a maximum speed of 45 miles per hour, 40 minute run time, and it can operate seven and a half miles from the controller. It's got specialized software that can come with it, mapping software, telephoto, wide angle, and thermal cameras as a spotlight and speaker as well as microphones that can be attached to it for two-way communication. It can be operated day or night. It has 360 visibility, meaning that when it's being operated, there's no blind spots. Gives the controller better control of the device. It's got GPS sensors so we know where it is at all times. Visible and infrared light sensors is the capability of accepting a detachable spotlight that's 2800 lumens, quite bright. It has flight assistance and object avoidance software basically to help us so we don't crash it. The cost, over five years, would be $227,224. That includes $27,708 to outfit two patrol vehicles with the equipment required to support these UAS. Five UAS plus software training and subscriptions. This would be funded out of the asset for feature funds and patrol general funds. Covered in our draft policy are the intended uses as well as the prohibited uses. These are some of the reasons that we would deploy these devices, natural disaster or public safety emergency, in support of search and rescue or water rescue operations, lost or missing persons, crime scene and traffic collision documentation, mutual aid, our fire department or outside agencies needing the services of this piece of equipment. As an aid in de-escalation, it's a tool that would help maintain an audio and visual connection with someone who may be armed but give us the ability to stand off a little bit and work through the problem without putting officers right there. In the mix, if we do not have to, provide us some space and time to work through whatever the situation may be. In the service of a search and or arrest warrant, crime and progress and locating a fleeing suspect, those would be the intended authorized uses, prohibited uses, this device cannot be weaponized, there's no intent to weaponize it. We will not use facial recognition software in conjunction with this. We will not use it in random surveillance activities. It will not be used to target, harass, intimidate or discriminate against any individual group or protected class. Will not be used for personal business nor the routine monitoring of a mass gathering protest or demonstrations where security concerns or criminal activity do not exist. Again, this is the same QR code that will take anyone who scans it to our transparency portal. In addition to the military equipment policy, we have a draft policy regarding the use of unmanned aerial systems, policy 607. I've discussed the military equipment policy 705. Within the military equipment policy, we have to provide an annual report to council for all things covered under that policy. So if the UAS program was approved and adopted and put into service, all use of that equipment would be covered under the annual report requirement that we have to make to council. In addition to all of the internal policies and procedures, the Federal Aviation Administration licenses the operators. So they have some oversight of what is done. We would pursue getting a certificate of authorization which is basically permissions on how we operate the UAS systems under the authority of the FAA. Information related to these would be available on the transparency portal as all of the equipment is. And then there is a software product called DroneSense that is available to come with these devices that helps in the transparency and tracking of the devices and it provides available data that can be used to know when they're being deployed, how they're being deployed and things like that. So with that, that is the AB 481 aspect of our proposal for this system. I will be turning this over to Sergeant Brad Burrell to discuss the program proposal in more detail. Thank you very much. Sergeant, welcome. Good evening, sir. Good evening. Good evening. Mayor Keely, council members, my name's Brad Burrell. I'm the sergeant with the Santa Cruz Police Department. We're excited to bring you this product to see it for yourself in action. As you'll see in this video, the specific SCODIO X10 is intended to be used very simply. It is versatile, it is maneuverable, the image quality is high. You get to locations that few can and when it comes down to it, the visual acuity that provides operators on the ground with significant intelligences and valuable. One of the big selling points for X10 if council approves is the ability to have the highest rated technology and software related to traffic accident investigations. As you all know, traffic accidents are significant, especially if they're extended in nature with regards to the impact they have on the public, road congestion and delays in people just getting from point A to point B. What we found with the SCODIO X10 is that the software that they have, you can see here in the 3D image quality, is not only done with the highest quality that we found, it's also done expeditiously. You're cutting down the time of which officers would need to be on scene investigating a traffic accident, collecting what they need and then getting the road clear. We're reducing the risk associated with the public, EMS personnel, fire personnel, police personnel, by reducing the closure of the roadway, allowing it to be open for people to drive freely and get those vehicles out of the way. What you see here is going to be the actual footage of an event that occurred in 2022, where a violent suspect was fleeing from officers related to an incident where officers believed him to be armed with a firearm. The subject was wanted for multiple felony violent crimes. As you can see, in the middle of the screen, the subject is wandering through backyards of a residential area. Hopping fences, what this is providing is real-time live updates to officers on the ground that are containing and isolating an incident or a subject, trying to coordinate resources effectively to converge instead of needle and haystack approach. The real-time live updates that the UAS would provide is invaluable when it comes down to linking officers with the operator of the UAS and effectively and ideally safely able to apprehend that individual without any other undue risk, unnecessary risk for the public, as you can see with residents coming out on their decks in the area, pointing towards officers, pointing towards the subject and hopefully reducing time where officers are inconveniencing people in their daily life. This is where we see if council approves the benefits that we can join with the fire department and other EMS personnel during the no-natural disasters that we are all too familiar with in this area. The UAS can go places where others can't, whether it's personnel on the ground, whether it's helicopters, fixed wing aircraft. The UAS is that invaluable rapid deployment item that can be utilized almost anywhere. Depending on certain conditions, such as rain or what-have-you, this is something that is giving the intelligence that is so needed for incident command to make informed, prudent decisions to deploy personnel and resources effectively to precise locations. Another example of our Santa Cruz Fire Department team working in the, I'm assuming somewhere on West Cliff area, but when it comes down to the terrain of our community, whether it be the coastline, whether it be the forested area, we have the full spectrum. The UAS is able to provide us that versatility and maneuverability while providing that real-time update to a rapidly evolving situation, to, in this case, fire personnel that are putting their lives at risk to gain situational awareness, whether it be tides, whether it be things that the incident commander may not see your team leader, that then provide that overwatch to communicate their force to the personnel that are on scene, trying to locate people, whether it be in the ocean or wherever else, like Sergeant Trog said earlier, the visual capabilities of these UAS devices cutting edge and can operate during the night time as well. As you all know, we have elderly people that can walk away from care facilities and finding them in the, especially at night time, is extremely difficult. As we transition here to the de-escalation portion of where the UAS device can come in handy is also addressing the sanctity of life and how we are trying to utilize any strategies and techniques at our disposal to slow things down for lack of a better term. We cannot assess what we do not know or we cannot see. The value of this, what the UAS can provide is allowing officers to stay a safe distance away as it maneuvers into a more high risk or threatening area and provide those officers with that real-time data to determine exactly how urgent the matter of which they're investigating really is. In this case, it's a training scenario, should have prefaced that for you. But this is a situation of what you can actually see, the clarity of which you can see it and the intelligence that's providing to officers incident command to, again, make more informed, competent decisions about how to deploy resources appropriately. Again, with council's approval, we intend to not only purchase UAS devices, but also outfit patrol vehicles to rapidly charge these devices for coordinated usage with multi-UAS devices during an incident or prolonged incident operation. Not only will these devices be able to be rapidly charged, but they can also provide that monitor for incident command to be informed of the real-time information that the UAS is providing and provide them the ability to make informed decisions and serve as a mobile command center, if you will. Again, if council approves the SCUDIO UAS device has proven to us that not only is it capable with its high-tech software, visual performance, and maneuverability, but it also has the highest standards as it relates to its compliance with NDAA, software, hardware, and the respect for people's privacy as it relates to what they are obtaining. Our other vendor that we are already partnered with is Axon, of which they already store our body camera footage, in-car camera footage, auto-tagging, interview room videos, et cetera, would work in conjunction with SCUDIO to house those videos. How's that data that would be collected via the UAS? As you can see, the majority of the costs, broken down over five years, are from hardware and software primarily. But as you can see in the videos, the quality is very high, and I will make a point of the speaker and microphone feature on the de-escalation aspect of that providing us the ability to communicate two-way communication with those involved with the incident, involve potentially crisis negotiation teams, mental health teams, liaisons that are already embedded with the Santa Cruz Police Department, and provide that comprehensive service to the community of Santa Cruz. As you can see, the training and the subscriptions are also embedded in the cost, broken down over five years. You can see it incrementally, year by year, from one to five. Sergeant, thank you for the presentation. Chief, back to you, sir. So that's our presentation, and again, we have two representatives from Axon available for any sort of technical questions regarding the equipment. We also are joined by Chief Odie's team here from our fire department. If you had any questions specifically to how this equipment could be utilized as well, just in the sense of public safety in general. We've had many conversations about collaborating with this sort of equipment and how this benefits our community as a whole and our ability to respond to different emergencies, whether it's fire related or law enforcement related. So we have people here to answer questions. Chief, thank you very much. Let me see if there are initial questions to the Chief. Ms. Brown is recognized. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. Gonna try to keep the words of one of my colleagues that drones can be used for good. In my head here, as I've been reviewing the material and listening to the presentation, I have a couple of questions about retention of the data because from what I, the material we received that the data collected will be retained as provided in the established records retention schedule. Maybe I missed it because there were a lot of materials for this packet, but what is that retention period for drone footage? Well, Sergeant Trogg answered a little more detail, but in most of the circumstances, the video and or audio will be evidence in a crime, so it will all go through a standard schedule that we already have in place with Axon related or body worn camera footage as well. Okay, so it's a similar, the body worn, the body camera rules or that's what you're using. Yes, it would fall under the same rules based on crime classification or lack of crime classification as to how long it would be stored in the already existing Axon storage system. And that is, do you know that off the top of your head? Is it 30 days? Oh, it's significantly longer. So for felony crimes, it can be up to forever. Misdemeanors, it could be two years, non-evidentiary, two years or less. It just depends on the nature of the incident. I guess, yeah, so for where it's used for criminal proceeding, I understand that, but I was just thinking about materials that are not gonna be used in, so non-evidentiary. It can be up to two years that it's not stored. It can be. I don't know if all non-evidentiary items fall under that criteria, but it would just, it would be whatever the current Axon schedule for retention is. Okay, thanks. Council Member Bruner. Thank you. I was looking at the policy that was posted. I thought I saw something around that timeframe regarding data retention, but I'm not gonna scroll right now. But it, you know, I have a couple questions and we've received a few emails with questions and I just wanna voice some concerns from our community as well. And our role here is public safety and how to best support the community. And at the same time, too, we are also voices of the community and so I know I shared a couple of concerns, but especially for black and brown people, we've done a lot of work since 2020 in police policies to eliminate facial recognition software, to eliminate some of the police policies that have really affected people of color. And this concept of surveillance is a really scary thing for people. It's physiological reactions. Even me, I've been pulled over for my tail light or brake light being out and it's scary experience being someone of color. And so I just have to say thank you for posting the policy and I know that's required. And how long has it been up for 30 days? I think actually over 30 days, no. This was on the last agenda, but we moved it. Yeah, and I know I reached out to you with some questions prior to today's meeting. So thank you for answering and incorporating like the uses of why we need these. What is the benefit to community over community concern? And to me, seeing so many of those examples in terms of car crashes and in terms of de-escalation with our mental health liaisons and really creating safety, especially with our low staffing in the police department, this is essentially another body, but it's not a human body that can be killed. This is in place of a police officer that has a lot more capability. And it's something that I think that some of those aerial views to a helicopter maybe that I've seen other places use in certain situations. So I appreciate all those examples of how to use it. And I see fire here. So I know with our natural disasters and even our wharf crew having the ability to utilize some type of drone equipment going under the wharf and seeing the pilings. And there's so many shared cross-departmental uses that this can be used. And I just wanna know my question is how like have you used drones before this purchase and do other jurisdictions share across, not only like across our departments, but I know that other equipment is shared across jurisdictions. How does that? Yeah, so the Sheriff's Department has I think 24-ish of these. And actually I could give you an example, just this last Saturday night, we requested their mutual aid and they requested their drones for a high-risk situation that happened around the west side of town with somebody that was armed and had shot the firearm from inside the house. And we were able to use a drone to be able to sort of see around the house. And before we started sending uniform personnel towards the house, we were able to assess for any sort of risks that are waiting for us potentially. So we just used the drone on Saturday night, I think it was. How can someone speak to how you would best address the concerns of abuse of drones in terms of surveillance and loss of civil liberties and targeting black and brown people. There's already this distrust and unsafe feeling that exists just by your uniforms. And so how would you address some of those concerns? Well, specifically in the policy 607.6, it lists some of those specific examples out as far as prohibited use to conduct random surveillance activities or to target any sort of anybody based on the perceived gender, race and a number of factors right there. So it's all called out for all of those prohibited uses to prohibited use to harass, intimidate, discriminate. All of that is spelled out here, so. What's the consequence to it violating prohibited use? What's to stop someone from? Well, it would really depend on the severity of the violation of policy. We typically use progressive discipline in our department, but there could be examples of something that was so grossly negligent that it could lead to termination. But if it was a smaller violation of policy, then it goes through the process. We also have the independent auditor that participates with us and reviews our investigations related to any sort of violation of our policy. Thank you. Council Member Collin Tari Johnson is recognized. Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. I just wanted to know what's the ongoing cost. So there was a cost breakdown in one of the slides to get this program launched should the council approve. But once we've done the sort of the software and the training, do we have a sense of the ongoing cost? Kathy Brothers, PMA, P.D. The ongoing cost, what you see here, the $254,932 covers all of the costs for hardware, software, training, vehicle, outfitting the vehicles and subscriptions. So we shouldn't see any extra costs when it comes to maintaining the hardware. We already have an axon contract that we, where we store all of our evidence. So we shouldn't see any extra costs there. The only other cost would be basically just, well, this also covers licensing for the pilots and the cost to maintain that license over five years. So just putting out officers in the field to operate these and the time spent that technically could be a cost but that would be folded into our, just regular operational costs. It's really one time, it sounds like. Yeah, we tried this, what's nice about axon and SkyDios, they've really packaged this really well and it's very comprehensive and so we're able to forecast over five years and we don't expect to spend any more than this. The warranties cover, in case a drone becomes defective or damaged, we have warranties that will cover replacement at no extra cost. Perfect, thank you. And then just one last question. Chief, you mentioned that we've collaborated and partnered with the Sheriff's Office they have, I think he said 24 drones. What are the constraints or challenges of continuing that type of collaboration rather than owning our own drones? And I can maybe answer part of that question is that the benefit I would see is we have our own trained officers but I'd like you to if you could just expand on that. Yeah, just a few challenges. One is response time, obviously, depending on whether they have an operator, a trained operator on duty and where that person is coming from is a challenge sometimes or it could be a challenge. I would also say if you had multiple incidents occurring at the same time, I could think of something similar to a school threat. Typically we are very concerned about multiple threats coming in at the same time in different jurisdictions. That would be another example where their resources obviously are going to focus on their jurisdiction. And I can also think from a fire perspective, I'm sure during the CZU fire there were multiple drones being used in multiple different locations to give the fire personnel intelligence of the different areas of that fire. So that would be another challenge. Thank you. Thank you for the questions or comments by council members. This would be the chief thank you. We're going to take some public testimony now. This would be the opportunity for anyone who is with us in chambers this evening who wishes to testify this on this item to do so up to three minutes. Is there anyone with us who wishes to make such comments? Welcome. Good evening. My name is Megan Golds. I'm a local filmmaker here and I've flown drones, seen drones, seen a lot of them crash. And I've also just kind of curious and concerned about who would be operating this. There is a lot of time that goes into setting it up, getting it in the air, getting it going. Battery life's maybe 40 minutes, I think you guys said. So that's maybe 30 minutes of usability because it also needs time to come back to its original place and land. If they can operate it from up to seven and a half miles away, what's gonna happen if there needs to be somebody on the ground? Also, cameras are very limiting. As we can see, the positionality gives you a very limited perspective versus somebody on the ground who can make distinguished judgment calls on what the need is, what the other problems are happening, other impacts from a car accident or what have you. So I feel like that's very, very limiting as far as response to public safety. And my concern also was I heard a little bit about not impacting the public by being able to fly drones over neighborhoods to see if there's somebody lurking in a backyard. But what about those bystanders who are also being on a camera and staying in the system for maybe up to two years, maybe longer based on their perspective of what's evidence or what's not? And that's really concerning to me because there's no way to check that. There's no way to honor our Fourth Amendment right of privacy because if we were to make it publicly available for people to cross check, that would eliminate the privacy. And also, if there's supposed to be some level of transparency and provisions about how this data is being used or not, how are we able to cross check that? How are we able to know that? So I'm very concerned about the use of this because of problems with profiling and also as somebody who's fallen a drone, you're operating it from sometimes a screen as small as your telephone. It is very, very, very easy to mis-ID something or mis-judge something and not know what you're really looking at, especially if you're in a cop cruiser trying to chase the drone. Also, if the drone's flying 45 miles an hour, what if it hits a bird or something like that and you're wasting all this time and resource to try to capture something on camera when you could just be boots on the ground? I just think that that seems like a very expensive and costly use of resource and time, especially if time is limited in a case of a crisis, in a case of a flood or a fire or something like that where you might not be able to see other things going on and other factors at play. So I just urge city council to project this ask for a purchase of military equipment and further militarizing the police here that are meant to be our guardians and not warriors. So thank you. Thank you. What we're going to do is we're going to toggle back and forth. So you'll be right after the next person online. Next person online, good evening. Welcome to the council meeting. Hello, good evening. My name is Liz Fitzgerald, Santa Cruz resident and local psychotherapist. I'm really concerned about the militarization of our police as an answer to any of our issues and that it's something that could bring peace. Hearing that you all passed this peace resolution vis-a-vis the ceasefire in Gaza, really kind of sharing, okay, like January, let's have that be peace month. And now there's this proposal to militarize our police. I don't see those going together with Santa Cruz values if our Santa Cruz values are to bring peace to this city and to this county and to this world. Also as a mental health professional, I'm disgusted and horrified to imagine these being used, these weapons, this militarization, the way that the council member was speaking to BIPOC being especially triggered and traumatized, understandably by police presence, by police weapons, that to de-escalate a mental health crisis using this kind of technology would cause more harm than help. I'm also just the idea of you all spending our money to both militarize our police force and to violate our privacy at the same time. I mean, that's just the double violation is unspeakable. Let me see. Also, I just have a lot of concern about the piece about protests where the statement that was made that they would be used for protests and other demonstrations if security concerns existed. How will those be assessed? There always be security concerns. Will these always be used at protests? And there's clearly, it sounds like there's really no policy in place to reinforce if there's a violation of the use agreement being made here in terms of how the drones are used. And that is extremely concerning to me. It sounds like there's not really a plan for that. And so I am not in support of this resolution of the militarization of our police. And with that, I yield my time. Thank you. Good evening, sir. Welcome. My name is QZ. The Bearcat then decreased the crime rate in San Cruz and the drone is not gonna do the same thing. And I don't like the cost. That's all I wanna say. Thank you, sir. We'll take the next person, then we'll be with you in just a second. We'll take somebody online and back to you. Next person online, good evening. Welcome to the council meeting. Hello. I've got some questions. My first question is, when was the last time the sheriff was using all 24 drones simultaneously? That seems like an excessive amount of drones. Although with a wildfire, I could see that being used. So I'd love to know the answer to that. I know that council doesn't respond to questions generally but if we could ask that, that would be great. Also, when was the last time a simultaneous use of drones was done by the sheriff and Santa Cruz police department? How many drones were involved with that? It seems like with the sheriff being such an integral part of our kind of joint law enforcement team and them being so loaded with 24 drones, it seems like this is a huge amount of money to invest in a drone policy that is completely redundant and potentially pretty wasteful and something that so far the public comments have spoken that Santa Cruz is uncomfortable with. I generally, I support the idea of using tools for police other than guns, I think it's great to have more eyes and more angles and more intelligence but it seems like we already have access to all of that and this is just something to eliminate that partnership and pretend that that partnership doesn't exist and a great use of tax dollars in a wasteful way. I yield my time. Thank you so much. Good evening, sir. Welcome. You, hello, my name is Irina O'Connell. I've lived in Santa Cruz for 15 years and since then I've seen an increase in militarization of our police departments. I remember the Bearcat, I remember the assault launch shotguns and even though this is not that, I want to just lift up that this is sets a precedent for increasing the militarization of police and increasing that AB 481 just continues to set the precedent for increasing the budget. I also echo the comments by Council Member Bruner. I think there's a psychological impact to the community for having these drones. I also echo the comments earlier of like, why can't there be more mutual aid on part of the sheriff to share those 24 drones if they're really that useful and they really have that many, 225 upwards, $1,000. I wonder what else could that funding be for? There's so many issues for this city and I really could imagine that funding being used for housing, for public education, for safety in ways that don't require further militarization of the police. Another thing that's disturbing is seeing the same technology being used in Gaza on the US-Mexico border. It's hard to trust that this isn't gonna be used for surveillance and it's hard to trust the judgment of police departments when it comes to determining what mass action or protest is dangerous or criminal because I think that part of the institution of policing is to protect private property status quo and when people use their First Amendment rights to mobilize and practice free speech, it becomes dangerous. So just wanna encourage the council to question do we need to further militarize the police? We are not the enemy, residents are not the enemy and I hope that the police department can use good judgment and that the council can use good accountability in making sure that QR code of checking to see how these are being used if they are approved but I wanna urge you to reject this amendment increase and to encourage more mutual aid as they say between the sheriff department and the police department. Thank you so much for being here. Ms. Bush, we'll take the next person online. Good evening, welcome to the city council meeting. Hello, my name is Ani. I'd like to start with, I strongly oppose the bill 481 PD. I see this as a major expense for our county and the long-term agreement is, something that needs to be taken very seriously. The use of military grade face recognition drones goes against our right of privacy as civilians. This is not a violent or dangerous city, not really and the extreme use of this technology is honestly egregious. I personally find it incredibly hypocritical as well that the Santa Cruz city council officials refuse to pass a ceasefire resolution specifically item 29 a few weeks ago as it was and altered some things in the name of peace and here we are but you all are eager to accommodate more police gadgets at a military level. These are the same drones being used against Palestinians as we speak and using such extreme force to survey us as civilians is honestly frightening. This is a huge opportunity for major problems to arise and abuse of power. This is an excessive amount of drones and it's very expensive. I see this as honestly inciting more fear and distrust of the SCPD with these drones. What are the consequences for officers abusing the use of them? There is just such a need for community stabilizing to be done that almost $200,000 of allocation of funds can go to instead of drones. I honestly urge every one of you to reflect on what this means for Santa Cruz and I honestly don't see it having a positive effect on the public. So that's my piece. I reside the rest of my time. Thank you so much. Good evening, sir. Yeah, good evening. My name is James Ewing Whitman. I missed some of the presentation. I heard a couple of minutes before the police chief took over. I was present during a demonstration on January 11th, I believe, at the Capitola City Council where they were going over their drone operations and such. My comment to the police chief is that I hope that the equipment that the videos you show, the equipment is actually much better than what the videos show. So I'm not sure about the equipment that's going to be used. But I think that for public safety, it's probably quite useful. I mean, I know it would be quite useful. I can think of countless examples. But the community seems to be concerned about their privacy and stuff. I mean, I have two of the latest 2023 weapons in my hand by Motorola. These are great frickin' tools. What brought me into this room more than four and a half years ago was why are we allowing military weapons in civilian locations? And at the time, Mr. Tony Condati and Mrs. Watkins and Sandy Brown are the only ones besides the two clerks that were here four and a half years ago. And it just seems there's no time. Got a minute and 40. Just because regulations have been passed, like the 1996 FCC 702, that the only complaint people can make about the control devices, the frequency devices, this is one, is the way they look. Now, a lot of things have happened since then. Once the scamtemic started, what was I forget that day? I was here on Monday and got a piece of paper saying it'd be a live meeting. And then I unfortunately witnessed some real panic in Mr. Andy Mills. And I kind of picked my battles. It was a rainy day. But this building closed down for two years to the public. But the next day, extensive public works operations. Matt, you shouldn't leave. Oh, no. Excuse me. Come here. Stay with me. He's the one that's in charge of this group. Stay with me. Yes. So I'll reiterate. The use of the drones, I think, can be used for many positive purposes. But the frequency weapons that have been rubber stamped through this room and the county are of real concern that none of the public is bringing that up. I'm not quite sure what else to say, but I was asking Matt not to leave the room, because he's the one that controls you guys, like you guys are little helium balloons being held. Whether or not you think you have control, this is not a city for the citizens. This is a corporation. And you protect your stockholders. And those stockholders seem to be organizations like Verizon and the FCC. So what? I got 14 seconds. So I'm all for law enforcement being peace officers and doing the best they can. And if this equipment puts them in a safer position to do that, that's great. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Next person online, good evening. Welcome to the Council meeting. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hi. I am timing in to say that I strongly oppose the increase in the budget for this drone. I feel so unsettled that no one could even answer how long the data would be retained, even if the sort of whatever footage does not even contain any evidence. And also in the slide, at one point, it mentioned routine monitoring of mass gathering protests or demonstrations where security concerns or criminal activity does not exist. This is listed as a prohibited use. But who gets to decide what is and is not criminal activity or what is and is not a security concern? I do not trust that the Santa Cruz Police Department can distinguish with no biases and judgment what is a security concern and what is not. Also, as a local volunteer firefighter, Cal Fire have their own drones. They do not need support or mutual aid from Santa Cruz Police Department to get the surveillance that they need. And like someone previously said, if there are 24, 28 drones that a neighboring department has, in what situation, in what disastrous reality are we living in that all of those need to be used as at once? This just seems like a toy that the police department wants to use for whatever quote unquote piece they're creating in town. This money could be used to serve the house's community that is routinely criminalized. That money could be used for so many things that the community actually needs. And this is not one of those things. And like Councilman mentioned and other people mentioned, back and around people already do not feel safe in this town, rightfully so. And this is not helping public safety. I love that whoever did the marketing for the police department is great. You put the natural disaster first and the criminal activity at the bottom. That is propaganda right there. You will not be using this for any natural disaster. It is a shame that you are marketing this as that. These are lies. Please do not show up for the community in this way. Especially after you oppose the ceasefire resolution. That violence is not happening somewhere else. That violence is happening right here in our community. Please wake up to that. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. We are going to take public comment up until seven o'clock on this item. And that will be the end of our public comment on it. Is there anyone with us in chambers who wishes to make a comment? Seeing and hearing none, we will go to the next person online. We're going to the next person online. Good evening. Good evening. Hi, my name is Stacy Garcia and I'm so deeply concerned about this item. And I'm calling you all to urge you to vote no on item number 30. Militarizing our police department with this kind of equipment will not make our community safer. What makes our community safer is investment in food, housing, healthcare and education. Please invest this money in resources that actually help our community instead of harming it. This military surveillance equipment will surely result in the unjust and disproportionate criminalization of black and brown people and peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment right to end violence, discrimination and an end to the ongoing US funded genocide. This month of January, you all declared to be quote, peace month. And just today, you talked about wanting to make more equitable policy decisions. So I asked for you to just take a minute to consider equity in your decision making. Does militarizing the police bring more peace and equity to our community? If you answered yes, then I want you to think about who it brings more equity and peace to. Who does this decision actually benefit? Does this benefit your black and brown community members who are disproportionately criminalized, killed and arrested by police across this country? Of course it doesn't. It actively works against racial equity and against peace. This particular surveillance equipment is so dangerous to everyone in our city and has proven that this particular racial recognition surveillance equipment disproportionately harms and actively targets black and brown communities. You can say it doesn't, but the evidence of this equipment's use proves otherwise. A racist policy as defined by Dr. Ebram X. Kennedy is quote, any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups, end quote. You have a responsibility to make an equitable policy decision for our city. If you want peace and you want equity, a vote yes will not achieve that. It will actively work against it. And as somebody who teaches and studies racial equity and justice for a living, let me be clear. A vote yes is a racist decision. A vote yes is a racist policy. I urge you to take actions that reflect your words and vote no on item number 30. Thank you. Well, thank you. Sir, good evening. Welcome. My name is Victor and I've worked here in Santa Cruz County for close to 10 years. Before that, I was a student here and after I received my graduate degree, returned back to the community, I've been working with youth. But before that, I worked and lived in beach flats. So when I was living there at an earlier age, when I was younger, I never really saw or heard from the community members or my peers that more policing made us safe. I never heard that. What I did hear was that everybody wanted more recreational activities for the youth. They wanted more soccer team equipment. That they wanted arts programs for our youth. And I'm fortunate to say that I was participating in such things. I saw a lot of those things as preventative measures for crime. And I saw those opportunities as being opportunities that created more relationships between youth that perhaps would not get to know each other. Recently, we saw a reporting again about what happened in Uvalde. That's a huge tragedy to our nation, to the world really. And it took enforcement, I think I heard it was over an hour to act. Now I know that our nation has become more militarized in our police departments. So I question why that took that long a time, right? I know that equipment was there and yet there was no action. So what I'm trying to say is that we need more human interaction, not more technological integration into our departments. Now I'm one that to say that I never had a good relationship as a child with police. But to this day, as an educator, I say two of the most important, I say institutions in our communities. I do see a role for safety, maybe policing the way it is right now. I don't see it, but I see that that could be a resource, but to help build communities. Do you want to say education and teachers? So we had that one integration of humanity and providing resources for children that would be now. Going back to Uvalde, if we had more resources in training that would have been, that would have allocated more, let's say opportunities for the police officers to act appropriately, right? And for some reason they froze. That wasn't happening. And I think technology has taken away our humanity to ability to communicate with each other because we are always escalating because we put this thing in front of us in the middle, so it's gonna take care of you. Now I think North Dakota in the 2015s, they passed a bill for drones to weaponize drones, right? And in 2018, I remember watching television, the first death in Dallas when they armed a bomb and killed an individual. That was horrific for me to see in our own country. I don't want that to happen to us. Thank you and I hope you oppose this. Thank you for your testimony, sir. Next person online, good evening. Welcome to the council meeting. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. So I want to say that I am against the request to purchase military equipment. I'm looking at a database that has information from the California Department of Justice and from the years of 2016 to 2021, there have been four reports of police discrimination, 25% ruled in favor of civilians. And in those years, there was also 90 complaints of police misconduct in the city of Santa Cruz. But that already tells me that we shouldn't really trust the police department. And in the, I believe it was in the year 2022, there was a Santa Cruz cop who killed a man and he didn't face any charges. So that's also concerning. And there have been many claims of racial bias against Santa Cruz police. And I just want to say that, kind of to repeat what other people have said, there's nothing natural about using these kinds of technologies, especially on native land. And it's just very shameful. I think that you are all like white liberal hypocrites because you talk about all this peace, peace is a white man's word. That's typically what white people like to say. And there's nothing peaceful about this. It's very hypocritical because of what you, the resolution that you recently passed. And then we just had the MLK march. It doesn't make any sense. And I understand that you are all, most of you, it's not like the majority are white people, you will never understand what it feels to be discriminated against. And this would allow what it would make people feel scared, black people, and because of police brutality, Hispanics, people that are undocumented because this is used at the border. And even people from the Middle East, Palestinians, a lot of people are in fear right now. So this would make it worse. And I understand that the council member Golder, she has a dress as a native American in the past for a costume party, which is very offensive. I understand that she wants to be oppressed really, really bad, but unfortunately you will never experience that. And I hope you don't, because of that reason, I don't think you guys understand what it means to be in fear of these kinds of things. Anyone else with us in chambers wish to provide testimony? Next person online. We're gonna take two more people online, this person and the next person. Good evening, person online. Welcome. Hello, my name is Isabel. I'm a Santa Cruz resident. And I'm speaking to ask the council to please not use a quarter of a million dollars to purchase five new surveillance drones. Cops should not be at war with the residents of their town. So why is the city council trying to arm them as if they are, instead of spending money on housing, on life-saving services for our homeless neighbors, on building and repairing climate change resilient infrastructure, we instead want to give expensive military equipment to our police. Santa Cruz PD already has an armored attack vehicle, chemical agent launching shotguns and grenades in its arsenal. And as other people have mentioned, the sheriff's office already has 24 drones. These new drones will be equipped with high resolution camera and audio equipment. We already know Santa Cruz PD has a track record of surveilling and intimidating private citizens, including during the wildcat strike at UCSC. And we are handing them the very expensive tools to do the same things at greater scope and scale. The summary report claims that the drones will allow Santa Cruz PD to quote, de-escalate and or communicate with individuals during high risk situations. Santa Cruz PD doesn't know how to de-escalate and care for the community even without the added distance and empowerment of military grade surveillance drones. We can't kid ourselves into thinking that adding technology will magically make the police an ethical and well-functioning organization that is truly in service of the well-being of all Santa Cruz residents. But this item appears on the agenda after the city council shot down a ceasefire resolution after hundreds of people shut down the UCSC main entrance to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine. And after the city council declared January to be quote, peace month is no accident, Santa Cruz seems to be gearing up for more aggressive suppression and intimidation of public speech and a municipality truly at peace would not need to wage war against its own residents. I urge the council to vote no on all components of item 30. Thank you, and I yield my time. Well, thank you. Let me see if there is anyone in council chambers. We'll go to the last public speaker. We'll be the person online. Good evening, welcome. Hello, I'm Douglas Filiu and I'm speaking to the council to vote no on item 30. I've been listening to this council today for the past couple of hours and I saw some really inspiring topics being discussed such as climate change, acts on homelessness, so on, topics which I think we should be discussing and investing our energy in as a community. So it really seems to me a little astonishing that while there are people in this community who struggled to put bread on the table or find a roof over their heads that we are discussing whether or not to give military-grade surveillance technologies to police. We have seen in several other states and in California as well how this technology can and has been unlawfully abused by the police both in the Black Lives Matter movement of a few years ago and in the recent protests for Palestine to target the constitutional right to assemble and unlawfully arrest and intimidate protesters. This regardless of the fact that doing such a thing would be like the speaker explained prohibited. I find it very concerning that the speaker says that the drone will not be used in protests where security concerns do not exist and security concern is precisely the justification that has been used over and over again in cases of extreme police violence and abuse of power. I don't know what possible good for our community could be in further militarizing the police. They already have armored vehicles, shotguns and grenades. It would be far more useful and work a great deal more towards the production of crime in this city if this money were to be spent addressing the causes of crime such as poverty, food insecurity, employment insecurity and the complete absence of affordable housing options in this city where living in someone's backyard can cost more than $1,500 a month. One dollar spent on any of these topics would be in my mind where several hundred spent on giving the police department yet another way in which they can spy, wound or even kill someone. If you are serious about actually making this community a better place and we should be constantly thinking of those which this community has failed and the policies we can enact to help them. I do not see how buying spy drones does any of these things. To me, it seems to be yet another step towards a mass surveillance world in a naive surrender or personal freedoms to an organization known to abuse its powers and authority. I therefore again urge the council to vote no on items. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. The matter is back before the council. Mayor, be glad to entertain rather a motion. The vice mayor is recognized. I would like to move the staff recommendation. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by Ms. Contari Johnson. Madam Vice Mayor, you may open on your motion. So, I think despite the rallied public comments from the people that organized this evening, the majority of the people in Santa Cruz that I speak to are really excited about this and they've reached out and said that this public safety tool is long overdue and if it can save one life in a water rescue, a fire, or by one of our armed, I'm sorry, uniform personnel not having to go into a situation where they could possibly die, then this is something that we absolutely must purchase. Thank you for the debate or discussion. Ms. Brand was recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I'm not gonna make a lot of comments. I don't think my powers of persuasion will be effective here. So, I'm just gonna say that to some of the folks who called in or present here, I agree with you about concerns related to privacy, surveillance technologies. I have mixed feelings about the potential good that drones can do and so I wanted to, but I also share the concerns and so I wanted to see if my colleagues might be willing to entertain an amendment to this motion. It is a request for some specific information in the reporting that comes back to us. I appreciate that you've included an annual report. I hope that the city council will get some information out of those reports and so I sent it to Bonnie and I'm just gonna, it's wordy, it's not a lot, it's not a lot, it's just asking for some specific concrete information to come in those reports and the place that this language would go would be in policy 607, I think it's section B, hold on one second. No, 607.4, it would be after the last bullet which is the bottom of, or the top of page three in our packet and so it's asking to provide information on the efficacy, if the drone, having these drones actually achieves the identified purposes, the total annual cost, I think that you've shared that and it feels pretty clear to me but I think it would be good to have an assessment of that, a description of how it was used and whether and how often that data was shared because there is a question about sharing among agencies, it seems like that would be pretty simple to let us just include that in a report so we know if it's being shared and with whom, what other agencies and then I think, and this one I feel very strongly about a breakdown of where the technology was deployed because I do think that the concerns that people have expressed about potential profiling, the way that people experience surveillance in our community is different depending on who you are and that breaks down race, class, all kinds of ways and so I do think it's important to understand where it's being used and then a summary of if there are any complaints or concerns that have been shared directly related to the use and any other information. So I know that's very long but it's actually quite simple, it's just providing some specific information. Hold on for just a second, are you asking that to be accepted as a friendly amendment? I am. Okay, is that agreeable to you? I'd like to call on the Chiefs to speak to the feasibility of this, I don't. Chief, somebody, Sergeant. Or somebody from either department is fine if this seems like feasible. So AB 41 already covers a majority of the items listed in here that are requirements for us to report in our annual report for all of the equipment. There are things that are not specifically named in AB 41 with the same terminology but in essence this is capturing what AB 481 already requires. Not entirely, there are things that are not in AB 41 but the large majority of it. And then I would also like to add that with reference to the ability, council has the ability to deny use per AB 41 of any of the equipment that's listed on there as a check and balance to the equipment. Sergeant, if I could, if I could ask, would you enumerate those items A through G which are not in the report that would otherwise come to us? What are the unique items that Council Member Brown is asking for? The item D is not specifically covered in AB 481 as far as to how we would be able to report that out. I don't have the answer. The specific geographical locations of where the items are used that's not in AB 481 specifically. Community complaints are in AB 481. We have to report on those and internal audits are required for reporting in AB 481 in our military use policy. So would I be right in thinking that items D and E would be unique ads to the report we would receive otherwise? That is correct. And let me ask if D is possible for you to gather and report on that information. Chief, good evening, sir. Can I just ask a question about the clarifying question? It says how often the data is shared or were you referring to how often the equipment is deployed to outside agencies? Council Member Brown. The data. Okay. Yeah, that would be separate than outside of AB 481 at this point. But is that a knowable fact? Well, we would track how often it was deployed to an outside agency and at that point, I would guess probably 99.9% of the time it would be evidence in a criminal matter so we would share that. But yeah, I think since we're tracking how often and where it's deployed, we'd be able to capture the information if we shared the data with a different agency. So D and E both are knowable to some extent. I mean, the extent to which you can gather that information and report on it. Okay, I'm seeing that there's a lot of conversation going on and I want to make sure we give you time to answer this question. Ms. Brothers or Sergeant, let somebody get to the, my question again, I'll restate it for you, is on D and E, as I understand from the Chief, that is not currently required in the report that would otherwise come to us. So on D and E, is that knowable information or the best effort you could make and you could add that to the report? Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. I need to offer one clarification. Please do, sir. Item A, we do have to report on how often we use it. AB 41 is not as subjective as it's a, governing its effectiveness in the report. So that would be sort of, yes, partially addressed, but not totally as worded in this amendment. Okay. I wonder if a way to go here, Ms. Brown, is to check and see with the Vice Mayor if adding D and E only because the others appear to be covered in the report that would otherwise come to us. Is that an offer of a friendly amendment from you? Would that work for you? Are you prepared to support the motion with the amendments? Yeah, this is not a weapon, so I have different feelings about this. Good, then absolutely, and if it's feasible, I want to. These are now added, Ms. Bush, not A through G, only D and E would be added. That's agreeable to the makers, agreeable to the second, where was the second? I lost track of it. Thank you, agreeable to the second. All right, matters still before the council for debate and discussion. Let me ask if there's further debate and discussion. Two points here. One is, if I understood it correctly, some have been characterizing as a weapon, some haven't been. There is no capability for this to have a weapon on it, attached to it, added it, some later data, is that correct? That is correct. Thank you. You also indicated that there would not be face recognition associated with this. That is clearly prohibited. That is correct. And the entity with whom we have a contract, they're clear on that. That is correct. Thank you for your question. There is no general fund money going into this. If I'm correct, it is asset forfeiture funds. Is that correct? That is correct. Thank you. Is there further debate or discussion seeing, hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. Council member is Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Vodkin. Aye. Kalentara Johnson. Aye. Vice mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Akili. Aye. Motion passes and is awarded. We are going to take a seven minute break until 7.20. Santa Cruz City Council is back in session following a brief evening recess. We have a quorum established. We are now on agenda item 31 through 39. These are appointments to various boards and commissions, appointments made by the city council. Ms. Bush, you are going to lead us through this. Thank you. And because you do such a fine job on it. And let's do this. I am going to any council member questions, then we'll have public comment. Then Ms. Bush will take us through step-by-step commission by commission. So let me ask if council members have any questions first before we begin. And hearing none, let me ask if there is anyone with us who wishes to provide any public comment on any one of the appointments that we will have in front of us. This will do this all at once. So if there's anyone who wishes to provide testimony or comment, this would be your opportunity to do so. And while you're approaching, let me, please come forward. Let me check with Ms. Bush to see if we have anyone else online. Nobody with their hand on that one. Good evening, welcome. Good evening. I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Rebecca Acosta. I have submitted an application for the downtown commission. I have worked downtown for the past 18 years. I think that I would offer a perspective as a mom, but also as a manager downtown that would be an official to our commission. Thank you for the consideration. Well, thank you. Good evening. Hello, good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Lola Kiroga. I'm a resident of the West Side and I've applied for the Transportation and Public Works Commission. A little bit about why I'm interested as a UCSC transportation and parking services employee and student organizer. I feel strongly about building more walkable and bikeable spaces as well as accompanying transit around development. I've been living off campus since my second quarter at UCSC and since then I've moved four different times each time in a different neighborhood. So I have a lot of experience moving around different parts of the city and county via biking, walking and transit. And I have a good idea of the strong and weak points of Santa Cruz road design. I'm eager to work with the community and my fellow commissioners to create the built environment we all wanna see for the future of Santa Cruz like working on proposals for bike and pedestrian improvements around existing housing as well as upcoming housing projects. For example, a proposal to improve bike safety on upper Laurel and King to accompany the new food bin housing project that just went before the planning commission. I believe my perspective as a car-free UCSC student and lover of Santa Cruz make me a good candidate for this commission. I look forward to listening to the community and working with my colleagues to make sure that the voices of disabled, queer, low income people of color and other minorities don't go unheard. Thank you for your time and considering my application. Just say, I'm an old man, so I don't hear you well. Say your name so I can identify you with it. It's Lola Quiroga. Thank you very much. Very much appreciate your testimony and your participation here. Bode, good evening. Welcome, sir. Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Bode Shargell and I'm here speaking in support of one of my absolute favorite people in Santa Cruz, my good friend Lola Quiroga and in support of her application to the Transportation and Public Works Commission. I'll give just a few of my thoughts on why I think she'll be a fantastic commissioner. First of all, as personally myself, a member of the City of Santa Cruz's Climate Action Task Force, I've learned that the single greatest step that we can take to combat climate change is to build institutional momentum to getting people out of cars and Lola will make great progress towards that as a commissioner. Some people might use the fact that Lola is studying computer science as evidence that she's smart. I would say that she's smart despite that but that's just my own opinion. Regardless of that, she may be coming into the commission with a background in transportation advocacy but with how inquisitive, intelligent and committed she is, she'll know as much about our city's public works projects as anyone by her third meeting. Lastly, I'll say that Lola's identities as a student, a worker and a woman of color go along with a strong value for equity which will lead her to ensure that the City of Santa Cruz's transportation system and built environments serve everyone, especially those who have historically been underserved. Lola's gonna make a fantastic commissioner and I hope that you will give her your support today. Thank you. Thank you, sir. And thanks for all the good work you do in the community. Zenin, good evening, sir. Welcome. Good evening, Councilor Logan and Mayor. My name is Zenin Aleik Crow. I'm a commissioner or outgoing commissioner on transportation and public works with the City of Santa Cruz and I'm here today to speak in favor of Lola and her application to be appointed to the Transpation Public Works Commission. I wanted to first extend my appreciation to the Council for my term on the commission. It's been a wonderful experience and I'm really proud of the work that we've done on the body and in the respect that with you guys giving me the opportunity as a student to be on that body, we've been able to make significant progress in a lot of mobility projects that are affecting students in ways that we might not otherwise have seen those protectives. For instance, when we were on commission, I was able to speak about the experience of cyclists coming from campus down Spring Street to High Street to get to downtown. And as part of the new signalized crossing, crosswalk from Spring Street over High, we were able to discuss and actually include a specific bicycle button for cyclists to activate that crosswalk as a more safe way to get across the street, especially for the students that were coming down from campus. And I know I really value the perspective that I was able to bring in that discussion as a student and I think I really value as well that the incredible perspective I know Lola will bring to the commission as well. I know that she's smart, she's very, very intuitive and she also has a deep knowledge and understanding of these issues of transportation. And so I think it's really important that Lola is the perfect candidate for fulfilling this position and that we continue to have an active student voice on the council or on the commission where 55% of Metro riders are students and where there's a whole host of safety issues related specifically to how students interact with the city. And I also do wanna echo the fact that with the recent council reforms, originally my term was going to be a four year term but then it got cut down to a two year term as a result of those reforms. And so there's also an imperative need to make sure that that voice remains to be filled by a student's role and making sure those perspectives are heard. So I think Lola's a fantastic candidate for this position. I really support her and I really support the vision of making sure we can have a wide range of viewpoints represented on the Transportation and Public Works Commission. Thank you. Don't go away. I'd be remiss if we didn't thank you for your service. As I understand it, you're going to be graduating in a couple of months and maybe leaving the area going doing something else. But while you were here, thank you so much for bringing the exact voice you're talking about to the commission. Thank you, Zenon. I appreciate it. Thank you. Certainly. Good evening. We'll take you and then we're going to take somebody online back and forth. But good evening. Good evening, Mayor Keely and council members. My name is Elizabeth Madrigal and I am a Seabright resident in support of appointing Lola Kiroga to the Transportation and Public Works Commission. Ever since I've moved to Santa Cruz, I've lived in this wonderful city car-free and have made it a mission of mine to traverse all the way from Veronica to the West Side on weekends, so very much familiar with the condition of our streets and the improvements that need to be made. And ever since I've met Lola, I've just really valued how much that is also the forefront of her thinking and how passionate she is about those subjects and just the interconnectivity of one place to another. I'm also a member of the Link 21 Equity Advisory Council. I don't know if you all have heard of that, but that's a mission under BART to connect the Northern California mega region with one another, of which the Monterey Bay region is a part of. So I've also really just valued the way that Lola thinks not just about the city of Santa Cruz and of itself, but also how we connect to places like Monterey County, the Bay Area, specifically San Jose, but also in the future when we get better train connections, San Francisco, Oakland, other places of that sort. So yeah, really just wanna be here to support Lola and hope you all appoint her. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're gonna take the next person online, then we'll be right with you. Good evening, person online. Welcome and please proceed. Good evening, council. This is Trine Mechel. Before I talk about myself, I'd like to second what you've all heard about Lola and how important it is to have a student voice on the Transportation and Public Works submission. Having Zennan on the commission has been a great experience and more broadly speaking, having a student voice on that commission has been fantastic, especially an active student. It's great, both of them, as Zennan has brought and Lola would bring an incredible energy that the commission desperately needs and the campus makes up such a large portion of our community, I think it would be remiss to not have a student on this body. Personally, I've been on the body for the past year and a half for the past year as vice chair and prior to that very engaged with the commission and being a bike rider and non-car owner myself very engaged with the needs and wants and risks that come with not owning a car in the city. During my time on the commission, I've seen great progress. I think it's been amazing what we've been able to do and I hope to continue that. Being a resident of district four, I am especially aware of the growth we're going to see over the next few years in our city, especially in the downtown core. And I think that it's important that we, you know, responsibly and respectively throw out our transportation as well as our housing at the same time. These things are inextricably linked. I believe I'm a good voice to do that. Many of you know I'm very engaged with housing policy in the city and the broader region and it's just been great to be able to tie those two things together while on this commission. So I hope to be reappointed. I thank you for your time. And if I'm not, thank you for the time that I found on this commission. It's been a wonderful experience. Thank you. Thank you for your service and thank you for your testimony. Good evening. Welcome. Good evening council. My name is Keith Diggs. I'm a Seabright resident. Hopefully driving the last car I will ever own. Knock on wood. A want to express my appreciation to the council and whoever else in city governments responsible for the e-bikes here. They're fantastic. I love them. So a big round of applause for that. And then second, just want to echo whatever one has been saying in support of Lola Kiroga for the large seat on the transportation council. I also know her and she's fantastic and I think she will serve the community very well. So thank you. Well, thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? We'll take the next person online. Good evening. Welcome. Good evening. Person online, good evening. Okay. Three, two, one. Sorry that we didn't connect on that. Do we have another person online, Ms. Bush? Anyone else? Okay. The Ms. Bush, we're now going to turn this exercise over to you, commission by commission. Please proceed. Thank you, mayor. Just to remind council and the public in 2020, at the beginning of 2023, you guys approved the sort of migration to directly appointed commissioners, to a handful of commissioners, those that have seven members on the body to align with each council member. And there's the need to stagger those because you can't have every member terming out at the same time or you're not going to have a quorum. So this is essentially phase two. That's why you're going to see some people who have three-year term, some people who have one-year term that the one-years are going to get them to the next round of new districts, council member that are appointed next year. So with that, if nobody has any questions. Questions? Please, Ms. Bruner. Two of the speakers spoke as if they are not applicants in our binder. And so... I do have a note about one of them. Okay, I was just curious about that. When, how do we get clarification? Did someone withdraw or? Yeah, if you, Zenin, he did apply and he withdrew from the downtown and transportation and public works commission. Okay, thank you. Is that, is an option in our binder? Five seconds, go ahead. I should also note that, yeah, I'm apologies for applying for a appointment, but I withdrew recently because my graduation plans changed and it didn't make sense to continue on in the role. And then also I noticed in the agenda that it said I was a part of the downtown commission, which is news to me, but in which case I am very clearly out of order with all attendance requirements. Thank you, Zenin. Are there further questions of Ms. Bush before we begin? Ms. Bush, back to you. All right, so the first commission up is the arts and that is one seven member commission that is gonna be transitioning to districts. So we have the, these are two at-large appointments with terms ending in January 2025. And for the at-large appointments, I will start from one direction and move my way that way everybody gets the first go around. So council member Brunner, if you have, you can nominate up to two. I nominate Linda Kover and Rebecca Guzman. Council member Kellan, no, no, no, you have any, no, no. Then by consensus, it would be Linda Kover and Rebecca Escobedo-Guzman, okay? Okay, then next we have is the county library advisory commission. The city has membership to that commission. These are two at-large openings, the terms ending for full four-year term, term ending January 31st, 2028. The two openings, council member Calantari-Johnson up to two. Raina Dubin and Vivian Rogers. I just realized there was only two. No others, I take it. Okay, by consensus, Raina Dubin and Vivian Rogers. Up next is the downtown commission. We have Mayor Keely's appointment for his direct appointment and Deng in January 31st, 2027. Joe Ferrara. All right, and then we have one at-large opening, Vice Mayor Golder, Rebecca Acosta. Anybody have anyone else they wanna nominate? And then by consensus, approve Joe Ferrara for a nomination. Okay, so we have Joe Ferrara as Mayor Keely's direct appointment and Rebecca Acosta. The historic preservation commission is next. That's another one that is direct appointments. And we have two openings, which are Vice Mayor Golder and Mayor Keely's appointments with terms both ending January 31st, 2027. The selection in 2023 determined the order in which they are chosen this time. So Vice Mayor Golder gets the first pick. William Schultz. Mayor Keely. Sean Wilson. By consensus, we have William Schultz as Vice Mayor Golder's appointment and Mayor Keely has Sean Wilson. And the Parks and Rec Commission. We have one opening, that's Vice Mayor Golder's direct appointment. Leo Cruz. No, it's okay, I could just complain. Okay, any objection to Jorge Leonardo Cruz? No? What? By consensus? No, but it's her direct appointment. Yes. Up next is the Planning Commission. Two openings. We have Council Member Newsome has a direct appointment and one at large. Council Member Newsome, do you have? Rachel Dan. And then Mayor Keely, for the at-large, do you have someone we could start with you? Or one nominee? I'm sorry for delaying the process, I apologize for this. Mr. Thompson. Joe Thompson? No, I'm sorry. Mr. Matthew Thompson. Oh, oh, Matthew Thompson. Council Member Watkins. No new ones for you. Oh, Council Member Brown. No new ones? Member Brunner, do you have anyone else? I had Rafa Sonnenfeld. Council Member Calentari-Johnson. Vice Mayor Golder. So we have a nomination for Matthew Thompson and one for Rafa Sonnenfeld, so we will go through and do a vote count to determine who gets that. Council Member Newsome. What am I voting on? Do I just say the name? Are you gonna vote for either Rafa Sonnenfeld or Matthew Thompson? So just say the name. Yes. Council Member Brunner. Sorry, Brown. Matthew Thompson. Watkins. Same, Matthew Thompson. Council Member Brunner. Rafa Sonnenfeld. Calentari-Johnson. Matthew Thompson. Vice Mayor Golder. Matthew Thompson. And Mayor Keely. Matthew Thompson. So just to reiterate, we have Rachel Dan, who is Council Member Newsome's direct appointment and Matthew Thompson, who is the at-large appointment. Up next is Sister Cities. We have two at-large appointments, starting with Council Member Watkins. Let me make sure I, sorry, just one second, excuse me. I wanna make sure I wrote it down. Okay, Carola Barton. And Andrea Ryordan. And I apologize if I mispronounced either of both names. Council Member Brown. Oh, no. Mayor Keely, do you have any new nominees? Oh, no, okay. So by consensus, we have, okay, now I see where you're at. Carola Barton or Andrea Ryordan. Ryordan, thank you. Ryordan, okay. Ryordan. Oh, it's spelled. Okay, Transportation and Public Works Commission. We have four openings here. So we have Vice Mayor Golder's nomination, Council Member Newsome's nomination and two at-large. So starting with Vice Mayor Golder, who would you like to appoint? Herman? Yeah. Okay, Council Member Newsome. Ryan Mechel. And then we have the two at-large now. Starting with Council Member Brown. Candice Brown and Lola Carroga. Council Member Newsome. Okay. Council Member Brunner. Ron Goodman. That's it, okay. Council Member Brunner, okay. Detlef Adam and Ron Goodman. Okay, so just Detlef Adam, okay. Mayor Keely. I'm good. Council Member Newsome, do you want me to come back to you or do you have donuts? Okay. So we have, one, two, three, four. Okay, here we go. Four. We have, who? Detlef, Candice, Ron, Scott, Herman, Ryan Mechel, Lola, Carroga is what I marked. The two of you. Ron Goodman, Detlef. Oh, sorry. Oh, the other one was his direction. Oh, okay, so yeah, there's four, sorry. Yeah. Okay, we repeat. So we have two at-large positions that we now have to go through and vote for. So you can vote for up to, actually, it'll probably be easier for me to go one at a time. Or Ron Goodman. Actually, no, that's not gonna work either. Council Member Newsome, out of the names, we have Ron Goodman, Detlef Adam, Candice Brown, and Lola. Who would your two be? Ron Goodman and Lola Carroga. Council Member Brown. I'm gonna go with Ron Goodman and Lola Carroga. Member Watkins. Ron Goodman and Detlef Adam. Mayor Keely. Ron Goodman, Lola Carroga. Vice Mayor Golder. Ron Goodman and Detlef Adam. Council Member Calentari-Johnson. Ron Goodman and Detlef Adam. And Council Member Brunner. Ron Goodman and Lola Carroga. For the two at-large, we have Ron Goodman and Lola Carroga. I'll practice that. And just to reiterate, we have Scott Harriman for Vice Mayor Golder and Ryan Metcalf for Council Member Newsome. And then last, but not least, is the Water Commission. There are two openings. We have Vice Mayor Golder's appointment and then one at-large. The Vice Mayor Golder, who would you nominate? Julianne Rhodes. And then we have one at-large opening. What was that? You want me to say it? What? No, it's Council Member Newsome's, yeah. Sorry. David Baskin. Council Member Brunner. No, no. Calentari-Johnson, no, no. Anyone besides David Baskin at all? So by consensus, David Baskin is appointed. You could, well, we can empty it if you want, yeah. We, Ms. Bush, do you need any other action by the Council on this item? No, thank you. Well, thank you very much. This is not an easy thing as we work for a couple of years here to get everything reconciled. Thank you very much, Ms. Bush, for tracking all of that and helping us through this. We are on item 40. This is an impact report on the effect of the proposed housing for the People Initiative, Measure M on the March ballot. We will have a presentation by the Planning Director and his staff and Mr. Butler. Good evening, sir. Welcome again. Thank you, Mayor Keely and Council Members. I'm Lee Butler, Director of Planning and Community Development for the City. And with me, I've got Bonnie Lipscomb, the Director of Economic Development and Housing, as well as Matt Van Wa, our Advanced Planning Principal Planner in our Planning Division. And we also have on the line Kathy Head. She is President of Kaiser Marston. She prepared the third-party report on Measure M. I'm gonna give a quick summary of our review of the report and then I'll turn it over to Kathy. So the Kaiser Marston report found that Measure M has broad applicability throughout all areas of the city. It triggers a vote of the people anytime, a change to the zoning ordinance, zoning map, general plan, or general plan map would result in an increase in floor area ratio or height, thereby having the potential to add time and costs to a wide range of projects, including 100% affordable projects. The report found that Measure M will constrain housing supply, resulting in less affordable housing and less market rate housing. The decrease in housing production coupled with the additional housing costs that the measure would add, it would result in a higher cost of housing. Measure M would constrain the city's ability to comply with state laws and make it more challenging to implement the housing element that the council just adopted and that HCD, the State Housing Department of Housing and Community Development, just certified. And finally, Measure M would have a significantly negative fiscal effect. With that, I will turn it over to Kathy Head for the details on her analysis. Good evening. Welcome to the council meeting. Good evening, mayor and city council members. I'm not in control of the PowerPoint, so I'm counting on Lee or Bonny to advance the slides for me. We can go past the first two. Here we go. Okay, so just to give you just a background before we get started in how the genesis of this process was the city received a sixth cycle regional housing needs allocation target of approximately 3,700 units. To assist in fulfilling this obligation and future obligations that will likely come in seventh, eighth and ninth, et cetera, renas, the city commenced work on a downtown expansion plan. So this triggered in some respects the putting of Measure A forward on the ballot or to put it on the ballot because of proposed increases in stated reasons for proposed increases in downtown building heights and floor air ratios. I think that it's very likely that that was the objective of the initiative. Just the pesky part about initiatives is if they're not very, very carefully worded, they're left up open to a great deal of interpretation. So what we're gonna talk about tonight in this first part of the presentation is just the various issues that could come up as creating a vote of the people where the initiative probably didn't anticipate that or didn't plan on that, but could very well come to pass. The first thing is that while the focus was on the downtown, Measure M would actually apply citywide. And then another just key factor of the initiative is that it would be retroactive back to June of 2023. And if you could go to the next slide, please. So the term development projects is a defined term in your municipal code. And it means any project that requires a discretionary permit other than just a use permit. And so in effect, it applies to any change of your general plan, be it the map or the general plan itself, the zoning ordinance or the zoning ordinance map. Anything that increases building height and or floor air ratio for a development project, which again, just to emphasize development project is a very broad term in your municipal code. So the table below just presents a number of examples of things that could potentially be subject to votes of the people due to Measure M. Not all of them would be. It's clearly increases in building height and or floor air ratio, but just again, inadvertent changes could cause these to come to a vote of the people. I'm not gonna read them all to you. So you can see them all and we'll just move on to the next slide. Changing the land use designation. These are the triggers, changes in planning documents that could trigger it. So changes in the general plan, land use map, land use designation, zoning designation, general planner zoning ordinances such as. So changes to setbacks could create the need to have taller buildings, coverage ratios again could result in taller buildings. Changes to the limitation in the number of stories could then create an FAR issue. And there are a number of other FAR and height issues that could impact a broad array of the potential projects. Next slide. Okay, so state law requires, this is part of housing element law. The state legislature has been very busy for the last few years, trying to put their hand into the middle of local zoning decisions. So one of the things that has come up in this process is the city's required to align development standards and use allowances so that the development can achieve the maximum intensity permitted by the greater of the general plan or the zoning ordinance standards. A couple of examples of that are the ocean street area plan zoning standards that need to be made consistent with the general plan development standards and minimum lot size requirements for RL zoning properties. A few examples of specific projects that are likely to be subject to this is 125 coral. The reason it might be subject to it is because it may or may not include housing and that may subject it when it's too tall or when it's taller than the general plan that it may subject it. Proposed affordable housing project on the northeast corner of highways one and nine, the development of the north side of mission and center streets and the downtown expansion plan, especially the four corners of front and spruce streets to 140th center street. So I'm sure you all know those projects very well. So we don't need to spend a lot of time on that if we could go to the next slide. This one's a key issue that this city and every other city is facing with their housing elements. And that is the no net loss requirement that's been put in place by the legislature. So that means when you put your best efforts in on your housing element to identify sites that would be developed in the seven year period and then we'd also include affordable housing as you've defined as targets in your housing element. When development actually occurs on any of those identified sites, if it doesn't meet the standard that you put or the target that you put in your housing element, whatever that shortage is, is then a net loss. And then the city has to identify a substitute location to fulfill that loss. And so the idea is since you've identified in your housing element far more units than your arena requires, as those sites get developed, you wouldn't necessarily have a no net loss. But I've looked up a number of places. I mean, this happens everywhere that I work with no net loss. I just thought I'd use Encinitas as an example since it came up in a lot of the public comment. Encinitas had a significant buffer in their housing element. It was nearly twice the number of requirements. This is in their current housing element and their current approved housing element for the sixth cycle. They had almost twice as many sites and units identified as were required. Development has actually occurred on a number of those sites. The projections were very aggressive for what could happen on those sites. And so instead of being 60 to 100% affordable as projected in the housing element, they have been coming in at about 20%. And just as a point of reference, the Encinitas inclusionary requirement is a 15% very low income requirement or a 20% low income requirement. So the unit, the projects have been coming in about 20%. So they are in a position now where with the sites they have left, they don't have that they've identified in their housing element. They have a shortfall. So they have an absolute net loss situation that they're going to need to resolve. The point being in that belabor discussion is that as you lose sites, then you have to identify new sites. And even if you had a really big buffer like they did, then what's likely to happen is also you're going to need to have in many cases either and or greater height or greater FAR. And that that's where a vote of the people would come in into play on this. Just as another point of reference of Encinitas, they have an initiative that requires a vote of the people that twice turned down their housing element. So I think that plays into the constraint to housing issue associated to some extent with voter initiatives. Anyway, back to no net loss. So in fact, I'll just leave there that there is a strong likelihood you'd have to increase height and or FAR to then fulfill that no net loss that resulted by projects not being developed. Next slide. So as I mentioned before, the legislature every year for about the past 10 years has taken new actions that impact how cities can zone their property and the standards they can apply and how and when they can deny projects. And the city obviously has no ability to override these requirements, but in some instances they may very well trigger measure M requirements. And just some recent actions that they've taken as authority to construct residential on commercial school and religious sites. They have, this one's almost impossible to understand, but you can't create a situation. The short answer for this next one is you can't stop a project with 10 or fewer units by creating artificial minimum lot size coverage or FAR minimums. Another interesting one is that the state decided to increase the maximum height limit for ADUs and then we have SB9 that allows lot splits for single family homes can be split. So those could all, each and every one in their own way could trigger a vote, a measure M vote. Next slide. So the density bonus, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna go over this more in the inclusionary section, but right now the thing that's just interesting about density bonus and I do a lot of density bonus work is that height and floor ratio increases are really actually the most requested concessions in any of the projects, certainly that I've worked on. They either come in as incentives or they come in as development standards waivers. In places that have inclusionary housing ordinances, developers will tend to use the state density bonus as a means of mitigating the financial impact associated with the affordability standards applied by the inclusionary requirement. And that's actually absolutely been the case in Santa Cruz. So what it does is it allows developers to significantly modify development standards and that won't trigger an amendment to the general planner of the zoning ordinance. So in and of itself, state density bonus will not trigger a measure M vote, even though heights and FARs will likely come to pass. Next slide. Okay, so developer risk. Developers when they're attempting to do projects and when they're looking for locations on which to do these projects, one of the key factors they consider is minimizing uncertainty. In fact, I and much of the work I've done that developers are sort of, they'll accept affordability requirements as long as they know what they are in advance and as long as they know what they need to do. And so the addition of a voter approval requirement throws a significant level of risk into the process for developers. That the obvious one is it increases the risk that the project itself won't be approved. And then the developer will have spent a lot of money trying to put that project in front of the voters. Even assuming it does pass, it prolongs the development process, which increases the carrying costs. I'm just gonna give you an example of Costa Mesa. Costa Mesa in 2016 had a voter initiative pass that limited growth very stringently limited growth in terms of if traffic was increased or the number of units was increased beyond general plan, specific plan, zoning code. It passed overwhelmingly, development then stopped in Costa Mesa. And so in 2022, the city council put an initiative in front of the voters that said, can we carve out areas in the industrial and commercial areas, not in residential zone areas, but can we carve out those things to allow for development of residential with a affordable component assumed, not explicit, but assumed that would be at a higher density than is allowed anywhere else in the city. And that also passed. And so in 2022, measure K was added to Costa Mesa and now their developmental development can happen in those places. And the reason for that largely is because Costa Mesa didn't have a chance of meeting the arena because all residential development had essentially been halted by the initiative. So that's just one example, but I think it is reasonable to conclude that measure M will discourage some developers. And to some extent developers even up 100% affordable projects from pursuing projects that require a height or FAR increase. And I've worked on a number of 9212 reports for initiatives. I've done a lot of research in the scholarly literature and it does back up that conclusion. Next slide, please. Okay, so talking about your arena, and I understand that you have in your housing element, you have a significant buffer to your allocation. But I think the Encinitas example should be taken seriously. Those buffers can go away quickly as development progresses. And you can't stop development just because it didn't meet what your targets were in your housing element. So as long as the development meets your zoning standards, then you have very little latitude in denying it. So the measure M impacts, as I mentioned before, is it may discourage or constrain market rate and affordable housing development. It extends entitlement and periods. And again, it could be voted, any project could be voted down in a measure M election. If you don't meet your housing element targets in a timely fashion, then developers can use streamlining that's been again provided by the state legislature. And again, if you have to implement measures to increase housing production, those changes would likely require measure M improvement. And if you lag or in meeting these standards, it's possible that HCD could come and threaten to decertify. Not to be labor and Senitas, but actually in 2022, the attorney general threatened to decertify their housing element. So these are real examples of what can happen. Next slide, please. So the key impacts of not having a certified housing element for your, particularly your affordable housing needs, but also for development premises is builders remedy. I imagine you've all seen builders remedy. It's been quite the topic in California this year is any jurisdiction that didn't have a certified housing element builders remedy could be invoked by developers. And then as long as they provided a defined amount of affordable housing, they didn't have to abide by your general plan or your zoning ordinance standards. That's up in the air in the courts. I think there's more to be heard about builders remedy. If you don't have a housing element, you can't get state funding to assist those projects. The city has a pro housing designation, which makes it more competitive for getting grant and assistance sources that would be revoked if you had a decertified housing element. And monetary penalties have come into vogue with the state in terms of decertified and folks not meeting their housing element. Next slide, please. Biscal impacts. This came from the County Board of Elections. The costs are estimated to range from 115,000 to $185,000. That depends on how many registered voters come out to vote, the number of items the city would place on the ballot and whether this is being done at a regularly scheduled election or at a special election. Another fiscal impact of reduced supply of housing is more demand than supply. As one of the causes that housing costs keep going up all over California is there's just way more demand than there is supply. Given that Measure M, I believe will create a constraint to future development, the city will be in the position where you'll be looking to increase your affordable housing production and by creating new programs and those cost money. And since redevelopment was the largest funding source for affordable housing in the state. And so when it was eliminated in 2012, we were left with cities being forced to use general funds a lot to provide affordable housing. And so that's the idea here is as if you have fewer affordable housing units developed and if you wanna fulfill your need for affordable housing, then you'll have to look for other resources to fulfill those requirements. Next slide. And next slide. So I'm just gonna go over these quickly but I think they're important. So that this part of the presentation is about the proposed 25% inclusionary housing requirement on projects with more than 30 units. So there've been a number of cases and pieces of legislation over the years that have guided how inclusionary housing programs must be set up. The two key requirements that came out of the BIA case against the city of San Jose at the California Supreme Court was the requirements cannot be confiscatory and they cannot deprive a property owner of a fair and reasonable return on investment. The courts did not define what that means. And so over time each jurisdiction looks at their programs in attempts to prove that they are not, they comply with both of those standards. AB 1505 came in, it allowed jurisdictions to go back to doing rental inclusionary. You hadn't been able to do it since 2009 when that was passed, then it allowed jurisdictions to do it. At the time, HCD and the legislature suggested that the standard should not be more than 15% of the units at 80% of the area median income. It used it as an example, but they subsequently, HCD subsequently wrote a technical memorandum that said basically they meant it. And so you're in a position with your housing element and the progress you've made with above moderate income, that HCD can't come in and make you do a feasibility study, but moving on to the next standard versus constraint to housing development, what they can do at any time in any place is they can reach out to you and say, we think your inclusionary housing program is a constraint to housing. You need to prove to us that it isn't. And I will tell you, I've had that happen in multiple cities, including West Hollywood and Palo Alto. And so then the burden of proof goes on you, the city, to prove that your obligation is not creating that constraint to housing. So based on the analysis that I'm gonna go over next, I think there's a serious consideration to a 25% requirement could instigate that request from HCD. And again, if it is deemed to be a constraint and if it's not changed, then the housing element could be decertified. Next slide, please. So we prepared financial analyses based on affordability gap analysis, which are effectively just the difference between the market rate, render sales price and the affordable price at the affordable level being required by the program. We tested to see the results at a 20% requirement as it stands now and a 25% requirement for projects over 30 units. Next slide. So the prototypes that I created for this analysis were based on the actual types of projects that are being proposed in Santa Cruz. So we looked at active planning applications and we looked at the housing element. And so I came up with three apartment prototypes and three ownership housing prototypes. They range on the apartments from high density to medium density to SRO, all types of projects that are being developed in the community. And ownership, which is much less, much less development of ownership housing going on in the community in recent times, high density, not even recent times, overall kind of a long period, high density condominiums, low density condominiums and townhomes. So those were the prototypes. We ran financial analyses on all of these prototypes, development costs, net operating income or net revenue, developer return, et cetera. Next slide, please. And then what we did is we looked at the impacts created by an increased inclusionary housing requirements. So the first thing that happens when there's an increase in any requirement like this is anybody who's already purchased property, the profit they are going to receive on their project is reduced from what they thought it would be reduced from. And then for folks who haven't purchased property, then they're gonna attempt to buy property for less money to take on that impact. But as you would expect, some property owners are reluctant to accept that their property value has increased. And so they'll just hold. And that's particularly true in a community like Santa Cruz where most of the development of housing that's gone on in recent past has occurred on improved properties. And so property owners who have improved properties are gonna take into consideration what the value of their property is if they just leave it in its current state. And just as a point of reference, your housing element is based on the assumption that that trend of housing being developed on improved properties will continue. So factors to be considered in terms of Measure M itself is developers who purchased a property after June 2023 but have not entered the approval process. There's a likelihood that some or a few or all will attempt to challenge the retroactivity clause in Measure M. I don't have an opinion. I'm not a lawyer, but it's been my experience that retroactive clauses have been challenged. Developers who've completed the application or have SB 330 preliminary applications, prior to June 2023, they won't be subject to the Measure M requirements. So based on these factors and based on what I discussed at the top about what happens with land and developers and property owners is, we looked at the reduction in property acquisition cost that would need to be available to the purchasers of land in order to make the 25% inclusionary housing obligation viable. And then as a second test, we looked at all things staying equal, so development costs don't increase. The increase in market rate rents and sales prices that would be needed to offset the proposed requirements. Next slide please. So normally when I do inclusionary housing analyses, I like to look at both of those conjunctively. But in this case, I decided to be the most liberal to making the 25% work. I looked at them both separately. But the thing to keep in mind when you're looking especially at property acquisition costs is residential development has to be competitive with the other potential uses. Because unless the residential development exceeds the value that the property owner is currently receiving or could receive from another use, the property owner will not sell the property for residential development. And I already discussed the rents and sales prices, so I'll just jump over that. Next slide please. So the benchmark standard is just that. It's a benchmark. Every single project embodies unique characteristics. And so these standards that I looked at was in fact that a reduction in the property acquisition cost of no more than 30%. That's a standard I've used for years. I've been doing inclusionary housing analyses for 20 years. It varies to some extent from city to city just based on underlying land values. But it's, again, we can't be confiscatory. We can't deprive a property owner of a fair and reasonable return on their investment. And we have to have property owners want to sell their land. The second test was, again, with no development cost increases, the 4% increase in market rent rates or sales prices, if it's over that 4%, then it will take longer for the market to absorb it. Those are the two standards that we used. Next slide please. These are the results of the apartment development analyses. In the report that you have, there's appendices with all of the full pro forma analyses for these projects. So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on these. I think as you can see by this table, the first scenario is a 20% inclusionary housing requirement assuming based zoning, assuming not using state density bonus. As you can see in all three cases, the neither of the benchmarks are met. And in fact, in the case of the high density apartment project, you'd need a reduction in land value that was two times the actual cost of buying the land. So in order to do this project at a 20% inclusionary requirement at based zoning, you would have to be able to give the property to a developer and give them money. That's the basic premise there. But the reason that your 20% requirement appears to be working at this time is because a lot of developers are able to use the density bonus. And so the 20% requirement with density bonus being applied is the reason that you can get to the point where 20% can potentially be supported. But as you can see again in the high density scenario, it doesn't meet the property acquisition test. It does meet the rent in test. And then the other two meet then the medium density one meets both tests. And again, the SRO meets one of the tests. So that's an important consideration because not all projects can effectively use the density bonus, but so far the projects that have been proposed are using it to get to that 20% requirement. So when you add on to that another 5%, I understand a 5% increase doesn't sound like a lot in a vacuum, but when you're at a percentage that's already marginal in terms of feasibility and then you add 5% to it, you merely exacerbate the constraint to housing that you potentially have. And so as you can see on the 25% inclusionary requirement, we're in a situation where again with a high density project, it's over the cost of buying the land. And in the SRO, it's 70% of the land cost. And then in the medium density one, it's nearly 50%. All of those render the acquisition of property infeasible given existing improvements on those properties and or other potential uses. Only the SRO project meets the percentage run increase. It doesn't meet either of the other standards. I think it's, I just have to reemphasize the notion of property owners don't have to sell land. It's really important that they be incentivized to sell land if you wanna see housing being developed. Next slide, please. Okay, I did that. Let's go to the next slide. So the ownership housing development prototypes. I think if you look at this and you just look at the top line red numbers on the chart, what you'll see is that each of the prototypes analyzed at each of the affordability levels, all generated negative profit, or in other words, a loss. And so as a developer, when you're looking at providing ownership housing in Santa Cruz as we sit right now, you're looking at negative profit. And we could go to the next slide, please. So the conclusions from the ownership housing development analysis is really right now ownership housing development can't support any affordable housing requirement just under current market and financial conditions. And even for the past few years, market and financial conditions. So it's not just a matter of the recent increases in interest rates. Some of the developers have mapped their project, their apartment projects, and it's possible at some point in the future, they'll choose to exercise that prospect of selling them as condominiums. However, that opportunity is constrained and will be pushed out further by the existing inclusionary housing requirement. And it'd be pushed out even further if that requirement went up to 25%. Next slide, please. So just things to remember. Inclusionary housing requirements cannot be confiscatory. That's the BIA case. Inclusionary housing requirements cannot deprive a property owner of a fair and reasonable return on investment. That's the BIA case. And inclusionary housing requirements cannot act as a constraint to housing. That's a government code requirement. And last slide. There's one more. So the proposed increase in inclusionary housing to 25% for projects with 30 units or more doesn't meet the standards of any of those three criteria. And those three criteria are the lynchpins. So the financial impacts created by the proposed increase in the inclusionary housing obligation are property acquisition for residential development will not be competitive. And if measure M passes, significant potential exists for legal challenges from residential developers and, sorry, my cat's coming, residential developers and or an HCD constraint to housing. And so those could potentially result in housing element decertification. And I'm sorry, I went so long. That's Dan. Well, thank you very much for that presentation. Let me ask if council members have questions. You would like to ask the consultant. We'll start here with Ms. Collin Tar-Johnson. Thank you. Thank you for the work and the presentation. There was one slide, the state legislation slide. And I'm not sure I fully understand. So I don't even know if I'm asking the question right. My understanding is that state legislation prohibits cities to deny certain projects. And for example, there was housing with schools as part of that. If we can put the slide maybe back up. So it's slide eight, slide eight. Okay, so let's say measure M passes and this type of project is brought forward and it requires a change in zoning. So it has to go to the vote of the people and then the people deny the project. So then what happens? If city councils don't have the right to deny these projects, what happens if the vote of the people deny these projects? What are the repercussions? What will the state do? What are the legalities? Again, I don't know if I'm even asking the question right or if the question makes sense. No, you are right. I'm gonna take a stab at it, but then I'm gonna let Lee jump in on this as well. So the situation is, and it's a, no, it's actually exactly the right question. But the situation is that you're required, you the city are required to follow state law. And so by definition, you have to allow residential development on these properties. So that in and of itself is true, but state law is limited where it says you have to, then you're the developer, you have to comply with zoning and general plan, general plan as a residential project. Now the problem is there's probably no residential zoning or general plan that actually imagined that would happen. And so it requires a change in the general plan and zoning plan to allow just the basic residential to happen. You have to do that. And so now I'm gonna let Lee jump in in the middle when I left him in the middle of the sentence. Thanks for the question. Council member Calentari, ah, Council member Calentari Johnson, excuse me. There are several instances where I could see something like this playing out. Kathy was alluding to one of them. Actually, she was alluding to what I see as two separate issues. One could be an instance where we need to change the zoning or general plan of a property to facilitate its development at a level that's feasible or just in general. So for example, if a property were not able to have residential zoning or residential uses, there's a public facilities property, for example, that we've been looking at. It's not a religious assembly use. It's not a school use. And so the recent law changes that allow for residential on those types of public facilities wouldn't be allowed. And so if we needed to change our general plan or zoning to allow for that project and that resulted in an increase in floor area ratio or height, that would trigger a vote of the people. Similar things could happen on industrial liaison properties like the northeast corner of highway one and nine. Similar things could happen for properties where we are looking at doing a shelter use like one, two, five coral, where we might need height increases or we do need height increases and where we wouldn't be able to use the density bonus because we might not have residential, it might be the medical facilities and the shelter uses. So there are a series of instances where a rezoning or general plan amendment could be required. Also, there are instances where there's a community commercial designation and those have a height limit that would likely need to be exceeded in order to have a project that actually works. All of those could trigger a vote of the people if you're rezoning those properties and it includes height or FAR increases. The other point, and some of those, we could be in a position where we need to get additional housing produced in order to meet our RENA targets. And so if we're not meeting our regional housing needs allocation targets, then we have provisions in our housing element that you all are aware of that say, we need to start doing things that facilitate the production of housing. And some of those things that we would be doing to facilitate the production of housing would also involve either reduced setbacks, which could trigger a vote, increased FARs, trigger a vote, increased heights, could trigger a vote. And so it would make it harder for us to comply with our housing element and meet state law. The second thing that Kathy Head was referring to there was an instance where projects come in were required to approve them. They, let's say, for example, our housing element anticipated that we were gonna have 100 units on a particular property, but that project comes in and let's say it only has 80 units. We still have to approve that project if it complies with the applicable objective standards. So we approve that project. If that happens and we get to a place where we need to, where we have not enough capacity in our housing element, which as is the case in Encinitas, as Kathy Head was referring to, then we would then have to come in and rezone additional properties and that would likely involve increases in height in FAR and that would trigger a vote of the people. And so in both of those instances, two separate paths, but they could trigger votes of the people and both have housing element compliance implications. That was a lot, I recognize. Okay, so essentially we could support a project, but the vote of the people would deny the changes in zoning and we would just be at a standstill, essentially. There could be a situation like that. If the project was proposing, say, a change to the zoning and or the, change to the zoning or general plan that increases height or floor area ratio, that would trigger a vote of the people before that could come into effect. Thank you. For the questions, comments, Ms. Brown is recognized. Thank you, I have two questions, hopefully just the two and no follow up based on what I hear next that might confuse me further. Okay, so I wanted to ask, in the general area of the concern around affordable housing, which is my concern, that is my 100% my concern. So the assertion that this could affect 100% affordable housing projects concerned me. And so I wanted to ask though, because as I was reading through the Kaiser-Marsden report, it got to me thinking, since ministerial projects are not included here, they would not be included, ministerial project automatically means no general plan change or zoning change, a ministerial approval. And that is a policy that we have at the city that we approve ministerially 100% affordable housing projects. So they don't even come to us anymore. So I'm just wondering if you could help me understand how affordable housing would be affected. Those 100% projects given, they appear at least from what I see to not be covered here. Sure, I'm happy to tackle that. So first, we vetted this not only with Kathy, but also with an affordable housing developer to make sure that we were actually conveying accurate information about the potential risks that developer may or may not be willing to pursue. And the way that a 100% affordable housing project would be most likely deterred is if they needed to come in for a rezoning or a general plan amendment. When we've talked with that developer and when we have vetted that through our consultant, they have said, if there is the risk of not getting the vote of the people, and if there is the time associated with the vote and there is the carrying cost associated with the time it takes, then they would likely bypass that site altogether and not even seek to develop that site with affordable housing. So they may have a connection with someone where they have, let's say, a community commercial general plan designation, but that community commercial general plan designation may not work for a project in making a pencil, or maybe it's a site that is a public facilities designation or, as we mentioned before, an industrial designation. So if they have to go through that process of a vote, they likely just won't pursue that project at all. So just, I think I understand. So it would be for projects that wouldn't meet ministerial requirements anyway, right? Okay, got it, okay. And then my, did you wanna, I thought I saw Bonnie, I don't wanna cut off. Thanks, I just wanted to add as far as the developer and some of the risks inherent is the cost is the delay of what funding round they're applying and for tax credits as well. And each funding round, in certain funding rounds, there's more funding in one round, less in another, some are more competitive than others. And so developers assessing that every time. And so when there's like an uncertainty or a delay in the process, that could throw them out of a critical funding round and then they can't even do the project anymore. So that level of uncertainty is really problematic for affordable housing developers. And it's something, there's different financing risks for market rate, but for affordable, those kind of situations are really dire. Thank you. Second question. I'm still really trying to understand what the effects of this might be. And we have voluminous information now, but it's still not clear. So one of the ways that I thought might be helpful, it would be to just ask how many projects that have been approved over the past, I don't know how many years, so a little while here, would have triggered a measure M vote? Had it been in effect at the time of approval? Just, are there, can you think of any, or I'm just trying to envision like an actual scenario, not hypos, hypotheticals. I can think of two recent ones that would have, and I can think of four or five ones that we have in the pipeline that potentially would. Thank you. And that's just off the top of my head. There could be more, I'm just... That's just what I, yeah. Council Member Watkins is recognizing. I just have a question, kind of a follow up, but I was wondering if that many projects did require a vote of the people, would that require a special election every single time, or would that be on a general election, or, you know, primary timeframe? Thanks for that question. I also wanna be clear about my last response. Those are development projects. There are many, many more changes that we have made to our zoning ordinance. Our general plan through legislative actions that this body has taken, that would. So I just wanna be clear that, you know, there are projects and then there are policy changes to the code itself and either one could trigger. So, and then Council Member Watkins, I apologize. Could you repeat that question? Sure, no problem, maybe it's for Tony, but it was around, if there's that many projects that are gonna require a vote of the people, would that require a special election every single time, or would that be on the kind of the election cycle or both? It really just depends on the timing. If the timing of the project is such that it can be added to a consolidated election, that would be the desirable way to go. Otherwise, a special election would need to be called. And do you anticipate, if I may, would that also then have like campaigns or is it just sort of a perfunctory kind of vote? I mean. It would be, I mean, whether or not campaigns materialized around that type of an issue is an interesting question, but it would be conducted in the exact same fashion as a sales tax measure or measure M, for that matter. Okay. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Mr. Newsom is recognized. Thank you, Mayor Keely. I kinda wanna, I guess, jump off that I have just a couple questions, but I kinda wanna jump off talking votes of the people and projects, but also see in the report that there's a good bit of state legislation that would trigger votes of the people. It looked like there was parts of our housing element that would trigger votes of the people. And I was wondering if you could say just on average, how many votes of the people you think per year this measure would bring about or I would expect a minimum of at least one vote. I mean, we have regular zoning ordinance updates that we aim for every 18 months or so, and we have the required updates that we have pursuant to state law. We also have updates pursuant to state law that we have to follow, but are behind in making our codes match those. And then we've got the projects that are separate. And so, yeah, I would say it's gonna vary, but in general, a minimum of one per year. Okay, so a minimum of one per year could be two, could be three. Sure, yeah, it could be more, absolutely. Okay, and I'm trying to understand, would those votes of the people change state law? Would they impact, say, the density bonus that's granted to a developer? And I think that was kind of answered in presentation, but just want to kind of clarify on that. It would not affect a density bonus. It would not affect state law. So we have to follow state law, even if our codes are inconsistent. So what that does is it creates confusion amongst the general public, amongst applicants, amongst everyone, if they're inconsistencies. So we aim to update our codes to match, but there are a lot of state laws, hundreds over the past couple of years alone, that are hard to keep all of our codes up to date on. Okay, thank you. So, okay, thank you for that. So I'm just trying to do some kind of quick math here. It looks like, so say, over say a 10-year period, this measure could cost somewhere in the ballpark of a minimum of $1.8 million and somewhere as far as $3 million, $4 million, $6 million and have no real impact on what developers can do per state law, or what's granted to them per state law? The numbers you cited are correct and it would not affect what they could do per state law. There could be some that affect what they're allowed to do if it were a project proposing a rezoning or a general plan amendment. But not like, say, development, a density bonus, such as projects that we currently have that have density bonus that go well above our zoning end. Absolutely, correct. Yes, a density bonus can be utilized without pursuing, without requiring a vote of the people. Right, okay. My next question, this kind of gets to the impact this will have on housing in our community and affordable housing. And I'm glad that it seemed like there's clarification. It does seem that this measure could impact 100% affordable housing projects and result in those projects not moving forward. But I did also gather from the presentation that this measure in general will result in less housing and less affordable housing being built, especially in our community. And that's from raising the affordability requirement, inclusionary requirements of 20 to 25%. I was wondering if there are any examples you can provide of, say, 25% affordable housing inclusionary requirement being a barrier to housing being built in California or, say, 25% or higher? Yes, I'll cite a couple of examples and then I'll offer the floor to Kathy who deals with these up and down the state. So San Francisco, for example, had a substantially higher inclusionary rate just six months ago. Their inclusionary is incredibly complex. It had a 96-page implementation document and very specific. But some of the levels were certainly at 25% and higher. They recently, about four months ago, actually reduced their inclusionary to around 12% or 13% because they were finding that their inclusionary was representing a barrier to housing. I was not following it at the time, but I believe that Watsonville also had a higher inclusionary rate in the around 25% and I see Matt nodding here. Our city manager back in the late 90s or early 2000s and they subsequently changed that inclusionary rate to a lower one to address the lack of housing production that they were seeing. So there are certainly examples. I know, Kathy, you deal with this all over the state. Do you wanna add some other examples to that? Sure. So just staying in the Monterey Bay, unincorporated Monterey County has had inclusionary in the books and actually, Salinas has a very similar policy, but Monterey County is what I'm gonna talk about. They currently have a 25% requirement that's comprised of 6% very low, plus 6% low, plus 8% moderate, plus 5% workforce, which goes up to 150% of area median income. For the past several years, they've been working on modifications to that program to make it feasible. And what's currently being considered and an ordinance has been written, but has not yet been approved, is to go to a requirement, developers can choose a 15% requirement that's 7.5% very low, plus 7.5% low, or a 20% requirement that is 10% low, plus 10% moderate. Another example is the City of Santa Monica, a number of years ago, they've had inclusionary for decades, but they created a policy for the downtown area of Santa Monica, which had been seeing tremendous amount of development. They had a community benefits program for if you went above the allowable FAR and or height, then they had a community benefits that translated into, generally translated into additional affordable housing requirements on top of the base inclusionary housing requirement. They subsequently, because they were doing them all by development agreements, they subsequently did a 30% inclusionary housing requirement for the downtown. And then what happened, and even I didn't do the feasibility study, another firm did the feasibility study, but very respected firm, they said it wasn't feasible and it wasn't. And so no one proposed any project in the downtown at the 30%, and instead what they did is they went down, there were three tiers of zoning and developers just went down to tier two, which could be administratively approved at the existing affordable housing requirement. So that's another example. Ventura, a couple of years ago, they had a very complicated inclusionary housing program. There were any number of options for the way to fulfill it, but basically it was a 20% requirement after a study that I did actually do. They reduced that requirement to 5% very low plus 10% low for rental units and 10% moderate for ownership units. And just one more example, this is more based on general economics than anything else. The city of Claremont adopted inclusionary housing in 2007 and then the economy crashed. And so in 2011, they completely revamped the whole program to make it usable. Oh, just as one more thing before I stop talking. So I have a survey of a hundred jurisdictions in California that have inclusionary that I update regularly. There are fewer than 10 jurisdictions in my survey that have a 25% requirement or higher. And we've discussed a couple of those here. I would just ask, Kathy, for those that do have that higher inclusionary requirement, are there any at 80% AMI? I would anticipate that in order for those to be remotely feasible that they have a higher area median income limit. And is that part of your analysis? Is that what you would say is accurate? They tend to have a range. So they tend like Monterey County has all of those different where you add them up to come to the requirement. So, and then like for example, Davis has a requirement that ranges from 10% to 25%. So I would say yes. I mean, the low income requirement at the 25% level is generally, there's more nuance to it. Thanks, I just wanted that clarification because I believe that our 20% at 80% AMI is already one of the highest inclusionary requirements in the state given both the percentage and the level of affordability. And just looking to you, Kathy, to see if that is accurate. Right, it's at the high level. And I think another thing to keep in mind, especially with more recently proposed inclusionary housing ordinances, is that jurisdictions are paying attention to the HCD guidance on rental. You know, you lost the ability to do rental from 2009 to 2017 because of the Palmer case. And so between what the state legislature is trying to do with zoning and just what HCD has decided with their guidance, I think that it's just 20% is starting to be less and less, I mean, it was never common. And now it's not, it's just not being considered as often. I just wanted to clarify on our ordinance. We do have the ability of on that 20% for rental developments for five to be available to tenant based vouchers up to 120% of AMI. And then for ownership, it is a combination of low at 80% and up to moderate at 120%. So I just wanted to add that. Right, and the analysis I did on ownership was based just for everybody's reference on the inclusionary. I did it as though they could do all of it at moderate. So I took, again, I took the most liberal approach. Just a follow-up question that are kind of building off, say this measure resulting in less housing being built, less affordable housing being built. What will be the consequences of that less housing being built particularly what consequences will that have on say our community having more or less, say land use control and ability to manage growth and say have a say over, say a particular aspect of a particular project. And I'm thinking here of SB 35, which has been replaced by SB 429, I believe now and the Housing Accountability Act and the Associated Builders Remedy with that and the impact that might have on us say determining something as simple as the size of a driveway, which we've associated with the project that we talked about with 1800 Soquel Avenue. Right, thank you for that question. I'll tackle it in two parts. First, you asked about what are the implications of less housing. So when we're producing less housing, we've got higher housing costs for all. We've got less economic diversity. We've got less racial diversity. We've got greater challenges for businesses trying to hire staff. We heard about the economic development strategy earlier this evening. We've got more regional traffic when that happens because people are driving greater distances to reach the job center that we have here in Santa Cruz. And we've got greater environmental impacts because our city's compact nature makes Santa Cruz the most sustainable place to grow in the region, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions reductions. And all of that leads to a less equitable community. So it's critical that we work to promote policies that encourage housing production and the council has done a great job of that in recent times. The second part of your question was related to SB 35, SB 429 and the Builders Remedy. If we are not meeting our prorated share of the regional housing needs allocation targets, then SB 35 and SB 429 can kick in. Just for the members of the public, SB 429 is just the new SB 35 and has broader applicability in the coastal zone, for example, whereas SB 35 did not apply in the coastal zone. So if we're not meeting those housing production targets, then those streamlining efforts would kick in. Those are similar to what we saw. It is what we saw with 831 Water Street where we have very little discretion to do anything. We have to approve a project that meets all of the objective standards. There's no CEQA, it's a ministerial process for that. Even if the process comes before the decision-making body, it has to be solely focused on objective standards. So to your question about would we be able to make tweaks to the project based on the driveway, we would not be able to make such requirements happen. We could ask, but we certainly couldn't require any of those things. And then you asked about the Builders Remedy and the Builders Remedy would kick in if we do not have a certified housing element. Then the Builders Remedy would kick in and the Builders Remedy allows for projects meeting certain state affordability standards to ignore the city's zoning and general plan and build the housing project at whatever development intensities the developer desires. And there are many, many examples of that. If the council is interested in a few of those examples, I would invite Matt Benoit up just for a few of those because I know he's been looking into that. Matt, would you like to speak to some of those? I'd love to hear some examples. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Thanks, Matt Benoit, Principal Planner. So yeah, as far as those, there's recent Builders Remedy projects in the Bay Area I can speak specifically to. And I'll cover some of the largest ones. Right now, Menlo Park has a proposed Builders Remedy project of a 421, 371 and 305 feet that's currently across the street from an existing single family neighborhood. Palo Alto has one of 17, 11 and seven story buildings in a 37 foot height limit zone. Santa Monica, like Kathy had mentioned, they had 16 Builders Remedy projects come in when their housing element was not certified. And they've since narrowed that down to there's currently one of those projects going through. That's 18 stories in a zone that currently allows three stories. So those are some of the larger examples, smaller examples. Cupertino was recently in the news. They have a 70 foot project going in in a 45 foot zone. And that's their first Builders Remedy project. Thanks for that, Matt. There's about, there's 47 jurisdictions right now that have Builders Remedy projects. And how many projects overall that you saw? Well, I don't know that it's at least double that. Yeah, so I just wanted to point out that the work we did last year, how critical that was, right? I mean, we did not want Builders Remedy to apply here and the work that we did as the housing element subcommittee with Mayor Keely and Council Member, Calentary Johnson and Council Member Newsom, we all worked really, really hard to get that document certified, certifiable with HCD and then to the full council for your adoption on time. I believe, I believe, I'm not positive about this, but I believe we were the only city in the region to get it done on time. And that was so, a big reason for that was because we knew that as a community and as a council, we wanted to have control over our destiny and when Builders Remedy is applicable, we do not have control over our destiny. Thank you. So the consequences of this housing being built could be, what you're talking about? Yes. On this measure, okay. And I wanted to add one more thing on SB 35 and SB 429, the streamlining. One key thing too, the state, there's two tiers of that streamlining and eight, three, one water, for instance, because we had met nearly all of our arena affordability categories, just not very low at that time, it still had to come in at 50% affordable to qualify for that streamlining. If we're not meeting our above moderate, for instance, the state comes in and says, it's 10% affordable or whatever our current inclusion area is. So that'd be 20% right now. So every single project, if we're not meeting that above moderate, market rate unit count in our arena, every project that comes in would be available for that streamlining. So as much as it's super important to get affordable housing, the state cracks down even harder if we're not meeting that market rate housing production. Okay. So that could lead to less affordable housing in projects. And also, and this is going back to Builders Remedy, is that also, is that wave sequel analysis as well? So there's no environmental analysis on those? The Builders Remedy does not waive CEQA. There's actually a court case that's related to that. And it actually spurred additional legislation this past year because San Francisco was attempting to hold up a Builders Remedy project due to CEQA and the legislature responded with specific requirements for cities to proceed with processing CEQA so that they couldn't avoid the Builders Remedy. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yes, Miss Brunner is recognized. Full questions. Can you list all the ways housing can be affordable besides building straight up an affordable unit? Sure. I think Bonnie and I and probably Matt could all speak to that. I had an interview yesterday with the news about the city's ADU production in BC Bay Area. And I was mentioning that a lot of our accessory dwelling units are actually rented to family and friends. And what we found through our surveys is that those rentals to family and friends are at substantially lower rates. So that's one way in which they can be affordable. A lot of times, we say this sometimes, the best time for housing to be built is 40 years ago and the next best time is today because if we continue to produce housing at a rate that meets the demand, then older projects will naturally become more affordable. And so older developments are typically more affordable. That isn't always the case, particularly when the supply and demand is out of whack the way that it is in Santa Cruz. And frankly, throughout the state, right? I mean, it's not just a Santa Cruz problem. It's an acute problem here, but it is an issue throughout the state. And so the production of sufficient supply helps that. But there are other ways. So it might not be a deed restricted affordable unit, but there may be assistance, home buyer assistance programs that can help. And Bonnie's team has things like that that she's worked on with the home buyer assistance programs. I'll let you want to speak to some of those. Yeah, I mean, first off, I would just say that there is what Lee was saying about just the number of units on the market, right? The more that we're able to produce the housing units, overall the rent and the cost of those units is going to be less. The fewer of those units, those costs of those units will be higher. The size of the units matters as well. The smaller the unit, the more affordable it is on the market and tenant-based vouchers provided through the housing authority. And I know you're very familiar with those are also ways to make a unit affordable. So a developer can provide and have a market rate rent and still have someone who qualifies for a lower affordability level in those units. So those are some of the most readily available ways of making housing more affordable to projects. Obviously the SROs are some of the most affordable and that's just the size of the unit being very small or much affordable by design. So those are some of the most frequent programs that we have. We do have, had in the past, a first-time homebuyers, that as a program is pretty challenging to be able to, for the cost of the leveraging that you put in there, definitely the larger rental projects, affordable projects are much better value overall. But we have worked with Habitat for Humanity in making projects available and aging in place projects as well with Habitat for Humanity that does allow a senior to either live in the main house or build an ADU at sufficient cost savings. So those are a few of the programs. Thank you. I find that a lot of times when I speak to community members the perception is that affordable housing is only on a new build of affordable housing and kind of taking a step back and looking at the whole and the stock and how much housing has been built since the 1989 Loma creator earthquake over the last 30 years, for example. And it definitely seems to be one of the reasons why housing is so expensive because the supply is so little. And having served on the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners for so many years, we oversee the programs there and the federal, the HUD programs, all the different types of programs whether you're a single parent or a vet, whatever you're eligible for those subsidies, those vouchers from those different programs were able to be increased. And there were times when we'd have 300 voucher holders out there not able to find a place because there weren't enough units to rent. So increasing subsidy needs to come in line with increasing stock. And then my next question is, can you, do you know off the top of your head how many affordable, like actual termed affordable units are in process right now? Yeah, well, roughly we have 8 or 900 affordable units of about 26 or 2700. So in that ballpark, if you give me a moment, I can. I can look, I have it on my screen. We have the map. Yeah, I would say in about 400, 420 of those are 100% affordable projects. Three of those are city. One is a 65-unit project under development. 867, 867. And then one of the questions I've gotten a lot recently is the city doesn't build affordable housing. So there's just kind of this understanding of how housing is built and why we're always referring to private developers. I think we need to stop and go to square one for people to understand. What does it take for the city to build housing or for any developer to build housing to understand those steps in process and why we don't do more housing? Yeah, I think for a city and a city our size, it's not very typical that a city is in that development role. But I will say in our community where there's such a commitment to housing and the cost of housing is the highest in the nation, there is a commitment to building it. And the challenge of what it takes is it either takes a city-owning land where they can underwrite, just as Kathy Head was mentioning earlier, there's a subsidy required in order to actually build units in this town, particularly affordable units. So as a city, we can really leverage the funding by providing land at no cost or less cost as well as having a funding source which we no longer have since 2012 to be able to leverage that to be competitive for state and federal funding sources. So as a city, we have been successful either through the former redevelopment agency in building over 1,800 units. And those are largely over the last 20 years. Those were 30 years, largely many of the affordable units that were built in the city. But since 2012, and we've lost that funding source, it has been a real challenge. And so we've been able to leverage in loophies that developers have paid to the city under our inclusionary ordinance. We've been successful in applying our state and federal grants in order to partner with affordable housing developers using city land, acquiring and assembling additional land. And that's another challenge in Santa Cruz is actually getting a site that's large enough for a housing development project because to do a multifamily housing project, which are those only ones that really are going to pencil and make sense to leverage the city funding is you need to have roughly 20,000 square feet or a half acre. And as you all know, there are very few sites in Santa Cruz that are that size anymore. So it's a matter of acquiring other sites. And many developers, when they come to Santa Cruz, the cost of real estate is just too high. They don't have the ability from the profit side to look at Santa Cruz as a good risk or even to look at Santa Cruz as having opportunities unless the city or the public can come in in a meaningful way and underwrite that value for them. And I think one of the challenges that we have for developers, particularly with this next rena cycle of 3,700 units is that any additional sort of stress we put on our current housing environment is going to, you know, for a developer when they're looking at, do we develop here or do we develop in another city? They're going to be looking at what that cost is. And if we have a higher, and this is for market rate developers, you know, that they're looking at projects, you know, when they have other cities to choose from, it's already incredibly high to build in this environment. They're going to choose another city unless we as a city have a funding source to be able to subsidize regular developers, market rate developers coming in to meet their inclusionary requirement. Unfortunately, we just don't have that funding source now. And I would say unless we had a meaningful funding source, like a substantial funding source, I would say we should be leveraging that for 100% affordable projects than subsidizing market rate projects meeting their inclusionary. But there's just not a way they're going to be built otherwise in the current environment, particularly if the inclusionary rate is increased. One more question. How many projects would you say that we have at the 20% inclusionary? Right now, we have had one project that has been built at the 20% inclusionary. The 20% inclusionary kicked in in February of 2020, I believe it is. So all the other projects are under the prior 15% inclusionary. I will say, however, that we do have a number of projects that are pursuing building permits at the 20%. So presumably they will be moving forward and we'll have more. But there are still entitlements happening and most of the projects that you see before you now have come in post that 2020 change, that February 2020 change. So we are still seeing entitlements, but the entitlement and the building permit process and getting the financing takes a while. And so in terms of projects, when you say how many projects have we seen, we have seen a number of projects come in for entitlements, a couple more that I can think of that are pursuing building permits, but only one that I'm aware of under the 20% that's actually been constructed. Can I just add something to that? I'm sorry, just one comment. And those projects are largely density bonus projects. Almost exclusively we are seeing density bonus. I will say there's a project that used accessory dwelling units instead of the density bonus. It was a small project and they used three accessory dwelling units, which was almost a 30% increase. So while they didn't use the density bonus, they got additional units to help make that pencil. So thanks for that clarifying point, Kathy, because that's an important one that it's only working with the density bonus or with another way to get additional units so that the actual inclusionary on the project plus the bonus or the project plus the aid use is less than the 20% otherwise, as Kathy pointed out in her analysis, it would not be close to actually being financially viable. And I just wanted to further add that that change to the 20% inclusionary coincided with AB 2345 to change the density bonus to 50% from 35%. So we're also starting to see developers take advantage of that increased density bonus to further make up for that change in the inclusionary rate. I might add one more thing to that, which is there's additional density bonus that is allowed as of this year and our consultant did run the analysis based on the additional density bonus as well. And Kathy, if you wanted to speak to that, I know you looked at that and you also said that it did not work from a financial perspective. Right, so what I did, this is the stacking density bonus that just went into effect on January 1st. You can add, you can get up to 100% density bonus if you fulfill, as Matt was just saying, if you get to the 50% density bonus, the most efficient way to do that is a 15% very low income requirement. If you add in a 15% moderate income requirement, you can get 100% density bonus. But the analysis I ran, there's another component of the stacking, which is you can get up to approximately a 38% additional density bonus if you add 10% very low income on top of the 15, which brings you to 25%, which is coincidentally, it really is coincidence, it was just legislation, brings you up to what the measure M standard would be. So I ran that analysis as 25% very low income using the state standards for rents, which are lower than the standards for, the rents are lower than the standards allowed for your inclusionary requirement. I also ran, with the eight, what then became an almost 89% density bonus. I also ran a 25% scenario, which was in the presentation, where I took 15% very low income to get the 50% density bonus, which is the most efficient way to do that, again, because of the differentials in rents between the state and the city's density bonus ordinance. So I took 15% very low, plus 10% Santa Cruz inclusionary low. And that 25%, while not viable, was more viable than the one with the stacking density bonus, if that makes sense. And neither of them work. So to summarize, the things that you have in your report are actually more viable than going with additional density bonus. Right, I only showed in the report because the other option you had was to do 24% low income to get a 50% density bonus. But because the Santa Cruz inclusionary rents are so much higher than density bonus rents, that's just worse than 15% very low, plus 10%. So I didn't want the report to be 300 pages long. So I ran them all, and then gave you the most efficient ways, because again, I was trying to be as liberal as possible to getting the viability. Right, and I just wanna be clear when I say that it's more viable, it was still clearly not viable. Councilor Woodburn, for the questions. Yes, I will wrap up now. Oh, no, but I just wanna know if you have further questions. Yes, I am. I don't have to wrap up. Thank you. So I know the intention with this is to have more affordable housing and to be able to have a say on heights. That seems to be something, some of the people in the community really want to be able to have a say on are the heights. Is there currently a way to vote on zoning changes or heights as we currently are without measure M? Yes, all legislative acts, I'll turn to our city attorney, but I'll ask him to confirm. All legislative acts of the council are subject to referendum when it comes to changing height or floor area ratio in our general plan or zoning. Tony, is that accurate? He's confirmed that that is the case. So right now you can vote on heights, on changes that the council enacts related to heights or FAR or rezonings. Any legislative act related to land use, the charter allows it and the state collection code also allows it. I just also wanted to say too, we heard in some of the correspondence about democracy and things like that. And our process right now is you all and that is democracy. So I just wanted to clarify that too. For the questions, Ms. Mayor. Not at this time. Thank you. For the questions by members of the council, please ask your question. Just to clarify the cost of the elections that my colleague was asking about, who burdens that cost? That is the city's cost. Thank you. What we're going to do now is we are going to take 30 minutes of public testimony. We will alternate between folks who are in council and folks who are online. Is there anyone with us in the council chambers which is to provide testimony on this item? Good evening again, sir. Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, council. I appreciate all the hard work that's gone into making this report. I think it is exactly what we need as a city to see what the financial feasibility of housing is at the current state in Santa Cruz. And I really am grateful for the work that has been put into this. I think it really shows a lot of the data and the numbers behind what we've been talking about for many, many years now when it comes to housing production in Santa Cruz. And one thing I did want to add in there is that I think when we look at affordable housing and especially when it comes to inclusionary, we need to be making sure we can build the greatest number of affordable homes possible. We want to make sure we can get as many people in a home as possible. Many families with a roof over their head. That is the goal here. The goal is not to have a higher percentage, which is just a higher percentage because if you set the inclusionary to high and you get 25% of nothing, the goal is to build the greatest number of affordable homes. And so I really want to stress here that maybe there's an opportunity to even look at updating how we calculate our inclusionary zoning policy to say on a rolling basis every two years we should do a study like this and we should say what is the percentage that we should set that would generate the greatest number of affordable homes so we're not inadvertently ended up causing there not to be any homes being built at all. And because we know part of this is obviously there were projects that were penciling at 20% based on the applications, but the conditions today are far different than they were three years ago. And those conditions will continually change both with rents potentially increasing, both with material costs maybe going down, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of different variables in what these costs looks like. So if we could on a rolling basis every two years find some way to calculate what that ideal percentage is to get the greatest number of affordable units, we could actually reflect the current market conditions every single time, make sure we don't have a situation like this where our current policy means that it is infeasible to build any housing in the city of Santa Cruz right now. So I appreciate you guys' work on this. This is a really impactful report and thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. We'll take the first person online. Person online, good evening and welcome. Good evening Council Member Keighley. Thank you for taking my comments. This is Eric Rodberg. It was a great presentation both by staff and the consultant and great questions from the council members. You may or may not know, but last week, the city of Fortin reached its settlement with HCD and the attorney general is they had a non-compliant housing element and basically they capitulated. And I would hate to see Santa Cruz be put in a similar situation and it's really apparent from the presentation that Measure M would put the city in conflict with state laws and you know that the state's gonna win. So I wonder if the city itself because I mean, in many ways, it seems like Measure M would be illegal under state housing laws. If the city itself could challenge M judicially, maybe the city attorney could comment on that. And one other comment, I am so grateful that council is dealing with a very important local issue tonight in contrast to the January 9th meeting. This is your job, this is what you should be working on. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good evening. Hello again, Mayor Keeley and council members. Elizabeth live in the Seabright District. And you know, this is very important to me because then during my day job, I actually work on affordable housing development and affordable housing policy. So just coming at this from that perspective, it was really refreshing to hear than partial analysis from Kaiser Marston. It's clear that the passage of Measure M will stop all types of housing from being built in the city of Santa Cruz. Creating barriers to housing development will not magically result in more affordable housing in our city. If anything, it will lead to more displacement as a demand will still be there. But the only difference will be that the demand will be within the existing supply. So there's obviously going to be a demand supply shortfall there. And two, I really want to say that effectively the passage of Measure M will serve to benefit only those who the status quo already favors. There's a reason why no affordable housing developers that operate in the city of Santa Cruz are in favor of this measure. So I really think that you all should greatly take that into consideration. And it really just pains me that every single day there's people commuting an hour or two to Santa Cruz, just to work minimum wage jobs here because we cannot house them. That is simply not a constant, not contentable for our housing crisis, for our environmental crisis, our climate crisis. And just as humans, those people deserve to be able to spend time with their family, with their children. So I strongly urge you all to accept this report. And if you all are also voting on that tonight, to also recommend you to vote in favor of not supporting Measure M. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll take the next person online. Good evening and welcome to the council meeting. Yes, good evening, Mayor Keely and council members, Professor Sonnenfeld. Like Elizabeth, I would encourage you to oppose Measure M or take a position from in the opposition to the measure. I think we've heard loud and clear tonight why Measure M is bad for our community. It's a poorly thought out, poorly constructed, poorly conceived policy that frustrates the city from planning for housing at all levels of income and unnecessarily makes market rate housing in our community less feasible than it already is, which is not particularly feasible today. We've heard about how it's likely that it would increase the risk of our community losing control over zoning and land use altogether. I think if people want the city to have control over its own land use and land use authority, they should be opposing Measure M. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Good evening, soon to be commissioner. Hello, good evening again, council members and Mayor Keely. First, I want to say thank you for appointing me to the Transportation and Public Works Commission earlier tonight and my friends for coming to support me. I want to urge you to take a formal stance against Measure M. The measure does two things, but I'm going to speak regarding the city-wide voting for height limits. I think having a city-wide vote for Monday and things like ADUs and ADU height limit changes and fence limit changes are a waste of taxpayer money. I think it's ridiculous to be making ADUs harder to build and delaying development even further when ADUs are beneficial for homeowners and renters alike. They're usually affordable. I've lived in ADU in Live Oak and I really loved it. So I hope that that can be an option for students going forward, but we need to make it easier to build them, not harder. We need to increase the demand, increase the supply and the demand will go down. Right now I'm looking for housing and my options are on Craigslist and Facebook groups and there's really like nothing out there because Zillow has a really unaffordable housing that's just not realistic for me. And so I think once these new buildings are built that have 20% affordable housing rates and we encourage more developers to build those types of housing, I think it would give students a lot more options and regarding the affordability rate increase, we, I think we should do a study to determine if the 25% affordability rate is feasible. I think just generally, like I don't know if yearly or just routinely to inquire about what the right affordability rate is for Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz City because it could always be changing and whether it's above the current affordability rate or below, I think we should find out so that we can make sure we're not disincentivizing developers from building more housing. Yeah, thank you so much for conducting the study. I really think that it echoes what a lot of us already felt about Measure M and now we have evidence that it is not great. So thank you. Thank you very much. We'll take the next person online. Good evening and welcome to the council meeting. Good evening, mayor and council members. Brian Mechel. Thank you for doing this study. I like Lola just mentioned it's good to put data to what all the affordable housing groups in the city already knew and what many of us already know. Like others have said, what matters here is the number of units that we produce getting people and housing is what we care about. If that means 10% inclusionary grade, if that means 75% inclusionary grade, this report shows that 25% just doesn't add up. Math is math and this report showed that the math for Measure M just doesn't add up. I like the idea of checking the inclusionary rate for feasibility routinely so that we are producing the maximum number of affordable housing units for our city is something that is incredibly important that's personal to me as a renter and many of my friends, some of who have spoken here this evening that were able to continue to afford to live in the city and not get pushed out. Measure M increases that possibility. For those who have said that we don't have a democratic process for determining zoning and FAR, we do, I am speaking to that democratic process right now. Both yourselves and staff have done an incredible job in producing and planning for housing in our city. I appreciate the engagement you've had with the community during the housing element process. Again, both council and staff, I believe that is something that is really important that being engaging with the community during that process and planning for a city that can actually house people over the next eight years. Measure M would spoil this work. Measure M would have us lose local control and lose our power to actually plan for a city that we wanna see here. We're in a housing crisis and Measure M would dig us deeper. I encourage you to accept this report. That's a great report. I also encourage you to oppose this measure personally so that we can continue to make real housing progress in the city of Santa Cruz. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mayor Don Lane, welcome back. Thank you very much. Thank you all council members and Mayor Keely. I really appreciate having a chance to both talk with you but also to hear that excellent presentation. As some of you know, I've served on the council for many years and the city has worked with Kaiser Marston for decades on affordable housing policy and affordable housing projects. I think it's really important that people in the community understand this isn't just somebody who the staff found, oh, let's find some random consultant to tell us some story. This is, these are people who know Santa Cruz and they know affordable housing. And beyond that, what they did is they didn't just talk in broad strokes. They did the rigorous financial analysis and that's what we need right now. We can't just have, you know, I'm part of a political campaign. I'm gonna talk in platitudes but this report does not do that. This has the facts. This has the data that I think people in the community know. And one of the main things that this report did was provide absolute clarity about having too high an inclusionary level is the last thing we need if we wanna build affordable housing for people in this community. And as has been mentioned before, not only has Kaiser-Marsen raised these concerns, several affordable housing organizations and affordable housing, nonprofit affordable housing developers have weighed in and found similar flaws with Measure M. So I just hope that voters will review this analysis and not simply accept the claims of advocates but actually read this important data. We have real information from people who are not political advocates. And then lastly, as was mentioned before, even if the council as a council does not choose to weigh in on this, I hope each of you, now that you've heard this information can be really great communicators to the community about the problems that Measure M prevents and presents to this community. So thank you again for the opportunity. Thank you for bringing Kaiser-Marsen in to do a great study. Thanks. Mayor Lane, I'd again be remiss if I didn't thank you for all of your good work over the years on this topic and your continuing good work with Housing, Santa Cruz County. Thank you very much. We'll take the next person online. Good evening and welcome to the council meeting. We do not have anyone with their hand raised. We will welcome you, sir. Good evening. I think you might be the one we're looking for here. Good evening, council and everybody else. Thank you for the really great report. My name's Mike Paul Hamas and my wife went to the new Mean Girls tonight. So I get to go out and party. And here I am and I'll keep it short so that you guys can do the same. As you just heard, there is literally nothing positive about this measure. And it's bad from a fiscal perspective, from an environmental perspective, from an affordability perspective, from an availability perspective, there's literally nothing good about it. And I'm not gonna belabor the point, but I will add something that doesn't usually come up in our housing conversations here is that Santa Cruz City Schools is projecting a 25% reduction in student attendance due to the loss of families in this community. And one of the big reasons for that is housing availability. So if Measure M was to pass, it would pretty much put the nail in the coffin on that. And we would not only see a major reduction in students, a major reduction in funding, but also employment and then also all of the different structures in our community that serve youth. And so I just wanted to bring that to the council's attention and also to the public. And again, if you can privately take a position against this measure, it would serve us not only in all the areas that I've mentioned, but also with public schooling. And to my knowledge in the last housing element, and Lee, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but our last housing element, we built over 50% of the units in total as affordable on some level. And so what we're doing is working. And since 1980, last time I checked the County Housing Dashboard, we added roughly 80,000 new people, but only 26,000 new units. And that is in my eyes the crux of the problem. So again, I would just really appreciate the public and the council and everyone opposing this measure because there's literally nothing good about it. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Paul Hammons. The matter is back before the council, recognize the vice mayor. I am prepared to move the, accept the study and I would like for the council to take a formal position to oppose measure M. There's a motion. Is there a second? A second. A second. There's lots of seconds. I heard this one to my right first by council member Newsom. Madam vice mayor, you may open on your motion. I don't really have a lot to say that hasn't been said already. I just wanna thank the members of the public that came out. I also just would like to say there's the people that aren't in the room. There is a large number of people in the community that don't want any more development and the idea that we're trying to build more affordable housing scares them and they don't like that and they don't want big buildings downtown and they don't even like the ones that have been built so far because they want Santa Cruz to stay a small town. We live in the city of Santa Cruz, not the town of Santa Cruz and development is inevitable. And I think supporting this measure would be misguided in the evidence that Mr. Van Wa brought forward with some of the cases in the local jurisdictions where builders remedy kicked in. It would have the exact opposite effect. So whether you want affordable housing or you want Santa Cruz to stay the same either way you wanna vote no on this because we wanna keep some of our local control the little bit that the state is allowing us to have and that is having that certified housing element not to mention the waste of money all the other things that everyone has said. So thank you. Thank you. May I ask if there are questions, excuse me if there's debate or discussion on this item Council Member Brown is recognized. Thank you mayor. Well, first of all I was, I guess I'll just say I'm not, I'm speaking to the report because that's what's on our agenda. I'm not speaking to the measure and whether or not it should be supported or not. I wanna make a, and I'm gonna give us a history lesson because I've been here for a little while. Kaiser Marston did a similar study in 2017 at which time they persuaded the council on a five to vote I voted no to reduce the inclusionary rate in our city to 10% because that was what would pencil out. At which point the city was sued and had to settle that lawsuit. It stopped the development of the project that zero affordable units unit project at the Anton project Pacific and Laurel slowed that down considerably. And at the end of the day the city council voted to increase the inclusionary back to 15% which was the will of the voters in 1979 with that measure O. And Kaiser Marston said that 10% was a sweet spot and they'll continue to say that. And that's based on assumptions about the cost of development, the land costs, et cetera. And it's based on assertions made by developers without any economic evidence, actual evidence. This is all models and models are not always correct. And supply and demand is real but supply and demand is also dependent upon, I mean there are other factors outside of just simply supply and demand. We will never build our way to affordability in a community where there is the world's largest economic engine and people making massive salaries in the private sector who can keep filling those $3,000 one bedroom apartments that are gonna get built. So I feel very strongly that to suggest that it cannot be done is just factually incorrect. Models may tell us this but I have not seen any actual evidence other than the assertions of developers and their behaviors which are not, that's their assertion. So I just feel so strongly about this. I had to say it, we then, this city council, then a different city council for sure, increased that inclusionary to 20% and we continue to have projects in the pipeline, projects being applied for as has been said because of the density bonus. At a 35 to 50% density bonus we get with 15%, we get like 11%, right? Somewhere around there, somewhere nine to 11, something like that. Now we have 100% density bonus. So our 20% inclusionary means 10% inclusionary. So an additional 5%, I don't believe, I just don't believe this model is telling us the truth. So I am not in a position to support this motion. I am not speaking to the measure itself but I just, I cannot, I've said it, I've been consistent about this and I'm not gonna support something that says something I don't believe. No, I'm sorry about that but it's the inclusionary thing. Thank you. Would you accept that we divided the motion? I'm not gonna support, I'm not gonna, no, no. Don't worry about that. I'm not taking a position. Got it, okay. Through the debate or discussion. Seen here none, clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. No. Watkins. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. For the business to come before the Council, Mr. Kandadi. For the business to come before the Council, Mr. Golder. No, thank you. Seen here none, a motion to adjourn to be in order. The Vice Mayor moves. Council Member Watkins having shown up late and wanting to leave early. Second. I second that. Non-debatable, those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Carries and so ordered. We stand adjourned. And I'll spell it this time. Thanks for that. All right. Yeah, I know you will.