 Good afternoon. Welcome to our 4 p.m. April 20th 2021 study session of the City Council. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website CityofSantaCruise.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely. I want to thank the public for staying home to view today's City Council meetings. If you wish to comment on today's agenda item, call in now and when the item is introduced, use the instruction on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming so if you continue to speak on your, excuse me, listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it is time for public comment, press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you Mayor. Council member is Watkins. Here. Calentary Johnson. Council member Cummings is Epstein. Golder. Here. Vice Mayor Brunner. Present. And Mayor Meyers. Thank you, Bonnie. One agenda item this afternoon is building a green economy in the city of Santa Cruz. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if you are wanting to comment on this, now is the time to call in and using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation by several invited guests, followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. So this is item, the item today again is building a green economy in the city of Santa Cruz and will be to receive presentations from four leading organizations in natural environment green economy efforts. And then we will spend time scoping out as the council green economy sectors of interest for applications in the city of Santa Cruz. And with that, I'll go I'm going to go ahead and introduce this. I want to thank Ralph and Laura and also Tiffany Weisweth though of our staff. They've been helping me with the staff reports and working with our our invited guests today to organize the study session. And so I'm going to go ahead and introduce this and try to get us right into the session with our speakers. The intent as outlined in the staff report at the end of sort of the year is sort of a reflection from the council of a resolution that sort of expresses what what we understand and sort of think our direction should be in terms of the green economy. The green economy certainly is something that you're hearing a lot about. And we've heard about the Green New Deal and a lot of a lot of such concepts. You sit down and really think about what that is. It's sometimes hard to put in actual actionable policy at a city level. And I've done a lot of research over the last couple months and a lot of cities are struggling with this right now. So my intent today really is to bring forward what I think of as the natural environment piece of the green economy. And I hope that I can host later through the help of our climate action manager Tiffany Weisweth around table on the built environment green economy which I think we are more probably aware of because of its application to carbon reduction and various things like solar and some of those industries that have really grown out of this attempt to really look at a green economy and its benefits to climate change. My intent today is to introduce you to a group of people who I think are leading the way I should say how they're operationalizing their work for environmental sustainability and across sectors. So we have Nick Strong-Covetich and this is not in order of who will be speaking but mostly because he's the guy with the wave behind him. I've invited Nick Strong-Covetich. He's executive director of SAVE The Waves and he's going to be here today really giving us sort of our place in a global perspective of ocean conservation. But at a very localized level, they have a very intriguing program of setting up world surf reserves and a very ambitious goal of preserving a thousand areas in the world that revolve around surfing as an economy and how to do that from the perspective of both stewardship but also what that means as a generator of revenue source and benefit to the people in those communities and he's working all over the world in doing this work with a partner conservation international. So Nick's going to bring a global perspective. He'll be our second speaker. Our first speaker is Andrea McKenzie. She is the general manager of Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, otherwise known as OSSA, in Santa Clara Valley appropriately because she has been working on land conservation to the last really 10 to 12 years there, Andrea, but before that in Sonoma County and has preserved tens of thousands of acres of California and their work is very intriguing because they have done revenue bond revenue driven measures, but also they're now turning their attention to not just preserving land but actually looking at land that they've preserved and figuring out how that serves the equity goals within their community. So Andrea will be talking a little bit about that work that they've been doing. Andrea also also sits on the Bay Area. Is it together Bay Area? Andrea, that's the new, which is a nine county regional that looks across the regional park system in the Bay Area and looks at sharing and resource generation and basically sort of everybody's all rowing in the same direction and they've done some pioneering work around health and parks, parks prescriptions rather than prescribing people drugs, a lot of kind of different things that they've done there. It's a very enterprising group. Andrea has been on their board for a long time and is a leader in the way of thinking of parks and open spaces as places that we all now call essential places and essential services through COVID. Next will be Reggie Knox, a longtime resident here and Reggie is the executive director of California Farm Link. He's also a pioneer in the organic farming movement coming out of Santa Cruz dating back 30 some odd years. And Reggie has really revolutionized his organization, California Farm Link, into a program of economic development and really utilizing the institution of farming which unfortunately in a generational way we are losing our farmers. We're not gaining farmers and he has revolutionized the way that small farms especially are able to sustain themselves in our urban areas and has really I think in a really creative way become a community development financial institution. He's going to speak a little bit about that investment and impact to local communities and specifically to urban areas like the city of Santa Cruz. And then finally Bill Henry is the founding director of Groundswell Coastal Ecology. And if any of you take a walk on Westcliffe Drive or spend time at Seabright Beach, you will see Bill's work and throughout the area. Bill is slowly but surely restoring all the bits and pieces of Santa Cruz that are woven into our urban parks and on our beaches. And he is the reason that we're starting to see Seabird starting to nest back on Westcliffe Drive because he's taken out the ice plant and he's put back in native plants. His focus in Lighthouse Field is sustaining the modern butterfly habitat there through working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and State Parks. And he really is I think the Tom Sum of the city of Santa Cruz in his quiet way and he's stabilizing our environment not just for our enjoyment today but really enjoyment of future generations. And so Bill's work is is literally on the ground and he's the person that we see change these these little changes around us. So what I've tried to do is put together a group of people that can give you that perspective of community investment, global impact and global notice of the work in Santa Cruz. Really should teach you thinking about revenue measures and what those can do and how those bolster we just finished with our Parks and Recreation Study session. What do those revenues do and what do they leverage and how do they benefit people in ways that we hadn't managed and managed imagined before. And then finally you know how do we support the values that we already have in place in Santa Cruz but that sometimes gets forgotten with our focuses on various other things as the city but really I think we have been part of a green economy for a long time here in Santa Cruz for decades but we have not called it that so we probably need to sort of do a little bit of thinking about it but I think we're certainly on the way and have always been on the road of a green economy in the natural environment and so I've asked these folks to give us some short presentations my hope is then we can have some questions with them depending on timing we'll see if they are ready to bail and go to take care of their families this afternoon or if they'd like to stay with us that's great and then I've got a few slides that we can just talk through really what I'm trying to do is get a little perspective out of you as council members and then Tiffany and Ralph and other staff will start to kind of take this in in terms of the natural environment to see what kinds of really priorities we might put into a resolution as we work towards this over the next to really towards the end of the calendar year so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Andrea first and I believe we've got a slideshow probably Bonnie you're going to be the driver of that go ahead and there do you want to show them or should I give it a shot to show the screen if you have it just in case it doesn't work okay thank you everybody and thank you Mayor Myers and council members I'm really pleased to be here enjoying you for this important discussion today I'm going to be talking about how the protection and restoration of nature and natural systems is really critical to the region's long-term health economy and resiliency now I'll start you off with this President Biden's American jobs plan I kind of cobbled together a few through the thoughts that he laid out in the jobs plan but I think really captures what you're trying to do today and the view of the open space authority our mission is to conserve natural resources support agriculture and connect people to nature and we see nature as a form of infrastructure for its many important ecosystem services that support people communities and economies we've been around for 28 years we were created by the legislature back in 1993 we cover about 1,100 square miles or about three quarters of Santa Clara to voter approved assessments and parcel taxes that we've taken before the voters generating about 12 million dollars a year I think it's fair to say for every dollar we bring in we leverage that to bring in an additional three dollars for our conservation and restoration work we've protected about 30,000 acres to date and we operate a system of open space preserves that's open to the public year-round tree of charge the other things we do is we operate an urban open space and urban greening grants program that benefits non-profit schools the cities and the county and our jurisdiction and one of our grantees and partners is Veggie Lucien a non-profit that operates a community serving urban farm on the city of San Jose and the Prush Park. Veggie Lucien is working in low-income communities of East San Jose to address food insecurity and to help youth develop career-oriented skills one of our grants is helping them to fund a joint venture with the Silicon Valley Bight Coalition that TAPS volunteers to deliver food boxes to needy communities via bicycle. Our urban grants program also partners with nonprofits working on urban forestry to counter urban heat island effect and to work with the county's community health clinics to connect families and individuals and underserved communities to nature working to make sure that all people have access to our open space preserves and we've really seen as the mayor pointed out during COVID how essential nature is to mental and physical health. I want to provide kind of an on-the-ground example of how our work is coming to fruition. Increasingly our conservation efforts are focusing on protecting and restoring natural and working landscapes that provide multiple benefits to nature and people such as building climate resilience through nature-based solutions and equity. And the model I want to talk about is the Coyote Valley. It's one of the last valley floor landscapes that's still undeveloped in the Bay Area and it's the highest conservation priority for the open space authority. A little bit about this landscape it's about 7,500 acres on the west side of Highway 101 that separates San Jose from Morgan Hill. It's a remarkable landscape for its unique beauty, its biodiversity, active agricultural operations, cultural resources, and significant water resources. The northernmost part of the valley that you see here in the photo lies within the incorporated city of San Jose and the mid and south Coyote Valley lie within the county. To imagine this for decades, going on 40 years, this place was planned for development of tech campuses for 50,000 workers, 25,000 single-family homes, and most recently large distribution warehouses. Now we hope the highest calling for the significant landscape is as natural infrastructure rather than for development. And so the city of San Jose joined forces with Peninsula Open Space Trust and the Open Space Authority in 2019 to acquire the landscape you see here in the photo. About a thousand acres in North Coyote Valley for wildlife connectivity, water quality, and we continue to acquire additional lands to grow this conservation network. It really helped us along the way as we found a local legislator Ash Kaurra who authored AB 948 in 2019, signed into law by Governor Newsom, which designates the area in the orange line there around the greater Coyote Valley about 17,500 acres as a landscape of statewide significance. And by doing this, it makes us eligible for bond funds, grant funds through the State of California. So through both outright acquisition, policy, and legislation, our goal is that Coyote Valley becomes a national model or state a national model for ecosystem services and nature-based solutions to climate change. In line with Governor Newsom and President Biden's recent executive orders to protect 30 percent of the lands and waters of the state and nation by 2030. One of the reasons this valley is so unique and important is because it provides the vital land bridge or corridor for wildlife moving between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range and it's rich in biodiversity. In the north portion of the Coyote Valley lies the Laguna Seca. It's the largest freshwater wetland in the South Bay. It has tremendous importance to wildlife for migrating birds, groundwater dependent ecosystems, but it also plays an important role in stormwater capture and natural flood management which benefits the downstream communities of San Jose. It holds the last undeveloped flood plains about 2,500 acres upstream of San Jose and contains the confluence of two creeks. This photo really shows the benefit of Coyote Valley's natural flood plains for community resilience. You can see it acting here like a giant sponge to capture and slow storm also recharge our groundwater aquifers. Important, well in 2017 a catastrophic flood hit downtown San Jose along the Coyote Creek that caused evacuation of 14,000 people and over a hundred million dollars of damage mostly in low-income communities. Undeveloped upstream reduces the impact of flooding which is only going to become more important in the future. In partnership with the city of San Jose 18 they put a 650 and allocated 50 million dollars of that amount to preserve open space lands in North Coyote Valley as natural infrastructure. The lands in Coyote Valley are still in some kind of ag production. Now the mayor talked about a minute ago it's hard to stay in agriculture. Thailand values costs of water development threats and other challenges next to the 10th largest city in the U.S. are making it harder and harder to stay in agriculture. So we're working with the city the county the state through planning policy and funding to try and conserve the working lands of the Coyote Valley for regenerative agriculture food security land access for beginning and immigrant farmers and developing procurement agreements between local farms and the city and the county. So we can monetize that connection. Multi-million dollar master planning effort for Coyote Valley that will be holistic in nature. It's going to integrate wildlife connectivity, water resources, climate smart agriculture, equitable public access and eco and advertourism. I have a thought that Coyote Valley could be that location just off of highway 101 to attract economic development opportunities that support nature-based and agricultural based tourism recreation education and green jobs training. And so speaking of green jobs we have an ongoing partnership with San Jose Conservation Corps. We employ their crews to perform land storage, trail construction and other projects on our preserved lands. We get a lot of bang for the buck by working with the cores, job training, education and career pathways. We've just started an intern pilot program with Sasees that will start this summer to support workforce development with the idea that once they graduate they will be eligible for future jobs with the open space authority. And then building on that we're in the ideation stage to create a Coyote Valley climate resilience and stewardship core that would hopefully be linked to President Biden and Governor Newsom's climate cores where we employ youth from disadvantaged communities and local tribes to train the next generation of environmental stewards using Coyote Valley as a outdoor lab and training ground. One of the other things that makes this so intriguing is that we have a community college, Gavalon Community College and IBM that both have campuses located in the North Coyote Valley and we could work with them. The mayor mentioned I sit on the board of Together Bay Area and they produced a green jobs report in 2020 conducting a survey of their public park, water agency, nonprofit and tribal members across the 10 county bay area including Santa Cruz. And they were really looking to understand how environmentally related work contributes to the regional jobs market and how sustained investment in nature based industries can support regional job growth and provide multiple benefits to communities, nature and the economy. So they looked at job opportunities in outdoor education, stewardship, capital projects, wildfire resilience, sea level rise and flood protection, 500 jobs by advancing 620 ready to go projects over those 10 Bay Area counties over the next two years. And so the report really recommends integrating climate and equity structure investments with a special focus on under-resourced community for a level where we're prioritizing working lands for climate resilience, water resources, healthy soils and food systems and equity rather than development. We teamed up with the county a few years ago to produce the Santa Clara Valley Ag plan as a climate change mitigation and greenhouse gas reduction strategy. We're also working with the cities and the county to integrate nature-based solutions into city and county climate action plans projects. And we're working with the city of San Jose to update their general plan four-year designations, industrial commercial in Coyote Valley to open space agriculture, realize our conservation vision in Coyote Valley and shift that landscape into a nature-based family. We're working with our partners and representatives in Sacramento to support various state bills that are supportive of agriculture for food security, climate resilience, ecosystem services and jobs, green jobs. And that includes a Robert Reeves's AB 125 as a three billion dollar bond to support regional and more equitable agricultural systems, AB 30 which improves access to nature for all with an emphasis on disadvantaged communities and of course the respective senate and assembly climate bonds. For your time, council members and may or might get some ideas and creative juices flowing and I'm looking forward to any conversations that you would like to have. So thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Andrea. We'll hold all our questions maybe until everybody's presentations have gone through and then we can just again have a conversation after this. Next I wanted to introduce Nick Strong-Covet. He's the chief executive officer of the Save the Waves Coalition. Nick, welcome. Thank you so much. Any of the residents of the city of Santa Cruz? Oh wait, I'm sorry. Thank you so much, Mayor Myers. I get too colloquial around here so I apologize for that and thank you all council members for the time and opportunity today. I'm going to share my screen or at least attempt to PG on the ground so should give you an idea of a couple places that we work but really our whole mission is to protect SIRF ecosystems around the globe. We really came up with a new category of what we're protecting but I think anybody that's spent a lot of time in Santa Cruz can really understand what this means by SIRF ecosystem. It's sort of the kind of these three elements that come together around a breaking and writable wave. You have geophysical properties that make a place really unique, that create a breaking wave, that's the bathymetry, that's the coastal geography, geomorphology. And I think Santa Cruz is unlike any other place in the world when it comes to that because we're blessed with I think 26 sort of anomaly when it comes to coastal geography. But we also know being here that the biological component of those systems is just as important. We have these healthy and thriving, we're mostly healthy and thriving kelp marine mammal life that's dependent upon these really interesting ecosystems and then we've got watersheds that have made these waves but also are really important for the terrestrial life that depends on these places. So I think the third component then again is at the core of Santa Cruz is the socioeconomic component of the of the SIRF ecosystem. So the culture that's sprung up that's unique to the place that's dependent on the place itself, the economy that I'll talk more about that's dependent on that place and then really the human well-being. We all know during the pandemic that surfing and the ocean was a lifeline for people that otherwise would really have had a hard time over the last year and more than just Santa Cruz a lot of people from a lot of places that came and visited here because of that well-being. And so again the SIRF ecosystem our whole mission is to protect these places that are the the places themselves the plants and animals and the people. So when we set this giant goal that Mayor Myers mentioned which is protecting a thousand SIRF ecosystems around the globe by 2030 so we're supporting the 30 by 30 goals that have been set for by the state and federal policy as well as these international agreements where everybody's sort of pulling in this direction. And so really what does it look like if we're truly effective in doing completing this goal if we have a mobilized constituency of people people that care about a place we have effective stewardship of that place and we have some sort of legal or voluntary protected areas that actually creates the recipe for long-term healthy protected SIRF ecosystems. And I think that we have that in Santa Cruz. I think one important component of our work is we don't do anything alone. I can't think of one project that we've ever done where it's just been saved the way it did this project and we declared victory and it was great. We do everything in coalition so we build coalitions to solve these problems and build coalitions to tackle sort of the protects to and defend strategies. So these are our three strategies protects to and defend again creation of voluntary and legally protected areas. So I'll talk about our more voluntary ones which are world surfing reserves but we also have a series of legally protected areas that we're creating largely outside of the U.S. that are called SIRF protected area networks so we're working in Mexico we're working in Chile we're working in Indonesia we just started working in the Azores and the Maldives we're working in the number of other places that are coming up as well Costa Rica and in parcel this is due to the partnerships that we formed. So Donna mentioned a large strategic partnership with Conservation International. Again we have a number of smaller partners in each of these places as well and it goes back to the coalition aspect of what we do. And I'll talk more about the world surfing reserves in D2 component as we mentioned. This is sort of a technology platform in form of our mobile app and then projects that we do when you can't legislate against something or create laws or a protected area around things like non-point source water quality you know water quality contamination like we talk howls or this happens to be a shipwreck in Mexico off the island of Villa Santos. So sometimes you just need people to maintain and steward a place you don't need to legislate something or create a protected area framework. And a really good example of this locally that I think has been you know an enormous source of pride for us and something personally it was really important to me was the Queen Cowles just a few years ago launched the Cowles Working Group and that was one of the more effective coalitions we've ever collaborated in. We took Cowles as a group and with tons of investment from city staff of time and resources and the council obviously and then the community partners of folks like at the county surf rioter Sierra Club we all pulled together in one direction to take Cowles bacteria contamination way down really understand the problem and really communicate to the to the public what it is and I remember you know 10 years ago you didn't want to touch Cowles with your foot and now I feel like that stigma's gone and the data are getting continued to improve there's still work to be done but it's just an example of sort of how we do stewardship and then we defend we launch popular campaigns sometimes when there's a massive threat to a surf ecosystem or more increasingly in favor of increased legal protection for these places around the world. We sort of support a lot of this work with the economic viewpoint we don't think we can just tell everybody about how great surfing is and it automatically protect itself and we think that there's really benefits to more than the surfing community so part of this is really using a hook and using the love and passion of the surfing community to have brought the community as well. Most of the pertinent discussion today kind of our biggest and most well known program is the world surfing reserves. So this is really a an honor a titular honor but it also conservation responsibility that we we confer upon a community so we really identify the bathrooms or or waves around the world and and then the local capacity and support. So all four of those we use as a criteria to select them we select one per year we're up to 11 but just to give you an idea of where we are working with all this Malibu was the first one in California Manly Beach in Australia, Edeceda in Portugal was the third one Santa Cruz was the fourth so way back in 2012 it was nominated to Peru. One Chaco Peru which is arguably the birthplace of surfing in South America some Hawaiians might dispute it but it is significant on the left an archaeological standpoint. It is told Santos in Mexico around Sonata, Ponte Loos and Chile which is Patagonia the clothing company. The Gold Coast in Australia which is host to some of the best surfing in the world and many of the Perpadoan Bahú in Brazil and then the latest ones were Nusa in in Queensland and Playa de Mosa in Costa Rica. And so I think what I want to kind of invent today is that as a resource and waves as a resource is something that Santa Cruz has in spades that we probably do not link up enough with the economic development and the economic potential it's not to say we can get a bunch more people here and monetize it but I think there's a way that we can think a little bit more strategically about it because again in terms of green infrastructure you don't have to maintain all you have to do is not screw up the purpose and I think the second point that I want to make is that the World Surfing Reserve is a title and an economic driver we use and significant amounts of tourism resources go to support this and and we don't really utilize it in Santa Cruz in any sort of meaningful way and so I think again my object here today is to just show that we have these resources here that are we can take advantage of and get work. So just to give you an example of the profile of this surfing reserve being selected in Playa de Mosa, so it's really what we're talking about here. In the Gold Coast 77 I think world champion and it's huge legend in the surfing world, current world surfing world surf league commentator and then Mick DeBreni who is a minister of sport for Queensland. The Queensland state legislator is taking up legislation about how to legally protect this what they call surf amenity of the World Surfing Reserve. They take it very very seriously there it's the de facto reserve committee there is the de facto body that advises the council of the Gold Coast and again it's a very huge deal you drive along the highway and it says welcome to Gold Coast Australia's second world surfing reserve like giant sign on the highway my tech world. This is from Enesada in Portugal and this is their surf mind blowing. The municipality received about 360,000 euro grants to build this interpretation center what they've done with it's very very cool and can be a bit of a another thing that some of the other communities have done. The directions are what happens to the wind and tide it's all very interactive to understand that surf ecosystem and they they designated a whole component like there's an entire building here in Enesada that's designated to this interpretation. We paint a picture here of the economic but this is a recent study that just came out by Dr. Jess Ponting and Leon Mock that looked at the pre-covid baselines of surf tourism and had a couple of different they surveyed about 2,500 people sorry 2,000 people and over 2,000 people and really found that the surf tourism expenditure could be between 31 and 64 billion dollars globally and that surfers are willing to pay for more sustainable tourism. We've also found we've done a series of these what we call surfonomic studies to depend to figure out what the actual ecological economic sorry the ecological economic value of a surf spot is and one of the studies we did for example in a place called Uluwatu in Bali it was it was projected that it generates just one spot generates 35 million dollars of economic activity and that left out real estate jobs and a number of other things. We haven't been able to do this study in Santa Cruz yet but I think post-covid it's something that would be very very interesting to see how it's changed and how it has grown in COVID because I know during the pandemic the surf economy has done nothing but go up and so this is something we want to be able to understand a bit better we've had UCLA actually build us out the entire methodology it looks at jobs looks at travel costs and travel expenditure and looks at the the sort of like housing valuation that surfing actually contributes because we can measure that. So I think what the picture again that I wanted to paint is I think there's a real opportunity here for our community to not create something new but take just utilize in a more of a strategic way for us to really be able to that's what makes our community our community. I think one one historic kind of study that I or one historic story that's really important is that Santa Cruz was the first place where surfing left its native Hawaiian roots it's the first time it became international it's the first time it became an international sport way back in 1885 right and I think that that Santa Cruz has also been a leader when it comes to doing really cutting-edge things around the environment and the economy. I think about companies like Aguala starting here or the organic food movement really starting here. I think we have the ability to show the rest of the world that we're really leaders and that we can listen to the the community and the grassroots of what we can what we can do in terms of the economy but support what is already here and sustain what is already here and that's what I think is really cool about the opportunity that's coming up. There's a few different things that we need to be able to manage around our surf resources. There's some big challenges that we're going to have to take on such as climate change and that's probably the biggest threat to what we have now so how we respond to that is really important and I think I save the waves again we're here as a coalition all we want to be able to do is help leverage the resources that are here and help leverage our network to support Santa Cruz because again I think I learned a long time ago it doesn't matter if you fly around the world and you save other people's places if you're not doing it in your own backyard it doesn't really matter so for us this is our backyard and this is where it starts so thank you guys for the time we'll take questions after and I just really appreciate everybody's everybody's interest and time thank you. Thank you Nitz. Reggie Knox two up here and as I mentioned Reggie Knox is a long long time resident and the executive director of California Farm Link since 2011 as I mentioned he's just brought a whole level of creativity about food across the region and his work it's really inspiring so Reggie thank you for being here today with us and we do you want Bonnie to run your slideshow Reggie or do you want to turn? That would be great yeah okay I'm one of you I'm like you Reggie I'm like someone else I can never do it thank you and I'll just I'll just say next when I'm ready for you thank you so much Bonnie and thank you Mayor Myers and council members great to be here so so fascinating to listen to these illustrious speakers and Nick thanks for queuing me up there with the comment about Santa Cruz as an early center for organic agriculture and I think you know my thesis today really kind of kind of builds on that and we were one of the first states with our own Organic Food Act starting in 1979 and the organic food movement was developing during the 70s before that right here in the Monterey Bay area and in Santa Cruz County and you know here we are perched next to Monterey County which is the largest coastal agricultural county and one of the top agricultural counties in the state after the big the big ones in the Central Valley and we ourselves have quite a significant agricultural economy in this small county and so we should have a strong strategic approach to the ag community here in the ag industry and one that facilitates job creation that recognizes the ways that within our city limits we are supporting agriculture throughout the county and the region and the whole bay area and you know develop jobs and industry that also leverage the innovation that's occurring in agriculture right now particularly with regard to adaptation and mitigation of climate change Andrea mentioned you know regenerative agriculture which is a big area of study right now and carbon forming and the ability of agriculture to sequester carbon so we'll talk a little bit about that today and and Mayor Myers you mentioned you know food security so really as with all the changes and with climate change accelerating you know ensuring the development of a strong regional food system could be something that we participate here in the city and so next slide just a little bit about California farm link these next two slides here our theory of change is really about providing access to land capital and education for small and mid-scale farmers we believe that these three things are the foundation of sustainable farming businesses that create and preserve wealth while conserving and enhancing natural resources we believe that successful farm and ranch businesses support the healthy rural communities and resilient food systems living wage jobs and a healthy environment and and we deliberately direct resources of California farm link and and the opportunities and services that we provide to farmers of color and women and members of groups that have historically been denied equal access to land capital and education so we focus on fair financing we are a financial institution access to land and access to education and Mayor Myers mentioned that we became a community development financial institution in 2013 and there are about 800 active community financial institutions around the country that are certified by the Department of Treasury and the focus of community development financial institutions is to bring capital where banks are not bringing capital it's essentially into low-income communities so as a community development financial institution we have a target market of low-income small business and in particular Latinx farmers we've been able to develop this long fund and it now numbers about 175 farmers in that long fund and 19 million dollars we provide farm operating infrastructure and land loans in particular this year we're working hard on developing we've been piloting a few pilot firms for the last couple years but developing financial incentives for conservation and carbon sequestration on the farms in in this region we are a statewide organization with about 20 employees we have an out our headquarters is in Aptos but we also have a couple staff in Sacramento and one in the Sonoma Marin area serving north coast counties next slide I'm sorry on the former slide I missed mentioning kind of our source of funding so we are because we're a financial institution we do have earned income from our loans in the form of interest and fees where our loans tend to be below market rate and we make loans to the small businesses banks typically don't make loans due because there's not enough money in these loans there's not enough profit in these small loans that we're making for small businesses we have investors that are called impact investors and these include the local community foundations Monterey and Santa Cruz community foundations are both significant investors in farm links loan funds we also there's about 20 or more institutions that are now invested in our loan funds so these are low interest loans from zero to two percent that you know we are on the hook to pay back eventually but that's how we generate our our loan pool and then we also receive grants from foundations because the income from the loans isn't enough to run the organization or even pay for our lending staff which is about half of the 20 staff are in lending the other half are in education so now we can do the next slide thank you we also have educational programs and the one that we just rolled out this year called programa para asegurar su patrimonio familiar or wealth-building program in English it's a you know Spanish teachings uh educational program eight-week program and it's similar to our English language resilience program that's been going on for a couple years now it's just basic small business development we also work with farmers on farm succession planning and um introducing uh folks to if there's not a family member who wants to take over that form to possible um you know remember uh small farmers who are outside of the family and uh we also in our land access program have a web portal that links uh farmers with land owners so as a land owner if you have extra land that you might want to lease out to an organic farmer then you can post it on our website um and then we provide a lot of leasing support because most of our farmers are leasing land but as since we've developed this ability to make farm mortgages and we've done about 30 of them now um we've been able to help a number of small farmers initially develop a lease often with an option to purchase or a first-rate refusal and then turn that into a land purchase um sometimes with the help of a land trust purchasing a conservation easement on that property which makes it more affordable for the farmer if there's a purchased easement so let's go to the next slide just a crop report in Santa Cruz County just to get a sense of the agricultural economy here the county uh gross in 2019 was 625 million in farm sales um we have 625 farms um on 63,000 acres and the median farm size is 10 acres so what i wanted to press on here was that um you know most of the small the farms are small farms um and uh very few of them are of the larger farms and you can see in Monterey County uh 4.4 billion this is a very large agricultural county 4th and 5th in the state um with uh you know twice as many farms more than twice as many farms um and you know a major agricultural industry of course within the city of Salinas and quite a bit in Watsonville since the Faroe Valley is kind of the center of our agriculture but um there are ag related businesses throughout the county and right here in Santa Cruz in the city of Santa Cruz of course so next slide please more about the crops here we all are familiar with uh the strawberries which is the largest um in terms of dollar volume in the county and uh 60 percent if you include uh raspberries and blackberries of all the crop value um and then veggies nursery and some of the other what they call in the crop report one million dollar crops and except for hemp that's new um but a crop of interest in Santa Cruz County and then we have a significant amount of acreage in um and dollar volume in organic as you can see here from this from this data with 145 registered organic growers and then um I just did looking at a couple a little bit of looking around at some of the reports on jobs in Santa Cruz County if I got any of this wrong please please correct me but um I was trying to get some data on you know active farm jobs which uh the EDD says number 5,500 in the county um but then the workforce development board showed 11,350 ag and food jobs um there are a lot of corollary jobs for agriculture distribution aggregation cooling inputs manufacturing processing etc um so I think it would be interesting to do a more comprehensive look at you know what are the businesses in Santa Cruz that are engaged in in supporting the agricultural sector and how can we leverage the ag economy in Santa Cruz for green job creation here and next slide um one of the key elements in this arena of small farm development is marketing of course so direct markets are critical um the farmers market this farms market association here in Santa Cruz plays a very important role in helping small farmers to get started as do the other farmers markets around the Monterey Bay area um and the peninsula and um as farmers as farms grow um they they often get to the point where um if they're going to stay in business they're they're moving on to other distribution channels and uh what one important uh institution in northern Monterey County is Koch Farm which is a distributor that supports many of the um Latinx farmers that that we work with um with our loan program and our education programs um and many of these farmers are former farm workers of course and um there's a lot of food emphasis on the development of food hubs sort of new distribution models for aggregation of product from small farms in a region so that would be something to look at here I have a slide that we'll see in a minute about the wealth of organic farms that are on the north coast area and um and even in Bonny Dune and all around Santa Cruz um right up to the city limits essentially there are farms that could benefit from you know marketing food hubs uh these can sometimes are organized as farmer co-ops that might be something to look at for the future um I know there's been a lot of uh support for the Farmers Market Association and um and there's been during COVID a lot of increase in you know interest in CSA so what we saw with all the farmers who we're working with and supporting through our loan program was that some people were losing markets these were people that relied on institutions uh or like offices or schools that were closed um and others that business was booming and particularly with regard to direct sales through CSAs community supported agriculture or um of course the Farmers Markets mostly stayed open so uh supporting uh the direct marketing opportunities for farmers in our community is important Andrea you you mentioned uh agency procurement policies and I think I don't know where we stand with the city in the county right now with our procur procurement policies but um that would be something to look at and we've seen many examples of food policy councils in other Bay Area communities um that have focused on on supporting small farms from the region uh I'm with El Parro Community Development Corporation in here based in Watsonville which has an incubator kitchen that maybe some of you are familiar with but this has been another you know food and formulated many of the businesses in in that are taking advantage of that incubator kitchen are buying from small farms and um El Parro of course also does small business development and education and we'll go to the next slide we have many pioneering training and education institutions in Santa Cruz um that support small farms um the agriculture land-based training association is a national leader and farm incubator based in Salinas not in our community but um it's uh an example to to look at um because they have focused on helping farm workers start their own independent farming businesses and uh part of the way we got our start especially with the loan program was serving the farmers that had come through that incubator and um we're ready to start our own businesses we're looking for land so our land access program helped them and then maybe their first $10,000 loan leading to a 25,000 and a 50,000 and sometimes in you know five to seven years we're actually seeing people buy farms um you know 10 or 20 acre farms in in this region which is a very tall order but we have very high value crops um the typical strawberry farm takes by the way 10 to 12,000 dollars of investment at the beginning of the season and it will require per acre it will require 25,000 20 to 25,000 by the end of the season um and it may grow five or six sorry net five or six thousand dollars per acre so um we have high value crops in this area with um high return and you know fairly high risk so as a lender we we share that risk along with investors who are impact investors um when we make loans to these small farmers businesses in Santa Cruz that uh are supporting the agricultural economy here California certified organic farmers uh is a significant employer in town I think with 150 or so employees um I wanted to mention that Cal Coastal Rural Development Corporation which is based in Salinas but is another uh financial institution actually a CDFI as well that um is about 20 years older than California Farm Link and really started working with Latino farmers um long before Farm Link did and kind of graduated onto mostly larger loans um serving the larger farms in our region all the way down to Santa Maria um but another you know example of a of a financial institution that worked hand in hand with farmers and development in the ag community um in terms of organic farm inputs uh there's there had been discussion some time ago about um whether or not our county would be able to really step up and provide compost um you know significant amount of compost production for um organic farmers of the quality that they require and uh I think that would be something to take a look at again now especially um with regard to the farms on the north coast and all this transition that's going on there with retirement and um the need for succession um one of the you know factors is the ability to get compost on these forms and that's also an important um climate change uh you know practices cover crops compost mulch um are all things uh you know along with you know habitat enhancement around the borders of farms and that kind of thing that um can help sequester carbon um I just wanted to mention that we I talked a little a little bit earlier about our efforts to use financing to incentivize conservation and climate smart ag the resource conservation districts particularly Santa Cruz but many of them now um are all working on carbon farm plans and uh doing those uh that work so evaluating and helping farmers figure out how they can sequester more carbon and participate participate in climate change mitigation um and we have the the healthy soils program which is a state program one of the four um climate smart agriculture programs that has been developed in the last 10 10 or so years at the state level um so once a form has a carbon farm plan then they can apply for a healthy soils grant to offset the cost of implementing a new um you know carbon practice like growing cover crops for example or applying mulch or compost um there's also the federal environmental quality incentives program administered by the natural resource conservation service it has similar cost share programs for farmers who are into uh we'd like to implement conservation measures next slide um I just have a list here of some of the interesting local uh well some of the areas within the city limits that have hosted farms um over many years and other sort of community card and examples and that kind of thing um you know the first two areas within the city limits that come to mind of course are both drive um where I started farming I'm graduating from UC Santa Cruz back in 1987 for four years um with the former manager of the UC Santa for agroecology who started Santa Cruz farms down there on golf club drive that that's still an area that includes uh a couple forming businesses central coast wilds which is a native plant nursery and restoration services business um as well as common roots farm which is relatively new which provides people with and without disabilities skills building and and social network building and opportunities for micro enterprise so some interesting projects still going on down there on golf club drive to pay attention to um and then of course historic organic farming leases on ocean street extension and then um the younger ranch which is just outside the city limits to the north um a couple hundred acres on that first marine terrace um it has historically been in bustle sprouts but there's uh interesting opportunities there now um at many of the bustle sprouts growers are transitioning out and some of those leases are becoming available um and then in Watsonville I really like the examples of Esperanza community farm and Mesa Verde gardens um some of the same people are involved in both Mesa Verde gardens is I think they have last time I checked which was a while ago but they had eight sites I believe that were basically providing community gardening spots in near low-income communities for people to grow their own food and Esperanza community farm was developing a csa and providing work opportunities for folks and distribution to a csa products at affordable prices into low-income communities and I was involved in the 90s in a study that we did in the Watsonville city limits called the power of alley futures project um it was an infill study essentially and we looked at all of the vacant parcels within the city limits at that time and um about hired economists to look at what the possibilities were for agriculture related development on these parcels and the idea was that this would be an alternative to sprawling out onto some of the the farmland there and that kind of led to the action Palbro group and eventually the urban growth boundary that is getting ready to um reach its 20-year limit soon but there was a there's been an urban growth boundary around Watsonville um to protect farmland for the last 20 years and we'll see what happens there um and then I love the example that Andrea provided for coyote valley so don't have to say anything more about that one more slide here um the point of this slide is just to you know name some of the historic and new farms along the north coast that you know draw their labor force from Santa Cruz often and rely on Santa Cruz for markets and direct markets in some cases and there are some serious limiting factors to to agriculture in the north coast uh not the least of which is you know affordable housing for labor um and and water but as I mentioned a number of leases of the some of the conventional both hostels farms and some of the organic farms that have been around for 30 years now um are turning over and there is you know a question as to whether these will be able to continue as organic farms given um particularly the the housing issue right now um I I don't know the details of the rail trail plans I haven't kept up on that but there's certainly some interesting possibility possibilities there for you know rail and rail trail connections um with the farms on the north coast yeah I think one more slide just to to wrap up you know in conclusion I'll just say I really hope that we can leverage our agricultural economy to create jobs in the city and um and it may be time to do a more detailed study of what the sustainable agricultural economy looks like now and what are the opportunities for the city the city to take part in it thank you may I remind you you're on mute probably uh testing our council members a little bit here if you do need to get up and run to the restroom we were in session since two so please feel free to dip out here but I wanted to introduce Bill Henry as I mentioned when I introduced him earlier he's the founding director of grounds well coastal ecology and the green the the green some of of our local parks and areas and paths and trails and he is coming at this from very much a um a community of science community art and education and um he's just doing really neat work and so I'm really excited to have him give you a little bit about his work in some of our most important places in the city which are sea bright beach um natural bridges and steamer lane and uh so happy to have Bill here and Bill you want to queue yourself up or do you need to queue you up here there we go thank you all um thank you ma'am ma'am Myers and council members and appreciate it just had to shut down the the piano practice going on behind me here so yeah it's an honor to be with everybody here talking about doing good things across the landscape it's so exciting to you know get to spend time with everybody that's you know we're all on the same team trying to build um a better place and so I think I can share my screen there we go Henry I'm with grounds well coastal ecology we are pretty different than most of our and then the organizations here today we're very small um we've been around since um about 2015 and um what we really focus on is building better places for nature and people and um what what I think a big part of the the goal of our organization is get that interaction going because today with the lives we leave uh live there oftentimes is just a lack of that hands-on that tactile that interaction that inspires us and there's a big opportunity I feel to um to do that across the landscape um and so one of the ways we do this is by trying to um work towards thriving natural ecosystems that are connected to vibrant communities through the hands-on stewardship and that's the key component is um you know as as primates we we live by doing a large part and so having that tactile that interaction that smell that taste that touch that hear that uh acoustical connection to our environment um is is uh is really important to us um um as we've evolved over time we're pretty fortunate here right I mean we're endowed with um incredible natural resources and we're at the the very head of the Monterey Bay at the head of the the indentation along our coast that's one of the most highly productive marine ecosystems in the world um and and in addition to that we have these rich agricultural lands forests and abundant open space and open coastline and these are all attributes that bring us and many millions of people here every year to enjoy this and to be inspired um inspired by that interaction and that is something that you know I think it creates these feelings of introspection and it's pretty well studied the interaction between people in nature and and we know that it creates um you know a sense of creativity and there have been some really neat studies done on that um and I think there's no fault of that in Santa Cruz and perhaps that's in part why um we are such a stronghold of creativity and a lot of really unique um innovations have come out of Santa Cruz and I'm really interested in seeing how we can make that go forward with building um with building a green economy because I think the opportunity is there we have all the components right even just who we have here today um we are we have many challenges too and I think um addressing uh these challenges is an opportunity for building a green account economy here and um we're going to kind of three of the primary challenges I think that we have and then maybe talk about some some opportunities there on the first of the coastal adaptation um you know with sea level rise um frequency intensity of storms um we have a um we have a threat along the coast especially in the areas that we've built up on and we're experiencing coastal squeeze um wildfire is another one I know you know many people on on this call or on this presentation have been impacted by wildfire and it's a um it's a massive threat um and a massive component of the ecosystem um um and then water security um you know we've just gone into a water shortage of stage one here and so that's another big issue but also an opportunity I feel like for when we're talking about building a green economy for building towards resiliency across these three things and the other thing that it kind of comes into play is um some other stressors that compound everything and you know obviously we're all well aware of um how intense visitorship has gotten and it's something we all support we want people to have those interactions between um you know the natural environment to be inspired but we've hit this I think almost this tipping point of where the sustainability the balance of access and resource um we need to uh perhaps invest some energy and and some funding in a way to make it sustainable um homeless is another uh issue that is compounded um uh some of the is compounded by some of these other stressors um like before below down on the right that's a a camper on the king tide at the base of the at the base of the Santa Cruz War and then we run into this thing that you know unlike um many communities in the Silicon Valley um we have a much lower tax base so that that is um makes it more challenging for us to implement solutions um and so we need to find solutions to you know to the primary challenges but also to accommodate some of these additional stressors I'm gonna start with coastal resilience and we are so lucky to have um many practitioners of you know building more resilient coasts in in amongst our ranks and you know I know Tiffany you're on the call and you've been a really um incredible leader in pushing forward um things like the resilient coast initiative and the west cliff adaptation and management plan and the beaches plan that are going into our lcp a local coastal plan that will help dictate that next generation of coasts going forward and there are several opportunities here um and we were fortunate to be a part of that along with um central coast wetlands group and um integral corp and a number of partners that worked on that product um so one of the things that this allows us to look towards dealing the um the thinking about how we adapt our coast is one of the primary I think you know methodologies that we're going to be able to implement is building living shorelines and up on the upper right here is our restoration project we have at Seabright beach and you can see here there's kintide and large swell um you can see how the the fore dune and the back dune is absorbing um the waves here and so that's one thing that we've really worked on doing is you know figuring out ways where we can make our coastline more resilient to um to the two rising seas and um and large swell and um increased storm intensity and frequency and one thing that we try to employ is nature-based adaptation so to move away from that hardened shorelines and use nature to absorb these structures and that's not possible everywhere um but it is in a lot of places especially if there's a little space along the coast and and it's also favored by the agencies and so where I see this really being um an opportunity for building green economy in in the city is through landscape design in integrating natural components along with maybe some of those infrastructural components that are going to make coastlines more resilient another important component is is building habitat so you know by adding natural elements such as plants you can um you can change the structure of how sand dunes function by their roots and the different species um penetrate the sand in different ways and so you can make dunes more stable by choosing your plant palette but also by animals and by enhancing habitat for animals and one of the ways that we can do this is by using uh specially designed infrastructure or specially designed elements are incorporated into the infrastructure and so this is really kind of tweaking nature a little bit with our human side um our ingenuity to make it more kind of porous so to speak to nature and um you know in the in the center here down below is um oikonos is a nonprofit locally that does work with um nest modules and they've been working on on Unuevo and then on the right are these um seabird nesting ledges and these are some of the recommendations that we've integrated into the west cliff plan that we'll go into the LCP to integrate this kind of habitat along our coast as it retreats and as maybe we harden we soften at the same time um down below are some techniques in the bottom right of basically increasing rigidity in coastal structures and so if you do have to harden how can you soften that hardness and this is a way of doing it by you know creating man-made tide pools um creating shelves for limpets to hide under our abalone and then um also for building have to have for people um on the bottom left is an image of um pleasure point seawall and i'm sure you're all well familiar with this and that was kind of like the first really um uh seawall that we had in Santa Cruz and there's a lot of room for improvement here but a couple of things that they did were create places that people can spend time along our coast and so it's not all vertical right there's some horizontal built into the vertical and these kind of elements make it more porous to people and give people opportunities and then and then i also wanted to add in the fact of art into living shorelines and um i think that we have a real opportunity to engage artists in this build out you know if you look at for instance the pleasure point seawall that layout or that the end product does not really fit with the look and feel of the Prisma formation that is along this section of coast and so i feel like by engaging artists to try and mimic nature in these layouts we can integrate a look and feel across the landscape that goes along with kind of our ecological identity or our sense of place it's all being Santa Cruz and he's along the Monterey Bay the next thing i want to talk about was wildfire um and we here have a big opportunity for forest management and building healthy forest and then we have limited amounts of you know intact forest on city properties but we do have some places where there is forest and then also within the private sector in in the city limits and so ways that i feel like we can help manage this is through timber harvest and working with big creek for instance who are pioneers in sustainable forestry and local um and have businesses and and employ people locally in uh in their operations another one is through fuels reduction and these are a couple of that's like a a brontosaurus basically is a big excavator at the mastigator um and these are how we start building like fuel breaks across the landscape and um and then below is is a grinder so a mulcher um but the fuels reduction is a really important component and strategic places and there's a big i think opening here again for integrating technology into this we haven't even started i think that you know the the dawn of the you know the robot um forest managers are it's going to happen it's really going to happen and at the scale of problems that we have with our forest right now these are going to be huge players in allowing us to kind of reboot our forest for the sustainable and resilient direction and then the big elephant in the closet here is prescribed burns and if we're to think about a single restoration tool that we have in our tool set along in the Santa Cruz mountains it's going to be prescribed burns because this whole landscape needs to burn regularly and often um and to give an example of kind of how far we be we are behind on this um I was speaking with BLM the other day they have may manage the central coast office manages 300 000 acres last year they were able to burn 300 acres so that gives you an idea and all of this stuff would you know at any one given point in time maybe like 80 000 of those acres would burn annually and so we are really far behind in prescribed burns and there's a there's a big um there's a big an opportunity here to work with um regional organizations um and to use larger or entities than the city to help um spread their knowledge so the Santa Cruz district of state parks is they're an amazing um entity they have great resource managers and they've been doing prescribed fire for many many years and so they can provide education that will allow um groups to burn either on their own lands or in partnership with entities like Cal fire or prescribed um for uh local fire councils um and then there's also the new informed central coast prescribed burn association and so these are this is an entity that's actually providing outreach and engagement and training to individuals right now to use prescribed fire on the landscape and then within the kind of the concept of prescribed fire within the thought of rebooting our forest making more healthy and creating creating um transitioning from this carbon sequestration more to like a nuts and berries and fruits which supports and bowls which sports greater biodiversity and makes forest a better place to be in we also have the idea of using tack right and so um on the lower right is a is an image of a drone and those are actually fireballs that it can drop out and lay out fire across the landscape and again I think we're you know working with companies that are doing this kind of thing in Santa Cruz integrating technology with land stewardship and land management it's really you know from what I can tell us we're not going to do it all by hand I mean you during the fire a group of us from Davenport got together and we said we're going to go stop the fire so people grabbed shovels and then we went and looked out our back window and I think a couple people went up and dug you know a couple feet of land line fire line and then came back and was just you know it's it's impossible the magnitude of the scale is huge and then another opportunity I think in the city is thinking about home design landscaping design fire escaping home hardening how we make our our our homes more resilient to fire which you know generates many jobs and will continue to generate jobs and there's going to be money invested in this I think Lisa just signed off on five hundred and thirty something million dollars dedicated to reducing the impacts of catastrophic wildfire in California so there's funding coming down the line for this and I think the city could position to position itself to to be ready to take advantage of something that then I want to briefly mention about water and I think there's another opportunity here from rewatering streams really a lot of our streams are kind of a fragment of their former self right the San Lorenzo used to have um we now in steelhead runs and now it barely supports any fish and so where how are ways that we can rewater streams and how can maybe we do it you know while still supporting agriculture and start to use maybe techniques in agriculture that use less water or the human consumption part is is massive right and so one thing we can do you know as a community is reduce our water use and thinking about different ways that we can increase water efficiency and the city can provide incentives and does provide incentives but I think there's also a big opportunity for technology here technology here and then landscape conversion I think there could be bigger incentives that's a picture of the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History and we work with the city and the museum there to convert their lawn basically into a coastal prairie and it's transitioned really really nicely and it's a great example of the city the city actually does have a rebate program for converting your your lawns but I think that that could be increased and generate more jobs in the landscape industry for that and then with recycling water right now we're seeing some big projects in south county with aquifer injections so taking reclaimed water and putting that back into the aquifer and I think that's a big opportunity as well for the city to look at and and and also reuse reusing water and that's something that we haven't I don't think export as much as we can with the the city sewage treatment one thing I wanted to say about was rewatering was also thinking about bank storage and how we deal with our streams as they're coming down and there are opportunities there for creating side channel habitat that also recharges bank bank bank storage which allows more water to sit in the aquifer so if you have a pump for agriculture or a well that provides city water such as just up from highway one on San Lorenzo there'll be more water over a longer period of time to draw and then thinking about how we percolate across the landscape and I think the city's done a good job here of integrating things like these bioswales into the buildouts and I think there could be more incentivization to make sure that that happens um and retrofits especially and then so and thinking about our solutions coming out um and the city has been working on this with you know the Mission Street quarter in downtown densification is really going to be important to us and that's how we're going to hit new since 30 percent rule really is by densifying on our landscape and so in some ways cities can help reduce this impact right if they keep people together but then the trick is to have how do you integrate ecology into that built environment so people still have this interaction with that and I think there's a a big big opportunity here one from incentivizing living infrastructure right so having living walls having gurus you know really like maybe re-gardening the garden mall right and and here there's just a host of partnerships between engineers landscape designers horticulturists ecologists to try and figure out nature is complex and to figure out the different ways that we can make the the built environment and nature kind of handshake and dovetail and also to try and make that habitat functional so not just the green desert as many kind of landscapes is known are known as but how do you integrate nuts and seeds and fruits that will then support insects and pollinators and birds in building this I really think that a key thing to do is to use parks as models and one way we can do that is by utilizing local and native materials across the landscape so we don't need you know a bright pink piece of plastic on west cliff what we could use maybe as a limestone boulder or a redwood log from big creek and then we're taking advantage of them we're continuing on with that kind of that what I call ecological identity and there's room to increase dialogue between federal state county and city NGOs in doing so so that we can kind of coordinate across the landscape we're not we're not creating discontinuity but creating continuity and this is going to come apart from developing MOUs to share resources and really sharing them I mean it's one thing to say you have an MOU a memorandum of understanding it's another thing to actually share those resources across those different agencies and perhaps one way of doing it is in the name of trying to say look at restoration across a regional stretch of coast instead of these artificial boundaries that oftentimes we've created such as you know partial line trunks and then this will increase the connectivity between parks and among parks and allow for more interaction of wildlife and migration like Andrea was talking about across the coyote valley and I think another important thing is to create and interpret these examples of green infrastructure that can be replicated on private lands so that it just doesn't get put in with no interpretation but you implement these things if you allow people to understand them that gets the buy-in and that gets the the next use the up use the dissemination across the the landscape was what we're looking for and so another thing that I think the city can do is really team with some regional emerging programs and it's it's kind of all about scaling here right like as a city we're a small portion in a you know in a large landscape and so one example would be working with the central coast prescribed burn association I think at one at some point I would love to see you know prescribed burn and more creep for example and that would help you know create a defense line on the northern end of town where west western drive for example with the eucalyptus are highly vulnerable and then also this is a new program that I've been working on with the central coast wetlands group and we've been working with them to build this Monterey Bay living shorelines program and what this program intends to do is really scale the concept of these small disparate living shorelines projects bring them together and start recognizing efficiencies and a big partner here is the state parks because they own over 60 percent of the Monterey Bay and so they're kind of a logical entity to work with I mean I shouldn't say Bay I should take coastlines in the Bay but the living shorelines program really seeks to increase connectivity between the different projects help prioritize them make sure that we're prioritizing from a needs basis so are we working at the coastal access points that serve people that need it most such as the disadvantaged communities in the center part of the day those kinds of elements are incorporated into the living shorelines program and then we're also looking at some creative ways of financing that next I'd like to mention the Rio California and this kind of was created by the California Native Plant Society I know there's a Rio Silicon Valley there are a bunch of reoking efforts across the landscape and I think there's an opportunity here to increase habitat under the auspice of oaks which most people I find identify with and then I think working with the alma mater learning program is another way of increasing that connectivity between people in the land and also for conveying those that that native use that is so wise and so time developed in land management and land stewardship and it's something that I think we could use a lot of scaling with right now and then learning from agriculture especially doing a lot of restoration work I think Reggie would be great to talk to you I think using agricultural scale techniques to do restoration is very intriguing and I think it can be really effective oftentimes we don't treat restoration the way that a farm retreats the field but we're both growing just crops just different types what I would just implore you to do council is to really invest in the next generation we work with a lot of schools in education and I think that oftentimes schools are brought to places so that they're immersed in all the time and one way to do that is by creating living infrastructure models on school campuses and these don't have to be huge things there could be a a bond for instance that helps put green walls at schools that students can learn oh that's how you put green into this gray I think there's a big opportunity there the other thing is they help that could help support the thematic learning and we know that's an effective way for students to learn and so by creating outdoor spaces with functional habitat they can see the impact of their work because they're experiencing it every day and then to engage students in this hands-on design thinking which allows them to tackle a problem design a solution implement and then with this building and evaluation and so I think this is a program that could go you could be bond funded that could be put across schools and working with schools myself I've seen at least three schools in city limits be denuded of trees over the last five years rather than gain trees and instead of new trees that being put up I've seen metal structures be put up for shade and I think we're missing out on an opportunity there and then of course supporting stewardship programs I think but you're well familiar with that so in working together I think as a as a council and as a city it's important to support multifunctional public works projects and so maybe design a flat percent of funds that goes into the ecological element because oftentimes what we see happen is there's a capital improvement project or a public works project some percent of money was designated for the face the ecological facing build out and the project goes over budget and then that ecological part gets curved back and dialed back and it's just a you know like a fraction of its original stack and I think that we can't just keep pulling for it I understand the need for these public works projects but they often leave nature batting last and again integrate local native materials for instance rock from the Fountain Quarry by granite the granite up there is an incredible native material to be able to use in buildouts again for bonds I think there's an opportunity for a school bond I think there might be one coming up soon and then also perhaps a coastal enhancement bond because we can't float some of these capital infrastructure projects on a one off one off basis and we need to start picking more strategically which the the resilient coast Santa Cruz is helping to do and also think about compensatory mitigation how we mitigate for hard being coasts and how those funds go into building out more resilient and sustainable ecologies so with that I you know also love to form partnerships with the city on funding opportunities and formulas with local organizations that are familiar with the landscape and doing boots on the ground work with that these are just a couple of partners that we've worked with over time and get involved with house restoration thank you very much Donna I think you're muted I wanted to thank our speakers today again three of these organizations are right here in your hometown in the town that we are governing very inspiring work they're doing globally statewide and then Andrea's work really just is you know an example of a partnership with a city that really has looked at opportunities that really are have made meaningful impact to community and residents local food security things like that that really you know job training the ways that we can think about really what we have here which when I when I started to kind of think about who should speak I realized that in many ways we sort of do have ecotopia here I don't know if any of you read that book in the in the late 80s but you know it's this concept and it's really the fourth out of many of the people who really sat in these chairs before us who put together our green belt that surrounds our city very few cities in the United States have a green belt that surround literally surrounds their community and the benefits of that kind of thinking that dates back 30 years literally we're living with those benefits but we're also having to acknowledge that that stewardship is really important as we heard from our parks department just a few hours ago so we are pretty close to time I want to just let the council know sort of the next steps I would love to work with a subcommittee on sort of working out a set of principles around a resolution and I have not had enough time to really think my way through about what exactly that subcommittee will do but I think it is engaging with some of these partners that we have and I'll put more together about that and work with staff on on getting that together in the next month or so but really what I think I wanted to accomplish today was again to give you this perspective of this green economy that we do have here and really kind of light some a little bit of creativity in your mind and look at these opportunities as things that we we probably don't think this way when we go to the farmers market every week that we actually literally have one of the largest urban agriculture areas in the literally in the US I did a lot of research I mean we have 60 acres of farmland in the city of Santa Cruz we have about 115 neighborhood garden plots that are already available to our community members so what are the kinds of things we could do what are the kinds of opportunities you know most of the work with green jobs is going to be blue collar jobs they're not going to require a four-year college degree or a phd or any of those other things that some families just can't get a whole can't do for their kids so you know how do we work with the workforce development board how do we get involved with cabrio college how do we work from the county office of education all the way up bringing these blue blue collar jobs into the green economy these are the people that we do see you know who have chosen to go into those industries rather than maybe you know pursue academia or have the have the resource to go to call you know get a college degree so I think we want to those are the kinds of perspectives that I'm hoping to bring and I will put a no doubt to counsel to create a subcommittee to work on these ideas with again the goal of some kind of a resolution that can be incorporated into Tiffany's work as she does the climate action plan update as well as just a statement that reflects on the health and all policies policy already but also cement these things together in our interim recovery plan we do have a few minutes and I know everybody's been it's been a long day and it's been an emotional day for everybody I think but I'm happy if the panel would be willing for 10 minutes if anyone has any questions and if not that's okay tonight but I mostly want to just give everybody you guys are amazing you're doing amazing work it's very inspiring what you're doing I will open up to council to see if we do have questions and then I do see one member of the public who does want to speak to us for public comment so I'll just ask if council members have any questions or comments tonight to our speakers and I've jammed a lot into a short period of time so council member Brown hi yes thank you so much for being here I don't I have a million questions for all of you but I don't want to take that time for that at the moment but I just wanted to say I really appreciate you being here and sharing your amazing work some of which I'm more familiar with than others hi Reggie it's been a while but good to see you and everybody so you know just thinking about as we move forward how it is that we bring your expertise and the people you collaborate with really into this process as we you know as we explore and make decisions and strategize so I hope you'll stick with us for the longer haul and and just really appreciate you being here thank you council member Brown council member Watkins thank you thank you also I also really want to acknowledge you Mayor Myers for making this a priority for our discussions as we're moving forward particularly at this unique time with recovery planning and I also know in-house we have really incredible resources and I know Tiffany Weis-West is here on the call as well and just really you know I'm all in I completely I think this has to be the way that we go just a potential for infusion of tech and jobs and future equity and sustainability collaboration the whole night so whatever it takes I hope that we don't lose momentum and and I'll leave it at that because I think we could have probably had a study session on each and every single one of the things that you presented on this evening so thank you so much for volunteering your time but more importantly for the work that you do thank you council member council member contrary Johnson also wanted to just convey my gratitude for this study session for all the work that you do and for bringing it to our attention a lot of questions and a lot of areas of excitement so hopefully to be continued I'm really really how we can integrate our youth and educating our youth and building workforce development back into elementary middle and high school thank you guys so much thank you council member and vice mayor bruner so much Mayor Myers and thank you to the four speakers what a wonderful presentation and I have a lot of questions I'm hoping to continue the discussions and the connection and to continue the engagement in the process of decisions going forward from this group question is can you share your side presentations with us thank you thank you vice mayor council member golder I just wanted to echo the thank yous and the appreciation for all the work that all of you do and I was thinking having worked out I work at Bayview is just the connections to the different groups that we already do have here in the schools and so I just think I echo what council member Callan Dr. Johnson said and really want to you know expand on that education and youth activation piece in our community so thank you very very much and I look forward to you know working with all of you guys in the future thank you yeah so next steps what I'll be doing is I'll put a note out to everybody we'd love to have at least a subcommittee get formed I'm hoping to pull on some of these folks maybe not sitting here for two hours with us every time but again pulling on these folks and then working with Tiffany and her expertise in what I call the built environment and really kind of wrapping this into sort of this too too too faced the yin and the yang of really what we have here and I think I think Bill's reflection on just the way that creative people gravitate to this space to Santa Cruz and people who think creatively and are literally working in you know a dozen countries and and sitting in their office over in the you know in the church at the at the you know the circle you know these are things we just don't know about each other and we have this wonderful network of people who are really very creatively acknowledging the importance of nature in our community and in our town and you know again people who were thinking this way dozens of years ago and we're all living because of those benefits but then people like Reggie who are really saying that you know and and Andrea saying that having local food systems right next door right down your on your block you know available to all ages available and affordable but also more importantly getting that training to be successful at that endeavor you know that's the piece that where we take this into workforce training and into job opportunities I think we heard you know between these organizations we have you know a number you know a couple of close to at least a hundred jobs created just by these organizations within our within our community so that's not an insignificant amount of jobs and it's I think it's a sector we can continue to grow and we can be thoughtful about how we how we think about deploying our city resources so I just am again really thankful for everybody's time I want to again thank the speakers friends and colleagues and we'll pull on them a lot in in ruminating on this but determined to try to put something together that we as a city can be proud of in the next year so thank you again I'm going to take it out the public comment and we will have more conversations so Andrea, Bill, Nick, I'm looking at you guys on the on the Hollywood squares and Reggie thank you so much really appreciate time this afternoon you guys are true leaders and thank you you never get a thank you it's so much tireless thankless work you guys have other jobs too we deserve to thank you guys because you guys you go through a lot for our community so thank you guys absolutely second that I'm going to bring it out to public comment now with two minutes left to go and good night those folks who who did join us and the speakers and I'm going to go ahead and take this out for public comment and I see that we have someone go ahead Steve you should be able to unmute and address this will be for the item on the agenda tonight which is building the green economy for Santa Cruz. Mayor Myers can you hear me? Yes we can. I'm wondering if it's possible to multitask and promote green jobs let's give a suburban forest function that will be something we look at I think Mr. Henry was sort of alluding to some of those things so Steve thank you I'm back and forth in public comments but we will certainly record that comment during our consideration for the upcoming resolution that we'll bring back and there will be again more more council action on that later in the year so thank you and my follow-up and you don't have to respond I'm just looking are you willing to support a video project that encourages kids are there any item this evening please press star nine on your phone and you will be well that will raise your hand any other callers that would like to speak at this time okay well again thank you everyone and we are now adjourned have a good evening thanks again everyone all right thanks thank you