 to comment on the closed session items now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. In this part of the meeting the council will receive public testimony there after the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through your phone. Please note there's a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely and I want to thank the public for staying home to view today's city council meeting. When it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. The time will be set for two minutes and you may hang up once you've commented on your item of interest. I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you mayor council member Byers. Okay we'll count council member Matthews You're older you're the public who'd like to comment on items on a closed session now it's time to call in please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and once you've been recognized you'll be unmuted and you will have two minutes to speak. If there are no members of the public who are calling in to comment on this item we will go into closed session and I'd like to ask if there are staff or members of the public who are not going to be commenting on items on closed session to please call back in when we have our open session. I see she's here but um I don't see her at all. I think we should be good by the time we're ready to take the roll. So good afternoon everyone and welcome to our 12 30th session the August 11 2020 meeting after your city council. I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast on community television channel 25 and streaming live on the city of Santa Cruz website cityofsanacues.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely and I want to thank the public for staying home to do today's city council meeting. Wish to comment on an agenda item today please call in at the beginning of the item you're wanting to comment on and use the instructions that are on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in but listen through your phone. Please note that there is a delay in the streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it's time for public comment please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak during public comment you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. Once you've finished commenting you may hang up after your item of interest and with that I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you Mayor. Council members Byers. Here. Matthew. Here. Here. In which we gather is the unceded territory where they'll watch while speaking UP tribe. The homeless and tribal band comprises descendants of indigenous people taking the mission Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the central coast is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historic trauma. With that we have to begin to kick off our meeting we have a couple of proclamations. The first one is for David King. David King and native of Del Norte, Colorado was born on June 16th 1951 and whereas David King was the mayor coming. Sorry that that particular proclamation is not on this agenda. Proclamation on our agenda is honoring Maryland Elwood's 40 years of service which that is a profound commitment to the city and so with that on August 3rd 2020 police property and evidence specialist Maryland Elwood is retiring after four years of faithful and dedicated service to the city of Santa Cruz and its citizens where on September 22nd 1980 Maryland Elwood was hired by the city of Santa Cruz police department as a photo technician and whereas during Maryland Elwood's tenure she served in various roles including property clerk property attendant and most recently police property and evidence specialist whereas Maryland Elwood has been an outstanding example of ability and has been a tremendous asset to the city of Santa Cruz its community and its police department and we will be long remembered and appreciated for both her friendship and for 40 years of commendable service. Now therefore I just in coming mayor of the city of Santa Cruz do hereby proclaim August 3rd 2020 as Maryland Elwood retirement day in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all our co-workers and citizens to join me in expressing heartfelt appreciation for 40 years of dedicated and exemplary service and numerous contributions to the city of Santa Cruz police department and the city of Santa Cruz and wish her well in her retirement. If there's any council members or staff who'd like to share any comments on this proclamation hearing none the next item on our agenda is a proclamation Second Muslim Appreciation Month and I know there's a number of members of the public who have been invited to join the meeting to receive this proclamation. Should I go ahead? Yeah so I'll start by reading the proclamation that'd be great if you all could share some comments. So where's freedom of religion holds a distinction as a cherished and essential right and a fundamental value upon which the law and ethics of the United States are based and where the Bay Area has a thriving community of 250,000 Muslims in over 100 mosques and religious centers and Muslim Americans pursue diverse professions make rich contributions to the social cultural and economic vibrancy of the United States and have distinguished themselves by fostering greater respect and understanding among all people through faith and service and where the Islamic Relief USA has committed to distributing five million dollars nationwide in COVID-19 assistance and its Northwest office has coordinated with local charities to distribute masks, hygiene kits, hundreds of meals, 50,000 pounds of food to adverse communities in the Bay Area, packed 50,000 meals that were sent overseas and donated tens of thousands of dollars to organizations who distributed aid to local impacted community members and where's the Muslim Student Association at the University of California Santa Cruz is a welcoming and open community that aims to spread awareness and create a safe supportive environment for Muslims and Santa Cruz and has offered virtual programming upon self-improvement and how to navigate around during COVID-19 through the Muslim mental health workshop series as well as lectures on solidarity structural racism and a conscious call for justice and where it is appropriate to acknowledge and promote awareness of the myriad of invaluable contributions of American Muslims in California and across the country and extend to them the respect and camaraderie every American deserves. Now therefore I, Justin Cummings, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, hereby proclaim the month of August 2020 as American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month in the City of Santa Cruz to acknowledge the rich history contributions and guiding virtues of American Muslims and commend all Muslim communities in California for the lasting positive impact that they have made towards advancement of our city and our country. Peace be upon you. My name is Madiha Griffith. I am one of the founder of the Islamic Center of Santa Cruz. Hello and I'm her daughter. To introduce myself, my name is Sabrina Griffith. I was born and raised in Santa Cruz so this community is home for me and I went to Santa Cruz High just up the street from the city's office and my mom has been a part of establishing and growing the Islamic Center of Santa Cruz since the late 90s. So our vision as a center is to serve the collective needs of Santa Cruz residents regarding the Islamic faith but also to promote cooperation and understanding between Muslim residents and other communities such as but not limited to the Jewish and Christian communities in Santa Cruz. So we thank you as the City of Santa Cruz for commemorating the fifth anniversary of August being designated as the American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month. The history of Islam in this country as many of you will probably know dates back to before its founding originating with enslaved Africans who brought their Muslim belief with them to the Americas and who later contributed numerous ways to the founding of this nation and today there are millions of American Muslims both immigrants and native born of diverse backgrounds and beliefs. Muslim Americans in this nation in this state and in the city of Santa Cruz are teachers, lawyers, doctors, social workers, tech workers, nurses, business owners among numerous other valued professions as well as peace builders, activists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. Unfortunately the Muslim community has been and continues to be the target of harassment, discrimination, and assault but with the continued support such as this proclamation and appreciation month we can work together to promote awareness and extend to the Muslim American community their respect and camaraderie that every American deserves. So again I thank you for this recognition by the City of Santa Cruz as American Muslims have and will continue to contribute to this city and to this nation. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'd just like to say thank you so much for being a part of this community and please let us know how we can continue to support your community as well. Thank you. I guess we'll continue on with our meeting. I'll have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website. Mayor we have one more presentation item. Oh we do. Okay. Looks like we have one additional presentation. Maribay community power annual update. I'll turn it over to Lena Williams, manager of energy account services for Maribay community power. Thank you mayor. Thank you board members. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Maybe you have a jam packed agenda today so I'm going to make this as brief as possible and then you guys can ask me any questions that you may have. Thank you mayor and illustrious board members for allowing me to present you with your annual JPA member update for Maribay community power soon to be central coast community energy. For anybody who may be new to the board or not be aware of who we are of course we are. The current primary clean energy provider for the central coast. We are joint powers authority now made up of these 29 wonderful communities of which Santa Cruz is one. And as I mentioned one as we continued our expansion down the central coast to include cities in Santa Barbara County and in San Luis Obispo County. We made the decision as an organization to move towards a renaming effectiveness September 4th to central coast community energy. Accomplishments to date. I'd like to share these with you. A few of them you may have heard but we've had some changes over the year. Of course when we launched in 2018 NBCP was providing two energy choices for the members in the communities that we serve. 100% carbon free offering and for those who wanted to opt up to 100% renewable and support renewable energy that offering was available as well. As an organization in its entirety we currently have about 94% of the eligible customers in all of our communities enrolled. We have supported the economic vitality of the central coast and these are some numbers that are new since last year. So we have actually reinvested over 12 million in energy program customers throughout the communities that we serve experienced over 17 million in energy savings so far. And just this past year in 2019 we established a $25 million resiliency fund that was in response to the PG&E power the public safety power shutoffs that were actually going on. It actually is a free evolving fund that allows critical facilities to actually take advantage of initiating resiliency projects so they can keep their power on in their communities and in those essential buildings during power shutoffs for extended period of time or part of the emergency preparedness still available when I go into more detail about our energy programs of course I'll be sure to mention a little bit more about that. We've entered into over $800,000 in contracts with local lenders so in addition to those being within the tri-county there also are some in the cities of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay. We have now expanded to a second office so in addition to our original office located in Monterey we've also opened an office in San Luis Obispo to actually support the community members in San Luis Obispo and be closer to those community members in Santa Barbara County as well. We've achieved over 140 million in reserves and as was mentioned to you previously all of the loans were paid off. We have continued to add to our renewable portfolio so over 450 megawatts of renewable solar wind and geothermal has expanded in addition to projects that include solar plus storage. A Monterey-based community community powers response to COVID-19 was swift with unanimous support from the boards we were able to actually launch for the months of May and June a 50 percent across the board rate reduction for 100 percent of enrolled NBCP customers that was regardless of rate class or energy program all students were excuse me all customers received that on bill savings I mean may have received an email or seen a notification like this or your constituents may have seen an email just alerting them that that was coming and was available but if they weren't aware that's actually still visible on their bill for some folks their bill late in the month later in in the month they can see that there but it resulted in over 22 million of funds reinvested directly into our communities and it was the largest CCA response to COVID-19 in the entire state of California. Just a brief overview here and I know you have this in your your deck when I mentioned some of our renewable projects including solar plus storage you can actually see the extent to some of the projects that we've actually entered into you over the last year some of these go live in 2021 some in 2022 including a memorandum of understanding for an offshore wind project and moral bag so energy programs our structure actually provides for three percent of gross revenue being set aside each year for energy programs and so in the last year we were actually able to not just expand what we offered I think there were only two programs that were launched in the year before we were able to actually continue funding for existing programs and then build on that success so Cal EVIP providing for the electric vehicle infrastructure the affordable housing program that is actually something that took place more recently 2020 the school bus electrification program so that is in conjunction with imbar and it's still in progress for 2020 the ag electrification grant program so that was actually just launched last month and it will be continued into the next year residential electrification is to come later this year including residential resiliency and then the greenhouse gas inventory is from member agencies so if your agency still has not applied though that is available so there is there are funds set aside for each agency in addition to the reach cold and code incentives for the member agency the 25 million total investment this goes back to the uninterruptible power supply program that is our resiliency project the 25 million revolving fund 20 million of which was set aside specifically for the public sector to initiate projects with critical facilities so those funds are still available of course mbcp is available to support you and identifying those projects if you don't already have those in progress where you may be able to add resiliency or you already have resiliency battery storage generators as part of that plan and you want to see if there's additional funding or support there so there are there continue to be funds available for the public sector the reason that i'm here so the city of santa cruz numbers so we have here 2018 and 2019 just so that you can see what has been saved to date city of santa cruz has 22 880 and golden counts accounts which represents between residential and commercial combined almost 96 percent of the eligible account holders within the city of santa cruz in world the city accounts so the buildings that are buildings and leaders and lights that are currently owned by the city of santa cruz and paid for by the city of santa cruz in 2018 there was over 18 000 in savings and in the past year 2019 you're looking at closer to 45 000 in savings and then overall santa cruz community members in 2019 saved over 700 000 dollars to unify the central coast of course we have had additional communities that have agreed to get started with mbcp as you see we already are at 29 in october though of 2021 we are roughly within october or q3 of 2021 we will also have three additional santa barbara community s of south santa barbara county carpentry and galeta and then in 2022 we now have the city of yuletan so that would mean that by january 2022 all of santa barbara county will be enrolled with mbcp we are continuing as we go forward with our new change in september to make additional announcements about that but we will also invite our member agencies for our quarterly members member agency update to get more details on the available programs that are coming up in the next quarter for you to take advantage of my presentation did you have any questions for me while i'm here and thank you for your questions from council members of yeah thank you for the presentation i have uh just a quick related to the overall functioning of the unified central coast cca that we're moving towards i'm having been on the board i'm really appreciative of all the work that you all have done to make our cca so incredibly robust and effective and bring that kind of community savings and all of the other benefits i know that we've been receiving from the director information about this threat to cca as a result of the moves that may be made by the pc to help subsidize the big three which includes pg&e and i'm just wondering if you have any comments on that or anything that you think that we could be doing to be helpful in that regard i know the mayor of san jose has written a op-ed and there's probably other activity um but just if there's anything we can do to to try to support your efforts thank you that's actually a really good question so i directly am not aware of the things that you can do to add but what i can do is i can reach out to our regulatory team i know that we have several members of the nbcp staff right now three of them that are kind of fighting the big fight uh the good fight for us and um there may actually be things that we can actually reach out say comment on um or be a part of so absolutely i will i can share that with the rest of the board thank you and just for the public if you're listening this is about uh you know the the differential that we that now have to pay as as the cca um is to kind of help the big three including pg&e cover their costs and they're allowed to increase the rates um without a whole lot of uh pushback so i think it's fine that we start pushing back and i just wanted to to make that uh you know information available to the public too thanks you are very welcome thank you i'm sure i think for everyone in saying this is a spectacularly impressive and report and how nbcp has grown really quickly on the scale of things from a small band of devoted activists i mean what was it 15 years ago something like that you know we have a vision and this is just so impressive and just congratulations to everyone who had kept that vision and kept working on it and proving that it would work it's just amazing thank you so much councilmember mathias yeah i just wanted to say thank you also for the presentation uh lina and uh i especially just want to make note um of your of um monterey bay community's power to really committing to helping people with their bills over the covid-19 period and um it's it's great that you guys basically are leading the state and really forecasting and doing that right away out of the gate so thank you for taking care of that for people in our community that needed that assistance and again thank you for the wonderful presentation and all the work that you've been doing thanks thank you questions from council uh thank you again lina for that presentation and for all the hard work that you all are doing at monterey bay well thank you so much for having me have a great afternoon moving on to the next part of our agenda i'll have a few announcements and then we'll move on to the regular portion of our meeting uh today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityofsantaqueers.com if you wish to comment on an agenda item today the instructions will be provided on your screen we will provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda item that will be opened up for public comment please note that public comment is heard only on item city council is taking action on and not on regular updates or reports the items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers 10 through 33 on our agenda with the exception of item number 29 and with that i'd like to ask if there are any council members with statements of disqualification today hearing none i'd like to ask the clerk if there are any additions or deletions to the agenda there are not communications all communications is an opportunity for members of the community speak to items that are not on the agenda all communications will occur on around 7 p.m if you wish to like the uh to make a comment during oral communications please call in at 7 p.m if you may from the city attorney on items in closed session thank you mayor Cummings members of the city council uh this morning the council convened in closed session at 9 a.m to consider the following items item a was a conference with labor negotiators and uh the council discussed with its labor negotiators the following bargaining groups which represent all essentially bargaining groups in the city police officers association fire eight i a fs local 1716 fire management police management uh oh e3 mid managers and supervisors at ci u local 521 and unrepresented employees there was no reportable action on that item item b is a conference with the legal council concerning liability claims there are eight liability claims on this morning agenda six of those including the following are also listed on your open session agenda as item number 16 on the consent calendar and those are the claims of Beverly Hoffman dwayne lansing peterson safeco insurance troi william swain margarita lisa raga and celeste boros uh items seven and eight late council also received a report from and gave direction to legal council and those are the claims of marco for san cruz bay ink dba deeks market and dangian ramirez um there was no reportable action on those last two items item c was a conference with legal council involving existing litigation item one was the pending litigation in the matter of save our big trees versus the city of san cruz currently pending in san cruz superior court uh item two was uh an amicus uh request for support in the matter of charanel falton et al versus the city of philadelphia that's a legal challenge to the city of philadelphia's uh ordinance that bans discrimination on the basis of race uh religion or sexual orientation item three was the matter of the state of washington versus the department of health and human services and that's a legal challenge to a change in the rules under the affordable care act which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation uh in those two items the charanel falton case and the state of washington case the council voted to join in an amicus petition uh one pending in the supreme court of the united states uh the second state of washington case pending in the united states district court for the western district of washington washington um i would just add that in the washington case um there are other several other uh pending litigation uh matters in various districts throughout the country which are also uh raising the same issues and the council authorized joining in amicus briefs filed in those other uh cases as well item b was a conference with legal council concerning anticipated litigation uh one was a significant exposure to litigation and the other item was initiation of litigation and the council received a report from gave direction to legal counsel on those items there was no reportable action thank you very much questions are coming to the council members we'll move on next item on our agenda is uh city manager report to provide updates on city events and business violence uh thank you mayor i do have uh two items i'd like to update the council on first uh just a covid related item uh the council may be aware that we've been seeing additional vendors on beach street uh in front of the uh the volleyball court area and uh we've uh have the i've issued indicative orders to provide for um social distancing in place uh in that area and thus far we have been having uh a difficult time uh getting compliance from the vendors there uh with respect to the the uh rules that have been put in place that require that vendors uh have certain conditions in place as far as wearing masks as far as as far as spacing is concerned and where they locate so that they don't come into conflict with uh pedestrians and bicyclists and and other users of that pretty pretty confined and busy area but we've been having issues with that and i just want to let the city council know that we will be having to take some additional measures and actions to address that so we'll be doing that here soon because it's becoming very very difficult to keep people apart and given the rising numbers in the covid cases and the spread of the virus we'll need to take action on that uh soon so i just want to let the council know about that second a couple of budgetary related items that i just wanted to highlight the council does have a study session uh next week at 11 a.m where the council will get an update on the city's budgetary status and some of the actions that the council may need to consider and take as we deal with our increasing fiscal crisis so i want to let the council and the committee know about that and for them to tune in and to hear a more detailed update and analysis of our budgetary conditions so again are pretty significant at this point in time and then finally again related to the budget and i'll share my screen really quickly here i want to let the council know that we have to that was sent to the county board of supervisors relative to requests regarding funding for in particular homeless related items the county has received a significant amount of funding from the state related to homelessness allocations and the city having a need with respect to number of areas around homelessness put together a letter that was submitted to the board of supervisors they are holding their their budget hearings on these items this week in particular with respect to some of the funding tomorrow so just wanted to just go over those with you very briefly and for the public to make you aware of some of the major areas that we'd like to work with the board and the county on trying to address first is the potential catastrophic wildland fire risk in our city and regional open spaces as the council may be aware we do have quite a bit of open space and we will need to be doing some wildland interface to address the potential spread of a fire major fire event and that would would likely result in the displacement of individuals that might be or that are actually camping out in the open spaces particularly in the pogunas and so we'd like to ask the county if they could assist with providing surge capacity to address those that might be displaced by having to move individuals because of the need to do the fire mitigation in that area secondly as you may know we are working with the county and housing matters to make improvements on coral street with respect to operations there with respect to the condition on coral street in the surrounding areas to provide a better environment for the service providers the participants that come there to obtain services and also the residents that live in that area and have been working with the county and housing matters to make some improvements there and again we are asking the county to provide some assistance with trying to make some of those improvements they'll also recall that we did get awarded some money for the purchase of the seabird property acquisition which we're not moving forward with and so that money could be allocated to making improvements in that area third as you all I think also know we have been seeing an increase in RV parking on the west side and we have increased the RV parking capacity in the city we have an additional parking lot now and lot 17 which is the parking lot behind wheel works as well as some additional capacity at the police department but really would like to request that the county provide additional RV parking options throughout the county so as to spread the the the the options for people living with any vehicles to reside so that's the third request here and then and then finally the county in conjunction with the city is has embarked on a process to change the way homelessness is addressed in our community as far as the governance structure and planning and how to move forward with that and we'd like to request that the that the county also allow the city to participate in that process and that we move forward with that process as soon as possible and I'm sorry there's actually another one and then the final one is with the specter cares funding the county did receive about 27 million dollars in care funding the purpose of that was to address COVID expenses and also to address the homelessness and that we received some funding as well that will be allocating towards COVID response particularly the impact and services that we've had to provide to address the homelessness issues and again I've asked the county to also allocate some care funding for those purposes including some of the items that I just pointed out I just want to highlight that for the council and the public I sent a copy of the letter to the council as well and if you have any questions that we have to answer this so with that I'm having to answer any questions thank you one time for visiting manager and council members thank you for the updates Martine it's great to hear that the conversations with the county are continuing and productive I have a question and I'm hope you can just clarify for the general public mostly because I've been getting questions from people both tenants and landlords about the eviction moratorium we extended that until August 13th and but the language also included or you know depending on what the state does and the governor did extend that to September 30th there seems to be some confusion though in the community about that so I'm hoping you can just clarify that and then also could we could we like get that some kind of notice on that on our website with the with the COVID resources page just to clarify yes yes thank you for that but yeah so if the governor did extend so the council extended and then allowed us to move forward with the extension if the governor did that and so we anticipate though that if the governor does not extend that we will be bringing forward at the council item around that as well so that you can review options to extend further and also to see what the what the governor will be doing but right now we do have the the state extension in place and we can certainly provide an update and additional information on our COVID web page and on our housing web pages as well so we'll do that um did we get a copy of that letter uh if not yes I I emailed it I'll tell you I can I can we send that again but yes you should have a copy I don't doubt that you did but I'm happy to send it again thank you councilmember Goldberg I want to say thank you um city manager for sending that and working on that I think it's really important for the public to understand where the revenue for health and human services and homeless services comes from and I think the continued um working together is going to really help move things along so thank you if I may uh there's another item that I'd just like to make the council aware of too that I was reminded of um again just an FY to the council but this relates to um the uh situation at uh parking lot number 27 which is the parking lot on Laurel and front street uh that uh has been utilized by food not bombs and again I just want to let you know the council that we are receiving complaints and concerns around the use of the lot uh as it relates to social distancing and some of the conditions there and associated impacts uh with the surrounding area and so wanted to just let you know that that's a that's a problem and that we and unfortunately also food not bombs has not been complying with the permit that that was was provided to them as well so we'll be we will be having to uh work on in the dress up situation as well and I just wanted to let you know about that the council requires and for the um letter my my request is that if if you do share back or if you anticipate hearing back from response that you hear that with us as well it'd be great to hear on the county has part to those suggestions and hopes yes that'd be great and uh we did ask uh and I don't know if uh the mayor of or the vice mayor or council member it might be able to if possible uh participate in the budget hearings the the county will be um hearing this at their budget hearing tomorrow on the CARES Act funding so it might be helpful to have uh the council member at least the present there to um you know uh in person providing but uh to the board if it's at all possible of course have to do it too but we can certainly work with uh council member yeah I can do it I can do it yeah thanks uh thanks part team for the update uh regarding the vendors on beach street I think understood you say that uh we'll be implementing the uh the pandemic rules is that what what is that going to do I mean it won't move them they'll just distance them well we've what we did was already uh put in place rules that where we have areas that are offline where they can be uh recommendation those have been in place for several weeks now we've also worked with them to get them to comply with respect to obtaining a business license working with the health department to get whatever health permits they need so I think we've been facilitating um and working with them to to do that the problem has been that since then even with these conditions in place they have not uh and even with a quite a bit of enforcement quite frankly in work with them it had not been working many have uh continued to uh site uh in the non-designated areas and in in such that it's creating very very crowded conditions there's also been problems with bicycles in intruding into the bicycle paths and just unfortunately a lot of issues and it's just become a place where there's a lot of overcrowding in it obviously it's not conducive to uh trying to prevent the spread of the virus so quite simply it's a health issue uh health hazard and uh it's something that we need to try to prevent the spread of the virus so we're looking at having to change or add additional conditions to try to mitigate it even further because what we've done this far has simply not not worked unfortunately so what is the next move that I'm missing so we haven't finalized it but we may uh limit uh just change uh uh where they can be or not be so we're working with the city attorney's office and the police officer there okay I just called her to see if she could come out did you need to talk with her we have not finalized uh limiting or prohibiting uh the vendors uh in in certain areas with certain conditions again to truly try to limit the the spread of the virus uh in in and to try to keep the social distancing in place to the extent possible I'll have to also recognize that uh even with the extent of enforcement that we have out there it's just been really difficult uh because uh we simply don't have the resources to be out there you know constantly and the vendors have been very creative in trying to avoid in a very competitive environment unfortunately um but uh uh we'll do we'll do our best to work with them like we have but we might we do need to impose some additional instructions to again because the addressing the the COVID spread is really critical at this point in time on our Matthews and Revolver well I kind of expected to address this when we got to the item about uh amending our vending ordinance to conform with state law I don't know if you want to continue it here yeah you can tell me how's about it then it's uh it's it's somewhat related in that obviously that what we're doing now is executive orders under the existing health order it's not the latitude necessarily the ordinance was moving forward the issues well I just put in my two cents here I might go for that but um it's really gotten bad and and it's not obviously not just COVID I mean that's kind of the use of the executive orders but um uh the whole situation there has gotten um unsafe for the bike lanes it's got it's become a real problem to survive for the beachgoers I mean who wants to have fights between the street vendors that's not a pleasant experience so um I personally would just encourage you to uh um create as much in the way of oversight enforcement as is really possible because it's just a bad vibe down there and you know we've we've all seen the correspondence we're getting and it just seems like you know there's so much of storing up his hands oh can't do anything and I realize the state law is a big challenge so I would suggest that also in the future we anticipate John Laird will be in the Senate I mean um let's uh probably hope that at some point we can get a correction in the state law as well I know League of California cities has has been interested opposes the extent of the state law and we are not the only city grappling with this issue so for the short term let's do what we can to make the experience of beach and downtown up to downtown in the same um same spot here um obviously states but also um uh explain what local control we possibly can on this issue which is the theme is just not helpful to us as long as we're on this topic that I'm going to just throw in my two cents too if that's okay right now and um I'm just curious is it my understanding that in order to vent like these people are doing um you need to have a business license in the city that's correct and then to have a business license in the city do you have to like live within the city or the county or can you have a business license in the city and live in other places too you know as I understand you don't have to live in the city to have this place I guess that makes sense duh so from from from the I don't know if anyone's on that's from the finance department or maybe they can get back to us for the mobile vendors are most of them coming from you know the city or the county or from out of the county do we have any idea my understanding from the staff that's been working with them is that the vendors that are in the beach area are not from the area they're from the central valley and southern california updates to the calendar august 18th study session I sent you guys an email to see if 11 a.m does work for everyone it would be great to number nine uh it's the time for council members and then external boards committees train power meetings um so if anyone has any updates that they would like some of these go ahead and start please to say that the ethics subcommittee finished our job and we will be forwarding the report to you uh need to put in a lot of work on that so that was my name captain on that have a quick update uh at our rtc regional transportation commission meeting last thursday we approved uh from open streets the typical rtc funds that are used for open streets uh to their the slow streets programming and bike sanikers county and ecology action will be uh the recipients of that or they already received the funds but they'll be directing those funds towards slow streets so I know a lot of people in uh the community are very interested in this and I thought I'd uh just update that that's an additional uh some additional support for going moving forward and so I didn't update on the modeling which uh we also received a presentation during closed session today so the public is aware and then we're going to be having a special meeting on august 18th um the time to be determined but uh sounds like we're aiming for around 11 or 12 in the morning 11 in the morning or 12 in the afternoon so that'll be coming in bag is meeting tomorrow we've been having a lot of discussions around the impacts of the schools of COVID-19 on schools um as many of you are aware the uh the federal level that they didn't renew one of the orders that allowed for schools to distribute food and so um I haven't received an update on whether or not that's changed but the city schools um have reduced their meals programs for the handing out to families and so there's a discussion around what that's going to look like moving into the fall um there's been discussion around uh whether there might be potential city facilities that could be used for in-person learning when that's allowed again there's been discussion around outdoor learning as well um and you know but a lot of discussion around how to get meals and sure that we're getting meals and learning materials to students so that everyone has an opportunity to do distance learning this fall the climate action task force has been moving forward with a 2030 climate action plan um and then with regards to the almost 2x2 I think we're going to hear a lot of information around the catch report this afternoon and we'll be able to ask questions but the county has been moving forward with a six-month plan that uh was before them at the previous and the last um uh county supervisors meeting um and so I think that's all I have to update on the committees at some time I was if you're there can you hear me now yeah thank you mayor for covering many of those you and I share a number of committees so I won't I will not repeat those I do want to just um touch on a few committees though that did meet the downtown management corporation met in July and we have been uh reviewing uh use of the budget um we are seeing a budget uh decline but we have uh committed to continuing with our downtown ambassador program and um we've also received a report from the downtown association uh staff on the number of closures that we're seeing of businesses downtown and um so that was um just heartening to hear uh about so many of our beloved community businesses starting to uh not make it downtown uh any longer so uh definitely a sobering meeting um we uh but we will be uh refunding at a limited slightly reduced amount many of the services downtown with the intent of trying to um again draw people back make sure that it's um uh you know there that the ambassadors are there to welcome people answer questions also on those lines we are seeing obviously the popularity of some of the the street closure and outdoor dining which is also great so um I'll let councillor Matthews add to that if she'd like to add more um the other two things I'll update on are the cows working group sure many of you saw the media um the cow's beach was off has been taken off the beach bummer list by heal the bay for the first time in 10 years um there is still work ahead to do the group is now focused on um basically submitting a grant to do an epidemiology study which is basically a study to interview folks who uh may have gotten sick from the water or have symptoms so that they're wondering or related to the water will be conducting that and trying to raise those funds to do that work hopefully in the next uh in the next year or so we also there was some great media that saved the waves and the city put out the city put out a couple of great videos about that work um and we'll be continuing to try to refine that as well we're also uh through stave the waves who is a member of the working group um and the city and other members of the working group will be working with stanford university on a drift study in that area so we further understand how the currents work in that area so some nice news during this period of time so um good news from that and I'm just looking through the list here uh I think that covers it for my items um so that's my report thank you great thank you I'll calculate my message on this and uh you know every committee we're on the revenues are down we all have that experience um metro is trying very hard to adjust to the COVID reality what ridership is way down um they are retrofitting the buses and insubstituting a whole host of safety managers to protect both drivers and riders they're drawing down some reserves as we are they have been some federal funds but they too like us are looking at the public agency for a uh financial survival over a long recovery period um council member mires is on the finance committee for that one but I think that's that's the thumbnail sketch there trying to maintain critical service um uh under very trying circumstances regarding the downtown management corporation you know we were um putting a lot of energy into the pulmonary recommendation to do the merger of the assessment districts and uh COVID just kind of blew that all apart so we are back to the basic services um and uh we have talked about contacting for the embassies program with a nationwide uh entity that provides that service and so there can be uh still a uh hospitality service um but uh administered differently um basically covered by the assessment district and then jack davis who has uh snap taco and penny ice cream rate went off the board after six years who's been a great representative of the business community so we're recruiting for a new uh board member from the uh downtown business community and yeah the um just kudos to economic development and this very very quick work day and how reports are done on occupying the street or when you go downtown now it's amazing so and i think that's a good transition to visit census county i think i forwarded to all of you some um uh reports of what visit census county has done in terms of um a campaign to visit safety um and they promoted it heavily in the um uh all of the industry lodging and visitors serving uses um with some great simple graphics so obviously we do want to come to Santa Cruz but we want them to be safe when they do a distance map etc so they put a lot of effort into the safety campaign which has actually been picked up by other entities statewide i'll just thank everyone again for all your hard work and commitment to being on these different committees and task scores versus uh council member matthews i gotta say one more thing i don't know where this fits in uh august 18th is the centennial of the ratification of the women's rights vote so for proclamation i know uh justin did one in oh earlier this year for women's history months or week or something but anyway yeah that's the date august 18th and the cabrillo festival did a wonderful program on sunday related to the uh centennial so you know we'll get out and i just have i have one other thing to add mayor coming um i just wanted to let the council know and our community know um that on sunday last sunday the or excuse me saturday the eighth of august um i participated with our sister city shingu on uh a remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima which actually occurred on the 6th um but also the bombing of the city of nagasaki which did occur on on august 8th um and the sister cities um committee and shingu folks were all together on zoom and it was timed in japan and timed here in california we both read proclamations i read the mayor's proclamation it was translated into japanese for their community they read a proclamation it was translated and then there was a coordinated bell ringing ceremony that took place at the at the temple in shingu and in nagasaki and other communities in japan uh both on the sixth and the eighth and um it was i have to say big highlight for me it was uh it was a pretty neat thing to participate in so i just want to just uh thank the sister city committee and the shingu um folks who work with the shingu sister cities uh folks because it was a really meaningful event and um i have asked um the sister cities folks to uh provide that uh video to us so hopefully we will have a shorter uh city council meeting and then we can broadcast portions of that video uh for our community to see dsc council so forgot to mention that thanks thank you uh talk to me a little while i'm giving them a storyboard i wasn't able to make it to say hi to our friends in shingu so i'm glad that you're able to make that event um i just have a tradition one two the big schools just that it was really heartening to know that our staff from parks and recreation is working really closely with the school staff on a regular basis just to make sure that they can mobilize as needed in any way possible to support their ends um to ensure that we're leveraging resources um and then i just another uh sort of brief reminder and announcement that to those in the community who haven't already to please fill out your 2020 census that's coming up and we need to get as many responses as possible so every opportunity we have a chance to to remind you we we will do so um Santa Cruz community feedback opportunity which is open right now and it's open through august 17th and it's um on our website at the city of Santa Cruz dot com backslash uh resilient coast so for those who want to participate in that survey please do so by visiting the website and i will make sure to wear my shirt on august 18th thanks for the reminder celebrating a hundred years of women's right to vote i just also wanted to acknowledge the parks department parks and racks for um attempting with the virtual junior guards and you know making a lemonade out of lemons and i signed my daughter up and we did a couple of the videos and the instructors did a great job of you know doing the best they could with the situation they were given and i just think um it was a really cool way to highlight junior guards and a very popular program given that they couldn't hold it in person so thank you to them uh thank you vice mayor mires for uh participating in that and reading the proclamation i was able to sit in and it really was amazing and um just the the you know all of the effort that went into it and the you know our sister city representatives in shingoo were just like thrilled to participate as were we at our end it was really great if we don't have the ability to time to watch it uh during a council meeting which i hope we do hopefully we can get it up on the website and i encourage people to to take a look it was lovely yeah yeah thank you all for those updates i think it was one thing i would like to add that it would be in addition to registering for the census uh just encouraging everyone to register to vote having a very important election coming up and uh soon you can register to better the census agenda these are items numbers 10 through 24 from our attendance for today and for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items 10 through 24 the instructions will be displayed on your screen and please remember to mute your streaming device and when you would like to raise your hand to comment please press star nine on your phone and listen for the cue saying that you have been unmuted all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled from the consent agenda by council members for the discussion are there any council members who would like to pull an item uh from consent in the consent items looking at the news sorry only because i gotta be guess who our vp running mate's gonna be oh california kamala here is around i have a question of love i think it was um i have it if it's above um 43,440 yeah i was just wondering in terms of like what would the cutoff be you know so somebody makes 80,000 or 100,000 would they still be able to apply for this part show the excuse me well let me say a little bit about where the the amount came from so it it was uh suggested i think sciu came up with the suggestion or could have been the supervisors that amount and it was based on the cares program for pgne which they felt was um well vetted in terms of coming up with the the tiers but as i asked your question specifically so we created two tiers so household income of 43,440 or less would be eligible for up to 1500 and tier two a household income of 43,441 or more they would only be eligible for a thousand dollars there was no upper limit you know whether you're 80,000 or 100,000 um in terms of your your your household income um to answer your question okay i was just curious as to why it came up with another woman i guess it would be good to know for council um as this program i think it's great that we have the city's playing on this program to support their employee as well with the kind of dealing with this very difficult time i think it would be good moving forward to get report backs reports back on you know who's applied for those loans and who's received them and have what you know the prevailing income back it off because just to ensure that we're getting that's what i'd be happy to provide you with those updates comments over to the public see if there's any member of the public who would like to comment on items numbers 10 through 24 on the consent agenda and so if members of the public would like to comment on these items now is the time to call in and once you join the meeting please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you will be unmuted and given two minutes to speak on items on our consent agenda there's no member of the public who would like to speak on this item i'll bring it back to council for action deliberation count number brown yeah i do have one quick comment of thanks to our director minard for the water meter item the water remit water meter replacement item we um talked about that in detail and it's just goes by one of those things that goes by in consent but i just appreciate the work that the water department put into to developing that program in addition to sorely needed upgrade it's also intended to help develop our local workforce in provide opportunities for living wage jobs so i i just wanted to call that out and with that i'll move the consent agenda i have a just a couple of quick comments i want to second the appreciation for item number whatever was 24 the meter replacement and there was a lot in that replacing the obsolete equipment and recouping the losses and workforce development but i'll say personally i looked at my water bill last month and shoot i hadn't been billed for water for two months and guess what i was one of that 10 percent where the water meter was frozen and so that was replaced i mentioned by sister she had the same thing so it's not inconsequential so you know uh good on many counts and then i also want to thank uh lisa for the work on the temporary economic hardship program very responsive low on bureaucracy you were given general direction by the council and i think you came back with something that really did what we were shooting for so good job there's a motion to uh approved consent by mathias 25 to 28 for members of the public for streaming this meeting if this is an item you would like to comment on now's the time to call in using the instructions or items number 25 to 28 is that on your screen once you dial in please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you'll be given two minutes when it's your time to speak remember the apology you're on the line for granting preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race sex color ethnicity or national origin in public employment public education and public contracting unquote that's right the calibrational and gender discrimination by themselves through legislative initiative it attempts to repeal prop 209 which is an initiative of the people which passed the 55 affirmative in 1996 and was upheld in a supreme court challenge with their problem unequally as they please based on what should be gender based discrimination banned by current to another based on race or gender for instance the qualifier quote a majority of the businesses minority or woman owned but equal doctrine of segregation that phase of systemic racism is also exactly this your face is your votes there can be no justification for race gender discrimination this is what that is those who vote for this are the new any racist of the leftist progressive far left let's hear mr. kandadi's take on how he would defend a civil rights lawsuit should this requirement be challenged by one solely denied a license for such an ill-conceived reason let's hear yours also i expect a weak t empty words compared with a fair reason truth yeah i'll move consent uh move the consent public hearing agenda okay so my councilman matthews council member brown second i'm on the matthews second my council member brown to move the hearing items i'll turn it over to the clerk to call the roll call vote we'll register a no vote on item number 25 mayor coming first Watkins and i was voting no on item sorry mayor coming can i just confirm that was um motion by matthews seconded by brown right in a 916 seabright add a 101-123-6 to continue to the august 20 city council agenda project labor agreements and community benefits strategies for capital improvement projects and this is a presentation by council member urbine uh award director rosemary minard director public works from our federal and director of economic development by wilson new council members i'm going to try to share my screen here i just have a is really just focused on the overview of the recommendations and then i'd be happy to answer your question the council received a presentation or a staff report that's fairly lengthy it has quite a quite a bit of detail in it and i guess basically the first of the sort of key elements of that staff report is an articulation by the staff of the um of what we understood to be the council's basic goals from the conversations we've had uh in about workforce development opportunities about living wage strategies for workers who are working on city projects etc and so we've articulated the uh these three particular goals uh as sort of our understanding of what the council's main purposes are in asking us to look at both project labor agreement as well as the possibility of other kinds of community benefit uh strategy benefit strategies associated with the implementation of capital projects whether they're utility projects or housing development thinks that the city gets involved with it involves capital construction so i'm not going to read these you obviously they were in the staff report and again this this was our premise of what we were really trying to do in terms of that where the results came to focus um the the next segment of the presentation is really what i would uh say are some recommendations to add the council to adopt some key findings there are three parts to this recommendation the first is uh to adopt the key findings the second one has something to do with uh project labor agreement enabling strategy and then the third one is a community benefit strategy the key findings really come uh from the analysis work that was done by staff looking at both the legal and the sort of practical realities of our local construction workforce and so the first set of findings relate to the legal analysis which indicates that project labor agreements need to be project specific and that they need to demonstrate that they are able to achieve uh you know these kinds of specific benefits either decreases in strikes lockouts uh other kinds of indirect cost overruns that kind of saying um directory indirect cost overruns or increases in timely completion uh steady supply of uh you know skilled labor or the percentage of local presidents working on the project and contributing positively to the local economy that's the basis of the legal analysis and then um additional ones are sort of acknowledging that the city's construction projects do provide opportunity for generating community benefits through including local contractors and local workers in completing the work that's a strong component of you know what we can do in addition to sort of getting the infrastructure re-investment as we just talked about with the meter replacement program there is a way for us to you know have some benefits that that go beyond that by in that particular case doing some really strategic workforce development and providing some opportunities for uh long-term equipment for a number of people training of skill labor and then bringing those folks to a place where they have a skill set that can be marketed to any but any entity that has meters and there are lots of them in our world that we live in and the second one is that um that the the analysis presented by staff you know makes it clear that we have a hard time filling certain kinds of our ongoing operating positions not just the ones that are related to specific kinds of construction projects but both the wastewater utility and the water utility have major operating facilities that are complicated they have a lot of electrical and mechanical elements to them and both the public works director and I have continuously you know struggled to fill key skilled trade positions that are necessary for us to continue to reliably and sustainably manage these massive infrastructure facilities that produce these massively important essential services for our community so the idea here would be to figure out how to utilize workforce development strategies particularly in this particular situation the pre-apprenticeship programs as a way of beginning to focus on the strategic development of some of these key kinds of skill sets and creating opportunities for both local hire and the pre-apprenticeship programs moving on to the formalized apprenticeship programs and then another another sort of reality just based on the analysis that was provided about the characteristics of the county's construction labor workforce a lot of the larger projects we have are likely to be awarded to contractors from outside the area because we don't have contractors here with the the scale of experience on the kinds of projects that we're often talking about or they're already booked up and have other work to do so they don't you know end up working on our projects there but there are some substantial opportunities for us to figure out how to partner local general con local contractors of special skills electricians others for example with some of the larger contractors that would come in and there's more we can do to facilitate making that happen so the first first of the other recommendations that two are to you know have the council consider use developing or giving staff direction to develop a PLA enabling strategy and the idea here would be to adopt an enabling ordinance and then to direct the staff to you know come up with the terms and conditions criteria for the appropriate project selection that would meet the key finding on you know the benefits that the projects have to produce and the selected projects have to be have to produce in order to implement them via PLA and next the next one is to create some sort of thresholds that would maximize the potential for benefits from the PLA to be produced what for example larger size projects are probably better than smaller size projects a construction schedule longer construction schedule creates more opportunities for apprentices that would be involved in these projects to actually get experience that would be important to them in making you know the pathway through the multi-year apprentice problems programs that they're involved in to get them to the journeyman level and then being able to have that skill set and the higher wages that are opportunities that are associated with that higher level of skill set and then really to try to maximize the potential for there to be multiple skilled trades because again this gives us an opportunity to bring apprentices in on these various types of skilled trades and again it's a leveraging of the basic opportunity and then finally on this strategy the idea would be for the direction from the council to staff to negotiate a template agreement with the Monterey Santa Cruz County's construction building trades council that could be used when an appropriate project is identified and that meets these other terms and conditions that have been described in addition the staff is recommending that the council consider directing staff to move forward with the community benefit strategies that is really focused on workforce development and trying to leverage the opportunities for engagement of local construction trades and contractors in city projects so the first item on this list would be find a way to facilitate information exchange between local construction related businesses and the city's main sort of bigger contracts that are going to go forward so there's an opportunity for sort of a matching up of some of the local providers with the with the larger providers that might be coming in from out of the area to bid on some of these projects the second part is to you know look for opportunities to create that information exchange and to you know find that to support that kind of matching up of that subcontracting I think there's some really good opportunities there and then really one of the key I think outcomes of the staff analysis has been that really we need to work on the pre-apprenticeship element to start at the beginning of the process to identify local residents who might be interested in this kind of work to help them understand what the opportunities are and to find our partners in our community whether it's schools whether it's labor organizations other non-labor organizations to develop and find opportunities to advertise and engage local residents in these pre-apprenticeship programs which help them to then identify the opportunities to move into the formalized apprentice training programs and then also to work with local labor entities and others to increase the participation of local residents in strategically identified apprenticeship programs these are as described in the staff report a set of key skills that are necessary both for in the construction trades but also in our operational needs electricians mechanic instrumentation workers utility maintenance technicians some of these aren't existing apprenticeship programs but I think there are opportunities for us to work together with a variety of parties including entities like the Santa Cruz county workforce development board the labor entities other interests to really find a way to develop these kinds of apprenticeship programs and to make sure that our local folks have the information that's necessary for them to understand the opportunity to engage in these kinds of workforce development for themselves and professional development for the individuals and with that I will sort of turn it back to the council to that's an overview of the recommendations from the analysis and be happy to take your questions I know that the public works director and the economics director development director certainly on the on the call so you can also direct two questions to them thank you very much thank you for that presentation and that's one you know that I appreciate the outreach that's been conducted especially you know try to identify ways that we can improve workforce development I will say that I wish I had a chance to weigh in a little bit before I wasn't able to attend so council members are aware I wasn't able to attend a gender review and place on the agenda but council member Brown and I've met with staff and we're working with members of the building trades and the unions to provide an opportunity for the unions to weigh in because they had expressed a desire and wanted to weigh in on their decision that meeting is actually set for next Tuesday and so I just want to express my caution with moving forward with taking action today because the unions haven't had an opportunity to weigh in on what was before us so I'll open up to other questions if council members have them but just wanted to let folks know that there has been a meeting set with the unions to discuss this and discuss some recommendations and I think it'll be you know in our best I think it'd be good if we had that discussion with them prior to taking any action but I'll open up to council members and then to the public and we can circle back for action deliberation with that council member Matthews first of all I wanted to thank the staff for the breadth of this report and this I think is responsive to the direction we gave the last time we considered this which was to give us a bigger picture of our local workforce and the opportunities both for workforce development and for project labor agreements and I really appreciate the structure of this I just have to say this publicly looking first of all at the the context of what are our goals in doing this the key findings part what's the legal framework what are the opportunities that are presented then the second part is considering a PLA strategy and the third part which is Rosemary has mentioned this in her comments repeatedly as has public works that we have a lot of potential within the city operation to reach out to the workforce development resources in our community and provide those kind of workforce entry level and advancement opportunity so just the big picture on this I thought was was really good I don't have questions right now but I would be prepared to make the motion when the time comes and I should add I think the whole discussion with the central with the building and trades council is set up you have that in gear and that's really intrinsic in part of number two here initiate the discussion for a framework thank you well I was going to save my comments until afterwards but since we're started going down that road I'm just going to agree with Mayor Cummings about the timing and sequencing of considering this today I do I very much appreciate the work that's been done by staff and really laying this out in a clear way for us and thinking about all the opportunities that can come from you know continuing to engage in this conversation I and I'm also prepared to make a motion it may have to be a substitute but my question is for I think for Tony about the so the the kind of the findings on the legal analysis indicating that you know we'd have to demonstrate that some of these benefits might be might occur through a project labor agreement they seem very um uh hard to verify difficult to verify based on you know some of this is about projection for example saying we can only do this if it will um support uh timelier uh project completion how like how would we know that I mean it's those are those are pretty subjective and variable depending on projects so I guess I just um I'm wondering what your thoughts are on if we were to uh move forward with these this particular component how that would work or how you see that um evolving well I mean I think the way the staff has lined out this this process part what would need to be undertaken as the council considers adoption of an ordinance that um specifies the the criteria uh under which a project the labor agreement would be appropriate um ultimately it's an evidentiary issue but the council's findings are accorded some deference in a in a in a determination of that sort um but it has to be based on some objective standards and um and so hopefully as we move forward with this process um we'll have a broader discussion and and develop uh criteria that can be supported with with some backup uh evidentiary basis thank you reading at all and it was so new to me I think there's been discussions but it was uh took a couple readings but uh obviously the staff did a really good job in talking to the businesses and contractors now I just heard that and I it was lacking any mention of um our building trades our unions so now I just heard that you have a meeting set up but it hasn't happened so it seems to me that's critical to look at the whole picture is a big picture I should say so I don't know I whether uh the council and the leaders in this situation uh see continuing until after you've had that discussion and it becomes part of the agenda I think it's just it's a big lack it's just a big hole in the in the report so I'm just I'm putting out there that I would be willing more than willing to uh move that we continue this um in fact on turn is a formal motion that this be uh happy I guess uh put in for the next agenda item after we've had a report from the building trades I'll just point out that since we haven't gone to public we can't take action yet okay okay hold that motion okay we're glad to do um council member the vice mayor Myers and then council member Watkins my question is um well you know what I I think I'd just rather wait and hear from the public um I'm a little bit confused on where we're at so I think I'll hold my questions until after the the public thank you from hearing from the public thank you council member Watkins just have a question and maybe it's for you mayor and then for you Rosemary if you want to add I was just a little confused by your statement mayor did you say that you had a meeting with the trades or was that with the staff meeting or how is that where you want to weigh in on sort of your anticipation around uh moving this as your research community building trades that was then set up and was uh discussed for a little while to be set up um was really to focus on the workforce development opportunities which I think are from my perspective a little separate um particularly the pre-apprenticeship sort of started the beginning element of this that seems to me to be a critical element of moving forward so uh the um I guess the comment by uh councilman buyers related to the business outreach is uh a comment that I would respond to just a little bit just to put that in context uh why the labor site isn't in here I guess to the extent that it isn't um was to was the council specifically asked us to um reach out to the local business community and get their feedback because we had noted as early as the initial discussion on this in uh January of this year that really that we hadn't heard from that side of the the issue we had uh seen from the labor reps and heard from the labor reps at the January 28th meeting um what their proposals and concerns were and Mark Dell and I did have a meeting with uh the president of the building trades council at the end of February and so uh the apart from the business uh input that the council specifically asked us to include this project this the staff report didn't explicitly didn't include the you know the various pros and cons of either project labor in part because that wasn't the remit that we thought we had it was to tell you what the situation was so that you could understand the degree to which the the purposes for example the goals that are identified could be achieved by various different approaches one last question for clarification to the meeting that you have planned is something that you're also attending rosemary is that correct mark and i are both attending along with uh the mayor and uh council member brown if i understand you're city manager also you know you need some workforce development and that's that's a big purpose of bringing forward the community workforce resilience and project labor agreements and so having that discussion i think that as we've been discussing this item in addition to working with um the business community i thought you know a big part of the direction as well was also really trying to work with labor unions and labor folks to figure out what's going to be what can work for you know both labor and the city to kind of try to get to this win-win situation where we get something that works for everyone and currently i think that it's worth us discussing further with the unions some of the thresholds that have been put in place to get some clarification on that um and you know really get to something that's actually going to work you know in favor of both the city and with the unions and i think that it is critical to have an involved in conversation because unions are one of the one voices that workers have and so you know if we have the chamber of commerce weighing in if we have the um the you know the building companies weighing in um it's really important that the workers have a voice in the conversation as well and that's you know why i feel it's really critical that we meet with the union reps we talk to them about you know what we look before us in a way that's you know constructive as time is it's not just two-minute comments that we actually can have in some sense of conversation before we make a very big decision that has an impact on our workforce so i don't want to put that out there as well in terms of my concern with moving forward today if there's no further questions from council members or comments from council members um we did have two um people who reached out for extra time i'm not sure if they're on the call the one person is um justin white from san truce county business council and christian but she uh uh with this ladder construction thing what we'll do is when you are called on or um when you're allowed to talk please let us know by stating your name and you'll be given four minutes and with that i'll open up public comment i'm drive 20 with operating engineers local three how you doing today great so the reason i'm calling in today is the letter that was sent out it's kind of disturbing if you were making a loaf of bread why would you leave half the ingredients out we know that we have a training center we have a pre-printed strip program for sanacruz county moderate county san venido county and open to all so i'm kind of don't understand why we're trying to make bread there's only half the ingredients can you hear me okay so that's all the time i'm going to take because there's other people that really want to talk if you're going to make a loaf of bread make sure you have all the ingredients i think you're on the right track there mayor thank you well you know now at the time and once you call in please press raise your hand and after you've raised your hand uh when you're called on you'll be asked to unmute and you'll be given two minutes so again if you call into uh to call on this item please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and i'll go to the next call oh is that me yeah this is this is shan he bought on the senior field rep for carpenters local 505 here in santa cruz county and i'm also on the local carpenters training committee i'm also a trustee for the training committee for all of northern california and i'm a member on the workforce development board for santa cruz county um so far be it for me to uh queue staff of not doing their homework on this but no one has contacted me in any respect on this outside of uh conversations i've had with council members and so i didn't have a lot of time to do a lot of research on this but i took about 20 minutes to go through the list of respondents for the survey and so i just checked to see if they met the bare minimum requirements for doing business under on for the city of santa cruz pl a or no pl a i'm just looking we're looking for local people that's our that's our threshold so if we look at local contractors who are registered and able to legally do public works and have a business license in santa cruz county we have a fantastic 20 pages of responses from these people but of the 40 people on this list seven of them meet that threshold and only five have employed apprentices in the last five years so let's keep this straight we're fundamentally about workers in this project we're talking about training their benefits and their wages and now we have the results in the foxes are clearly anti henhouse who would a guest we have responses from as much as 400 miles away and i'm not going to respond to mr christin's characterization is us of us as divisive bigots as he clearly googled santa cruz and thought that that would play here but i'm just very very disappointed in putting this out as data and i'm making little air quotes and then when i say data not the way we do research to make decisions about public policy thank you yeah hi this is gareth hillop on channel 28th immanuel panero the ceo of the local billing trades rep said he provided and promoted project labor agreements to the city which found objections by some staff departments relating to emergency or special technical projects he ripped non-union labor the representatives and non-union contractors for several minutes in his speech he finished with i quote i know a lot of council members are unappreciated but i guarantee you're passing the pl a also community workforce agreement will not go on unappreciated unquote i wonder if he was talking about political contribution appreciation it would be in the interest of transparency and important public knowing today whether any view or running for future office has accepted or will be refusing if offered any monetary appreciation by unions for your future campaigns should you be voting on this union favoritism agenda item it would appear in the construct of the agreements all labor union and non-union would have to go through the unions to find work on such projects while this skirts the absolute technical deprivation of people to find work who do not want to join a union in practice i suspect their rights to individually bargain with prospective employers without union interference would be compromised their rights then damaged it is not in the interest of fair competition or the public pocketbook to erode free trade with such agreements you have already made it possible to combine all aspects of a project to put out a complete bid and as far as i know are not required to take the lowest but lowest responsible bid there's nothing that proves union pl a's are a necessary factor in obtaining this lowest responsible bidder and no assurance pl a's in practice won't operate counter to that fiduciary duty of yours getting value for public monies what we have here is union reps wanting special government favors give us preferential work am i missing something the idea of hiring local just because someone is local is not free market logic but for practical reasons common construction workers are in fact local or within commuting distance many workers commute and do not live in santa cruz many that live in santa cruz commute and work elsewhere you would not apply this logic to them and should not hear of course non-union workers can also be local santa cruz should not be a member only country club for union workers bye can you hear me yes afternoon mayor comings and members of the santa cruz city council my name is joe lubis i am a local resident taxpayer i am very disappointed to learn that the city of santa cruz is considering a project labor agreement that will naturally drive up the cost of public works projects for taxpayers such agreements have indeed been proven disastrous locally at the santa cruz metro transit district metro base project six of eight bidders were unresponsive the project bid on september 12th and it was awarded three months later the life of project budget increased from 27.3 million to 29.4 million the completion date was two years past contracted completion date furthermore the salinas chamber of commerce case study at hartnell college in the monterey county market demonstrated that a pl a will result in fewer local jobs not more without project labor agreements according to this study 56 percent of the money spent stays in the local economy with pl a's only 10 percent does nearby the city with the city of watsonville with its airport freedom trunk sewer replacement project valued at 3.26 million came in at 2.9 million however this that bid was deemed unresponsive despite there being four other bidders the winning bid came in at 4.2 million which was 988 thousand or 30 percent above the estimate also there is the manana lane sanitary sewer project valued at 1.2 million it only had two bidders each were higher than that estimate the quote-unquote low bid was 1.4 million million dollars change orders have increased the product the price of the project to 1.9 million which itself is 50 percent higher than the original value on a larger scale uh with the on a larger sorry the uh the two minutes was up to the last poll okay yeah hello can you hello can you hear me yes okay hi this is uh paul burna one of the owners of monterey pence engineering uh appreciate the opportunity to speak today um i did send a letter uh to each of the council members i hope you had an opportunity to see it um i do want to comment that uh the contractor survey i believe an in-depth review of that survey you know we'll clear without some concerns and pitfalls of implementing a project labor agreement i do appreciate the outreach and the opportunity we were given to respond to the survey um our company does work for the city as anacrus um we have employees who live in the county um and someone said that employees do commute we have some that commute here to monterey to work in this area we have some that commute from you know they're back and forth so so when you talk about local construction workers um generally local means within 35 or 40 minutes of uh primary office so our employees do work in monterey sanacruz and san bedo counties i consider them all local because they all circle and alex the uh the various cities in that area so appreciate the opportunity to work um my letter speaks for itself so thank you very much thank you next caller hi this is niccole daring with associated builders and contractors northern california chapter we serve our members and apprentices in monterey and sanacruz and san benito counties we are heavily involved in our pre-apprenticeship programs with our community partners such as the salvation army and parole and probation and we would like to extend the same opportunities and trainings in sanacruz county uh some of the people that we've been able to change and transform lives include aileen getira the mother of six who went from homelessness to a career in construction she fell on hard times and was getting backed up and recently graduated from our construction leadership training program santas torrez another example he ran but the wrong crowd uh was in jail and now you know has changed his life and is getting a fresh start and our members are hiring these people and putting them to work and also putting them in our apprenticeship programs again serving your county for over 20 years under a project labor agreement these people would not be able to work on projects in their hometown and in your city so we would urge you to let your community let's help you build your workforce in your community and let your community workforce build your community let's not um you know pick winners and losers by different groups um labor i saw in your staff reports that you want to negotiate a pl a with the moderate county sanacruz building trades council there are other entities out there that also do project labor agreements and they are happy to be ones that are inclusive and and that incorporate the entire diverse workforce in the area and also help recruit future people into the into the um trade so we would like to work with you on solutions that are beneficial for everyone including all apprentices and all workers because under a pl a the local workforce would lose their money a painter for example on a 2000 hour project would lose roughly twenty five thousand dollars under benefit and that's not mutually beneficial for the worker so i would urge you to um work with all groups to recruit and advise against pl a thank you very much thank you mayor can you hear me yes good afternoon yeah good afternoon this is ron cheshire moderate sanacruz building construction trades council director of training education i've been a union representative for 30 years throughout the moderate bay area and i've been heavily involved in apprenticeship training and we would definitely like uh a time to sit down and present you with much needed information uh i've read through uh the reports and i'd have to say i'm slightly disappointed the uh legal analysis is invalid uh project labor agreements do not have to be project specific there are numerous counties and cities and public agencies which have blanket project labor agreements they're all valid they're all legal and such and uh so we would like to discuss that issue i have also been working in the sanacruz county area for over four years with the workforce development board we have a pre-apprenticeship program we've graduated many individuals that have moved on to construction careers both union and non-union okay if uh this virus wasn't uh plaguing us at this time we have received funds from the sp1 legislation over $570,000 and uh are on our way to implementing a better pre-apprenticeship program but again the virus has us down at this time uh because i was uh the ceo for the building trades council throughout the two county area i want you to know that last year before i retired i contacted the department of apprenticeship standards there were a total of 800 uh 383 apprentices in sanacruz county only 20 of them came from non-union programs 363 were from the joint apprenticeship programs which are union so again we would like to present you with the information so you can make a better decision thank you very much yeah they are coming to the city council this is keiki buyer from the sanacruz chamber of commerce i'll make my uh comments very very brief as we have another person that's going to speak to this issue specifically i want to want to thank rosemary uh menard and her staff for her due diligence in putting a report together and i also want to acknowledge the input from a number of contractors and home builders in the area who who were committed to a survey in attachment for in your uh in your packet uh i'm certainly kind of uh disappointed a lot of the information is being misconstrued by the labor community uh it was the labor community that came to the mayor back in january that asked this item to be placed on the council there was a very very vocal debate uh during that council meeting and it was asked for this city staff to come back to the further report uh point being in that report was a request by the council to include information from the community and from the labor community uh we proceeded to meet with the staff and provided as much input as we thought was appropriate and i think that it reflects in the particular package that you have before you and finally uh the attachment to the beacon beacon economics report specifically shows that in santa truce counties and in the in the central coast of the trough cry counties that there is a lack of skilled workers whether they're union or non-union what we're asking you to do is take a look at the merit-based employers the contractors that are in the county within the region and if you're going to go down the psa uh a pl a route you should include them in the discussions uh to simply put a psa that is labor intense and labor union orchestrated will shut out many many eligible and qualified construction companies from doing business with the city thank you so much for your time thank you the next person up to speed is just in light with the santa truce county business council who requested four minutes good afternoon everybody and thank you mary comings and the entire city council for allowing me this extra time i'm gonna jump right into it my name is justin white i'm the ceo of k and d landscaping i'm a second generation business owner uh past resident of the city of santa truce now in the county of santa truce i'm the california landscape contractor association chapter president i sit on the board of many nonprofits including the business council and santa truce county parks friends of santa truce county parks uh knd is currently the business of the year awarded by the popper valley chamber for our community beautification projects and i've been active advocate in our community for economic disadvantaged workers and for the everyday entrepreneur i've happened this pl a you're going to be excluding the 92 employees that work at knd landscaping from working on future city projects the last 30 years my mother and father kendall and don have worked tirelessly to create a strong relationship with the city so we can work on many projects we've we've completed hundreds of projects with the city and by passing this pl a you're going to be excluding knd from participating in future projects you're not only excluding knd but you're excluding all non-union companies from participating on future projects i don't think that that's going to improve the local opportunities for our residents and for our local employees of our companies to work for the city now i'm not against the union i think the union provides great resources for many trades but why exclude non-union contractors why would you make a pl a agreement that requires all companies to hire workers from a union hall you may not know this but landscaping is not a union recognized trade we actually do not have a union we fall into what's called the labor's union and basically it's general construction labor so whether we're putting in in or grading we're putting in irrigation valves no matter what it's the same general labor i certified irrigation tax that have studied for 20 to 30 years to become certified and to be the level that they're at today there's no construction labor that is going to be able to install material at the skilled level that they're able to install by passing this pl a you're excluding those people who have spent the last 20 to 30 years of their life dedicated to the landscape trade from working on your projects the dir improving wage requirements are great the staff at the city and the building planning departments are great what is in place right now is working very well i do not understand the reason for more red tape for more complication from a contractor standpoint if you think adding more red tape and more complication to the bidding process is going to reduce the cost that is completely wrong more red tape equals more cost not only that but you're excluding a large percentage of the employees and contractors that are able to bid on these projects when you have less competition your prices go up there's only two landscape companies that are union in this area which means instead of having seven to eight bids to the landscape trade you're only going to have one or two because not all of those companies are going to be bidding every job now i'm speaking very specifically to my company and to the landscape industry because that's what i know i know pl a because the city of watsonville recently passed a pl a that has impacted our business greatly with the city of watsonville and you can talk with the city folks in watsonville on how the pl a has worked for them has driven up costs of many construction projects and public works projects they have gone out to bid i don't understand why passing a pl a is in the best interest of our local residents and our local companies 80 percent of local companies are non-union that currently work for the city you're telling them that they are not qualified and they do not treat or pay their employees good enough to work for your city i please i challenge you to ask around your city hall and your city employees ask them about k&p and ask them about mpe companies who are no longer going to be able to work for that and no longer been going to be able to bid projects again thank you for the time i appreciate it my name is robert singleton um thank you mayor and council members and thank you staff for uh putting together support and for considering this item today um i would definitely encourage the council uh to move forward today with some kind of item or some kind of action um you know this has been a long time coming we first started discussing this item back in january as kp buyer mentioned and then action was put forward uh to try and get this back on the agenda in march it's now been uh four months and we've done extensive outreach in that time to uh our local contractors um both union and non-union and have incorporated them into part of this uh essentially the uh what the feedback has gotten from a lot of our contractors that this is a solution in search of a problem you know staff didn't put forward the proposal to move forward the pl a it was the union backed candidates who sit on city council who wanted to get this going i also really don't appreciate the the person who claimed that our survey that was sent out to contractors is somehow invalid because we actually took the survey the survey respondents the pool that we sorted from was all city contractors both past and present and those expressing interest in future city contracts so there are local contractors who are interested in doing local work um i also want to make sure that we are clear that we can realize a lot of the community benefits and a lot of the optimal outcomes that are the impetus for pursuing a pl a without a pl a through a community benefit strategy that is robust and i think staff is pursuing a strategy and it's uh giving you action your staff report to move forward with that in terms of general problems that our contractors have expressed with plas generally uh because we have such a limited local workforce uh both union and non-union um as stated in your staff report through beacon economics this would force invariably uh if you're going to only exclusively hire two union shops non-local workers coming in doing the work uh i'll just conclude my comments there and thank you a lot about the concerns that i appreciate you hearing this item and hope you move forward yeah next following on the line good afternoon mayor council members and city staff this is richard marcuson and i represent the western electrical contractors association the plumbing heating cooling contractors of california the greater bay chapter the american fire sprinkler association and the independent roofing contractors of california all contractor associations that sponsor apprenticeship programs and one of the comments and you've heard some excellent comments from the community today about the project labor agreement and the problems with it but one of the comments that struck me in particular were miss i believe it was mr cheshire who suggested that because the unilateral programs the the non-signatory the non-union apprenticeship programs are in the minority that it's okay under the project labor agreement to discriminate against them is is this the policy that the city of santa cruz wants to pursue a policy of discrimination against state-approved apprentices because they're not affiliated with the union this is the wrong direction to go we would certainly encourage you that if you do decide to pursue the project labor agreement that you include members of the business community that you include local contractors that you include sponsors of apprenticeship programs to make sure that you are truly developing an agreement that benefits the entire community not just a segment of the community that are associated with unions but the entire community and i just wanted to say that as a alumni of uc santa cruz i hope that my former hometown takes the right steps is of inclusive negotiations to do a project labor agreement or community workforce agreement that benefits everyone not just a segment of society thank you very much thank you can you hear me hello a mayor city council and staff my name is christin fleck here and i'm vice president of operations pathetic construction today i'm speaking on behalf of the santa cruz county chamber and our nearly 600 members and specifically on behalf of slayer construction a well-known local santa cruz construction company that has been doing business here since 1986 the slater family has lived in santa cruz for over four generations and they've been running their construction company for over 35 years one would be hard pressed to find another contractor that has been involved with more santa cruz iconic structures than slater construction from the santa cruz beach boardwalk to the flat iron building in downtown from the written house building which was the largest concrete pour in the history of santa cruz to uh shakespeare and a park slater construction is deeply embedded in the history of santa cruz furthermore after the loma prieta earthquake of 89 the slater construction was integral in rebuilding downtown along with a multitude of homes and businesses throughout the county we are a santa cruz company with santa cruz employees that contributes to a multitude of santa cruz nonprofits and other organizations other local organizations excuse me slater construction is against any form of project labor agreements mostly because it is unfair for labor union organizations to dictate how a reputable merit shop contractor should conduct their business i want to make it clear that we are not against unions not at all we are against labor unions dictating how we conduct our business in particular what i would like to address today are labor union's requirements placed upon merit shop contractors workforces within a pla for example most plas require that merit shop contractors use only 20 percent of their workforce and hire the remaining percent of the workforce from union halls slater construction would never agree to using only 20 percent of our workforce if one of the main objectives of this agreement is to employ local workers how would a stipulation such as this achieve that goal all of our santa cruz employees work on all of our santa cruz projects if we were to work under a pla we would be forced to hire from a union hall where employees can come from anywhere in state so long as they are recruited from that quote unquote local union hall furthermore space reputation is based on our leadership the people we hire and the culture that we have created over the years why would we or any other merit shop contractor agree to only using 20 percent of our workforce that would be similar to me asking city council to use only 20 percent of their staff and hire the remaining 80 percent of from pet work and agencies how efficiently would your organization run you might be hiring trained and qualified workers but they would be clueless as to how santa cruz city council runs its operations if you wouldn't agree to those terms why would you want us to in conclusion when it comes to some of the largest public works projects union companies will most likely get them anyway since they tend to be larger than merit shop contractors also all public work projects already have city staff oversight and prevailing wage in place therefore what problem are we trying to solve if large public works projects will mostly likely most likely be awarded to large union contractors and if you have prevailing wage and staff oversight in place why do we need this extra layer of a project labor agreement plas are not good for merit shop contractors they are not good for local taxpayers and they are not good for local employees in turn i implore city council to vote no on project labor agreements both now and forever thank you mayor staff and city council for three nine and one four uh it's your time to speak please unmute your phone again three nine and one four you you're unmuted you know i gave you a couple bullet points here that i've observed on staff's opinion regarding accomplishing city goals a much of the report deals with the city's existing local hiring policy in santa cruz local construction workforce it implies that too many local residents working in construction i'm not sure why this is relevant to this discussion i'd like to emphasize that working with local unions and their hiring halls will maximize the use of local labor more than it's already done under the local hiring policy union apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs like the workforce development board are vastly superior to the non-union programs regarding pre-apprenticeship programs they are non-union affiliated entities popping up calling themselves pre-apprenticeship programs to get grant funding this does little or nothing to actually get local people into the apprenticeship programs we should not enable them particularly not to detriment the high quality programs adopting the PLA partnering with the building trades council greatly improve the city's contracting pool and in turn will discourage unscrupulous contractors from bidding on city projects the city will not need a separate community benefit strategy strategy to adopt the PLA renon one four i'll say i'm a local electrical contractor in santa cruz i just want to express my concern about the PLA i am a non-union contractor usually i do a lot of public works um i do have like for example for apprentices that they work and live in santa cruz i decide to pass the PLA to build jobs because i will have to be pretty much forced to join the union and use so i will be able to use my own apprentices that is more company the local company the people that we live here spend our money here okay next call hi this is Amy with K&D landscaping so i am the commercial department leader here at K&D landscaping and if this PLA is passed K&D will not be allowed to bid or work on future projects in santa cruz we plead with you guys not to pass this PLA this will exclude us and all of our co-workers all of our people that live within this community from working within this community and beautifying it we just don't see you take this into consideration thank you for your time raise your hand once you've been on meeting you will have two minutes to speak yeah good afternoon mr mayor and council members my name is dick johnson i am the chairman of labor management cooperation committee covering most of california if hey we're just still in the process of building a 40 million dollar library on that 40 million dollar library just last week our organization filed 10 apprenticeship complaints with the state labor commissioner there are either no apprentices on thousand hours of work or unsupervised apprentices appeal a does not guarantee an apprentice for a program the san josef unified school district has published on their website under their labor compliance program violations in the last three years there's over 400 of them half of those are apprenticeship violations and the total amount is over two million dollars in assessed valuation assessed penalties to those contractors the other area i'd like to address is an on-time PLA the PLA is that i am familiar with such as uh santa cruz metro uh the slainest new high school uh as well as hayward or a year and a half or more over the time that it was uh scheduled to be completed if you're looking for apprenticeship i think what you're need in the city is a good outreach to your citizens and putting in an apprenticeship program for that city there is an apprenticeship program available to the citizens but uh there's no participants apprenticeship training coordinator we service earlier that um it's kind of disturbing to hear specifically talking about disadvantaged workers our apprenticeship program currently has a ratio of seven percent women in the industry or in our program and 35 percent Hispanic so we do serve as a disadvantaged workforce community also i had a question on on why will it exclude any non-union companies having a PLA mera chops are invited to bid on PLA's and nothing is preventing them from from doing so and also to the knd landscaping i've told them this before UA local 355 covers landscaping underground piping so give them a call so our apprenticeship program is in conjunction with the tri-county apprenticeship apprenticeship program we do have direct entry and i have used that avenue to bring in eight apprentices over the last three years it's a great asset for us and it works really well um also we do have apprentices ready available and willing to go to work so PLA would only benefit um those apprentices looking for jobs that are currently out of work due to various reasons um i urge the city council agenda item until after they hear what the building trades have to say next week and council for the time this afternoon good afternoon you're on the line all right thank you my name is shane white vp operations at knd landscaping and i just want you guys to really consider the benefit of what you guys are trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish here and i feel like the PLA is very against that ultimate goal of benefiting the community and the local contractors and really just urge you guys to think about this overall of how this will affect the local economy and keeping the money local the PLA is not going to do that so i just really hope you guys consider all the factors here and what we have right now is working well the city of Santa Cruz is great to work with and i just really hope you guys look at all the factors and appreciate your time thank you thank you the other members of the public would like to speak on this item who haven't already spoken now is the time to call in and please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand so that uh you can uh again if you haven't had a chance to comment on this item please press star nine on your phone and we will um you'll have two minutes to speak for our zero three six nine please unmute your phone and you'll have two minutes okay next speaker this is your phone number four two seven three please unmute your phone and you'll have two minutes and again if there any other members of the public who'd like to speak on this item please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and when you're prompted to be unmuted please do so and you'll be given two minutes again for last four days just have your phone in or four times if you'd like to speak on this item now's the time please press star nine on your phone we'll give another minute and if there's no other members of the public who'd like to speak on this and we'll bring it back to Council for Action and Deliberation. Because on this item, I'll bring it back to Council. But part of the reason why we're having discussions and we're wanting to have discussions with many members of the communities to determine what would be appropriate for the city of Santa Cruz. And in many communities where a project labor and the community work force has been important, there are thresholds that determine when those agreements kick in. So I don't think it's true to say that we would be excluding all non-union companies for being able to bid on the projects, is that it would kick in. And so, I want to put out there that that is not true and that's why we're trying to have conversations with all members of the community. And at the current important time, we haven't had, we haven't been able to have these discussions with the, just what we did in its own in the year, receive a letter that determines and how it helps with them meeting the building of the new facility on time. And I just want to make sure that everyone is aware that there is experience within the county where a project labor has been beneficial for more time to meet with the unions can actually help first to address some of the concerns we're getting from the community and figure out what can be worked best and try to find a way in this situation. So I'll be helpful. Actually, I didn't have one other question because it states that these provincial provisions are being implemented as routine policy contracting in meeting local hire goals or utilizing apprentices on city funding construction jobs is not readily available. And so that's one thing that I think it's really critical because if we're talking about not going in this direction, we currently don't have any accountability mechanisms put into place on this local hire and apprenticeship provision that is currently in place. So I think it's important that having something that we can use to understand whether or not are we hiring locally? Are we hiring apprentices? And I think that this is a mechanism that could help with that. And so some of the buyers, and then we have Mappy's golden watch on the ground. Thank you, Mayor. Well, if anything, I'm looking forward to having continued this item. There are so many things raised. And I think by your meeting along with staff, it's very important that staff and the trade union and council members all meet together because there were so many things raised that I think can get, you've just mentioned a couple, Mayor, that will be sorted out and understood by all parties involved. So it seems, as I think it was the first speaker said, we've only got, I don't know, half the ingredients for a loaf of bread instead of all. So again, I would like to move that this item be continued. I believe your meeting is the 18th, be at the, if it seems appropriate by the staff, I think the other way in on this, to the next council meeting, which is the second meeting in August, which I believe is a 25th, and I'm not sure. Anyway, I so move. And I just also like to ask and make up the motion that maybe we could have some flexibility on when it would come back so that, it could potentially come back as early as the first meeting and well, no later than the first meeting in September, so that there's some flexibility if we need to do more outreach. Absolutely, yes. To be scheduled, you know. First Matthews, and then. Really not in favor of postponing this. You know, this came to us early this year with a very strong push. It was postponed for more information and I think we've gotten that. Most of the concerns that have been raised about the details of PLAs are would be discussed and resolved in the number two section of the staff recommendation, which is to pursue a PLA enabling strategy. And so that remains work to be done. I think many of the speakers said functionally, it's the large projects that are gonna be major union projects anyway. And so there is written into this, the recommendation for number two pursuing the strategy. There is a threshold already suggested. I think, Mayor, you mentioned that in your comments. Let's really focus on the bigger projects. So I would actually favor a motion putting the staff recommendation up to a vote with a couple of suggestions, couple of additional suggestions that would give a sense of direction for the conversations to take place. And so I guess we have a motion and a second on the floor. My substitute motion would be to approve the recommendations of staff in next steps one, two, and three with additions that is confirming the goals, the legal analysis, et cetera, the opportunities in number one, and the workforce development, the direction to pursue a broad workforce development strategy as suggested in number three. In number two, I would suggest, I would include in my motion increasing the threshold to $6 million, including an additional item that the decision to enter direction, direction for developing a framework with the buildings and construction trades, the decision to enter into a project specific PLA as the preferred strategy would require approval by the city council at the time of project approval. That would be in addition in the direction of the framework. Also, I would like to see included in the general direction for a framework that in order to develop an adequate number of competent workers in the construction industry, contractors and employers shall employ apprentices from any California state approved apprenticeship program serving Santa Cruz County in their respective trades. So those are just a few small additions to that item number two, but I would like to move this forward basically as suggested in staff reports with those two additions. The substantive discussion of what would be in a PLA all remains to be done. Seconded Council Member Myers, it would capture that language. I think I did. Minus, oh, thank you, Cynthia. I don't have a staff report in front of me, so I was going by what she was saying, but I think I pretty much captured it. Do you want me to share my screen? It's pretty clunky. So sorry about that. Can I just ask a clarifying question point of order? Point of order. We will be voting on whether or not to vote on the substitute motion, right? To accept the substitute motion for consideration and not the substance of it. That's right. Thank you. Okay, so I just want to acknowledge them before we move on to voting. What is Brown? What Council Member Matthew said, and I was prepared to second that as well, and because I was getting reached out to by group starting in January, I feel like people have had sufficient time to weigh in on this, and it's August, and I'd like to move along, and my husband and I are both union members and I have a lot of respect for what unions do to protect workers, but that being said, according to the staff report, we have a shortage of skilled labor in our workforce, and so we don't have enough workers union or non-union. I love the idea of working to build our local workforce capacity, and from my perspective, it would be a deterrent to our local workforce if we had a blanket PLA even. I mean, I'm okay with the, what was it, the threshold I think in the staff report was 5 million, and I'm okay with the 6 million as well, but I think it would prohibit some companies that have been doing business with the city for years from bidding on future projects, and this might have some unintended consequences in costing the taxpayers more in projects when we don't have the luxury of having extra money right now, and so I think working with union and non-union, we collaborate with the schools to ensure we get people into the trades. I support awarding contracts to companies that pay a living wage. Our responses provide local jobs, offer apprenticeship programs, and can compete and get the jobs done under budget and on time, and I think it's just really, we really need to think hard, especially given the information we got this morning about the budget in the next few years, about if we're gonna want as many bids as possible moving forward, and so I think we should move on with what's on the table before us today and vote on that. What can Brown and the Vice Mayor, might or shouldn't? Okay, thank you, Mayor. I just had a few comments and then I offered if Rosemary wants to add, but really looking at the agenda report, I just really appreciate how it's really based on results, really looking at the themes of interest and the goals and priorities around kind of the overall sentiment of the council and doing so really trying to balance what would work for us, reviewing the agenda report, really looking at how are we leveraging the opportunities for community benefits, stepping back and thinking about the long-term view, really thinking about how, one of the questions that spoke to me was, is there an opportunity, the question isn't, is there an opportunity to improve the current situation with respect to availability of the local workforce that can participate in this work? It is what steps can the city take to, Councilor Golder said that there's so much potential to really build up a reason to move forward in a way that's inclusive of our resources here, I think really is about leveraging benefit with this. Just my takeaway is, given how complex this can be, she liked to add some of the discussion or the community input. Just would like to make one additional comment here. I think that Council Member Watkins raises the question that's been a focus for me anyway, as I've worked on this and that is what are the results we're really trying to achieve. And I guess that I would give you a concrete example of that in an action that you took earlier in approving the Meet a Replacement Program. There is a concrete example of how we have the ability to make a change in the way we've done business historically and to improve both the infrastructure and the situation for currently underemployed or unemployed workers. And I think that's really what the opportunity is to produce results. I have no questions or problems of working with a whole variety of people to achieve that. And I think there are tremendous partnership opportunities with the various players who've weighed in here today. And that's personally, from my perspective, how I'd like to see us be moving forward is to figure out how to make those partnerships work and to engage with everybody we can in whatever ways we can to achieve the results that we all want. Yeah, I'm not gonna support a consideration of this substitute motion. I'm pretty dismayed that about the way this conversation is unfolding. I'm dismayed that my colleagues are taking the information they're receiving from the business community as fact and denying the input of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, and I'm sorry, the Building and Construction Traits Council who have been trying to get a seat at the table to have this conversation since January. Those conversations have been postponed. I believe that they need to be had before making decisions. Councilmember Matthew suggested all of the, you know, PLA related matters would be for an ordinance or a Project Labor Agreement would be to be determined. And then right after that made a motion to raise the minimum threshold. So that is not leaving the door open for a conversation with the Building Traits next Tuesday. That is bringing them a determined decision and saying here, this is what we're gonna do. And so I'm just not, I'm not comfortable with that. I'm not comfortable with the findings. Some of them I am. I'm not even necessarily opposed to moving in the direction discussed in the agenda report. And I do think there are, you know, some real, you know, possibilities for moving forward in those directions. They are not mutually exclusive from considering Project Labor Agreement without the kind of strategy. So I can't support the motion. I wish that we could have had this conversation after our meeting with the Santa Cruz Monterey Building and Construction Traits Council. And we'll see where it goes. Thanks. Fires, and then I'm actually gonna pause. Rosemary, you have a question for you, Director Menard. My understanding was that the construction building and trade council had been met with staff. Is that, I'm just trying to kind of piece together. I'm hearing lots of different things. I understand that they were part of the staff discussion and the staff sort of engagement with them as it was directed by council back in January 2020. Is that correct? I believe that's what was put in your report or in your presentation. I just want to confirm that real quick. I want to, I mentioned earlier that the Public Works Director, Mark Edel, and I met with Manny Pinero at the end of February. And then obviously immediately after that or pretty close on after that, the COVID situation resulted in a shutdown and the council made a decision in April to postpone the item a little bit. And then we had a further conversation in the timeframe of the early June meeting regarding whether or not this is coming back or to be further postponed and the council's direction then was for it to come back. So I guess what I would say is we did have an initial meeting. We did not get into the sort of negotiation process at that time. Specifically at the June meeting, we were asked to come back with an analysis of the bigger picture and with some recommendations for the council to consider. And among that was the idea that we could come back with a recommendation related to public labor agreement, but that the council specifically said and that was to come back later, assuming that they made, that you all made direction at this meeting to tell us to go forward and negotiate something. So thank you. Framework. Yeah, that was my recollection. And I'm just trying to understand mayor and council member Brown. So the trade, I'm just trying to understand comments around not being able to meet. I'm just trying to understand I don't know if that's a COVID relate. We're now in August and then back in June, we knew that this was moving forward. So I'm just trying to understand June, July, August, just trying to understand the context of what's happening here. Just trying to evaluate your request and I'm just trying to get more additional or maybe additional comments in terms of maybe to the extent to why the meetings weren't apparently weren't done. I'm assuming by you guys with a council, with a building trade council. I can speak to that. Remember correctly, I think this came before the last meeting in January. Standing on. It was the first meeting. Yeah, it's on the staffing board. Yeah. Standing on, we're able to meet with staff and we discussed a way to move forward inclusive of the different people who are engaged in the conversations. We at that meeting also agreed with staff around really meaning something that's gonna help develop a workforce in our community. And at that time, we had decided that we were gonna meet staff, council members, the manager with the building and construction trades and people from labor. Sandy began reaching out to those folks and we sent out a poll to see when people were able to meet and the earliest date that we were able to meet initially was August 17th and then it was August 18th because of conflicts. So next Tuesday is the earliest that we were able to meet which is why, you know, unfortunately my agenda review would have asked to not put this on the agenda at this time and to delay it so that we could have that opportunity with them. They came on the agenda and because it's here it was worth having a conversation we've been receiving input from the public but, you know, as has been mentioned before, you know, we're trying to have an inclusive project that we're asking for at this time is to revisit this after we've had the chance to have that conversation with the unions because if we had that conversation before today, I think we'd be in a position to move this forward but we haven't had that conversation and what we've seen in the staff report is a lot of outreach with businesses and contractors but we don't really have, you know, what is the position on unions because, you know, I think our objective is to try to figure out what's gonna work best for the community as a whole and without being able to have a conversation with the unions and labor before we move forward. I think that's a problem because we've heard from the non-union community but we haven't heard from the unions. Can I just add a really brief context? Mayor, in terms of a direct response to the why the delay as we, so we had the conversation with staff and everybody seemed amenable to moving forward with setting up a meeting. The doodle poll that we got was for weeks that it was three weeks out. So, you know, for a variety of reasons, people's schedules, I'm not sure. It just took that long to get the meeting scheduled. There are a lot of things we're on vacation during July. So, bringing city staff together along with council members and the building to take care of the people who've been taking that off. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I seconded the motion. First of all, I just wanna thank the staff and director Menard. I know that you've been working hard on this. I also wanna thank all the business owners and union representatives who are watching us this afternoon and participating in this discussion. I especially am glad that we were able to have both the speaking economic work completed. And I think I'm gonna echo much of what you've heard, which is, you know, we need to design a program that's gonna work for our local workforce. And I think that we have provided a pathway to continue to explore what PLA may look like for the city of Santa Cruz. But I do share the interest in the, you know, the workforce development piece in this. I think that, I mean, I have family members that work in the industry, in the construction industry. It's known throughout the industry that Santa Cruz, you know, the workforce is not being developed that's gonna replace folks. And we need to support our local companies to be able to have the opportunity to do that. And so I think that the workforce and community benefit approach is of great interest to me. I think there's a pathway included in this motion where the PLA can be further explored. But I do believe that there's an effort made to basically try to move this along. I remember a very expensive conversation in June and early June on our priorities where, you know, there was, you know, very clear direction and, you know, to bring this back in August. And so I feel like our staff has done their due diligence. I think, I know when the item was brought to the council back in January, it seemed very clear there had been quite a lot of conversations with labor and the unions back then. So I'm supportive of the motion. I think this, you know, I'm very interested in just moving ahead with the benefits that we can get out of this program and really the focus on our local workforce, which I think is very important. And so those are my comments. I will be, yeah, I'm supportive of the motion, obviously, since I seconded it. Thank you. I need to use that, I don't know what I'll have you. But just to give you my opportunity to instruct, I'd like to, we've been sitting now for, I think what's going on, almost two hours, two hours, so three hours. So while we take a quick five minute break and come right back, we're going to finish with the item. The video is on so you can see the video. That way we know that you're back. We can go ahead and get started. And I think we're just waiting on our team. We're going to go on deck, speed, Council Member Matthews, Council Member Byers, Council Member Brown, and then Council Member Golder. I'm done. Okay. Council Member Byers. I'm sort of, I'm glad we had that break because it's the way it can help a lot because I am just, it wouldn't be continued. When Council Member Politely are asking that it be continued, there is no timeline. Sometimes you can't continue on the agenda item. You've got some grant waiting or for some reason there's a deadline. But this, and even Council Member Byers just mentioned, bring it back in August. It can be brought, it can be brought back in August. And the fact that the Mayor was not an agenda review, because I've been a lot of gender reviews and did, ran many of them. And the Mayor controlled the agenda in it. It's on the agenda. Why would he get there without the Mayor reviewing the agenda and said, good idea? And I think everything showed in good faith that the Council, the staff members, I guess three, two Council Members and the Trade Union to a doodle, once you don't believe them, someone bring out the doodle and show that they tried, tried to get it as soon as possible. And so it's August 18th. It could have been August 14th. Life would have been great. It isn't, it's not until the 18th. And somebody's telling me what is wrong with continuing this agenda item and there's no deadline. There's no reason not to, at least it's been presented, that they wouldn't continue it for two weeks, this month. I just, I guess I've just never had that happen and occurred not because I'm one of the people made the motion. Just any Council Member, no matter majority and minority wants to continue something. And there's no reason not to. I just, somebody clue me in. I'm missing something. Yeah, I think Council Member Byers pretty much summed up my, I will say that I'll be moving amendments to the main motion when it looks like that's where we're gonna go, but I will be offering amendments. Council Member Byers, point. I think there's been, just in my short time on Council, times when I would have rather had more time to research something, but when it's on the agenda, I get on Thursday, I get some days to have people reach out to me or I can reach out to people and get that information. And so I feel like that's what's been on the agendas and that are gonna be coming on the agendas. I feel like that is the urgency that we can't keep having these long, long, long meetings. And there is so many things that when we, when we talked about what our priorities were, that we haven't even addressed yet this year. And so with that, I think there's a little bit of a sense of urgency and since staff did take the time and the labor unions could have reached out to any of us at any point since January. It wasn't like it had, like they had to wait for it to get on the agenda. Like I said, I was being reached out to by business owners and contractors and both union and non-union people that I know in the community since January. And so for that, I feel like I'm prepared to make an educated decision, which we all vote. And then I just wanted, yeah, I guess that's pretty much it. I, yeah, that's all I was saying. The other thing was the process. So what's the process now? That's why I'm a little confused. So are we gonna vote on Councilman's motion to postpone and then. And under your leading guidelines, when there's a substitute motion council first on whether to accept the substitute motion. And if it's accepted, then the council will vote on the substitute motion and the original motion will essentially wither and die on the line. Thank you for clarifying that from. Yeah, thank you for the comments. I just want to clarify, and I'm just trying to look up a few things here as we're doing this. I was at a gender review. I was informed right before the meeting that the mayor was not going to attend. I did not have time to call the mayor to check in with him. So I just want to be clear. I am not the person who put this on the agenda or did I have any control about why it stayed there or didn't stay on the agenda. So I was asked literally, I was informed about 15 minutes before the meeting started, the mayor wasn't able to attend. So I was responding to a list that continues to always be developed and is iterative as we work through various parts of the agenda. And I guess what I'm trying to understand here is a little bit about past history in terms of when this was supposed to be brought back. I remember a very long discussion on the night and there was very clear intent that this move forward as quickly as possible. And so I think that our staff was responding to that and I think that the work that was done is satisfactory. I don't know, we've had a lot of people taking time out of their day to be part of the meeting today. A lot of businesses are on the phone with us. I'm not quite sure how two weeks is going to make a big difference. And I think I understand the meeting is next week but there could have been a meeting on Friday. If this was what was needed. So I struggle with the conveyance that somehow we're forcing this down our colleague's growth as we're just trying to process a request that has been on the books since last January and we're trying to respond to a lot of different items that I agree, I think we need to move through and we have a lot of priorities that we're not getting to. So I want to clarify a few of the comments made by my colleague and I'll defer to the next speaker, to the next council member in terms of other comments. Okay, if I could just respond. I do want to bring forward a few things that I think are being overlooked, one of which is that when COVID hit, so that we wouldn't have shorter meetings so that we weren't hurting staff. So we were really trying to focus on the pandemic response and why this has taken as long as it has. And we were trying to not give direction to staff to work on these types of items that were not a priority at the time. It came back to us at the beginning of July. And again, I think the staff probably would have been done in terms of outreach. The reason why this meeting is important because it is that missing piece of outreach on us. We reached out to those outreach centers to the chamber. There was outreach center to the contractors and they've had an opportunity to weigh in. And we haven't, and we tried to get an opportunity to speak with building and construction trades sooner. And we weren't able to get that as soon as we could. And this is something that came out of meetings that Councilmember Brown and I had with staff saying that we want to do the rest of the community. And we really think we can play forward, but we want to have an opportunity to sit down with the unions as well, with staff, so we can all be in the same conversation so that we can all, you know, please tell us a little bit and hear from staff and hear the concerns. We can cheer with, we can work with the unions and try to work something out that would be, you know, something that we can bring forward and try to come into consensus on. And we have, and we, we tried to get that meeting to happen sooner. And, you know, people's schedules wouldn't allow for it, but as soon as, as soon as we really get it, it's auto-taping. And so, you know, I think what we're trying to do is really ensure the one piece that's missing is the work ethic change. It might have, there might be other recommendations that would come, but it would ensure that everyone had an opportunity to participate in this process based on, you know, priorities, why does the income come quicker? I'm going to move the discussion. I would just withdraw all my motion and I know I'm going to disappoint some people on that, but I don't want fellow council members to feel that they have been blindsided. I agree this is not urgent. My position is not going to change substantially into two weeks or four weeks. So no secrets there. I will say when this was first delivered to the city council earlier this year, it was a very heavy handed, delivered fully hatched item. And that was not appreciated. There was no effort to reach out to the broader community that time. And that's why direction was given when it came back to us. To stop, reach out to the broader, learn about our local labor force, workforce, learn about the options, talk to people before running forward a finished product. So for those who feel that this is being, there has not been adequate discussion, let me say that was the framework in which this was first presented. So I am willing to withdraw my motion in the interest of giving time for those who want another short bit of time to engage with labor, fine. You know, other council members can remake the motion and they may very well be disappointed with me. I have tried as some people know over the years to be accommodating and allow for discussion. We all know this is not going to, there is no calendar deadline facing us on this. But let's be honest, those who want discussion now with labor, fine, we will all hear that. We had a very strong case made earlier in the year without consulting with the broader community at all. Let's hear the full story. Let's hear what it means for our local workforce. Let's learn what it means in terms of the realities of doing project city projects. And then it will come back and then we'll decide. So with that, I'm going to withdraw my motion. I can't hear you. I was saying that in this meeting with the units before we make our final decision, I think it would be beneficial for the community just for providing. One second. I would just ask that those who's wishes have been accommodated in this move would extend equal openness as we go through the process. And then Matthews. Thank you. And yeah, Council Member Matthews, I appreciate your willingness to do this. I want to say that having not been one of the council members who originally brought this to our agenda, I too have since then been very interested in trying to have more of a conversation about this and not have it be one sided and not have it entirely be two minutes of the, you know, in public comment to us because I don't think that's the way that we're going to get to some kind of end recommendation that we can all feel good about. We may never get there, but we haven't even tried that yet. And so I appreciate your willingness to hold off to at least take this next step. And I certainly, you know, I will not forget that you've given us some additional time to have that conversation, but I just want to be clear that my intention was never to, you know, bring something fully formed and have it be, you know, imposed upon the city and all of its employers without discussion, my goal. And I appreciate your recognition of our desire for more conversation. Welcome to the audience. I think the most of was to table this at this meeting and to reschedule it. I first said the second meeting in August and the mayor asked if I'd make that more flexible. So I was just asking to delay it for two weeks. Either way, it was very simple motion, just that we postpone this for two weeks. It's all set. Mayor Cummings, specifically it was the motion that would be voted on is to postpone it to come back either the August 25th or the September 8th council meeting. Yeah, that's what it ended up. Just because in terms of agenda reports, that's not necessarily needs to have a strict timeline associated with that. I accept that suggestion. That'd be flexible in the timeline. But yes, the 25th, I realize now, now that I'm getting the agenda from Thursday night that there's a very little turnaround time from one meeting to the next meeting. If you want to ensure that we do, that this doesn't get underneath the flexibility. I appreciate some of the comments, but again, I don't understand the urgency in this. Don't understand why we're pushing this. I recall a meeting, the meeting in January and officially going to be a study to understand how PLAs could potentially be beneficial or also if there was downside, actually there was a motion made to actually begin an ordinance that night. So to say that this isn't been pushed, it has been pushed. I'm hearing sort of both kinds of comments right now, which is there's no rush to this, but I'm also hearing, well, it needs to come back to the second meeting in August or the first meeting in September, which to me is being pushed. So I'm trying to understand. I feel like, yeah, I'm just trying to understand because I don't feel like there's, I don't feel like the intent is clear because I think that two things are being said. We don't want to vote today on this because we have additional work to do, but as soon as we do that work, we're going to want to get this right back on the agenda and get a vote. There's a lot of people who took a lot of time to come here today. A lot of our local employers, a lot of our local family-owned businesses are on the phone listening to us right now. And we've been at this for over two hours. Now we're going to postpone it because it's not really urgent, but we're going to make sure it comes back in two to three weeks. So I'm frustrated because we're taking people's time and I don't know what my vote will be in a few minutes here, but it's frustrating. And I don't think the, it's a very frustrating conversation. So I would like to request it possible if I could attend your meeting with the building and trade union folks, if that would be acceptable to you. Because I think that might be beneficial to have a few more, another seat at the table. So I don't know when the meeting is scheduled for and I don't want to mess with schedule. So I'm trying to be exact as appropriate. So thank you. This is becoming, when it is because of the fact that we agreed to have a meeting on August 18th. So the frustration is shared. We discussed having a meeting with the building trade for bringing this forward when I had my meeting with the city manager the other day and wasn't really sure the best thing to do in terms of just deleting it from the agenda or there'd be some discussion. But I think that this discussion has been helpful in understanding, I do think that we want to not continue kicking this down the road because we've probably gotten more work done if it hasn't been for COVID. But given the position that we're more than happy, I think that we're going to be sure that we came to the meeting with us. And I'm hoping we can get through this so it's not continuing to just come back. And everybody's frustration. There's nothing I disdain more than meeting for meeting's sake. And like many of us, I have a full-time job and this is a second part-time job. And I don't have the luxury of being on that agenda review committee. And so when I get my agenda Thursday night and I look at it, sometimes I up to one in the morning and then Friday night and Saturday all day and Monday and Monday. And so I think it's kind of up to us to do our due diligence and it's up to reach out to people but we think our stakeholders in these decisions that we're gonna be making. And I also don't wanna like upset anybody to the point where we're working together. So if we need another couple of weeks, fine. But I, and so I'm not gonna walk that, but I would prefer when some things on the agenda that we address that issue after meeting or remove it from the agenda as soon as you realize that there's some mistake. I don't know, Mayor, if you had the power when you did see it that you could have removed it Friday, you know, if that was possibility, like it just, I felt like now we've wasted all of our time and the time of everybody else who's on this call and all of the people that came in to listen and find out what the decision is. And yet it's frustrating. And my opinion in general, this is the meaning that we've said a little bit. Yeah, like it's nice that you and Council Member Myers and Brown get to meet with labor, like in a, in a, in a group, but like the rest of us are prohibited from meeting in that group because of the- No, no. I like it brown act, right? No, no. We can meet? Yeah. If I could. We can't be in that same meeting, but any of us could meet with labor representatives on our own. Right, and they could have reached out to us. Yeah. Since Thursday. If anyone would have reached out to me, I would have met with them between Thursday and today. That's a bit too, because I think that, again, I think, I think the issue here isn't about process because what staff was doing was we were following direction just to bring it back on the state. Yes. And I think, unfortunately, what happened with gender review was, I actually missed the gender review too, I happened to be off that day. And so there was a misunderstanding there, but there's no deliberate attempt to try to push something in a particular date or anything like that. That was the date it was set by Council. That's what the staff was working towards. If it had been a different date, it would have been a different date. And then with respect to the meeting with the unions, again, I wasn't involved in it directly, but I understand the staff was, there were then the oppressor meeting with about a different topic. And so they weren't correlating the meeting with this action item. And so I think that's why there was that disconnect. But again, it wasn't any deliberate attempt to try to subvert the process or make the process, somehow force the issue at all. I just want to be clear about that. So I know there's, there's a difference of the things on the council, but as far as the staff was concerned, we were just simply trying to bring it forward, do the work that the council asked, bring it in a timely fashion. And if that communication had happened ahead of time and the request would have made to delay it a few weeks, I don't think we would have had any problem with that at all. Just that the way that we had worked out, it just happened to work out this way. I think it's just unfortunate events, nothing deliberate on the part of anyone. I'll come over to virus. I'm okay. Thank you. Well, I want to thank Cynthia, council member. It's hard to describe because that's a hard thing to do. And you have a lot of great colleagues here who I think, you don't know what the vote would be, but you certainly have a lot of support. And I appreciate it. And the second thing I appreciate is I knew nothing about the history. I knew nothing about a meeting in January where it sounded just from the words you used here kind of shoved down your throat or something to that effect. I did watch some meetings way back in January, February, but I didn't see this one. So I didn't have any background of how this came about. I just thought it, because you had a good staff direction. I know the new rule is staff direction to work on something that's going over eight hours. So anyway, I thank you very much for telling me all about that kind of helps with the big picture. And thank you, council member Murd. I was going to, for stepping up, I was going to almost make a motion that a third council member attend the meeting should this happen. So I think you just stepped up together. That was very much on my mind to have a third person. I think it's very appropriate given all of this discussion. This is definitely a learning opportunity, hopefully. And I think if we could have gone back, it sounds like maybe we would have been able to do this differently and save some time. I will just say that I appreciate council member Meyers wanting to join the meeting. I just, my hope is we're thinking about the bigger picture, the longer vision, recognizing where we are coming from and using the best information with community input and data to get the results that we want to see for our community. And so as you move forward with your discussions, having that in mind. And then in general, in terms of just sort of a agenda, agendizing, maybe Tony, you could work with the mayor or there is discretion of the mayor to pull items. So as you have potential for this to occur again, maybe there's a learning opportunity around, whether or not there was a window of time where this could have actually not, maybe not to the agenda given the concerns. But I don't think we need to belabor the point at this moment. I know we've had a long discussion. So I'm happy to go ahead and if you're ready, we can go ahead and take the vote. Very quick. Yeah, I really appreciate the conversation and definitely a learning opportunity for how to move forward. I didn't mean to suggest by saying that it was very surprising to me that this came on the agenda prior to a conversation with the building trade to suggest that there was some intentional undermining of the process. So that was not my, that's not my feeling. That was not my intention. And most importantly, Vice Mayor Meyers, the meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, the 19th, 18th, sorry, Tuesday the 18th, women's suffrage day at 8.30 a.m. And we can send you the Zoom. And thank you for offering to participate. I just want to be clear that what's coming back to us will be this same staff report, this same item. It's not going to be a whole new fully cooked or something or other. We are postponing this item as it was presented to us today and we'll deal with it whenever. Is there agreement? Is that what the intention is? I think that's the intention, but I think there's also the opportunity to allow the building trades to weigh in. So I don't know. Yeah, yeah, comment, but comment on this agenda. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I wanted to make that similar clarification. I will share that I received a lot of communication since Friday through today that despite repeated attempts to also try to get meetings, that those meetings with some of the local business folks were not honored either. So, and I know specifically there's been attempts, they are coming to try to have meetings with you. And so, several people mentioned that there was not even a response. So, I'm very concerned that we're gonna come back with yet another iteration of this to Council Member Matthews' concern. And if we're going to be truly continuing to develop this with our community, then let's make sure we develop with all of our community. Some commitment that is necessary. We do those communications as well. I think it's important. I think this has been kind of a misstep. And I just wanna make sure that our local businesses are one of the most important things we should be considering right now as we figure out how to recover from COVID, the next labor force for Santa Cruz. And so we need to be very careful and very open to hearing from our local businesses. They're suffering, they're part of the solution for how to move ahead. So, I would appreciate to make sure that we extend those invitations as needed. And that if we need time and we need to take the time, we keep working on this until we get it right. So, that's my request. And thank you. Can you this item to note later than the September 8th council meeting? Understand it may get postponed. Understanding it may get postponed. I'm gonna vote no on this. And I have an additional motion to make before we close off this item. Thank you. And Mayor Cummings. Matthews, Golder, Watkins, Byers and they're coming voting in favor by Mayor Myers-Thompson wants to make it. Yeah, I'd like to make a motion that we request the mayor also to meet with the construction industry during this time as appropriate and with the additional council members as appropriate. Local construction industry. I'll just say that I'm more than happy to meet them and I can do that. So, I mean, if you want the company to go on then it's fine but I'm more than happy to meet with local construction companies. I think that it's direction to do that. If there are emails I wanna follow up, I'm happy to reach out to those folks who I wanna make sure that we're gonna have a representative in my lack of interest. I really want to just make the- City of this motion, I would be happy to meet with anybody who wants to meet with me in terms of contractor employers who are non-union. I have not received not one message requesting to talk with me. The only messages I've received are the bundled ones that we get that go to all council members opposing project labor agreements. So I'm happy to talk with anybody. I agree with Mayor Cummings that it would be a little unwieldy for us to all go reach out. But if anybody out there who's listening wants to communicate, I'm happy to take it. I'll withdraw my motion and I'll work with local businesses to see who we can pull together. Thank you. Council member- She's offering a potential alternative which would be that you could say that for the record but if the motion's withdrawn and there's agreement then I think that'd be fine. Okay, council member Rebs. And at this point it's simply a comment but I appreciate the effort to reach out to a broader spectrum of stakeholders and that might also include local organizations involved in workforce development. City Attorney, the attendee was and when we're opening up for public comment please go sign on your phone and you'll be given two minutes to talk to me. Yes, thank you Mayor Cummings, members of the City Council. The sidewalk vendors in the City of Santa Cruz and in the last summer and again this summer I'm sure council members have received communications from members of the public and in particular downtown and beach area merchants concerned about sidewalk vending activities. We had a recent incident down on Beach Street involving essentially an argument over which vendor could set up in a particular location. There's also been an altercation with a local merchant and a vendor down there. Ordnance is coming before you because of a change in state law that occurred back in the Brown administration. It was enacted in September of 2018 and went into effect on January of 2019 and I guess where I would start is that under our current ordinance language the City is very seriously constrains the types of sidewalk vending activities that are allowed in the City. And what the state law did is it basically undermined the City's ability to regulate sidewalk vending in a myriad of ways that I'll go into. The ordinance that's in your agenda packet is lengthy and complicated and I'm not gonna go into each chapter but that is the product of the fact that as the municipal code evolves the activities that would constitute sidewalk vending were incorporated in different areas of the municipal code. Chapter 522 regulates mobile vendors under the current code but it doesn't distinguish really between mobile vendors that operate in a motor vehicle and those that operate in a mobile push cart or other type of device that can be set up on a City sidewalk as opposed to in the street. Chapter 5.81 deals with vending and display devices on City property and it largely restricts or prohibits commercial vending in the downtown area and in areas along West Cliff Drive and B Street. And then Chapter 1310 seriously restricts the ability to set up vending activities in City beaches and parks. Its own terms, SB 946 applies to charter cities and essentially prohibits the local regulation of sidewalk vendors except in accordance with government code sections 51038 and 51039. It also states that existing ordinances that conflict with the state statute are valid only so long as they substantially comply with SB 946. So the current restrictions on sidewalk vending activities have not been enforced since January of 2019 because the state law now prohibits the city from regulating sidewalk vending activities in the way that our current ordinance, our current municipal code does. For instance, under SB 946, the city cannot require the sidewalk vendor to only operate within specific parts of the public right of way except when the restriction is directly related to objective health safety or welfare concerns. We also cannot prohibit sidewalk vendors from operating in a city park or on the beach unless the city already has an agreement with a third party vendor for exclusive concessions inside the park. SB 946 does enable the city to adopt objective or reasonable time, place and manner restrictions inside a park if the restrictions are directly related to objective health safety or welfare concerns or are necessary to ensure the public's use and enjoyment of the park or are necessary to prevent an undue concentration of commercial activity that unreasonably interferes with the character of the park. City cannot require a vendor to obtain the approval of a non-governmental entity before selling food or merchandise. The city can require a vendor that sells food items to obtain a permit from the county health department, however. To operate only in designated neighborhoods except when the restriction is directly related to objective health safety or welfare concerns. In residential areas, the statute allows the city to prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors from operating in residential zones such as lemonade stands. But it cannot prohibit roaming sidewalk vendors such as push carts. The city cannot restrict the overall number of sidewalk vendors permitted to operate within a jurisdiction and accept if the restriction is directly related to objective health safety or welfare concerns. With regard to objective health safety or welfare concerns, the statute expressly states that perceived community animus and economic competition did not constitute objective health safety or welfare concerns. So if you think about, for instance, sidewalk vendors that may compete with brick and mortar merchants along Beach Street and concerns about the impact of that vending activity on the viability of commercial brick and mortar businesses adjacent, the fact that they may have a negative financial impact on competitive brick and mortar merchants is not a factor that you can take into account in attempting to regulate sidewalk vendors. What the statute allows the city to regulate by ordinance, it allows the city to limit hours of operation for sidewalk vendors, so long as they are not unduly restrictive, but it defines unduly restrictive as they cannot be more restrictive than any limitations on other businesses on the same street. The city can regulate or impose sanitary conditions and requirements to comply with disabled access standards and can require vendors to submit information to the city regarding their operations, including a mailing address, a description of merchandise to be sold and other information. The city is allowed to prohibit sidewalk vendors from operating near farmer's markets, swap meets and other events subject to a special events permit. The city can require the sidewalk vendor to essentially register with the California Department of Tax and the administration, so that theoretically they could be required to collect and pay sales tax relations on sidewalk vendors to administrative citations. So under the current law, if a vendor is selling in violation of the city's municipal code, they can be issued an infraction citation and be required to go to court or pay a fine. The new law would restrict the city to issue an administrative citation that would have to be administered by the city, but it's not clear how the city would be able to compel vendors who are cited with an administrative citation to appear and contest the citation or pay a fine. So I suppose what it relegates the city to doing is if it issues administrative citations and they go unpaid, the city would essentially be able to file a civil action against the vendors, but to collect on unpaid administrative fines or penalties, I have serious reservations about the effectiveness of those types of fines or penalties as a deterrent. In enacting SB 946, the state legislature stated as it's among other objectives that the purpose of the statute was to provide important entrepreneurship and economic development opportunities to low income and immigrant communities and to increase public access to desired goods such as culturally significant food and merchandise. I will say that although that's the stated intent, there's nothing in SB 946 that restricts who can operate a sidewalk vending operation. So what I worry about are corporations that can come in, hire staff and bring in merchandise and compete directly with brick and mortar businesses. The intent of the legislature was really twofold. One is to support, it has a valid intent to support entrepreneurship among low income individuals and immigrant communities and also it was intended by the administrative citation provision to reduce the risk of someone who is vending, someone who's undocumented and is cited for vending activities in violation of a local ordinance to come into the criminal court system and thereby draw the attention of immigration officials. So that was the intent, laudable as it was, the statute doesn't really have any mechanism for restricting who is allowed to bend, corporations have the same rights to set up vending booths on sidewalks in Santa Cruz and throughout the state of California as any individual entrepreneur. So like I said, the ordinance is complicated and there's a red line version of the ordinance in your packet. I'm happy to answer any questions about any aspect of it. But essentially all of the restrictions and the provisions that I referred to in my report in SB 946 incorporate those restrictions. So I wish we were coming to the council with measures to address some of the legitimate concerns about sidewalk vending activities that are going on right now in the community but that's not what this is about. It's really just to bring our ordinance into compliance with state law and the council members. Yeah, I understand. I mean, this is all about coming into compliance with existing state law. Given this, what are the opportunities to do more than we are now doing in terms of enforcement, setting rules, et cetera. And just given some of the testimony that we've been receiving lately about the antagonism, the confrontations. People are being, residents are being stared down by people and they're kind of afraid to go out. That seems to me getting to the health, safety, welfare concerns and inability of people to enjoy the park in a way. I mean, from what we're hearing, there's some pretty, as well as the bike safety stuff, but it seems like the situation is progressing and getting more and more unpleasant. And so that's my question. What can we be doing that we're not already? Yeah, I would put it in different ways. What are we doing that we would not be able to do but for the fact that we have a public health emergency. Right, right. I agree. As the city manager mentioned in an earlier report, the city manager has issued an executive order that places restrictions on sidewalk vending activities that are designed to reduce the risk that they could become a vector for transmission of COVID-19. Right. SB 9, and I believe we absolutely have the authority to do that under the emergency powers based on the declared COVID-19 emergency. But under SB 946, expressly states that we cannot require sidewalk vendors to only operate within specific parts of the public right of way. And we can't also, we can also not limit the number of sidewalk vendors that are allowed to then within the city. So, you know, in terms of what tools we have for effective regulation, barring objective evidence that an activity constitutes a public health safety and welfare. You know, we don't have good tools in our toolkit under SB 946. And how about the food vendor question? Food vendors are already under existing health and safety code provisions required to have a license from the county health department in order to sell food and in edible products. They generally can't get a license because the way they're operated doesn't comply with state health regulations. And so there has been an effort to discontinue those activities as they're going on, especially along Beach Street through enforcement. But unless there's an enforcement system but unless there's an enforcement presence there, no sooner our officers leave the area than they set up shop again immediately. And so under SB 946, we still will have the ability to require a license from the county health department, but the enforcement aspect will still be a challenge. And someone who is cited for not having a license will be put into our administrative penalty process. Council Member Brown. The quick question. So yeah, we have received, thank you for Tony for working on this and trying to figure out how we navigate our way through. We've, some of the messaging that I've received at least, and I think it went to the whole council suggested that there are local vendors who have been around who are really actually independent who are now experiencing this influx from elsewhere. And I recognize that 946 does not, and nor any other statute or legislation allow us to restrict out-of-town access. But one of the things in, at least one of those messages was related to parking and the fact that people are coming and parking and sitting for many hours, kind of longer than two-hour parking certainly would allow and metering. So I'm just wondering if you've thought about that or if there's any discussion about that possibly being a way to disincentivize the race to Beach Street? Certainly there's been just a competition to get the good spots on Beach Street. And you're right, I've been on Beach Street a number of times over the course of summer and I recognize some vendors that have been on Pacific Avenue and have been here for years. But those are the minority and most of them, we understand are people who to make up for their livelihoods go to beach communities and other areas that have big crowds and sell their wares. And under the statute, we don't really have the ability to restrict who gets to set up shop in our city to residents. We just like we can't do that for brick and mortar businesses. Obviously, manager wanted to weigh in. Yeah, there've been a number of challenges around that with vendors spending a night in vehicles and at the booths or in also storing supplies and tents and vehicles on the beach and other locations. And so we are working with parking also on trying to address it from a parking perspective. But it's just really difficult because again, they're very good at keeping an eye out on enforcement and they're constantly adapting. And so it's just become really, really difficult. So I'm afraid we might have to do a pretty drastic measure to just, again, I look at it from a public health perspective and we need to just act quickly. So we may have to just do a more drastic, not allowing it for a period of time in order to get a handle on it. And then maybe scale it back after that. So we're working with the city attorney's office now on coming up with something, but I think we need to act pretty quickly to try to do something that's gonna be effective pretty quickly. And if I could just qualify my question since you also responded, Martine, I guess when I say, you know, parking, the issue of parking is their way to address that. I also have heard about the challenges that people in the beach plots have. And I mean, I know in the abstract that's an issue and I know it's getting ever more challenging for people to have parking. And so I'm not, I guess I'm just wondering if, you know, like a blunt instrument that may end up affecting neighbors and community members is not something that I wanted to suggest I was interested in at all. But, you know, anyway, so I just wanted to clarify that. No, okay, I'm sorry. I mean, maybe I'm just interested in that. But yes, we have heard from the beach area residents concerns about the parking, which is related to not necessarily the Bending, but and all of them would be part of it. But also just the fact that with people being shelter in place, parking is more of a challenge. And so Public Works is working to, and Peter Pichet, our liaison is working with the neighbors there to come up with various options to try to address the parking issue there too. There's also a food vendor. It's a mobile vendor there. Also, I think we'll be working with them to figure out how to make things work for that neighborhood there. So there are some neighborhood issues that we're working with them to resolve and separate from the Bending issue as well. I think a million questions and comments. You said that they said there's administrative process. Can you tell me a little more about that, Tony? Why are vendors to, how they can be located and identification? And then in order to enforce, we would issue an administrative citation. It looks just like a criminal citation, only instead of being submitted to the court. And in which case, when the criminal process or court when decided even for infraction, the failure to appear is a misdemeanor under California law. We don't have the ability to pursue people who ignore their administrative citations by citing them for criminal conduct because the remedies that the legislature nature provided us to enforce our own sidewalk regulations are limited to these administrative funds. And then in which need to, first of all, provide a time period within which the administrative citation can be paid. And it's not, it doesn't really give us an effective remedy for going out and forcing someone to comply. And in fact, it provides an administrative process where someone who is cited can seek a hearing on their ability to pay. And under certain circumstances, the fines that are assessed can only be 20% of the amount that are outlined in our code, which is $100 for a first violation and $100 for a second violation. And each additional violation within one year is a $500 fine. So I essentially, I think where we're headed here is that we would be filing small claims actions against these vendors and they're not gonna be easy to get into small claims court. And if they are, if they do, it's not gonna be easy to enforce it, the judgment against them. All right, and so I just have to say that I'm sure that this SB946 had good intentions when it was written, but for me, and I'm all for promoting entrepreneurialism, but I think that it's worded with immigrant communities being spelled out right there. It's kind of systemic racism and thinking that our immigrant communities can't make a living another way. And I have to say, I spend a lot of time at the flea market and I've seen some of these vendors in over the years at the flea market. I have to say that my 19-year-old daughter had run-ins with them for the last whole summer while she had to have her bike parked down there and she couldn't access it at night and she left work. My 16-year-old had an incident with them where they were throwing the plastic cellophane onto the beach and he tried to confront them about not littering. And so my thought is, what about something else? What about jamming? People have to littering. What about ADA access to sidewalks? What about the camping, the overnight camping on the beach above the high tide line? Like, what about things that are already in place for that specific section of street and not trying to like reinvent the wheels or anything else we can do? So violations of other provisions of the municipal code, and of course our camping ordinance is, at this point, not really enforced but based on a certain decision that you're all familiar with. But other violations of the municipal code that aren't specifically restricted to vending like littering on city beaches, we can say under our municipal code and those do constitute either infraction or misdemeanor violations that can be prosecuted and I also does prosecute those in the criminal courts. The problem is they're very difficult to identify the perpetrator. A lot of, and if there's a witness, that's not a law enforcement officer, then the witness would have to essentially make a citizen's arrest or sign a citation as the witness to the criminal activity. So it's very challenging to enforce those types of restrictions. We can do it, but it's just not going to put a big dent in the activity that's really, that's, you know, to intact a sense of frustration in my presentation here today. It's because the legislature and its wisdom stated in SB 946 that this law applies to charter cities because it's a matter of statewide concern. And under California law, under the California constitution, as a charter city, the city is supposed to have authority over or considered municipal affairs. And to me, you know, regulating commerce in a commercial district, that seems kind of like a municipal affair to me. You know, the council want to promote regulations that support local brick and mortar businesses. Seems like a municipal affair to me. But under the legal standards that apply, it would be very challenging for the city to take a position that it's not required to comply with the state law. Thank you. And after a public comment, I could make a motion to move it forward as it's written to, I'm fine with that. Just a minute, you may have already touched on this, but we've just heard so many different terms. I know the city manager and the staff have a regulation on the vendors to be on the street, pre-s, a public safety concern. And so I was wondering if there's anything that could be put aside. Sidewalk vendors from other sidewalk vendors or from entrances to businesses or what have you to the extent that those are directly intended to address objective health and safety issues. We have the ability to adopt those types of regulations. They would still be enforceable under the administrative citation process that I described. I think though that the issue of spacing is kind of tricky based on our observations of the enforcement of our order, which was drafted and intended to basically provide the ability to engage in social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. And so we adopted an executive order that had spacing restrictions in it. And it somewhat ironically has resulted in the types of altercations that would not be necessary if we had no spacing restrictions. So yes, I think we can adopt spacing restrictions but the more broadly they're worded than the more likely we may be subject to a legal challenge under the SB9 person. I think we can adopt clearly have a direct bearing on public health and safety issues. This is Robert of Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom. Is that correct? Yeah, I agree with you on this. Oh, my God. And so do I want to point out. I heard about the inadvisability from the city attorney of the spacing restrictions both legally in terms of court challenge and practically regarding what actually happens when they put those in. And I've been wondering, because we've had this current situation for two years of ending ordinances. Now I understand Councilman Gold is concerned about the real problems that occur with blockages of the sidewalk, ADA problems, those of that sort. I probably disagree with a number of other things but that's not the issue. The issue is, is it really to the point that the traditional burden on the police cause more conflict between us, this and the attorney, and perhaps for very good reason, to actually re-institute the application of substances to other's bodies, including but not limited to paint styles and inks. The provision of personal services such as hair weaving, cutting, or styling. The completion or other completion of visual art. You can't complete a painting on Pacific Avenue if you want. The creation of visual art, which is mass produced or produced with limited variation. And this is the important thing I think for a number of people on Pacific who are a draw to tourists even in the COVID era. The creation of handicrafts such as weaving, carving, stitching, sewing, lacing, and beating objects I'm reading from the ordinance, such as jewelry, pottery, silver work, leather goods, and trinkets. So my concern here is that this will promote I think a disrespect for law. If you have a law, first of all, it's going through an administrative process, which definitely provides people any rights if they are, if they do go to court. It doesn't provide the actual city with any real recourse for making people pay, except taking people to court who probably don't have a money anyway. So that's a real concern. So my concern is also, of course, is how this is going to be applied against homeless and poor people. Ask yourself how many complaints have been made in the last year. These stats do not appear in the staff report. We don't know this. So I'd say if you're really going to want this ordinance, it doesn't sound like it's immediate in any way. Bring it back, bring it back, and bring it back with some real figures about all the big problems that have happened at downtown of Pacific Avenue, which is really my primary concern in the last year, and in the last two years, actually, because that's how the ordinance has been, that non-enforcement has happened. Essentially, a whole mass of downtown ordinances which this was the latest restrictive ordinance, this is the same ordinance we had passed by the City Council four years ago, really. It's been slightly extended and changed, but it's primarily the same kind of thing, but it is not a good law for a number of reasons, some of which I've already stated. The community knows it, too. And so in chief, we know it puts up censors to drive away homeless people from outside the post office and violations of CDC, shelter and police guidelines. Then three times the censors have been taken down by community members, and they're concerned with our own city codes, with the Constitution, with the CDC guidelines, and we also train the rookie police force. So direct action will get the job done and it will restore conscious faith and morale, as well as physical health to the community, because moving people who are sheltering in place, which is one of the uses this ordinance could be put to, because it talks about these storage of property on ordinances, that's the new language in the ordinance. So giving the police a license to move along vendors, or anyone sitting where it could be described with a display device, and making it illegal to put your possessions on a blanket on the ground, is both history of the conscience and also unfair. The next speaker you have on the line. Hello? But it seems like your hands are tied, as far as enforcement, which is a, I can see pros and cons to this. And so it also applies to parks, is what I understand. So my concern is about what if, you know, food vendors selling stuff in parks, how will they, you know, how will we be assured that they'll clean up after themselves, and not cause, you know, health and safety hazards, will there be, will they have to provide, you know, trash cans? Will the city have to provide them? And also I was thinking, maybe there could be a special area for craftspeople to sell, so that they're not all jumbled in with all the other, you know, tachikis or little trinkets and things like that. Not too happy with this situation, but I guess I'll just avoid the beach. Thanks, bye-bye. So I'll then please start on your phone, raise your hand and we'll be doing two minutes. I would make a motion and add to introduce for publication ordinance, revising the three chapters of the Santa Cruz Municipal Code. So bringing them into compliance with SB 946, and then the rest of the language, the three major municipal code chapters requiring revisions are chapter 5.22, pertaining to mobile vendors, chapter 5.81, pertaining to vending and display devices on city property, and chapter 13.10, pertaining to sales in and on city parks and beaches. But I also want to say one thing, I can't really say this, but I kind of agree with Robert Norse in that I think some of the people selling things downtown sometimes are kind of a draw for tourists, and it seems like the real nuisance. I mean, I do know that we need to focus on the brick and mortar businesses, and I understand that our hands are tied in a number of situations here, but I think that this situation that's going on on Beach Street is really what's the problem. And there is a lot of people selling things and have been selling things for years, but the guy that sells crystals and whatever that are fine. A comment on the council member Golder's comment and also a suggestion. Before SB 946, the city prohibited generally vending activities on Beach Street, West Cliff and on Pacific Avenue, but there was an exception for works of art or other products that were craft work that were produced by the individuals who were selling their wares. Like the secret set, that was secret set. But the little spiders and the little trinkets that have always been sold down on Pacific Avenue, and that was an exception that was written in recognition of the fact that some of that work constitutes expressive activity, personal works of art, for instance. On SB 946, those vendors are going to be competing with people selling t-shirts, hats, and stickers as well, so. Yeah, it's a shame. I know like I was just looking around my house right now, I can't even count the number of things I've bought off the streets from people. And so I think, you know, there's a place for it, but I think what's happening on Beach Street is not a hand, so, David. And then my suggestion is going to be to add in the appropriate location, both in chapter 1310 and chapter 5.81, the following. No person shall place, erect, or maintain a display device within 10 feet of any building entrance, stairway, wheelchair access ramp, fire hydrant, bench, sculpture, or planter. I may have overlooked something, but. I don't even want to think I think I would like to. What was that last addition, Mayor Cummings? Right, right. Incorporate, but they have to like pick up anything that they bring and take it with them, like pass or trash type thing. Yes, I think that we could add language that says, vendors shall be responsible for removal of their own garbage and refugees and shall not public. Refuge containers for that purpose. Thank you. And then not to like beat a dead horse, but is there a limit on the size that these can be? Or could I set one that spans the whole length of the street with like eight tents? Is there any limit on that? We restrict the size, I believe. We could, or the state does? The state does not. The state didn't think about that. Would we be interested in incorporating something to restrict the size to anybody, anybody want to add a comment? City council, they promulgate additional regulations concerning the time, place, or manner of sidewalk bending activities. Violation of which would also be a violation of the municipal code. I'm not amiss, but did you mention like in or within so many feet of the planner boxes? I know that's been another concern that we've heard that they're setting up inside the planner box for the trees. Yes, there was a provision in the ordinance that didn't allow them to utilize planner boxes, but the new language would prohibit bending within 10 feet of a building entrance or stairway, wheelchair access ramp, bike rack, fire hydrant bench, sculpture, or planter. In a second, can we clarify a response to council member Golder's question about the size? I think that I agree that's a way to approach that particular question. My preference would be that it be, there'd be some kind of accountability for the council if there's any major change occurs that is within the bounds of what we can restrict that it would come to the council. Don't quite understand your comment. I think you, I just heard you say a way to deal with the question about maybe thinking about size and restricting based on sizes that we could include some language that suggests that other restrictions may be to be determined by the city manager or the council. Right. So I guess I'm just like, I mean, I'm just wanting it, wanting to clarify what role the council has versus staff making those kinds of decisions. I think we need to be involved when it's some kind of significant ordinance change. Yeah, well, the regulations would be either by an executive order of the city manager or by resolution of the city council. That's what I had in mind. Okay. But if the council's preference is that such regulations come before the council, then you could simply limit it to authorizing additional regulations to be promulgated by the city council by resolution. And that would be another option for you to consider. I'll ask the questions because I wanna necessarily create a process that maybe delays intervening when there's a serious problem. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't feeding the ability to make decisions about this in the future to, you know, just that tiny language could be a significant change. So I'm fine with executive order, particularly under these circumstances. I don't wanna hold this up on that. I'm just trying to get clear about what that means or what that could mean. The mind of the council that in the chapter 1310, they already provide that the director of parks and recreation can promulgate additional regulations when necessary to ensure the park's use and enjoyment of a given park or beach. For beaches, natural resource and recreational opportunities. So we could add language to that effect in chapter 5.81 as well. Thank you. The deputy chief's still there? Enforcement. You know, I just know all the little one-liners affecting Pacific Avenue and how hard that's been. It's extremely cumbersome. You know, it sounds like I just, this seems overwhelming with the no, no, no, no, no. Just wanna take from you about enforcement. Yeah, that's a great question. We have officers out with tape measures. You know, it's at 10 feet, it's at 10 feet, six inches, it's at nine feet, six inches. So it's not the most ideal. But as you've heard with the restrictions that we face under SB 946, you know, we've been working hard with other staff and other departments to try to find some sort of solution to this. This probably gives us the best option to try to control it better than what it's been the last seven weeks. So I agree, it's not the best situation for officers, but it gives us, it does give us some direction. And I was just reminded that there was a suggestion that we add language that would require the sidewalk vendors to pack their own trash. So that's another option for you to consider. I thought that was already in it, no? Okay. I prefer the option allowing the Parks and Rec Director to establish additional guideline regulations as necessary and just inform us. And this is done frequently. And it's, I think, just a much better solution. It's not that anything's secret, but it's just the management of the spaces as long as there's an understood direction, we support limitations on size, then come up with something that is kind of a common sense and beneficial guideline. You know, you don't need three, four by eight foot tables full of stuff. So anyway, I prefer an administrative discretion with council being informed when there are changes. And then if anyone has a serious problem with it, they can bring it up. Yeah, I thought that was just clarified. I was just trying to get clarification on what it would look like. And I believe Tony said that it's in there. So yeah, thank you. Council Member Byers, if I your nomination to appoint them, I'd like to be at WS. Does Mayor Cummings nomination? Mervyn Mays, who is Council Member Byers nomination? Council Member Golders. We have to go to the public. No, I just was prepared to ratify the nomination. Okay, and then Council Member Byers, do you have any more members of the public? Move that we ratify the nominations. And I'll second that. And I do have a question following the vote. A quick question. Okay. So the motion by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Mathews, wrote on my own, of course. Council Member Byers. A question for Martín. Who's staffing the CPVAW these days? Okay. There's been quite a bit of turnover. You know, there was a fairly cohesive, stable and productive commission for a good chunk of time. By nature, there's evolution, but there's been a lot of turnover. And so in both staff, several times. And in the commission members. And so I'm just curious about what kind of orientation they get. There'll be three new members coming on as there'll be a couple of other recent ones. And it seems to find the right person to give an orientation. Just on the background, and what maybe some goal setting for this group. You know, it seems like it's somewhat of a challenge to look into that and see what we can do to eat your breakfast and a lot of turn around. So maybe for a little bit more. And is it a different project, you know, that they've worked on over the last few years? Okay. We'll follow up maybe a more robust orientation program or just kick off program for them. So. So many positives from the Warriors. And hard to believe it's been, I think, eight years. And, you know, I've gotten a lot, we've got a lot of emails this week. Just in the last few days, I think when this hit the agenda packet, I've seen an uptick in people writing us letters and saying that they're excited. They want us to make this happen. And so I really look forward to working with our staff and the Warriors and the corporate office and whoever it is that we need to try to keep this wonderful asset in our community. So look forward to doing the work. We would go deep into that to keep the Warriors here. And I just want to assure whoever's listening that that, that's not the intention. I'm sure that our economic development director will touch on that. But the discussion focused more on who were the potential partners to include in the discussion. Pretty preliminary and yet serious. And then have been a very strong economic positive for the city. And that's part of what is, that's part of what's our interest. Plus the games are fun and they're the community college partners. Just want to stress the, we are not talking about subsidizing a giant arena for the Warriors. There's one thing I'd like to mention. I have an opportunity to sit down with Chris Murphy and smaller members of the community. I really want to talk about more opportunities for outreach. Engage with the community, role models and mentors for the kids in our community and other businesses as well in our community for the best of our conversation. Thank you mayor for Matthews and all of the council. I'm excited that this is before us. We meet frequently with the Warriors and the Seaside Company. But we don't often come to council and talk about sort of what is the status of our agreement, what's the status of both the lease with the Seaside Company as well as with Santa Cruz Warriors. So I'm excited that we have that opportunity today. When we first started discussions in 2011 with Golden State Warriors at the time, now we have their franchise, you know, the G League Santa Cruz Warriors. One of the things and one of our goals that actually the council set for us was that not only would the Warriors become part of the community and that was one of the goals, was that also we chose a location that really helped to revitalize an area of lower Pacific. And I think we've really been able, we've been really successful at that point. Where the Warriors is located, this partnership that we have with the Seaside Company and with the Santa Cruz Warriors has really helped revitalize that lower Pacific area and be a key sort of a catalyst for connecting the downtown and the beach area, which is one of our main goals set for us by the council at that time. So we feel really good about that. We'd love for them to stay permanently in Santa Cruz. Some of the letters that you've received over the last few days, talk about, you know, the reading program that the players go into the schools and read with the children and just the positive impact that our local team has had in the community. The community green when people go to games, you know, and connect and it's just, it has become such a part of our community and our culture here in Santa Cruz. From a financial standpoint, I did wanna address a couple of the letters that came in. There was some concern raised about that our agreement would forgive any outstanding balance at the termination of our lease agreement. I just wanted to clarify that and say the existing arrangement has us splitting any outstanding balance that's not repaid at the end of any lease agreement or after any extension. So today where we are here now almost eight years into the agreement, but we still have another year on the existing agreement with less than possible after that is that they've repaid $3 million of the $4 million loan. They're paying on average about a little under half a million a year that gets applied towards the loan. What goes in the loan, we have approved repayments, principal and interest payments. In addition, we have concession revenue, we have facility use fees and any event revenue beyond the Warriors game. All of that gets applied to the loan. So each year we are chipping away at that outstanding balance and with the existing agreement that we have and then on top of that we receive parking revenue related to games as well as admissions tax. So if you put all of these funding sources together both the loan repayments plus the interest on top of the loan on the principal plus the admissions tax plus the rent revenue for the parking, we actually received more than what we loaned to the Warriors originally. So I wanted to clarify that and any sort of future options that we come back to you I think will be creative in nature. We're looking at what are ways we recognize right now this is from a fiscal standpoint in the middle of a pandemic the worst time to come forward asking for public subsidy which some of the letters were concerned about. We would be concerned with that too. I think we want to be creative and look at ways and look at our partnership and how we can keep them their home here in Santa Cruz. So I'll stop there. This is an item also from the council members. So I want to respect that but I'm happy to answer any specific question you have. Just a moment. If you remember the public who's watching to call in, there will be numbers displayed on your screen. Once you call in, please press start nine on your phone to raise your hand in about two minutes to weigh in on this item. Good evening, Mayor Cummings and City Council members. I want to first of all thank Bonnie Lipskin and the Economic Development Department. This is Casey Byers, Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce. We are 100% behind moving forward with this item. There are many members of the Chamber that are seasoned ticket holders to the Warriors and they look forward to the opportunity of seeing their hometown team grow in our hometown. So I encourage you to swiftly move through this item, get it on board and actually find a location that is compatible with what the Warriors need, what the seaside company needs and what our town needs. Thank you. Now's the time to call in and once you dial in, please press start nine on your phone to begin in two minutes to speak. Seeing no other numbers of the public who'd like to speak to us on this item, I'm gonna bring it back. That's a question for Bonnie. What, go with the deadline, not the deadline, but when there's a lease and you probably said it but I missed it. But the decision lease has a term that goes through September of 2021. So a little over a year from now, although there is a clause in the lease that allows us by mutual written consent to extend it for one more year. So we have one more year for sure, potentially two more years. Okay. Sure, and I just wanted to add, because I should have when I originally spoke and acknowledged our city manager who has been really instrumental in supporting the warriors and actually securing the warriors in the first place and being supportive throughout the last seven and a half years. So I don't know, Martina, if you wanna say a few words, but I think you've been one of the biggest warriors supporters from the very beginning. No, thank you. Thank you, Bonnie, first of all, but yeah, I think the council members have kind of expressed just the overall benefits that the team has brought. Many of them, you know, I think we didn't expect that from the very beginning. And it was a bit of a surprise that how successful they've been in so far is really being an opportunity for a cross section of the community. It really is a place where you see people from all sectors of the community all come together. So that's really wonderful to see. And I think the expectation out there is that moving forward, this will be a partnership and this is not intended to be a 100% or a primary public kind of a project here. It's a partnership, a true private partnership is gonna work for our community. And Martina, anybody else that was on council back then and brought this forward, I think it's just been such a tremendous asset to the community. And I remember when a fifth grader in my class presented it as the current event, I thought they were tricking me because I was like, no, putting up a stadium, how fast we want, no. And then just seeing just the further on which the community rally behind the Warriors and the enthusiasm that they brought to the schools and the arts communities and bringing in, they had different people presenting at half time or opening. And it just, I couldn't believe how exciting basketball became to everybody in town. And my own daughter danced with their Santa Cruz Junior Jam Squad one year and they got to go up and dance at the school at the state arena. And so it's just all these opportunities that I think kids have got and just giving them a positive outlet. I can't, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about this, even though I will never be a basketball player. I'm not even five feet tall, but I have become a huge fan. So, thank you. And I'll make a motion if anybody doesn't want to. Yes, making Santa Cruz Warriors, the permanent home in Santa Cruz and all of the language that's in our report. Do you want me to read it or? I'll take it. That we can work hard to make this happen. And I do also want to thank Martine for all his work over the years and several community members who've been the Warriors for a long time. Brain Warriors jerseys on the wall at his office. Just note that. I put up a couple of tenants on my door there. Yeah, so it's a strong message. That's a little bit of a number of what? That remained. I had my hand up because I was going to make a motion too. Thank you, Council Member Golder. And thank you to the council members that brought this forward. I think the Warriors, for all the reasons we discussed, have been a really great attribute and contribution to our city. And we want to do our best to make them a permanent resident here. So thank you for bringing this forward. And I'm hopeful we can get it done. The Warriors. Yeah, I'll just express my many thanks to everyone who's been involved in this process of bringing the Warriors here and working with them. Martine, Bonnie, and I know you've been doing a lot of work on this and we don't hear about it all the time. But I have been a basketball player and I love basketball as my favorite sport. So I was so thrilled to learn that they were coming. I know that there were initially some concerns in the neighborhoods about the potential impact. And I haven't heard anything since then. And I think that just the whole way it's been handled has been great. I would ask for a friendly amendment to say enthusiastically support. I'm just really happy to see this happening. And I also want to appreciate Bonnie for making the comments about the concern about subsidizing this project. And I think that that's the conversation that we will have ongoing about how the city can support the Warriors and find them a permanent home or help them produce a permanent home. So thanks a lot, everybody. Team effort, really appreciate it. I wasn't on the council at the time that this concept was developed. It's a little great for me on council. But let's look at the calendar. That was happening when we were just coming out of that recession. And that was a pretty gloomy time. And I think right now, obviously it's worse, but we sometimes feel kind of paralyzed by the reality ahead of us. And yet this is the case where the leaders at the time took a look at an opportunity and followed it to how it could develop into the future. So I think maybe that's instructive for us at a time that is challenging that in the long run, this can continue to be a really wonderful thing. So I just want to point out a little historical frame in there. I was on the council when it all happened. And very exciting. Mine, somebody who didn't know this, but the D-Team came from Bismarck, North Dakota. And I had 11 family members who had seized tickets to the warriors in Bismarck, North Dakota. They were not happy because they knew that they were going to leave and the heavens from Bismarck, North Dakota winners to Santa Cruz. Because the best, well, season is in the winter, so it turned out very well. But I also want to acknowledge Tina Schultz was at the time, right, my team assistant city manager, and really provided a lot of the legwork that needed to be done and did. And you're right, we did it right in the recession 2012, 2012, so it's wonderful, absolutely. Thank you everybody again, but I was thinking in my head, it's really like super optimistic to think about that, yeah, we can't be together now, but Sunday and we're thinking long-term, we'll be able to gather again and go see sports and have fun. And so I think that's what makes this even more exciting tonight. And I just got an email, but I'm gonna start serving lunch tomorrow. There's like 10 different sites. Yes. For Santa Cruz. Well, I'm just gonna join in once we have more, everyone will get started. Council Member Beyer. Here. And Mayor Cummings. This is an opportunity for people who are streaming in the meeting or calling in to set the counter as your hand. You have two minutes, you're trying to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. Super request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comment. So you can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes however it is not required and you will be given two minutes. Loudon Nelson's center name changed. It actually reflects the man who's named after, whose name is actually London Nelson. He was actually a really remarkable man, a former slave who came here in 1856. After he died, he left a pretty big section of property from Whirl Street all the way down. I believe to Pacific Ave, where the clock tower is now. And after he passed away, they erroneously changed or made an error in calling him Loudon when anything that predates his death is actually London, Halloween viewing. And I think what a better time than now to get that corrected. The public would like to speak on items that are not on our agenda this evening. Please call and use your numbers on your screen and when you're ready to speak. Vincent is included in the public agenda packet only on the day of the meeting in the new website format depriving the public of time to read it no matter when it was sent in. I'm wondering why the pride flags were allowed to be displayed more than a month beyond their 30th expiration date. Maybe I missed it, but I never did see any BLM or Pan African flags displayed or any BLM street mural. But I'm good with that as I think that brand is more than tarnished by the violent Marxist uncivilized death, injury and destruction meted out nationwide used as cover by that banner for Marxist anarchist purposes. I wonder what the stale date is on the BLM graffiti monument that is now the clock tower. I wonder when the Lighthouse Bank, my bank, will think it's safe for employees to return to work there. I wonder when the life to satisfy many will figure out setting goals, obtaining skills, working daily toward those goals with respect for other's rights every day will result in a better world for all than blaming others, destruction, discrimination, seeking special government favors, revolution and trashing all this great country as accomplished giving up theirs and everyone else's rights while abusing public property in the First Amendment. I wonder if or when respect for this country's ideals will return. It's a progressive left mess that is Chicago. Seattle or Portland is just a headline ugly violence of chaos. An unattainable utopian socialist communist fantasy. Historations of the life to Marxist lies matter. That's where Sackers' politics is going. The white man appreciation month. They've done a lot for this country and I don't see the recognition coming from the council. No, really, tell me why not. Justin, I think you're muted. The last four digits will be for number 1703. Now's your opportunity to speak. Is that 1703? Hi, council members and mayors. This is Barbara Meister and with Holy Cross Catholic Church here in Santa Cruz. We have several people who would like to speak tonight. Not several, just a few. On the oral communication time period we've been instructing them how to call in. So if you could just be patient a little bit to make sure that our folks have a chance to call in. And I just wanted to make sure we allow enough time for them to have a chance to get in. It's very challenging to try to participate in these public deliberations these days. So I would appreciate if you just give us a few minutes to make sure we can get folks in through the process. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Thank you for letting us know. We'll move on to our next speaker. I've been unmuted. Hi, this is everyday show. I'm the president of the electric auto association of the California Central Coast. And I wanted to commend the council. I was not able to attend the meeting earlier so I don't know actually what happened. I only saw the agenda. But I understand that you are at least considering the buying of our first large truck that's electrified, an electric garbage truck which is an excellent choice. And because every time they start up, they spew a lot of the, as an organization have been working on the transportation electrified for well over 50 years before we actually even had the major manufacturers. So I spoke with our director or the supervisor of our waste management before thinking as is the council for even considering this and as M. Bart is for giving the grant. And she's very forward thinking because there were some obstacles that were just logistical and she has come up with a way to think outside the box and make it work. There wasn't enough room to have two spaces for the story, solidating the route. We commend you and look forward to, and if you have any questions, I am available for consultation. I will find you a source for electric vehicle in that type of vehicle that you're looking for. Thank you. Yep. Diarrhea and oral communications please, but we will have two minutes to speak. Next caller, please unmute your phone. I just wanted to make a couple of points. I just wanted to first express some public support for the ofrenda that was mentioned by the gentleman earlier. This is at the Bell Tower and has been in place by a lot of community members. And I think it's been a really great opportunity for some healing to happen. A lot of people have gorgeous show of solidarity so I just really wanted to just say that first, you know that there are people out here who are really benefiting from having it out in our public spaces and to keep it up as long as possible. And then the other two points I wanted to address are that will be really beneficial for a lot of folks on sending eviction moratorium indefinitely not just keep pushing it off by a month or two each time people are living in really precarious situations right now and need to know that their housing is going to be safe until COVID has subsided. In September 30, it feels like a very arbitrary date to have right now. And the second point I wanted to make is that city council needs to really start looking at adding like inflation and mortgage inflation to their next agenda. It could be a huge undertaking but as a community I think we need to come together to brainstorm some ideas to alleviate some of the hardships that a lot of tenants and homeowners and some creepers are facing right now. They're going to only keep facing until COVID decides and that is really indefinite. So we need to talk about some long cancellations for folks. Thank you. Thank you. Again, if you'd like to speak to any item or sorry if you'd like to make a comment during all communications on items that are not on our agenda please press star nine on your phone after you've called in to raise your hand. One, two, nine, you are on the line. One, two, nine, you are able to speak. One, two, nine. Hi, my name is Socorro Robles. I'm going to speak in Spanish because I can't speak English. Is that okay? You don't need to know that. Mayor, would you have Peter on the line? Okay, Peter, do you want to hold the camera? Sure. Yes, ma'am. If you can speak but give me a chance until when I give you one or two sentences and then I'll bring it to you. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Socorro Robles. Good afternoon. I'm Socorro Robles. Y soy de la Organización Sendero en Santa Cruz and I'm from Sendero Santa Cruz Organization. Solamente quiero agradecerles a los Fonsejales de Santa Cruz for I want to thank the city council extender el moratorio para las familias to extend the moratorium for the families de septiembre until the 30th of september. Y también quiero agradecerles por el programa de emergencia que tiene para todos los alimentos que nos están dando. And I also want to thank you for all the emergency food that you have provided to the community. Con nuestra organización agarramos 38 solicitudes a familias y no se van a dar a chance con eso. With our organization, we've helped 38 families and that will help the tremendously of the people. Estamos pidiéndoles, por favor, que no solamente nos ayuden con los 12 meses para poder recuperarnos. But we also would like to extend that help for at least 12 months in order to recuperate and for these people to get back on their feet. Porque no van a ser suficientes 12 meses ya que nuestras necesidades son bastantes, pero estamos pidiendo un poquito para que nos ayudemos. Nosotros somos gente trabajadora. We are really people who would like to work and we think 12 months is where we're going to need to help to get back on our feet. Tenemos jóvenes que están estudiando, tenemos muchachos que quieren seguir estudiando y por toda esa situación no tenemos los recursos para mandarlo a los deshuelos. Y nos ayudan también. We have young students that are willing to work and those two study, but with the COVID they're unable to go to school and with the funds we're helping to do to school them at home. So we would like to have to include the young people who are also affected with this crisis and include them in the also this recovery program. And thank you very much to our organization senderos, Kopa and the whole community who's helping out people who are in need. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, my name is Neri Garcia. I am a leader with Kopa and I wanted to thank you guys for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, my name is Neri Garcia. I am a leader with Kopa and I wanted to thank you guys so much for this meeting and allowing our public comments and means a lot to us. I have personally led two virtual house meetings and I would like to thank council members Brown, Matthews, Walkins and Myers for attending those meetings and agreeing to work with us. It really means a lot to us. It means a lot to our community to feel so connected and like they can really trust their council members. It's nice to see their face and kind of see them as one of us. So thank you so much. For taking that time with us. We appreciate it. We also want to thank you for extending the moratorium to September 30th to help our families and also for having a emergency rental assistance program. We managed to help 38 families like apply for this program who are very thankful and blessed that you were able to do this. So once again, thank you. And I am calling to request a 12 month payback period for rent that is owed for well, you know, many families during this crisis. I have called countless families to invite them to their virtual house meeting and it always ends up with them telling kind of tragic stories about like their difficulties and their struggle to pay back rent once the moratorium is over. So thank you for having us. Thank you for letting me this moment to speak. And I invite all of you to our next virtual house meetings and I hope to keep seeing you guys there and to keep working with us. Thank you. Thank you. Glad for visitors of your phone number 3129. You are now able to speak oral communications. Now is the time to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand if you have not spoken already. I'll give you one more time with 3129. We'll answer the next caller. My name is Candice Brown. I'm Santa Cruz. Can you hear me? I just want to speak briefly and thank you for this opportunity. I'm not a renter but I'm talking to members of my community including people that I formally worked with, colleagues and friends. And some of them are describing situations that are quite dire where they have been working in retail and they were laid off. And then they have not for strange reasons been able to receive unemployment because of delays by EDD. And in one case in particular, I know they have not received it and they're still pending and they've been waiting for months. They are living in affordable housing. They were concerned that they would have to leave the affordable housing because they would have no income and no guaranteed income. And so I'd like to ask the city to look into a situation where people are expecting EDD and they could get a huge lump sum at some point but also in affordable housing. And so could they have a deferment until such time as they could work out the issues with EDD which could take more than September 30th. I just wanted to make you aware of this. I know people in my community that are having serious mental health problems because of this and I'm quite concerned in some cases. So I wanted to reach out to you and let you know about the situation. So thank you. What is the 4041 young one? Si, buenas tardes. Si me escuchan? Si. Mi nombre es Pablo Romero y soy miembro de la Iglesia Holy Cross y líder de Copa. Okay, dejame chance de yo traducir. So my name is Carlos Romero and I'm from the Holy Cross Church and also with the NGO Copa. I'd like to thank the City Council to have participated into the virtual home meetings and also to extend the moratorium for house eviction until the 30th of September. And also to extend the moratorium for house eviction until the 30th of September. Y agradecerles también por el programa de emergencia de alquiler e informar sobre nuestro alcaldes. And also for extending the house eviction program and the assistance on rental emergency. Hasta donde alcance y a través de las estensas de alimentos y obtuvimos 38 solicitudes para la solicitud de la alciler. And we'd also like to thank everybody about the 38th applications and that we received to help 38 families to pay their rent. Y consejo un periodo más de 12 meses para poder recuperarnos con pagar la renta de vida durante esta pandemia cuando la emergencia, hasta que la emergencia termine. And after an extension of what's the ability of 12 months without rent to be able to recover and be back on their feet. Y de nuevo cuenta pues a invitarlos a los miembros del consejo a otra reunión en el futuro para participar y trabajemos juntos en apoyo a la comunidad. Muchas gracias. And they would like very much to also have some of the members of the city council to participate in another virtual house meetings. And thank you very much. Gracias, Ted. Yes, hi. Good afternoon, good evening. City Council members and mayor. My name is Jorge Saabala. I'm a meter at Holy Cross Parish in the Pentagon Community Health. Coming to the last four months in March. And so as you hear today, we do have a couple of community members that were successfully able to connect but others that still haven't been able to. However, I just want to reiterate the thanks for creating the emergency rental assistance program. We were successful in connecting 38 families to that program and we'll be following up with them to see them through it. And if they do not qualify we have developed a system to help them connect with other resources. And so we know that it cannot just be on the city and so we're partnering with other resource centers to help these families in this process. But we do need the city to step up again before August but we'll rent after August because they are all working very minimal hours at this time with many families only having one person working three days a week instead of five. And so we would also like to reconvene on the idea of a payback period. I heard the translation earlier with Carlos and we are not asking for 12 months of free rent but a 12 months of payback period for the rent that is owed for families as they recover. So we look forward to reconnecting with city council members. Good afternoon. My name is Liz Robles and I am an active member of the organizations in Middles in Santa Cruz. First of all, thank you for accepting my call. I would like to thank you for having us here and for being able to have had been working with our community through these very hard times to help our especially Latinx families who are going through a very difficult time. There are hours being cut out while having a family to support. And so we would like to first of all, thank you for everything you do for the city of Santa Cruz as well as extending the moratorium. And we would also like to ask if we could hopefully extend back to 12 months for the help with rent since that is something that many of our families are having a very difficult time figuring out how are they gonna keep their homes. In addition, we'd like to thank the city for providing places around the city to be able to pick up food for those families who might need it. So thank you very much. And since that'll really encourage, encourages any one of our members to please come out. Maybe we help these families once a month if you are ever able to see how all your help and the help in our community, the changes that it does for our families that would be great. So we would just like to thank you for your help thus far and we hope that you continue with the support as well as extend the help for the 12 months coming. Thank you. Yeah, private, it was three, one, two, nine. Please follow when you're able to speak. Good evening. My name is Ezebel Velasco and I'm a member of the Holocaust and leader of the COPPA. Ezebel, wait a second so I can translate. So good evening, my name is Ezebel Velasco and I'm also with the NGO COPPA. I'd like to thank the city council and for the people of the members who came to our virtual house meeting. And also in the emergency assistance program helping people who could not make ends meet for the under rent. We have submitted 38 applications and we hope that all of them will qualify. So we'd like to have an extension of 12 months rent help. And we hope that you will extend the 12 month help to pay a rent. And also thank you for extending the moratorium on rent eviction until the 30th of September. It was a pleasure to be with you on our virtual house meetings and we hope to see you again. Okay, with that, we're gonna close out our oral communications and we're gonna move on to our last item of the day which is our item number 34, Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness as Elliot and Tom Slade. We also have our facilitator for the Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness for the name the presenters who are bringing this item forward. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor and Madam Vice Mayor, members of the city council and those of the public who are participating as well. My name is Fred Keely. I have the privilege of having been asked by the mayor a year and a few months ago if I would be the convener of the catch. And I wanna be clear what that is. What my duties are is as a convener and as a guide, if you will, to assist the catch in getting their work done. I do not have and did not have a vote on this body. It's more like being a presiding officer without a vote. The council and the first court in established the catch with a clear mandate to take a look at work that had been done by predecessor interests on two different occasions. Once in the late 90s and one in the relatively late 2000 teens. And those reports looked at a range of issues around those experiencing homelessness as well as our general community in terms of homelessness as well. The catch came together for its first meeting after the council had made your appointments to the catch and gave a charge to the catch to make a couple of other appointments as it deemed appropriate to fill out the representation on the catch so that it was a truly representative body in terms of both the house community and the unhoused community and various segments therein. I think in my judgment anyway, the appointments did in fact reflect that diversity in our city and a special note of thanks for the council making sure that those who had lived experience in terms of homelessness that their voices were on and heard at the catch from beginning to end. In July of 2019, the first catch meeting was held and at that the body made its initial organizational decisions selecting Taj Lahey and Candace Elliott as their co-chairs by unanimous decision. I will use that point to say that it was the goal of the catch on every single vote and they cast about 320 votes over the course of time that all but one of those votes was a unanimous consensus agreement. Let me be careful about what that means. That doesn't mean everyone jumped up and down and was thrilled with what they voted for necessarily every time but there was robust and seriously robust debate and discussion yet at each one of those votes when the time came to shape a motion and to move forward, consensus was achieved. As I say, there was one vote that particularly sticks in my mind that was not a unanimous vote but the others were. The at that organizational meeting in addition to selecting co-chairs, the body adopted there and at subsequent meetings bylaws so that they could operate with a set of rules of the road that everyone, all members of the catch as well as member of the public would understand what the rules of the road were. The catch also indicated that it very much wanted to have significant public outreach and engagement and as a consequence of that, not only were the catch meetings held in the evening so that folks could be able to attend, there were also times where the catch moved its meeting from the police community station to the veterans hall to one of the high schools so that the body could move around and engage segments of the community as would be the case. During many of the initial, I would say dozen or so of the catch meetings, they were a combination of two things. One was getting everyone up to speed on the issue, which is to put it mildly compound and complex. And so panels of folks were invited to come and present across a fairly wide spectrum of opinions and points of view. And those were made typically at the front end for the first hour or so of the catch meetings and then the catch would pivot to its actual business in terms of decision-making. You are, one other point I'd like to make about the organizational meeting, that is a mayor reference that there are other folks in addition to myself and Taj and Candace, we have chairs of the relevant subcommittees of the body. And this is worth taking a second on it. The body is a, was good sized body, you know, just over a dozen folks. So getting work done between meetings in order for the meetings to be decision-making, debate and discussion and decision-making, a subcommittee structure was set up. And each of the three subcommittees had a lane that they were going to work in and debate and discuss issues in that lane and then bring it forth to catch for consideration. Some of those folks are with you this evening as well and certainly will make substantive. My presentation's a process presentation. The co-chairs and other members of the catch will make substantive presentations too in a few minutes. One of the first things that the catch did and spent some time on was the following notion. And that is that although the city of Santa Cruz is the most obvious place where folks living and experiencing homelessness, it is the most obvious place in terms of visibility, in terms of seeing folks living in our community, part of our community who are experiencing homelessness. Not so much in the county, not so much in the other three cities. That's not to say it doesn't happen. We know that it does. But we do know that in the city of Santa Cruz it's fairly visible. Gave rise to an issue that the catch went at when looking at previous reports. And that was that some of the previous reports on this issue to the city made it seem as if the city government is totally responsible or largely responsible for addressing the issue in all of its manifestations. One of the things that catch did early was educate themselves about who in fact does have what responsibility when it comes to working with and assisting those members of the community who are experiencing homelessness. It was clear that the federal government has essentially left the field a very long time ago. The state governments, both in California and elsewhere are really the levels of government that make the policy and provide most of the funding for dealing with those experiencing, working with those who experiencing homelessness. In that regard, the state of California about two years ago made a serious commitment to housing generally and affordable housing in particular and then those experiencing homelessness as a component part of that. That money, both general fund money and bond money was directed to counties. Counties are literally as you probably know I don't mean to provide a civics lesson, you know this but counties are literally a subdivision of the state of California. Legislature could go into session tomorrow and say instead of 58 counties we're gonna have 158 counties and that would be the law. Counties deliver are the delivery mechanisms for the state's programs of health, human services and to some degree criminal justice system. Cities are not designed by their very nature to provide those services. That is not their function. They do it as an adjunct function. They do it if they wish to do it. They do it by allocating general fund money in various cases. But in terms of governmental design what the catch learned is that the state and the counties are really in the lead on this to get actual progress in many cases. And that was one of the things that the catch did in terms of its series of recommendations to you is to recommend to you those things you can do and are uniquely positioned to do as opposed to here's every recommendation you figure out what the proper level of government is for dealing with it. In December of 2019, the first report came forward from the catch by unanimous vote by consensus to you. That report contained nine recommendations and all nine of those were accepted and then adopted by the city council with direction to the city management to implement those recommendations. This is where I would like to pause and thank Susie O'Hara and Megan Bunch, Ron Prince, city staff generally for their assistance in helping the catch do its work by doing research and providing it back by answering questions, providing information back to the catch. It was enormously helpful to the catch and literally could not have been done without that level of staffing, but the catch is not the city government. The catch is an advisory body to you. What you've received from them is their work and their thoughts and opinions about how to deal with this vaccine issue in positive and substantial ways. That led the catch to its February 2020 presentation to you, which contained 22 recommendations. The first set in December were what could be done immediately? Where can you locate some temporary bathrooms, some sanitation facilities, some sleeping areas, what are things that could be done right now? In February, it was, here's a couple of more of those, but here are some medium term recommendations that the catch has to steal down from enormous amounts and hours of meetings and input. And those recommendations were forwarded to you. And the council then from that list selected a fairly large number that you not only accepted, but that you then turned those around and operationalized those. In this recommendation, which you are receiving now, this report contains four recommendations, which the co-chairs will be going for. By design, the first report was immediate, short term, quick, what can be done. Second report midterm, these now tonight are recommendations that have a longer term to them so that together this body of work can result in better outcomes. I will say two quick things. The grand jury has also issued a report on the topic of homelessness and I was asked to be prepared to make some comments on that. I will say, I will be very brief on this. The grand jury's report, I think like all grand jury reports, are uneven. This particular report, I think matched up quite well with the kind of look at what the government roughly speaking, those involved community engagement, effective governance on this issue, insufficient resources, and utilization of existing resources. I will say this about that report. They had a total of 18 recommendations, the grand jury. They had nine recommendations of those 18, which solely were directed at the county of Santa Cruz. They had eight recommendations, which were directed at the county of Santa Cruz, all four cities. They had one recommendation unique to the city of Santa Cruz, and it matches up to one of the major recommendations you will hear this evening. So I don't think they're very far apart in terms of what they're doing. I do think that they got the same education, maybe that the catch got, which is I'll sort of close where I started. The fact that those experiencing homelessness that we can, that is obvious in our community, and maybe not as obvious in the three other cities and in the county at large, does not make it solely the city's responsibility to solve. So I think you see that, where the catch got very focused on what this city government can do effectively on this issue. Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, members of City Council, thank you for every kindness you've extended to me during this period of time and for the privilege of being the convener of this organization, excuse me, of this committee. And I would now like to turn it back to the mayor. I believe you will be calling on both Taj Lahey and Candace Elliott. Thank you very much. Thank you. Before we continue, I need to take a quick break. We have a revenue issue down here at City Hall. So if we can just pause the meeting for about council members to turn the videos back on, I think we can get moving again with the second portion. If I might, Mr. Mayor, I think this is the point where Candace Elliott and Taj Lahey will make presentations on the final report, sir. I'll just wait for owners to join. Once they have everybody on, we'll get started again. Waiting on council members, Matthews, buyers, and the Watkins to join the meeting. Your video on once you're back, so we can get started. Tom, maybe we'll just go ahead and get started and hopefully Martino jump on here at any minute. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council members. Thank you, Fred, for that wonderful introduction and a little history lesson as to what Catch has done. In the past year, it's been an amazing journey and we couldn't have done it alone. So thank you to the staff as well. Susie and Megan have been instrumental and amazing throughout this whole process. We're gonna jump right into recommendations. We have just a few this time. As Fred said, some of the recommendations that we've had in the past were pretty hefty and lengthy. Given COVID, we just have to call it what it is. COVID kind of threw a monkey wrench into a lot of things. However, that said, a lot of really great strides have been made in the city and it's pretty wonderful to see. So what we have is the first one is sanctioned, camping and safe sleeping. Given the COVID pandemic, much of the homelessness response was taken on by city and county staff, which is wonderful. Many strides were made in terms of setting up managed encampments. The catch recommends that the city maintain a similar or larger scale of safe sleeping through COVID-19 recovery and beyond and use lessons learned during the COVID-19 response to ensure constant improvement and community compatibility. In short, to keep doing what is being done right now to house our fellow community members. If you look around town, you will see several different encampments that have been put up and from what I've heard, they're working really well and so we're just asking that they continue from this point on. And that's our first recommendation. Candice? Thanks, Tash. Thank you to all of you council members and to staff who has been so helpful through this whole process. Our second recommendation is around community engagement. In short, we recommend you keep doing community engagement around homelessness. There are, it's a very dynamic space and I've definitely learned that through this process. There are a lot of sort of changing stakeholders. There are a few stakeholders that are consistent who are sort of always there, but I think a lot of the key people inside of say nonprofit organizations and other sort of government positions change over on a regular basis and so continuing to engage those people is really important. And I've seen some of the great side effects of community engagement. I think that it's a way that our community gets to know each other. It's a way that our community can share their perspectives, but it's also a way that we can inform people about things that are going on and include them in the decision-making process. As an HR manager, I know that people really hate uncertainty and this is definitely a space where there is a lot of uncertainty for all of the people involved. So the more that we can be engaging in the community, the more we can share information, the more comfortable people in general will be with whatever decision it is that happened, even if there's disagreement about which way to move forward. And I'll turn it back to Tash. Great, thank you. That was one of the things that was a pretty much unanimous yes all the time when we had our meetings that sharing with the community what's happening, asking the community for feedback was a way to get the temperature, but also a way to bridge some of the gaps that may have existed. Thank you, Candice. So we go to public health. Under COVID-19, the city has deployed dozens of new portable restrooms and hand-washing facilities. It's been kind of wonderful to see because that was something that we recommended from I think our second report, but we were just asking for a couple to start small and because of COVID, one of the things we can say thank you for is that there are restrooms everywhere and hand-washing facilities. And so we're asking simply to just leave those up throughout COVID after that. And let's continue to fund those and also maybe make them a little prettier so that it will cut down on graffiti potential but then also make it so that it blends into the community a little bit better. And that is it for our last recommendation. Of course, give me my third recommendation. So our last recommendation to review with you tonight is envisioning Coral Street as a space where a navigation center, additional services can be located. And Coral Street is that street right over by Costco that typically has quite a number of people who are experiencing homelessness, living on the street, living near the train tracks, on the train tracks and using the train tracks as a way to move from where people are living further out in the Pogonis and in the forest towards town and there, oftentimes people see drug use happening there and in other cities, it has worked to take places such as that and to locate services there and to sort of re-imagine what the space looks like. And so by providing services, it actually ends up improving the location for the whole community and not just for the people who are currently using the space. Housing Matters is already located on that street. I don't know if many of you have had the ability to tour Housing Matters, but being able to go inside of that space and see what it actually looks like there is much different from what it looks like on the street. And so our sort of vision is, or a vision to look at would be to have that be a more comprehensive space where services can be offered for people who need them. So I would like to turn it back to the mayor. Thank you for giving us this time this evening to speak with you. We're here to answer your questions. Rafa and Amy, Susie and Megan are all also here to answer your questions this evening. Well, thank you for all the clicking together as well to find consensus, even though everybody wasn't happy it sounds like you were able to make recommendations that were reflective of an agreement that the community could make together. So we're very appreciative of the work that you all have been doing. I'll start by opening it up to council members to see if they have any questions and we'll start with council member Golder. Hi, everybody. I just wanted to thank everybody on this committee for the hours of volunteer work you did for your community and bringing this report forward to us. I know you sacrificed time and energy and I really hardly appreciate that. And I know the whole community does. So thank you. And homelessness is an issue that's near and dear to my heart. And I hope that we can work together to make things better for people who are experiencing homelessness. Thank you. And I still left it. I think I've been banging my head against the wall for about 20 years trying to get the community engaged and participate in this issue, totally unsuccessfully. Probably the little bit of success is I'm on the board of the housing matters and on that since the late 80s when it was, it's been many many things but now it's out in there. When we give tours, we know when we get people behind that gate and the other side of that gate they are so impressed and they hear about, they learn about it. But that's only four people a month or something like that. It just, it isn't working. So I don't know, I want to ask you very specifically if you ran into any ideas and even in meeting your board I didn't see things specific that people like myself could do or our organization could do maybe or the city could do. You want me to take that one too, please? Yeah, go for it. Yeah. I think I got to be one of those four people a month ago for housing matters when it was really amazing as they're a sibling. So the way that we approached community engagement was to create a sort of the first hour of a few of our meetings was focused towards specific topics related to homelessness. And so one of them was focused on public health and hygiene. Another one was very focused on safe sleeping in campground. And we invited people to participate in sort of a brainstorming process. And then we took that data and information and used it in order to make our recommendation. And the details of that process are in our previous reports, but I would be happy to expound on them in a later date if that would be helpful. Sure. Thank you. The other one I just aptly agree with all the work you've done and all your recommendations and not only anxious to implement but follow through that they say implement it if that's a correct jargon word. As you know, housing matter, their whole mission is get people in housing. Until we get them in a house, are we going to end homelessness? And of course that's a big, but we do know it works and it's successful. Get them a place to live with a case manager and they will stay. And I think we've done, I think 180 probably got close to a thousand in housing and housing matters gotten close to 500. So that's almost 50 hundred off the street today and half those were on the street maybe two years ago. This didn't really speak to it and I know what it means is affordable housing. But I think even if we can just keep all of us, keep our eye on that ball with increase the case managers will really meet an overwhelming plea from the community is, and I don't want to use off the street, but that is why you get them in housing and we know the statistics are showing that they're staying. Takes a lot of work and a lot of case management, but they stay. So anyway, maybe you'll have a fifth report or something under these days and you could address that. Thank you. I think that's all and thank you for the words about Coral Street. We're working very hard on Coral Street and it's so unfortunate that the city wasn't able to buy that building because right next door that would have just really tied everything together. And we'd be so far down the road in resolving the immediate issues, but we're working on that and I'm sure you, everybody involved in sitting County will continue to work on funding and navigation center. Thank you. Can I just add something on housing? Yes. For me, yes. Oh yeah, so important to keep at the top of mind right now is to keep people from losing their housing. We need to keep people in the houses that they have and thinking creatively about the open spaces that we have available and commercial space houses that aren't being rented at this time. I remember buyers during the lifetime of the cat, the co-chair and the catch invited various folks, the federal official who came and made a rather lengthy for state and county officials as well who did. We were mindful of what Governor Newsom said at his first state of the state address, which is that all of your sleeping problem at navigation center helps solve your homeless problem. And there that two-step move is the one in terms of capital outlay and why I believe anyway, as an observer of it, not as a policymaker at the catch but that the catch very much dialed into the idea that a lot of what's going on over at housing matters is damn near everything that needs doing gets done over there, but it needs to be four, five or six times as much of it. That was I think where the catch settled on that issue. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Could I speak to the community dialogue piece? Okay, thank you. I know that we have a few new counts and I have been other reports of the catch, but one of the directives for us was for looking to the idea of wisdom council. And we did that. We explored wisdom council with Jim Rock, who's the founder of wisdom council. And there was actually an independent wisdom council like pilot setup that included former council members, Don Lane and other people, both advocates and people who've been, I guess you could say more conservative on this issue, we're all in the room together. And we recommended that the council explore the idea being on the catch was the sort of the cumbersome nature of being in a government body, trying to have conversations when people come up and they have two minutes to talk and then you don't get to respond. You don't really get to have a dialogue, you know? And so I would highly recommend the council look into wisdom council and or dynamic facilitation or some kind of a play for people can really talk and get to some deeper matters around this. I found it very frustrating to be on the catch. And not everyone was a great person on the catch. It's just that with the way the agenda set up, the way that it has to be facilitated, the way public comments happen. It's very formalized. And I really felt like we couldn't get to some real, what are the deeper issues on this wisdom council that we did have, which was more of a pilot than an actual council. I heard things from people that were very new to me like that there was less resistance to encampments than there was to tents from some people. And people were so concerned about tents. And yet I thought that they were resistant to having any encampments at all. And they weren't. These people that I saw as more conservative, for example. And then Brent Adams was there and he brought up the idea of, you know, we do need housing and housing is great, but we, in the meantime, happening, sort of emphasizing like what is happening now for people. It was saying the housing first issue at this time and it'll take time. And so anyway, there were a lot of things that came up and dialogues that happened between people who normally wouldn't even be in the same room together. And everyone sort of coming to some new understandings at least. So I'm just putting that out there. That's sort of why I joined the catch was I was interested in new ways of community dialogue. And I think that there's ways out there. It doesn't have to be wisdom councils, but ways to engage the community that really can get to some sort of group, more root cause discussions and sort of real solutions, if that makes any sense. Cause there's a depth that I think has been missing around this conversation. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have the council member Brown, Vice Mayor Myers and the council member Watkins. I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. I could spend a lot of time talking about how wonderful and dedicated you all are and have been and how much work you put in and kind of how inspiring it is. I'll leave it there cause we don't want to stay later than we need to. And I also want to thank Amy. Thank you for bringing that up. It's a constant kind of frustration of mine as well that the way our public meetings are set up as they need to be does not allow for that kind of in-depth conversation. And so I really want to just put out my two cents supporting the city taking a role and staying committed to trying to facilitate those spaces or at least be part of them in some way. I think that that will really keep us moving in the right direction in the community. I've been really heartened by the way that people have kind of just been okay with pretty significant expansion of safe sleeping zones. And so I think that really provides us with an opportunity to keep moving forward. And I thank you for your recommendations. And I just, as an aside, I'm just going to say, cause I have it here. Council member Byers mentioned that she's been thinking about that community engagement process and the challenges with it for about 20 years now. And I'm looking at minutes from July 2000, Council meeting when a homeless outdoors was reporting back to you all and you were there. So it's been more than 20 years. But so I do hope that we can really make some, like just with more kind of focused attention to how we do that, we can keep moving forward. My question is about the Coral Street area. And I'm glad to see that that was one of the main recommendations you're bringing us now as a space that can be better configured or expanded upon. And I know we had, there was a lost opportunity or foreclosed opportunity with the space over there which may reopen. But in the meantime, was there any, like what was the conversation like and were there any more specific ideas about like what housing matters would need? What level of like, are they of openness and willingness to be part of that? Are they and kind of, just to get a little bit more of a sense of what would it take to really achieve that vision? So I'm just, that's just a kind of an open question. If the all thought talks about that, I'd love to hear more. Yeah, I think this would be a great question for Susie O'Hara to take if that's okay. You saw that I prematurely unmuted and my kid walked by and slammed the door. Good evening, Council members. So pleased to be here and I do wanna also reiterate my thanks to the entire catch for their dedication during this process. And then of course, the assistance of Megan and Ron and Fred of course was just created such a space for success, sorry, there's my kid again. So with regard to Coral Street, I will say that the concept of really looking at Coral Street, the entire campus area around housing matters and thinking about how to best utilize all of the real assets that we have and potentially could look into utilizing and on behalf of really the county and the city, we have over the last several months since COVID kind of changed our entire dynamic back in March have been engaging really directly with housing matters and the county on re-envisioning that area. It's falling under the county's shelter and care task force of which I sit on and some of our other colleagues here at the city and housing matters sits on as well. And we are working with Milton Design Studios to think about how best to create navigation center, housing center, programming at Coral Street. And that is really gonna take a heavy lift on behalf of the county and the city to think about immediate COVID response to ensure that folks that are congregating on Coral Street are doing that in a way that's safe with regard to social distancing but also to lower barriers of access to the important services there, both at HPHP, the homeless person health project as well as housing matters. And Milton has really done a tremendous amount of work already a few council members have been able to engage in this process and I'd be really happy to bring more information to the entire council on that. But it is really hopefully gonna change the dynamic on Coral Street and make it a community center that can be appreciated and really invite the greater community into solutions around homelessness. So I'm happy to talk more about that Sandy at a future council meeting or one-on-one and share also some preliminary design considerations that Nielsen has provided in early in these conversations. Mya's are gonna have council members welcome. Good evening, Taj and Candice and Amy and any other cash members who are there this evening and thank you Mr. Keely for all your guidance for this group. I think sometimes it's hard to kind of understand when you're looking from the local perspective why things aren't getting done or why you can't fix something even though you have a compassionate community that really wants to help. So I think reminding everyone about the history of federal priorities, lack of funding, closing some of our mental health facilities in the late 70s in California. I mean, we're experiencing something that's been in place and kind of coming at us for quite some time. And so it's a massive policy question. It's a massive policy puzzle to solve. And I appreciate all the people on the cash who put their time into this. I think the cash was especially different than what we've tried before in that we intentionally involved medical folks on this committee. We intentionally involved people who were either living or had experienced homelessness. We involve communications people, different people who brought different skill sets. And I know government interaction is frustrating and that it is so rigorous and so confined in terms of how you present and how you get to have discussions. But I'm just very pleased with the work. I'm very supportive of the recommendations and I just wanna thank you all for all that time and energy. I think you were meeting weekly for a whole year and that's an extensive committee commitment. And so, and I think we've also just been able to gather more voices in this community to solving these. And so, I'm confident that you guys have brought us another big step forward, actually a leap forward. And I'm just very thankful for that. I was lucky last summer to be able to go to the National Conference to End Homelessness actually with some leaders from Housing Matters. And it's an excellent conference, it's five days. And over that period of time, I've talked to many, many, many communities who had been where we were and are in different places today. And there is a systems approach that can be followed that helps these individuals in our community to become successful in their lives again. And there's also a clinical approach and there's a way on how you provide services and how you prioritize care for this community. So I think we can do it. I'm very optimistic. We're gonna need the state's help and we're gonna need our whole community's help. Our whole county will need to pitch in on this, but I'm confident that there's a road we can follow. And I think you got really important priorities for us as a community. So thanks for your work. I don't know how else to say, just my utmost appreciation and sincere gratitude to every one of you for all your dedication and work. I was on the council when you decided to jump into this position. And it was a very difficult time for our community and it was a very contentious time for our community. And you went into it and you led with your values and you found common ground around compassionate solutions to homelessness and homelessness in our community. And I have just so much appreciation to every single one of you. I don't know how else to say that. I would give you a trophy if I could. I know it was a lot of just countless hours on behalf of the staff as well as just your volunteer time. And I too am just so supportive of the work you accomplished. I was having a conversation with a colleague recently and we were talking about homelessness everything at this moment, it's lack of affordable housing, it's mental health issues, it's racism, it's long-term poverty, this long-term crisis crisis that we've seen coming. And I know the vice mayor just mentioned some of those. It's so many things and it's sometimes overwhelming and it has been paralyzing to a certain extent in our community. And we need tangible solutions but we also need to seek this moment for transformation in my opinion. And how can we rebuild in a way that's really prioritizing affordable housing and well-being for all and interrupting some of these cycles, if you will, of poverty and really getting the resources to those that need it in a way that will get them out of homelessness and to a successful lives independently. And I know that's not for all and we have to recognize that too. But at the end of the day it requires our community coming together and your ability as a committee to go through some of these very difficult conversations with a number of criticisms I know and come up with these recommendations almost unanimously with absent with you. I mean, it's just remarkable about what can be done. So I just wanna kind of highlight that because I think that's really core and critical to what took place here. And so I'll leave that because we were going over in the Harvey West area and when we were actually on site for work, I would see parents and mothers with their strollers walking down Coral Street and the conditions were not conducive to families. And I think we need to remember those very different populations of homelessness in our community. And I just wonder as you discussed the Coral Street vision, if there was consideration of having a different location for families as part of that discussion or if that didn't come up at all. But kind of observing it, it didn't feel like the right place to have parents with children as it was or as it has been in the past. Yeah, I can follow up on that. Council member Watkins. So the question about the best way of experiencing homelessness in our community all in one area, certainly has come up not so much within the context of the catch deliberations. However, the work with Nielsen Studios is also hovering around assistance and consulting work with master planning. And we had kickstarted a master planning process last year with Ron Prince kind of leading the charge on that and had begun to work with an architect to go, this is the City of County and COVID happened. And so in returning with the design of Coral Street, obviously the programmatic needs between the agencies that are cited at Coral Street have come up. And that is in addition to the business owners and the neighbors as well. And I will reiterate as well that folks into the managed camp on Coral Street, we had a father with a six year old daughter come out of Rebly Shelter and say that they had never walked on the sidewalk before that day out of fear and really quite frankly, concern for their safety. So I will, you know, obviously support that reaction and also know that it's really important to ensure safe accessibility for everybody. And that will be certainly be part of the design and master planning process moving forward. Nick, one last comment and just sort of a quick shout out to Duane Tate who is now in New Zealand, who's a colleague of mine at the County Office of Education, tireless advocate for homelessness and homeless families and partnerships and a collaborative person and his character and he had a really incredible foundation already. But I know he would be here in fear then. He would be all right if I spent a few moments now just trying to distill the perspective that I can share from here of the Safe Sleep Subcommittee. For the course of a number of public meetings, it's an opportunity to hear from a wide range of members of the public and receiving correspondence from the public about various potential types of programs from people experiencing homelessness to be afforded a legal place to sleep. It was even efforts that amongst the, there's a preference for options there for 24-hour indoor shelters, tiny home villages and things of that nature. And at the same time, many people experiencing homelessness stated a preference for the autonomy of being allowed to camp outdoors independently or in self-managed camps. While recognizing the general preference, many people in our community have to see people experiencing homelessness shelter indoors, in practice it does not seem likely that the City of Santa Cruz will ever have adequate capacity in its indoor shelter system to meet the needs of 100% of the people who sleep outside. For this reason, we need to continue to develop city policies such as revised ordinance that does not generally criminalize the act of sleeping outside and that designates places where people are allowed to camp. We must continue efforts to create additional capacity for managed indoor shelters such as navigation centers, tiny home villages and temporary indoor shelters while continuing to reflect policing practices. Moving to an outreach force model of enforcement where people sleeping outside and designating lawful areas for people to sleep will result in better outcomes, is more cost effective and will allow police officers to spend more time dealing with serious threats to public health and safety instead of essentially continuing to harm people experiencing homelessness sleep outside from one area of the city to another. Everything that I've mentioned thus far has already been recommended by the cash to the council, but the council has yet taken any substantial action to move these recommendations forward. By my count, only seven of the 22 recommendations made by the cash at our last presentation to council for the outreach force model recommendations regarding the developing safe sleeping sites beyond the temporary nature of the COVID-19 relief funded programs, developing additional long term indoor shelter capacity, several recommendations regarding the modifications to the camping ordinance that reflect the values of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Martin B. Boyzie ruling. And with that, decriminalizing sleeping, creating safe sleep zones for folks to legally have a place to go. The Benz Lens right now, which is a site that I think we all think is a good program model, has approximately 100 residents, but it's at capacity. And it's also set to close in the middle of October because of flooding concerns. So the question becomes, what happens to the people who are staying in that location now? Where does that site move? Is it gonna be more than one location? There are a lot of questions that are up in the air right now around that site. So identifying locations for these safe sleep zones or other programs, that's a really critical aspect of the city's responsibility for managing outdoor camping and people experiencing homelessness who are unsheltered. McKesson ever did make specific recommendations about sites for outdoor safe sleep programs. This was probably the most controversial topic we were asked to look at and the most challenging. However, the safe sleep committee was in the midst of developing a rubric for citing criteria that the city could use in selecting a site that we felt was an improvement over the criteria when the city was poised to choose between sites like the Wolf Corporation Yard, the North Depot Park parking lot, the city-owned space on High Street, Lot 17, et cetera. That work was ultimately not completed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But we felt adapting the city's existing scoring systems used by the planning department to weigh the citing criteria, which we listed in our interim recommendations. In that report, that would be a critical and a crucial goal in producing a fair, balanced citing recommendation that follows the objective criteria and reduces neighborhood political influence and site selection. I also just wanted to mention quickly and finally that the safe sleep subcommittee had put forth recommendation for developing a strategic action plan on homelessness for the city with 11 specified elements. Unfortunately, just the nature of the catch meetings made it challenging for us to turn that the subcommittee of the recommendation into a formal recommendation that the catch could bring forward. There just wasn't enough time in our meetings to get the word smithing right of that recommendation. We just didn't have enough time to move that forward. But I would hope that the catch would have been supportive of that recommendation that came from the safe sleep subcommittee. And in addition to that, there was another policy suggestion which is mentioned in our interim report, which is to take that strategic action plan and the idea of the outreach force model enforcement and make those two things the highest homelessness-related priorities for the city. And with that, I'll send it back to the mayor. I would just ask a question and maybe if you could share some of those. Just kind of given the parking programs, the multiple meetings, the outreach that's been happening. I think we're up to maybe seven or 12 now. Drop the county. We have the youth, the homeless youth program with the Senate in Venice. So the county's really stepped up. So I was wondering if maybe you could speak to, I know that six months, quiet supervisors are just gonna approve there's any long-term planning on focus strategies. And so I was wondering if maybe you could speak to the council and the public a little bit about that, because I think that some of what the work of the catch has been doing and in addition to that, some of the comments that were made by the students of the community captured it, the role moving forward that the county's gonna be taking as it relates to all of this. Yeah, definitely, Mayor. Thanks for the opportunity to provide some additional input on that. So as the two by two members know that Vice Mayor Myers and Mayor Cummings, we have been working very closely with the county on all things systems planning for quite some time. Focus strategies is a nationally recognized consulting firm that was hired by the county to do a deep dive into how the system responds around homelessness in our region and across the county is performing. And that process has been bifurcated in a few different reports. One is the baseline report that really looks at the system analyzes data and looks at those gaps in service. And they were poised to provide their final report to the Board of Supervisors. At this time during the year and of course by virtue of the pandemic were pushed off. But the first side of that which was captured a little bit in the report is that pandemic has created a truly tremendous opportunity for increased coordination across the region. And this is between the city and county jurisdictions as well as with our nonprofit and faith based and private partners. As the Mayor mentioned, the county is moving forward with a six month work plan which develops a bridge between COVID response and ultimately the sustainable approach to systems response and governance with regard to homelessness. The six month work plan which the CAO's Office and the Human Services Department brought to the Board of Supervisors at the previous meeting, not the one today, really does capture the momentum that was created during COVID. And as the Mayor talked about we have vastly increased our shelter capacity that is in hotel rooms for isolated and quarantine and vulnerable individuals. So those are folks that have either been tested COVID positive or are vulnerable particularly to the illness created by the virus to congregate shelter programs at both the Santa Cruz Vets and Lawsonville Vets Hall to of course what you see at the bench lands that started a few weeks ago and at the Coal Street Shelter Program that supported folks to transition from the un-sanctioned encampments on Coal Street. In addition, there is an entirely coordinated outreach model now that is being led by the homeless person's health project across probably two dozen service providers that have never worked together before. It's been a tremendous thing to watch from the city's perspective how much case coordination can happen when folks work together on those meeting those needs to the county just launched a Housing Center case management program within the current shelter programs. And so really putting an emphasis on the case management aspect that Council Member Byers was talking about which is critical for people to assist people to exit shelter into housing and to stay in housing. So that six month work plan I know Mayor Cummings, Lisa Benson, the Assistant CAO is certainly willing to come and talk to the city council about that process as well as the process for which the three year work plan is being created. The one main point that I think is really pivotal for the council to be intimately involved in is the new system of governance that will be part of that focus strategies work which will be replacing the HAP, the Homeless Action Partnership which is our region's arm of the Continuum of Care, the COC. And right now we are working through the focus strategy advisory team to develop essentially a county commission for which elected officials from the local jurisdictions as well as the county would sit on in addition to folks with lived experiences as well as other critical members in the community that are involved in homelessness response. So that government process is really important for the council to weigh in on in that essentially it is expected that this new commission will be making those funding and fiscal decisions as well as policy decisions to improve the lives of folks on shelter as well as our house neighbors. So I'm happy to work with the county CEO's office and HSD and bring more information to the city in a lot of future meetings if that is desired. Great, thank you, Susan, for that update and quickly from that six month plan is just mentioned on creating a homeless services division in the hiring process director at the World Over Counties, is that correct? Yeah, so the CEO's office has been housing no pun intended, the homelessness response for the county. That is in October moving over to the Human Services Department under the leadership of the new HSD director, Randy Morris. I believe that they are in the process of recruitment for that position, they are gonna be hiring a new division director of which the staff from the CEO's office is gonna be moving over and then HSD staff that works on SmartPath and other housing section is gonna be sitting. Most of that work is gonna be moving over to HSD come October of this year. Susan? Yeah. Hi, this is Markeene, I just wanted to add actually I'm actually serving on the interview panel for the new director tomorrow, actually all day today, so I'll be tomorrow. So then moving forward with that position. Great, so I think it's just great that the amount of work that's gone into homeless services and how we're almost during COVID is really developing into something much bigger at the county level, it's gonna be addressing this issue and so at the time where we're gonna be at the county, you know, the unifying to really address this issue head on and so just gotta be good for councilmen who may not be aware of the planning that's coming forward around homelessness at the county level, but from Matthews and what we can then open up to public comment and come back to get action on this item. I just was wanting to bring to everyone's attention according to the report, there's 77% of the people who suffer from substance abuse or electric condition. Sometimes people don't want help even if you bring them to a navigation center and so one question I have is what recommendations you have for people who are treatment resistant and then another thing I don't want us to lose sight of is that we talk a lot about the homeless, the homeless individuals and that they are the most vulnerable members of our community and some of them are, but I also don't want us to forget that the children under the age of 18 in our community are really vulnerable members of our community and prevention is something that we have to keep up before front of our minds and not just look at the here and now, but look really long term and I know Santa Cruz City Schools has been doing a good job of focusing on mental health and keeping sure that mental health and we've got full-time counselors at the elementary level, we've got social emotional curriculum and it's just as important as the academic curriculum starting in kindergarten. That being said, where I think Santa Cruz City Schools and I'm probably guessing schools across the city, state and county fall short is with any education around addiction and drugs quite frankly. I know like my high school junior has had one week of health education about drugs in probably his whole school career a couple of days in ninth grade health, a couple of days in seventh grade and a day or two in fifth grade and then we have hours of the day. And so if we're not focusing on the youth and we're not educating people about ways to not fall into this trap, then it's gonna be just a snowball effect and we're really never gonna get out of it. So while I agree that I think we need to focus on the folks that are suffering here and now, we can't decide that we need to put some money and some resources wherever it can come from and to making sure that this is prevented in the long term as well. Mayor, can I provide one little piece of feedback on that for Council Member Golder? So when I have yet to sit down with you and talk about core investments and that is being extended a year by virtue of COVID but gets to much of the upstream prevention investments that the city makes along with the county that we are moving forward with developing a new RFP in the coming months along with the county. And what you have raised in terms of the need to, and I know Council Member Rock and we'll agree with you on this along with many other other colleagues that the school system into prevention with regard to behavioral health disorders is a critical investment of that upstream collective impact. This is an issue that we will be bringing to the Community Programs Committee as we continue to think about how best to invest. So that is gonna be a significant priority for the city council in this coming year and thinking about what that investment should look like moving forward. And I can't remember if you're on the Community Programs Committee or not, I think you might be. So if you are, I'd really be happy. Thanks, Izzy. Okay, thank you, Council Member Matthews. I will briefly second everyone's comments extending thanks to the entire CASH team, convener, chairs, committee members and staff. It was just a heroic amount of work over time. I do want to second, I think, Catherine's observation. It's been a long time dealing with all those reports and recommendations and so forth. I'm honestly frustrating, frustrating for advocates, for providers, for the community. And I think as several have mentioned, certainly the mayor and city, the combination of the county's re-looking truth-of-focus strategies study and report about how they can do it better and the urgency of COVID in forcing a more engaged partnership between the city and the county has gotten a further than years of asking, quite honestly. And if there's anything I feel emphatic about it's that the burden, the expectation for this should not continue to rest on city Santa Cruz. I think that's probably, I feel a lot of nodding heads on that. So that's the momentum for us and for advocates and providers all to carry forth with. I'm encouraged to hear about some of the things, certainly the re-envisioning of Coral Street. I agree with Council Member Watkins' statements. That's not a therapeutic environment for families. Let's not kid ourselves. So there's so much to look at that can get us to the kind of results that we want. And I am hoping that as we move forward trying to implement the study, the county study, the cooperation and staffing and the government that collectively in the sense of urgency that we feel now with the sheer numbers and COVID that we can start to begin to feel that we're making progress on getting people to better places. And that can take a whole lot of different forms. But I think there definitely has an a sense of frustration, fatigue, settling upon the city. And I hope that the work at CASH and the focus strategy and a new partnership can get us to decent progress. And no further comments from Council Members. I will turn it over to the community who would like to comment on the report. It's being brought forward by the Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness. Now's the time to call the numbers on your screen. Once you have called in, please press them. You will be given two minutes. I do believe there was one member of the public that we had called and who was asked to go to the members of the public to open up for public comment. Real housing consisting of family-like support group homes run by professionals trained in health and safety rules. More than all by voluntary mutual agreement and enforced. This targets the neediest cases unlike the house this is paid for, who runs it is another matter, but the city should not be the primary driver of these programs. It would be cheaper than constructing new shelters where ordinary housing is involved and target the neediest unlike Section 8 subsidy solutions or the indifference of mass shelter and cabin solutions. It's time to try something different. Now back to what I've always said for two years. Number one, the population density of homeless and Santa Cruz is much higher than the state average, higher than any city I know of. It's almost 2% where the state is more like 0.35%. This means far too many homeless and Santa Cruz and we are in danger of becoming an exceptional cesspool of government subsidy reasons why this is. And identifying this problem requires acknowledging that dimension. The question is why this extraordinary density is just here. You really, really, really need to answer that question and admit reducing the number of homeless here. It should be a major necessary rational goal and a measure of success before committing one dime to do anything. As is, I only see the extraordinary cesspool of government dependence growing. I suspect it is the militant homeless advocates and a militant non-profit base that feeds off the homeless even as they support, attract, and maintain them even as law and order looks the other way. Those are high on the list of reasons for these numbers. I desire to hear your Santa Cruz specific explanation as to these large numbers. I expect to hear crickets. Number two, crime. The homeless population as considerably the police action crime and blight, something the greater public does not deserve. Some of these people should be locked up and not catch or release. I have more, but that's all for now. Bye. My name's Serge Cagno. I'm a member of the catch. I'd like to reiterate what everybody said. Thank you. There's been so much work and so much sincere effort trying to solve our city's issues on this and trying to help the people on the streets. I was on contact with the county to help design and set up the vet hall programs. I do a lot of collaborating with case managers and without root staff. And I think that no matter which side of these issues are on, I think we all want effectiveness. We want to have a change in the status quo. And as we're trying to decide what is our next step, I think it's all about, we would like an effective response to be able to change what everybody is, what our community is challenged with. COVID was a chance where the city collaborated with the county and that didn't need COVID. And I want to really be clear on the collaboration with the county can, I hope continues post COVID without this always challenging of the county should take care of it, the county should pay for it. So part of what the county did and what we designed for the vet hall shelters is we designed it as low barrier programs. And that means not having unnecessary stigmatizing curfews or demanding abstinence from residents in the midst of their addiction. Using low barrier, you can still absolutely demand safety and you accept people for where they're at. We engaged many, many clients who have never been in the system before, never accepted services from anybody. And we used HMIS, the homeless management information which is online case management pretty much. And we found many, many people had never signed up. So it's this idea of accepting people for where they're at and making sure that you have safety but being flexible about everything else, treating them with respect, gets them engaged in the system. We had services in the shelter. Suzie mentioned one of them talking about case management, trying to get people into housing after the shelters. But we also had social work with behavioral health and mental health and substance use services. And we had county staff coming in and doing hours and meeting with people. And that compassionate face to face time is hand down the most effective way to engage people into services. The status quo pre COVID in the city of Santa Cruz is a law enforcement response and a city manager response of trying to deal with encampments. I'm sorry I cut you off but you can't be on your too much. But I definitely thank you for your comments and appreciate the hard work that you're doing with getting services and getting people connected to services in our community. Okay, is there any, so there's any other number of people who would like to speak to us on this item? Now is the time to call in. And once you've called in please press do comment on this item. Okay, I'm prepared to make a motion and not just because it's a school night. I am also, and I can't even say this again, agreeing with Jeff Phillips and Matt, I do think people would be, it'd be awesome to see people in non-traditional homeless type shelters like we're in co-housing situations. And I would love to see further collaboration between our city and the county moving forward. And I agree with Surgeon that it shouldn't have taken a global pandemic to bring all the players to the table. And I really hope that this two by two committee can be able to do it two by five. I mean, I think if I can't do all the board of supervisors, but you know what I'm saying, bring more voices to the table and really move things forward. So that being said, receive the community advisory on homelessness, recommendation, and accept the final cash report and direct the city manager to implement council accepted cash, final policy recommendations as identified during council deliberations. And I would just like to add one more thing. If there's any money in that CARES Act that we could put towards this, then I'm open to whatever people in council think about that. That's, I'm gonna leave it at that. But also I think that it should not be comfortable to meet it. I'm overwhelmed. I wanna support the motion, but I wanna try to clarify and follow up on council member Golder's proposal to direct potential CARES Act funding to the, I think in particular, the Coral Street project. I think that's something that we could make a meaningful contribution to and with the help of the county, given the relationship that's, what I'm hearing about the county's willingness to participate in that as well. I feel like it's a good incentive to really get that going. So if we could just like, I mean, I would say yes, I support council member Golder's proposal. And if we could sort of figure out, could we find $100,000? That's how council members feel about that from the CARES Act funding that I believe we should have available to us for these kind of, this kind of purpose. Is that a friendly amendment or could you say? Yes, a friendly amendment to contribution from the city's CARES Act fund to move the work at Coral Street forward. Is that, if that's accepted by the maker of the motion? Yes, it's been a friendly amendment by council member Brown. Council member Golder. I understand the interest, if I could, but I wanna remind us that we're going into a budget some week and there are gonna be so many claims, even on CARES Act. And I'm very reluctant right now with this as the one thing provided to specifically designate any amount of money. Obviously it's a candidate, but I would just prefer that a specific designation not be explicit. A budget. There are a whole lot of things that are in the cash recommendations. They're all gonna be buying for resources. So that would just be a big suggestion. Even consider CARES, but not to designate or say a priority or an amount. I can interject and maybe ask Susie as well. I don't think maybe you're a managed away because I've never, you know, the conversations that we've had with through the two by two and just kind of understanding the funding. Currently, you know, as we're standing up all these different products on these probably unversible, I was wondering if you could maybe speak to how this is going to go. One thing that I wanted to mention, thanks, thanks, mayor. And I'm sure Martine will elaborate on this as well, is that the funds that have been used to stand up the vast majority of the programs have been provided during COVID response, have been provided by the county. However, under the continuum of care. So some of these funds were originally programmed through the homeless action partnership of which the city sits on the governance as well as the advisory board for the HAP. Some of those funds to the tune of $1.4 million were heat funds that were feeberg and by virtue of those negotiations falling through, those funds still fit in the HAP jurisdiction for allocation. That is one source of funds that could be used to help support the work of the catch and these recommendations. Further, you know, I know that during your budget hearings and the study session that begins next week, as Cynthia mentioned, there will be a lot of challenging discussions around cuts, et cetera. The care funding in addition to CDBG and other funds that may come from the state and the feds moving forward could be used for some of these priorities. And I think the biggest consideration that we need to make is what is eligible for female reimbursement and for the care funding in particular in things as the county. And so I know Martine mentioned in the letter from the mayor to the board earlier during his city manager's report, there is a request to look deeper at the care funding portfolio at the county level as well. And I think, you know, I'm hearing Sandy's family amendment, it might make sense to at least while not putting in a specific number to make a consideration around that negotiation with the county with regard to the care funding portfolio and then include some of those considerations in your budget discussions next week. Yeah, let me elaborate. There's a variety of funding sources. There's really two buckets. One is specifically to COVID. And some will be covered through by the nature of this being a declared emergency. And so we're tracking those and we'll be submitting for reimbursements. And so there's a number of expenses that we'll be looking to get the inverse for. And those includes homelessness related expenses in the sanitation facility, things like that. And the county is as well with some of the things that they've set up. And then in addition, there's the care funding which is funding that was allocated to the first stimulus package, the federal stimulus package. There was some money given directly to large cities, half a million or more. And then the rest was given to the states to distribute to counties and cities that were smaller populations. And so then what the state did was to give a direct allocation to cities of 300,000. There was a pretty significant, they gave a pretty significant allocation to counties. Really minuscule allocations to small cities. So what we received was minuscule by comparison. And really what, it's not even gonna cover our expenses that are not eligible. So for example, we're receiving $780,000 which might seem like a lot but it really isn't in the context of what we've been spending. The county by comparison received 27 million of care funding. So that's so far, what we're looking at with respect to our care funding is just trying to cover the expenses that we've had that aren't gonna be covered by FEMA and to just be able to, and as you know with our budget situation and the huge deficit that we're facing, we're just trying to make sure that we're able to pay the bills and cover COVID related expenses. It has to be for COVID related expenses. So deal with respect to the small allocation that the city received the care funding. Then the other part of funds that's out there is really from the state. And Susie mentioned some of the allocations, the heat allocations that have come in the last couple of years that have been used. And then there's additional funding in the current state budget also. And so the state, and then there's some additional state funding for mental health services as well. Much of that funding, again, has gone to the county. And so the county has really large line share of overall funding for homeless services that's been allocated through the state budget as well as the federal CARES funding. And then of course we also have allocated funding through our general fund. So we have some approximately a million dollars in general fund allocations and then we also allocate some through CDBG and other sources, federal sources where it tells them all. So that's kind of the status of our funding. But the honest truth is that we just do not have additional funds at this point to allocate for additional programs that are sustained. The county has been allocated a significant amount of funding for that purpose. And that regards since they were allocated the bulk of the funding for that purpose purposes. Mike, if I can just follow up, if I remember correctly, I think there was some mention about the... Yes, it was deposition, the search capacity, RV capacity, those are some of the areas that we've asked for some assistance in doing that. Now of course we also have invested in some of those areas through CDBG. We'll continue to do that and through the general fund. And but I think with respect to the CARES funding, I think that was part of the question, you know, our focus when you was trying to address the anticipated, unanticipated expenses that we had as a result of COVID. And of course we're also trying to deal with the huge budget deficit as a result of COVID. So it's sort of part of that mix as far as how to be able to use those funds. But really not extra funds that we have to spend at this point. I'll follow around, I know that you had your job. Yeah, I have several comments and a follow-up question that I suggested CARES Act funding is because I feel like that's a place where we can make a strategic investment now. It is one time funding and my understanding is that it would help motivate the county to invest as well. And so I'm a little concerned about like reverting back to this, well, it's the county's job and we're not really equipped to deal with this. And if we've already expended all of those funds, is it possible for us to get an accounting of what that money was spent for? Because I don't recall seeing anything like that. Yeah, you'll be getting that. It's part of the budget process. What it does is allocating their COVID funding for related expenses, IT expenses, PVP expenses that they've acquired, for example. Again, they've got $27 million that they're allocating. So what it does for us is it just simply makes our deficit bigger. So that's the way I sort of look at it from the budgetary perspective. It's obviously up to the council, the budget will be for you and you'll make that decision. But from a purely financial perspective, the way we looked at it was, we've got expenses that we haven't, we don't have the money to cover and there's expenses that we have now and we have a deficit. And so we're trying to cover those expenses. So yeah, so we'll get a specifically where that $780 million, $8,000, what that has been spent for, committed to. That's what the county's doing too. Yeah, I'm aware of what the county's doing. So I guess going back then to the, so council member Golder, did you want to just withdraw the idea of during Alex's money at this point? Okay. Yeah, I think that's a good question. I'll give him a comment here. Okay. Thank you. My only question at this point was what's the motion? So it sounds like it's a. I'm sorry, I'm really complete with that. There's an opportunity to work with the county and partner on a project that, I think that might be worth considering, but we should be sort of flexible with how we fund that. So I think I just want to make sure that we have retained flexibility to do that. And so there's a variety of funding sources that potentially we could take advantage of if there's an opportunity to partner or something. So I don't want to say that we shouldn't be partnering and potentially investing in things. So I think we will have to make some investments. I'm just saying that we just want to have flexibility with respect to how we fund that, depending on our budget situation and what's available. And it'll all come back to council in any case. So just to be clear. I would invite any of the council members to participate in the hearing tomorrow so you can support the county city partnership. The letter that was sent by the mayor and myself did specifically include a request for support for Coral Street. For the last several months, I've been working with at least two of the supervisors to keep them updated on Coral Street and trying to understand the needs and sort of the longer vision there. As Susie mentioned with her work, we've been doing a lot of communication in terms of Coral Street information. I think we've talked about CARES Act, we've talked about other funding. So to Martín's point, I think we don't necessarily need to call that out in this motion, but I just want to assure you that the conversations happen literally almost every other day in terms of trying to figure out how to support these different efforts. So I just want to compliment, especially Ryan Coonerty and Supervisor McPherson because we really do communicate almost every other day. I really do feel like the partnership has grown substantially. And I want to compliment the county staff. I don't think by any means it's an impossible process request. I think there's a lot of money that needs to be sorted amongst a lot of existing expenses that need to be covered and then the future. So I think we're in good shape just being able to report out as a two by two member that way. So hope that helps. Yeah, one traveling amendment that I was wondering if we could make to this motion. The first part of it when I was wondering if we could also direct the report to the county supervisors, given that those expenses part was done, I think that it would be good to this report to not only really counting, but then also in the direction of city managed office that they work with the county on implementing council accepted cash file policy recommendation as identified there in health information that's come through this group. It'd be really good if the county has these recommendations as well. We really try to work with the county and the conversations right now. You can as we talk about funding, if we're able to work with the county and kind of see the county as the leaders with us. So what our needs are, I think that that would really be helpful in continuing to maintain this collaboration. I will gladly accept that family amendment. I think it's brilliant. Thank you. I'm happy to wrap the evening up. It was mentioned that it would be good to have someone represent the city at the budget areas tomorrow. That was mentioned earlier today. Also, is anyone planning to do that? You are. Okay. What time is it at the meeting tomorrow? Do you have a time certain for that or a window? Yeah, I was, I believe Susie mentioned that I think the meeting starts at nine. It's hard to know exactly, but maybe somewhere try to tune in by Spanish. That makes sense. I don't know if you were watching that closer than I was, but I think to the extent that we can advocate, let's please anyone that can join in. I've got a little time between a meeting at work, but if there's more people that can join, it'd be great. I'll try to be on time. That's all Zoom too. So it's just a matter of pulling in. Is that correct? Yeah, so I sent an email to the man vice mayor about the timing of it. I'm Council Member Matthews, and I think that the meeting starts at nine, but there is public comment before that, and there have been a fairly long line of public comment in recent meetings, and I don't know if the budget hearings will be an exception. And then they are going to do the consent agenda before they move into the CAO's office budget. And that, so my expectation is anywhere between nine 30 and 10 30 is when public comment would be happening on that particular element of the agenda. So it is the first general business agenda item. Yeah, okay, I can do that. I can group text you guys if you guys are interested and I can send the column information as well for everybody if that would be helpful. Yeah, and then my thought is also if you're going to send gig copy to the supervisors, it's just a little bit more effort, but also share it with our state elected and Jimmy Panetta. I mean, these are all money sources. So let them know we have made a big investment of money, time, et cetera, effort in this cash project. And so let others see what we've come up with, what we hope to achieve and let them be part of that. Yeah, I'll just reiterate my disappointment that given all the talk about partnership and wanting the county to move in this direction, working on the Coral Street project, et cetera, that we can't come up with a way to make a small modest contribution to demonstrate that we really want to partner on a project like this. So I'll just say that and leave it there so the budget conversation may come up again. The city manager's office will put the county on implementing counter-accepted cash file policy recommendations that's seconded by Councilmember Wacken if there's no further questions or comments. I'll turn it over to the city. May I make a quick request for staff clarification? And I know that this might be helpful for the clerk as well. The motion was written in a way to allow for you to identify specific recommendations from the final recommendations to move forward. I'm assuming that you mean all four recommendations. I just want to make that clarification so everybody's on the same page. I'll make a motion that's the case. Okay, yeah, thank you. Thank you. Okay, yes, we'll move on to all our recommendations. Councilmember Fierce? Matthew? Bye. Bye. Boulder? Bye. Bye. And Mayor Cummings? Aye. That's the dean out on his way. We'll send to all the cash members and to all the people who are engaged and involved and move forward before we forward with our work we can have to really test we can with the resources that we have to address homelessness in our community.