 Okay, welcome everybody to the capital city council meeting. Before we get started, I'm going to turn this over to our, uh, first Chloe. Thank you, Mayor Brooks. I'm having technical difficulties. One second. So, okay, I'm sorry. Welcome to the capital city council meeting in accordance with the current and the governor's executive order and this meeting is not physically open to the public. Council and staff are meeting via zoom and there are several ways for the public to watch and participate information on how to join the meeting using zoom and a landline or mobile phone along with public comment during the meeting tonight is available on our website. City of capitol.org on the slides now shown and on the published meeting agenda. As always, this meeting is cable cast live on charter communication. Channel 8 channel 8 and it's being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Wednesday at 8am and on Saturday following the first rebroadcast at 1pm on charter channel. And contact channel 25 meetings can also be viewed live from our community website. Tonight we have two technicians from community television, their names are Noel and Alex. Thank you for being here and Mayor Brooks back to you. Thank you so much. I love for everyone tonight just please remain on mute. Unless you are the speaker. Okay, so we're going to move on to item number one. Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, we're going to move on to item two and this is a report out on close session. And you're muted. Sorry about that. Anything else. With how the agenda and no action. We have three additional materials. If you have any additional materials tonight. Yes, there were several materials for tonight's agenda. The first being the resolution for item 70 for item 70 G and updated easement was sent out. For item 80, we received one comment. And for 80, there was one letter. With all the additional materials. Thank you very much. Moving on to item four additions and deletions to the agenda. Do we have any additions or solutions? Let's do that sound test again for you, Jamie. I think you said something. There's no changes to the agenda this evening. Thank you. Okay. I'm five or public comments. We have any public comments. Mayor Brooks, I do not see anyone. They're hand raised and I do not see any emails on this item. Okay. Moving right along. We'll now move on to item six. This is for city council and staff comments. We'll start with staff. Do we have any comments from staff this evening? I do have one announcement I wanted to make. You may recall during the Google setting session, we talked about a potential partnership with the city of Scots Valley. Rather recreation programs. Have been in communication with the city manager for the city of Scots Valley. And they've elected to pursue a different path. They've told me that they're planning on working with a nonprofit partner to provide summer recreation services in Scots Valley. So we won't be bringing back. Thank you. And we're going to move to council. Council member for Trent. Council member. You are needed. Yeah. I was recently talking with the executive director of the RTC guide president. And I asked if he would like to speak with the city council member for the city of Scots Valley. I asked if he could do a presentation with the executive director of the RTC guide president. And I asked if he would like to do a presentation. He's done one in the past, but the RTC has gotten a significant grant that's helping to fund many of the improvements on highway one, including bus on shoulder, which is something a lot of people are anticipating. I asked if he could do a presentation on that and an update on the trail rail issue. And he said he was very glad to do that. But he'd like to have a conversation with Jamie to figure out, you know, if that fits into your schedule and also to go over the content. So Jamie, if that's agree with you and the city, that's going to be a great informative presentation to the people. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to take a moment to address my thoughts on some issues that we've seen happen not only in our community, but throughout the state and throughout the nation recently. One of them is that since the start of the pandemic and more recently, honestly, we've seen an increase in hate and hate crimes against our Asian American Pacific Islander community. And I want to take the moment right now to, to condemn that kind of behavior and that kind of hate and to re reaffirm that there's no place for it in Capitola or in our state or in our nation. And on that same train of thoughts, throughout the city recently, people have been finding rocks and signs that say no white guilt on them. It's disturbing to find not only for myself, but for others in our community, especially for our BIPOC community in the city of Capitola. And again, I want to take a moment to condemn these kinds of actions, behaviors and statements in our city and to reaffirm that all people are welcome here and that, that these kinds of actions and behaviors to specifically indicate that there should be no white guilt or that there's certain members of our, of our community that aren't welcome are exactly why we have people reaching out with concerns about whether or not Capitola is a welcoming place. And so I would encourage us all to take a moment to find ways to make sure that we are continuing to affirm that Capitola is a welcoming place rather than to continue to perpetuate the kind of ideas that we're seeing in these fires and rocks and hate that's happening throughout our community. Not only recently since the pandemic, but, but also historically. And that's all from me this evening. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember. I couldn't have said it any better. I appreciate you bringing that up tonight. My thoughts are also with the families that the lives that have been lost in the community and throughout the country to gun violence. There's been just a lot of going on. In regards to the hate and violence. And we have a lot of work ahead of us. And I'm just so proud to be a part of a community review person who's leading these groups. And these really courageous conversations. And I appreciate being a part of that. So thank you so much. I would just like to add that there's a couple of. On a bit of a lighter note. That's the capital. Chamber is hosting its annual. But a little bit different this year. You will not see thousands of adorable children on our beaches. They are doing several different funds. Throughout the village and so to learn more, you can visit their website. Also, this is just a reminder to everyone to please continue to run your mouth. And socially distance. We have a lot of updates. Going from one to another. But the message remains the same. Please continue to socially distance. Don't worry your mask. And lastly, I'd like for staff if we could have a report back and a later meeting about an update on our environmental commission. Each of us are a point somebody. On the environmental commission, but we just have heard from them or know what's going on. And so I just love to get an update on that. I just met with a group for this first time. Last Wednesday. And we are kind of in, in talks about. Putting in more mandates for. The, the to go containers utensils, things like that. When it comes to restaurants within capitol. Making the mandates. More of a mandate than it is at this point in time. Along with. Many notes that we've been getting. On behalf of. Gas powered. The blowers. So those are things that have been discussed. The work, the group is in works of. Making a presentation for council. And so we'll. Receive a more in depth and more informational. Post. Then I can get today, but that's kind of the. Perfect. The jazz. Cool group. So I'm glad to be honest though. Yeah. Okay. So moving forward. We're going to move on to item seven. For consent calendar. All items will be enacted as one motion in the form. Below. There will be no separate discussions on these items prior to the time. Council votes on the action. That's a member of the city council request. To be discussed for separate. For separate. Would council like to pull any items before moving on. And I understand. Move to accept the. Video. Sorry. I'll second. Thank you. All right. Wonderful. And I have a roll call for. I approve. Number. Hi. Number. Hi. Hi. Hi. Your story. Hi. Okay. Now we're going to move on to item eight. This is general government. Go to item eight. Eight. The 2021 community development block grant. Public hearing to consider potential activity. And I believe this isn't miss. Charlie. Item. Thank you, mayor Brooks and council. This evening we have Paul Ashby with us who is going to present. Good evening, mayor. Members of the council. Good to see everybody again. I am back to do another public hearing for CDG. At the last meeting. I gave you a pretty good update on. Your notice of a funding availability that is coming out for 2021. And tonight we're actually going to have the public hearing. For that item. So I'm going to head and share my screen with you. And I trust you all can see that. Thumbs up. Good. Okay. Thank you. So if you will remember. And the call from our last meeting. The notice of funding availability comes out every year. I'm just going to hit on a couple of these slides before we get into the recommendations. Just so everybody can refresh their memory. Housing and community development department. Issued this Nova on January 29th for $30 million. This is typically there. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you. I'm just going to hit on a couple of slides before we get into the next slide. So this is the $30 million. This is typically their annual allocation. I mean, you're going down a little bit. But this has been pretty standard for the last few years. Funds are provided to cities. And the form of grants. Housing. Public services. Economic development and structure and more. And as you will recall, we always have to meet the national objective. of all under the low, moderate income of the persons. In this NOFA, we can apply for up to three different groups slash activities. The students are on the screen. We have homebuyer for $500,000, house for $500,000, public services for $500,000, planning and technical assistance for $250,000, and economic development and business assistance for $500,000. Maximum award for the district is $1.5 million, and these applications are going to do on April 30th, 2021. So in meeting with staff over the last couple of weeks and kind of looking at the past experiences that the city's had with CDG, we really felt like public services, the way to deal with this application, as many of you are aware, we have been to housing programs in the past in the city that are pretty difficult, just based on the purchase price limits that we have and some of the market that capital opposes. This year's also a little bit different because we can't do infrastructure. That's actually not going to be open. So our recommendation is to focus on public services. So that's the other slide we're going to see tonight. If you do want to discuss some of those other items, though, and activities, I'm happy to go over those again with you to the council once more. So just a couple of general ideas here for public services again, homeless recreational services, health care, food, crime prevention, the list really goes on and on. It's going to be used to pay for the actual salaries that people are going to put together, supplies, labor, you know, many expenses that we can cover and we can just leave this for them. So once we decided on public services, we did come up with the recommendation on who might be the best fit for these programs. You're obviously going to recognize the names on this list of the next staff and each of these organizations to see if they would have any consistent concerns. As council is aware, these groups are already receiving really good health care money through the Coronavirus Act. So this would be a separate grant in addition to. So the amount you can see below are what the organizations proposed to us, which actually fit pretty well within that $500 app. We would be able to apply for all three of these not to exceed $500,000. As you can see there on the screen, we have free bears, the food distribution program, the second harvest food bank and the community bridges meals on the list one. If you're successful, these awards would most likely be in fall 2021. And with their typical annual cycle, the funding period is actually for 36 months. So much longer than the CARES money, CV money. So once we execute the contract, these organizations would actually have three years for spending dollars. So they had probably a bit of time that they would be able to utilize these funds. And when staff and I reached out to these organizations, we made it clear that it would be more of a three-year cycle and that they thought that they might be able to use specifically from the CV bank. So the recommendation tonight, CEDG always requires that we have the form of public hearing that we have noticed. So the recommendation would be to open the public hearing of CV money, close the public hearing and then have council discussion. If the council sees fit, we would ask that you recommend staff be reported with preparing an application and that resolution would come back to you on April 8th for formal adoption and the application would be submitted to the state no later than April 30th, 2021. And that is a brief overview of that. I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I would be happy to answer any questions that the mayor and the city council members may have at this time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Ashfield. I'll go ahead and ask if there's any questions from council. Please come to the floor. Thank you, mayor. And thank you Paul, it's good to work with you again. I just wanted to maybe get some clarification because one of my prior meetings when we were talking about our community grants program using general fund dollars that, and I believe I wasn't sure whether it was CDBG recipients or CARES recipients should not also receive general fund dollars and therefore shouldn't bother to provide an application for our community programs. So I was just wondering if you had some clarification on that. Sure. Thank you councilman, sorry. So two items there that we can hit on. So first with the CARES money, they hit on the duplication benefits a lot in the guidance that comes out there. And that's basically meaning you cannot pay for something twice with these monies. And so in this case, there will be a duplication benefits to any of these programs. They're very concerned with folks. Let's say that the city of Capitol is in a rental assistance program. And at the same time, the state's coming out with their sort of their emergency rental assistance program. They're really looking to make sure that we're not funding the same groups of people the same activities and they're receiving basically government gift. The lack of the better work for the duplication benefits. The second caveat with these funds that I think you're hitting on council member is also they say that CDBG funds in the right should have some other federal money that's already been programed for. So the idea is they don't have a deposit money sitting in the grant and then, oh, we'll just come in and fund this with the city of Capitol one CDBG fund instead. So ideally they're not so planting any federal dollars for these as well. I hope that answers your questions. Yeah, it does. Thank you, Emma. Absolutely. Council member, the chair, the other question. You don't have any sound. Is there any reporting requirements here to the city of Capitol or to the fence? Yeah, so it's a great question. Council member. So the, the reporting will fall to your sub recipient. So the city is basically passed the agency to the sub recipient to gray bears and the second artist. Right now we have them required to report on a quarterly basis to the city and the city intern reports to HCD on a quarterly basis as well as an annual report on what you've done with the funds. Those quarterly reports can be the same as your drawdown requests as well as a status update on where you're standing for funds. They up to $500,000 I will just go now since you bought it up to 17% that the city is able to take into general administration which would cover cities that time or myself to assist with those reports and prepare them. So ideally everything would come out of the grant not going to get hit to general fund for the administration. What's the tenor or the just other reporting except like how many meals have been delivered or how many rides have been delivered or does it go into a little bit more detail in terms of improvement of lives, improvement of situations that you're actually working in? Well, I would say that HUD always likes to see it go further and say how they're actually improving these lives rather than just one meal provided to somebody who knows that really makes the biggest difference but to be honest the report is going to look at who you assisted. So it's going to be demographics on the individual that they're providing the meals to. So if it is exceeding meals on meals program let's say community bridges would be providing unduplicated reports for individuals that they serve that we would collect income and demographic information on them that we would collect. And then probably in the near future is where we can add how many meals of food, how many pounds of food maybe we would purchase anything else that they would like to have. Great, any other questions before we move to public comment or this question? Okay, we're going to move to our public hearing portion if there's any comments from the audience. Mayor Brooks, I do not see anybody with their hands raised and I do not see any email communications on this item. Okay, thank you. So I'll bring it back to council for further discussion and a vote. Do I have a motion? Yeah. Council member Peterson. Motion. Council member Peterson. I think Vice Mayor's story just made a motion. So I'll second his motion. Fabulous. And can I have a roll call please? Member Chang. Please. I approve. Council member Piper. Aye. Council member Peterson. Aye. Vice Mayor Story. Mayor Brooks. Yeah, item passes unanimously. We're going to now move on to item B. This is outdoor dining and village parking program discussion. And I see, thank you, Katie. I see Katie. It's your item. This is my item. Good evening, Mayor Brooks. Council members. So give me a second here while I share the screen. Can everyone see okay? Yeah, let's get a thumbs up. All right. So as a reminder for everyone during our vote section a couple of weeks ago, we talked about potential goals around the long-term plan for outdoor dining as we transition hopefully out of the pandemic relative to this team. We also talked about a long-term plan around potentially looking at our parking rates in the village. Other could be in this proposal from the Council in looking at the outdoor dining plan. But there was lots to discuss about whether or not we should be looking at the village parking rates at the same time. So at the meeting of the vote setting session the Council directs back to continue deciding to bring back a little bit more information for further deliberations. So the outdoor dining, I think everyone will remember is back again in June of 2020, last year we were issuing an emergency order that allowed the board of businesses to move outdoors to provide safer opportunities for people to do in their business. There's 32 cities, businesses around the city that have permits. And there's 15 restaurants or apartments that are used that are conducting business outside in the public right of way in the village right now. It also we estimate for 47 parking spaces that are being occupied. Probably reducing revenues by around $140,000 a year for the city. Those permits for outdoor dining might now be structured in case it will continue until May 31st at the earliest, three-year longer, if the city chooses to attend it. The currently in the red tier and we may be moving more relatively soon and in order to get all restaurants to increase their capacity in yours up to 50%. At this point, we don't know how long the blue term will be in place. My over time, I'm just able to continue to have some levels of restrictions as we get into the early summer. But maybe by the time we get into the later summer, that's when potentially this system will be able to move back to the last one. No chance of getting one, it's not in the right and go for shipments. In 2016, the city actually took a step on an outdoor dining program. It was a two-year pilot program that the city council adopted. The basic idea behind it was for a limited part of the village, a couple of parking lots could be allowed for a three-year period to see how they worked out. What ended up happening was the full cost of one of these was supposedly the city of almost $5,000. The rents that we needed to put in place in that program were $3,000 per parking space per year. And then the construction costs, because we were wiring a footprint with a deck to be built, it was around $750,000 a few years. And it wasn't business that was interested but they ended up pulling out during that second year because they really realized that we were not going to be able to be there. Potentially $15,000 to $20,000 in seven costs if they understand how it worked out to be a short period of time. So at this point, the village pilot program is inspired in New York County that needs to mechanism by rotating the businesses that had our product today to move forward when the emergency service arrives. Our community race, our community race for last June since 2009, when we had a record of $1 to $1.50 per hour. The process was a pretty, it was right about the time that I first came to the city. It was a relatively in-depth process that included a comprehensive city study of the village parking rates, of the parking formation of lieu of admission and that multiple times ultimately came out with recommendations in the multiple city council hearings. In addition to the village parking meter rates, we also had a fully parking permit program which costs a certain amount of money, resident parking permits, and then also overnight accommodations like the hotels in the village. They didn't purchase transferable passes that they could give out to the guests. So we talk about the village parking rate structure, potentially all of those items to be on the table in the morning. So that takes us to options for how to move forward. I think that there's really three different tasks that council can direct staff to pursue. One is really to develop a long-term plan to be able to focus in on that. I think council would want to consider the lost parking revenue as we develop what that long-term plan looked like, whether it be consideration of parking revenue ultimately letting it do kind of a one-for-one match like the original program would remain unseen if we decided down the road. But I do think city would want to consider looking at okay, if we're going to do this, what the financial implications are for the city. Another option, which is sort of the half-glending of these three different projects together, we'll be looking at it for dining, but also looking at maybe some of the other parking rates in the village, and maybe don't generate much community concern. In general, most community concerns around the village parking meter rates, but for example, potentially if you look at tweaking the way to the city hall or to us, behind city hall, or maybe one of our other programs, what are things that didn't generate as much community concern. The disadvantage of this approach is that the parking meter rates are set, I don't know, restricted to subject to coastal commission approval. So we would end up having to submit coastal commission rights. In addition, I think there's a pretty strong argument that there's relations between how much we're charging the village versus how much we're charging the local lots. And it may be, it goes like what we see on the project. The third option is really to say, well, we're going to leave out. This is this review of the effort, which probably would be something that would occupy a lot of the work for the city for the next year. And it would be basically looking at a long term plan throughout the parking and traveling beyond the village parking rates. The downside of that is that sometimes you don't want to put too many things on the plate. Nothing gets done. And so I think that's my only concern with this approach is that are we tackling too much of lots creating the work that we can get done in some way. So with that concludes our presentation. I'm available for questions. Thank you. I'm just wondering if staff is on the estimated, any revenue estimates, or if the, either the village meters or the parking lot fees were to go up by a quarter or 50 cents or a dollar. Is there any estimates of what kind of revenue that would bring in if the parking rates were increased? It does that. I will tell you though that it's, we would probably relatively, mostly just straight line it. So I do think that our finest records to give us our public works track would give us a ballpark. They'd give us our total meter rates and then, hypothetically, if we were to go to $1.50 or $2 an hour, that's a 33% increase. So we could come up with that pretty quickly if you'd like. Okay, thank you. I'll put it closer. I think this might be a question you were asking, but I'm kind of thinking a little bit outside of the village at this point. I know a lot of things are put on the parklets that are taking up costs to the city, but what about other restaurants and places that are using their own parking lots to use tents or outdoor dining for this same thing that would limit their parking that then again is part of their lease or whatever their property ownership is based on whatever business that they're running? Is there any way to compare these two? I don't know, I think I'm at a loss for words at how to compare like the village versus say somewhere on 41st that may have their own parking lot that are allowed to use the parking spaces but isn't being taxed on our parking dollars. So they're spot free and the village business is not. Let me take a stab at it. Katie and then maybe you could jump in and help me out here if I'm stumbling. So I think that there's two parts to your question. I think the first part is are we focusing in this idea of outdoor dining on the village? And I'll be honest with you, that's kind of the way I conceptualized it, but I think you bring up a good point is would we want to also think about continuing the opportunity for restaurants that are outside the village to use their own parking lots for outdoor dining? And I think that that's a good question. I think that could easily be folded into the this overall objective for the goal so that we can look into that. And I think you're also pointing out another good point is that the rules we would set up around that really what the purpose for their parking on their lot that they're paying for is to minimize the impacts on their neighbors from their business, right? So that their business doesn't end up spilling over and impacting their neighbors. So it'd be a whole different sort of set of, I think rules are a program that would set up then if we're giving up public space, right? We're giving up public parking spaces and a public asset for private business. So I think that that could make sense. I'll be honest with you, I was kind of mentally more focused on the village because it's right in front of us, but I think that's a good point. No, and thank you. I this kind of just I'm right now. So I just wanted to put it out there because if I don't, then I'll forget about it. But yeah, I just think if we're going to continue on a long-term thing, I think it's a great thing to incorporate and think about as far as not singling out just the village and just 41st or wherever, but kind of making it, yeah, and things may be different depending on your location, but maybe sort of factoring some of that stuff into. Thank you. That's my story, do you have a question? Again, thank you. Jamie in the staff report, it mentions that changing the parking rates would require a post-recommissioned approval, but it's an amendment to our local coastal plan. However, it was setting up the parklets which would also eliminate parking spaces also be changing our local coastal plan subject to the post-recommissioned approval. I don't believe it would be in the same way. My understanding, because they were okay with our pilot program, with as long as we were issuing coastal development permits for the projects, they were okay with us proceeding without an LCP amendment for the pilot program. However, it's possible that if we would implement something larger, that they would suggest that it's an LCP amendment and it isn't just the issuance of a coastal development permit. So I think that if this becomes a goal, Steve Jesper and myself have spoken a little bit and we've identified a number of different kind of immediate research needs and that is one of them, is to talk to coastal commission and get clear about their position around the other line. Okay, thank you. Okay, seeing no other questions, we'll go ahead and do this to public comments. Do we have any comments or questions from the public? Yes, Mayor Brooks, I see one attendee with a hand up, although I'm trying, oh, there it is. Okay, let me allow, it's Linda Smith. Good evening, Councilor, can you hear me now? Good evening. I think that you're listening. Good evening, Mayor Brooks and Council members and Jamie as well. First, I want to commend you for your quick and decisive action throughout this pandemic and for allowing me the opportunity to speak and for having these presentation materials put together for this issue tonight because it's been one of those things that's been on my mind for a couple of months now. I was a planning commissioner when we originally sort of deliberated the parklet idea and safety, size and image were focus areas for us then and now because of what's happened with the pandemic, we have some real life examples that can help mitigate some of those concerns that we had before. Traffic has slowed, especially in the Escalon, pedestrian awareness by vehicles has increased with the parklets being there. Adequately spaced parklets require more than two spaces and I think we can see that now in the implementation that we've got. Once they were invested with lights and plants and planters after you guys said that this would go at least until the end of May, I think that the parklets really brought some charm and some vibrancy to the village that we didn't have before because the only place for all of the crops to go were the sidewalks and the sea wall and of course the beach but now there are gathering places that are helping the restaurants and at the same time distributing some of that crowd and changing the nature of the experience in the village and it's good. I think the restaurants are going to have continued challenges. Right now getting staff to come back is a huge deal for most of the restaurants in the area both in Capitola and outside of Capitola. 50% occupancy is a lot more than we have today but most restaurants are limited more by the six foot required spacing than they are the number of 25% versus 50%. And the restaurant owners that I talked to say it's not gonna help them going from 25 to 50% if they have to give up the outdoor dining seats that they now have available. Mr. Westman said it very well when he said the successful restaurant of the future will provide sufficient square footage, spacing and protected separation, air handling equipment and modern kitchens to ensure a safe dining experience for both customers and staff. I think he's absolutely right about that. For what better air management system can you have them be in outdoors at the beach? I'm requiring infrastructure investments, raised platform, new kitchens, all of that while the seat space, am I running out of time? No harness. Can I just really close really quickly? I really encourage you to adopt option one and in haste and develop a long-term strategy that minimizes the immediate burden on the restaurants with a phased investment approach, identify those design elements that are really important like lighting and borders and that kind of thing but allow flexibility so that each area can uniquely identify itself. Extend the May 31st deadline to provide adequate time for the restaurants to respond to what you come up with and give them a real reason to invest. Today, we have a variety of dining in Capitola that encourages people of all ethnic, cultural and economic levels to mingle together outdoors at the beach. And I think that's what the Coastal Commission really strives for. So it's gotta be worth 47 parking spaces to them since we have the big parking lots and I'm sure the city can recover its loss in revenue in the rents for those parcels. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you. Okay, so now we'll bring it back to council for further discussion, some direction for staff and a vote. Council member Kaiser. Thanks again, I'm talking about this but I just want to thank Linda for her points. I resonate with a lot of them. I do think that coming up with some type of symbiotic relationship for city and small business is important. However, I do think as Mr. Westman stated that we are approaching a new normal so that we are no longer gonna be elbow to elbow with indoors of a dining experience. So that the outdoor possibility should be kind of in the forefront and whether we also talk to other businesses that are not dining. That I think going to the BIA and getting more information on this is how we can move forward as far as sort of surveying what's gonna work for the village and beyond whether that's 41st and other areas like that. So I really want to move forward with this and make it a goal and a priority to make it sustainable for both small businesses and the city and the lights and the visitors. And I appreciate that. Thanks guys. Thank you council member, Vice Mayor Stewart. Thank you, Mayor Brooks. I just want to acknowledge, I think that we should be prepared and I agree that we're probably gonna have to extend this current outdoor dining permits beyond May 31st because of the years that the blueprint and the tiers are probably gonna continue longer. And I don't think it's in anyone's interest for us for the restaurants and for the city to try to survive on 50% occupancy. I think as part of this analysis, it would be interesting to see what that capacity means in terms of either reduce or additional sales tax on the city. Because I think that would be critical in this analysis. And going beyond that, I guess I have one concern I have because we've had prior experience with the parklets and the expense involved. And when you took the cost of the improvements, the cost of the permit and then the cost of the annual rental to the city, it was approaching almost $20,000. And so I guess I have a concern whether many of the businesses are gonna be able to afford that. And particularly, the annual grants that would be that we attempted to collect which was about 3,000 a year and which it appears that it would be about that same amount. So if there was some ability to offset the loss of the city because if we don't collect those rents, the city is gonna lose revenue. But if we impose those rents to keep the city hold, it may be too extensive for the businesses to participate. So I think we need to try to solve that dilemma. But, and I agree with Councilwoman Kaiser that going long term, we need to take our time and bring in all the stakeholders because this would be a significant wholesale change to the village, to the traffic circulation and the visitor experience. So I think it is something that we should take our time with and evaluate. And I anticipate that it's gonna require Postal Commission approval to have a permanent purpose in the village after we have exiled it for a brief time. So those are my thoughts. I'm glad that we're looking at this in study in it. I think we should continue to do so but I think we should try to find a formula that's gonna work for everyone concerned. Thank you. Thank you Vice Mayor. I just want some clarification on the item before us this evening or maybe offer some clarity. I wanna understand tonight's item is just to set this as a goal for the next, and Jamie helped me on for this next coming year that in May will be moving into the program itself. And so I'm just hoping that the feedback you're receiving tonight will be in the closing of the May presentation because there's a lot of great ideas in the discussion being brought forward. But am I able to say just to make this for us a yes for that I would like to look at our plan all together and we want to set that as a council goal. I'm just looking at offer some clarification on the feedback and what you're looking for tonight. Thank you very much. And tonight we're looking for a really is a council to get us correction on which one of these three goals or a modified version that is a fiscal year of 2021-22 goal. And you're exactly right. I think actually our goal is to get back in front of the city council like the first because of the timing of the aftergliding if we do determine the aftergliding before next year which I think we are. It would be our best to get back in front of the city council to start talking about the issue and bringing the information and making it hopefully more than the possible. So yeah, so if I have my brothers at this point we would just give motion saying you know I move that you move forward with option one of the options listed here or a different version. Okay, thank you. I'm before I move on to the next question. My question is to worry if still your hands are already done with your work, your comments. I am but just sharing that I guess I would want to put in there that I support option. Okay, thank you. Council Member Peterson. To clarify if that was a motion or just a comment. Just a comment, not a motion. Okay, thank you. I also, as Vice Mayor Story mentioned I also have concerns about the costs that we previously had in place for apartments and that made it for some businesses or using them going forward especially since we've seen the benefit they can bring to our village. I would like to see in the future when this comes back to us in April those kind of cost estimates of what kind of revenue the city could bring in if our village parking meter prices went up either from 150 to 175 order $2 and then also what kind of revenue estimates we could see in our parking lots if those prices were to be increased as well. And then in general, I also want to echo the comments that Councilwoman Kaiser mentioned about bringing in all the stakeholders for this issue. And finally, I would like to make a motion to move forward with option one in establishing a long-term outdoor guiding strategy quickly in the near term and then agreeing to evaluate the parking rates. It says in future years, but I would just say subsequent to the parklet issue although if we could bring back the information about the rates, I think that would help us make better decisions about the outdoor dining strategy and then we could actually dive in deeper with the parking issue at a later time. Was that a clear motion? I'm not sure that it was. We had a pretty clear motion. It was option one with the commitment to look at the parking rates subsequent to getting the outdoor guiding time. Yes. Council Member Kandilicum? Yeah, I want to second that in a way and forgive me. I think I'm coming across the point where I don't really want our village parking rates to impede on how we move forward with the parklets. And so maybe I'm missing the difference between option one and option two. If that just means we could focus on the parking of the back lots versus the parking of the village lots or if in future years we focus on the village, that's cool too and I can fully second that and I'm down. Thanks. Are you asking for clarification on my motion or on the staff recommendation? I think the recommendation. Okay. The difference of the staff recommendation was option one was really focusing on getting the outdoor dining done and then option two was focusing on getting the outdoor dining done but maybe if there is any low hanging fruit and I'm not sure if that's really a good term in this context but maybe looking at the remote lots, the rates remote lots, probably that's probably the only area of non-controversial parking rates that I can think of. So that's the difference between one and two. Okay. So I feel like I'm starting with two then. But. Okay. We have a motion on the table for staff recommendation one. Do we have a second? Okay. Seeing none. No second. Okay. Okay. So council member Bertrand you would like option one. Yes. Okay. So we have a first and a second. Any further conversation? Yes. I have a question staff. Oh, I'm sorry. Council member Bertrand, Vice Mayor Storys-Hamlet's raised first. I'm happy to be deferred to Council member Bertrand. Okay. Council member Bertrand. So city manager, I think you addressed this but I just want to be clear. You are ready to run with this so that we have clear direction and we're going to be working with other groups and help that formulate our direction. And we'll be able to address this way in advance of the May deadline. Perfect. Way in advance. It's going to be a real push. Our goal is to get information to start the process with the council next month and do our best to have a program in place before the end of May. But I think as a council member or vice mayor Storys said previously, it's very likely that I think we're going to be extending our temporary outdoor dining program into June. And I also do know that the car show was recently canceled for this next year. So that conflict at the beginning of June has gone away. So we'll do our best, but I don't want to promise that we're going to have the whole thing buttoned up by the end of May. Okay. So you brought up my concern on supporting one but at some point, if you need more time we can just put in before the city council to extend that deadline. Yeah, I do think that would be necessary. Okay. Thank you. Hey, vice mayor Storys. Yeah. Thanks again, members. Just wanted just to ask about clarification on the motion. The step before it says the option one is to establish a long term strategy for outdoor dining. But what I'm hearing it sounds like and maybe clarification on the motion, the motion is to establish and implement long-term dining. Is that accurate? Well, if I'm understanding correctly the overall issue that my motion would be to establish a strategy for long-term dining, but because we need to make a decision by May 31st that we would need to implement that strategy before that time. Or at least extend what we have happening now would at least need to extend past May 31st. I'm fine with that. And then in that case, my motion would be just to create a strategy. So maybe I just caused more confusion based on the question. Nothing would change. Like if we vote on this tonight nothing's gonna change until we vote again. That's my understanding. Okay. All we're doing at this point is saying whether or not we wanna tackle the parking meters next year and outdoor dining or whether we're gonna focus on outdoor dining. I think that's the simplest way to think of the two options. Okay. Okay, so we're just setting a goal tonight to bring back outdoor dining again at a later meeting. We're just setting the goal, adding it to the roster of items that we did at our last meeting. And I have a motion on the table for option one, which is to establish this as a goal for 20, I don't even know what year we're in, 2021, 22. Last year, to really establish as a goal, we're gonna bring it back for further discussion and more great ideas for the process about outdoor dining in the future. This option one is very specific about the parking option. And so we have a first and a second by Council Member Prachand. Are we ready for roll call? May I have a follow-up question, Mayor Brooks? Sure, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to ask staff as a part of option one, do you think you can develop a strategy that's gonna be revenue neutral for the city? I think I can develop a strategy that's gonna be revenue neutral for the city. You know, what we'll do is we'll look at probably added revenue that we could get up the outdoor dining and then also look at what the rents would be. I know this is a little bit more, a little bit off topic, but I don't think that the hang-up to our pilot program was this annual rent, I think it would be upfront cost in the limited term. So I suspect that maybe, especially through phase in the rents, I suspect that we will be able to make a revenue neutral just on the face of it with the rents that we're gonna charge. But we're gonna need to do some more homework, we're gonna need to do some outreach, we're gonna need to think about how the costs to develop the improvements would be funded, all of those things. Okay, thank you, Dena. And so I'll just share before we go to roll call that is why I'm not gonna be supporting the motion on the table tonight or right now, because I believe we're gonna have to look at other options and that possibility of increasing the parking in our lower pack home or those two other parking might be able to help mitigate those costs that we're talking about, that my senior was talking about. So that's my favorite option too, and that's why I won't be voting yes for a good motion on the table this evening. So I'm gonna take it to roll call and then go from, oh, council member Kaiser, I'm sorry. No, thank you. I think you put it better than I did. I'm feeling, I'm trying to look at both sides of the coin here and I've been in a lot of research back from the public as far as the outdoor dining, costing us revenue and things like that. So if this is something that we want to continue which I think we all are in agreement that we should especially for our small businesses that is there another supplemental income that we can look at in conjunction with the continuation of the way things are going for the parklets, i.e. the back parking lots and look at that situation as far as being the hourly costs or whatever to supplement and to kind of try to bring up the scales here and make it so that more people are comfortable in the community with how it's going on. So it's not just like the restaurants are just getting all that they want and we're losing money and whatever, which I want things to, I want it to be more symbiotic. And so I think that's all I'm trying to get at is I think it's a little less black and white than the one, two, three scale that we're looking at. Council Member Peterson. Thank you. I just wanted one more point of clarification from staff if I could. So if my motion, my motion's been made clear on option one, but I have a question on option two. If we were to go forward with that, that means that we would need postal commission approval. And so any long-term strategy we did come up with for the parklets could not be implemented until coastal commission approves any kind of changes in lot fees if we were to decide that. Is that correct? So we have to go forward with the kind of temporary measure we have now, potentially for six months to a year or more. However long it takes for coastal commission to approve our parking lot changes. Is that correct? I don't know whether or not, at this point I just can't tell you whether or not the changes in the LCP that the parking meters would necessitate would also hold up the outflow value. You're correct that even if we started moving today and said we want to change the meter rates in the backlogs, we would take at least six months before that change to come in place. But I don't know if that would slow down the implementation of the outflow value. Which you can't say. So that would depend on us as a council though, correct? If we as a council said, yes, we will allow this long-term strategy for park goods to go forward is and when we can increase the parking meter rates, then we as a council are essentially determining how long that would take. Is that correct? Correct. I'm sorry, Jimmy, you cut out just a little bit at the end of the last part. That's correct. Then you'd be trying the two projects together. Okay, cool. That's all I needed. Thank you so much. Yeah, just to rule that on that point, my sense is that option two incorporates option one. And it's always at our discretion to determine what the final plan is going to be. And this just gives us an opportunity to evaluate the meter rates in the lots, to seeing if we could use that in some way to offset the cost of the permits, the annual fees and for the businesses. So I didn't view that option two is necessarily restricting option one in any way. It just to me, it spans our possibilities of consideration. And also having the specifics or the confirmation of what the cost of permission is going to require will also weigh into our ultimate decision. So that's just my sense of it. It gives us a greater, I think, platform to work from. And we may very well end up at option one or that one being implemented until such time as we can change the meter range. So I mean, that was my sense of it. You know, staff feels that's the wrong interpretation. Yeah, please, you know, let me know. But to me that I didn't think that they were in, you know, we were committed and tied to those two things when it came back to us. Thank you. So I hope not vice mayor's story. Because I'm going to give you from some members here to send them vice mayor's story about looking at all options. Okay, I think I'm going to send it back. So any other comments before I move to roll call? Okay. Can I roll call please? Council Member Bertrand. Approved. Council Member Heifer. Council Member Peterson. Aye. Vice Mayor Dory. I'm not option two guys, so no. Mayor Brooks. Moving on to item A-B. Consider options for implicit bias training. Yes, good evening Mayor Brooks, Council Members. I am trying to share the screen on the correct one for the broadcast. So one second, I want to make sure I get this right. Hope everyone can see that. So I'm here for you to talk about implicit and conscious bias training. This was both established by the Council to provide implicit or unconscious bias training for council. We have researched different options and different options and we've categorized the options based on the roles of the city council and the department heads and those others to attend the council's meeting on a regular basis. The council of police communities we kind of considered as a public workshop for the city council and department heads. It would be, of course, to be at this point to be conducted over soon. We've talked to a few professional bias trainers. I will tell you in front that we, a few of the people we've talked to will not do this at a public meeting, studying at a public meeting, but we do, we have talked to a couple that we think are going to be, would be pretty good. They both talked to about 90 minutes in length. If the council would like, it could be a joint council and plank and mission meeting. Again, it's a public meeting so everybody, the public, other staff, anyone can watch it as well. And if this is the direction the council desires, staff would work with the council to select a date and time for this public workshop. We go down to the capital police department as well as the community service officers. Currently, police officers are required to pass an implicit bias training as part of the police academy. In addition, there's an eight hour bias or racial profiling course that they need to pass every five years. And that includes sworn officers in city of Capitola. Includes sworn officers, community service officers, as well as parking enforcement officers. The city does have the ability to increase this training frequency if that's the direction. As far as other city employees, we were looking at a self-directed e-learning. At this point, we're looking one foot done by these, one of the same groups that does the public workshop. It is an organization that does implicit bias training all over the world. In addition, if employees want to, they can attend the city council workshop whenever that's decided to be. So at this point, we're hoping for some direction. The recommended action is for the city council and department heads to hold a public meeting, continue with the eight hour implicit bias training for the police department and the community service officers. And then for other employees, allow access to self-directed e-learning. And I believe that is the end that I'm available for any questions on this item. Okay, I'm gonna move to council for questions council member Peterson. Thank you. So I know that you mentioned that the police and community service officers are required to do this every five years. I know that council members were required to take a harassment training. I think it's every four years. So I'm wondering if with the implicit bias training, if staff has given any consideration to how often this would be required or if there's a recommendation that this be one and done or if this be renewed at every term. And if there's any consideration of that that could be shared with the council. I don't think we've considered the how often it's done because this will be the first time and you are right. All city staff has to pass anti-harassment training every two years as well as the council. We have not at this point concerned because we haven't done it. And we wanna see how effective it is the first time and to see if the direction is to figure out a way to do this on a regular basis, absolutely. It isn't a structured type of training like the anti-harassment. Every trainer has a different way of going about this. So there's no kind of defined structure. So we'd like to figure out, if at least the first go around, if it's successful, if it's meeting the goals that we want. And then we can kind of address that after we kind of get through the first cycle of this. Cool, thank you. Nice, Mayor Story. Thank you, Mayor Brooks. Mary, I was a little unclear. You had said that for the public workshops that some of the facilitators were not willing to do it publicly yet, you know, the council meetings, the planning commission meetings are required to be public. So how do we reconcile that? Well, I was just trying to say not, we have found some that are willing to do it. Not all of them are. We've had people that deny it because that's their intellectual property, you know, they figured if it's out there, what we have agreed to is it wouldn't be recorded like a regular meeting. And that's kind of, but that was the concern, is that it is what they sell to other folks. And if they have it on the, if it's part of a public meeting, it's gonna be there and they're not gonna go into that. Okay, so that would just limit our option. Yes, yes. But again, we have found a couple that we think would work in the direction. Thank you. Council Member Bertrand. So Larry, following up on your comments. So I guess we would consider this as a special meeting. That's correct. Okay, so just do this and perhaps include city planning and others on staff that they wanted to go. Yeah, as the, you could make this a joint planning commission, city council meeting if you'd like and then the planning commissioners would attend. And they, and of course, even if you don't do that there, they can attend as the attendee and watch, but they wouldn't be kind of the participant side of things. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, I have a question. So, I'm guessing there has been conversation by the police officers, around the police officer standards training. I know that they've been discussing changing the timeline, the requirements from five years to more often. Do we know if that there's been any decisions made or if there's been any talk about changing that in the near future? I see Chief McMannus, you turned your screen on. Would you like to answer that? Hi, nice to see you. If I may, good evening, mayor and council members. You are correct in the 2019 legislative session, there was a bill on the floor that if passed, it would have required the same mandated eight hour implicit bias training on a two year cycle rather than the current five year cycle. That bill back in 2019 died on the floor, but post-cal chiefs and other groups are of the opinion that it will likely come forward again at some point in the legislative session and there may be a different result. Thank you very much. Any other questions from council? Okay, we can move this to public comment. Do we have any comments from the public? First hand up, Mayor Brooks is Linda Smith. Welcome back, Ms. Smith. So, you can hear me? I can. Okay, I'll be quicker this time. So in the private sector, I'm very familiar with the reality that you can't change a corporate culture without doing it company-wide and it can't happen without leadership from the top. Because of scheduled conflicts, I've only been able to attend one of the community meetings on equity, but I found it very thought provoking and racism like sexism is sometimes a subtle thing, sometimes not so subtle. Just like bias is a cultural thing sometimes and sometimes just an individual. Terms like unearned privilege and systemic racism can evoke an immediate reaction in those of us who have witnessed overt racism and thought it died with laws intended to provide equality. I have the utmost respect for our police department, our city staff and our city leadership. Mandatory training of this kind is a bold step forward and I salute you for considering it and I support spending money to achieve it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Smith. Do we have any other comments from the public? Yes, we do, Mayor Brooks. Amy Forrest. Thank you. Welcome, Ms. Forrest. Mayor Bezier. Hi and thank you to the city council and thank you to Linda Smith for what she just said. Right on, Linda. We would like to, we wrote a letter that I would like to read. My husband Carl and I wrote a letter that I'd like to read into record. So we take issue with the current agenda language in the item HC as it's currently written. The recommendation includes three facets of implicit bias training. One, holding a public workshop for council and department heads. Two, eight hours of already required training for police in a five year cycle and three, access to online professional development for city staff. As for the public workshops for the council, the rules and the nature of public hearing make it not a place for people to explore implicit bias in a safe setting, which is what you really need. Routine police professional development taken every five years may address a timely issue like bias in racism and policing, but we have to wonder about needed follow-up work. And if the police departments under public fire for racism now across the nation use the same system as we use in Capitola. And finally, non-mandatory online professional development for staff on their isolated computers will probably not address the deep issues that are needed. Probably won't change behavior unfortunately. Work on implicit bias in racism requires hard, long-term systematic work in a safe space where participants can build trust in order to open up and explore very deep personal and cultural issues. Working together with mentors and experts in the field is required for effective work in exploring bias. In our opinion and from our experience, the current recommendation as it's described in item A to C will not be as effective as we need. And it's unfortunately kind of written in a bias manner. We recommend instead contact other, contact a rep, it sounds, we didn't know about this, but it sounds like you have talked to organizations, but we'd like to make sure you check out lots of different organizations that do really important work. Carl has had experience with courageous conversations in a business setting before and got a lot out of it and get input on systematic programs that involve the entire capital city government. Members and staff find out its costs and then design on a designated time. Could also contact other government agencies in our region to collaborate and either join them on work that is already in motion or propose the creation of a consortium to find a strong long-term program at a better cost within a definite timeframe. And if quick decisions due to budgeting are needed, some quick phone calls or emails to those groups described above could ballpark an amount that should be for budgeting professional development that the council prefers. Bottom line capital city government should be diving into professional development around implicit bias as soon as possible with a focus on personal exploration and then policy considerations. Deep work and understanding must start with each individual. Then with that understanding and education, learning can be applied to city-wide issues, but addressing bias should be done in a way that is meaningful and is not simply a way to use unearned privilege and recommendations with little meaning that serve to specifically not make the deep changes that are required to address implicit bias in government and in our community. In our opinion, the way Agenda Item 8C is written is in a way to promote inaction and not address bias. It's not enough. This critical topic and deep study does need to be more carefully researched and acted upon by you, our capital city council. Thanks so much. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna bring this back to council for further discussion and a vote. Do we have any comments from council? Do that way. Council Member Burchand. Yeah, I reflected on Amy and Carl's letter. I know them and respect their community participation. No, they've done a lot of things, they're very community oriented. And so I took their comments very seriously. The problem I was having is what would work such that in a sense a meaningful course or a meaningful way to deal with this issue for a public body? We're not a corporation, Linda. I know what Linda's talking about because I've been through a lot of those kinds of meetings and day seminars and weekend seminars in my private setting, but we're not, we're a public organization and we don't work together on a daily basis. We see each other every two weeks. So I don't know what would accomplish what Amy is talking about. I think the effort that we're trying to do is a really worthwhile effort, but how do we actually do it? And maybe you can consider other things. So maybe it's not a one off. I found that the courses I've taken in this regard, seminars and stuff, you start thinking about things. And so, if there's follow-ups, so if we go to someone that does something, I don't know how long we're considering and then we do another special session in a month or two months or something like that, things are gonna come up that maybe follow-up events or seminars or public meetings would be really helpful for us. That's all. So not a one off, you know, make a more serious effort and I think that would get more to the point with what our public comments are talking about. And I think more to the point of what this whole effort was from the beginning. So Yvette, I think you brought this up and I think it was a great idea at the time. So we wanna do something that is more meaningful. And I think Amy's comments brought up something that maybe really think about it. So those are my comments. Thank you, Council Member Peterson. Thank you. I just have a question about the city employees, the other city employees aspect. It says they'll have access to a self-directed e-learning plan. Does that mean it's not required or mandatory? It's just, you know, here it is if you wanna take it. During the discussions, there was some questions one way or the other. We hadn't made that decision yet. If the council can direct either way, you know, either way is an option. Okay, I think it would be important for this to be something that's required of our staff and really all people that are dealing with the public, the planning commission, the city council. Cause I think part of the whole point behind implicit bias is, you know, it's bias that we don't recognize that we have and maybe part of our decision-making process. And so we're dealing with issuing permits or approving plans or passing legislation, local legislation. I think it's important that we have these kinds of trainings that help us to consider those things. So that's my comments on that item for now. Thank you. Okay. So, you know, I just like to add this, this is definitely something that I brought forward and it's really important to me. And, you know, this whole idea of implicit bias training, it's most certainly not a fact. It's not something that goes away. Our actions and what we talked about and what we're seeing going on throughout the country is most certainly in respect to races or our regards to racism isn't the way people are being taken. This is not just an offshoot thing. This is a real problem. It's a problem in our community and it's most certainly really important for us to address this. And this is why I think it's important at the city level for us to do something about it. And these steps most certainly get us in the right direction. So I, to answer Mr. Lorenz's questions about when, you know, I think that all city staff, all council members and commissioners and all police officers should be on a two year cycle for implicit bias training. Now, if the POST from the police officers association come back with something different for less than two years, then we could address that at that time too. And also like I said, this isn't a fad. This isn't like a one time thing that council prioritizes for the year. I think that we need to see these trainings happen. When I'm long and gone and the rest of us have moved forward, we need to continue these trainings. And so I think it's important that this be a priority from here on out. And it may be called something different. That, you know, there might be a different type of training later on down the road. But I think we really need to focus on this and dedicate our time and energy towards this. So two year cycle for all staff, all council members, all commissioners, and to make this something that's on an ongoing to council member for trans point about, you know, it is, and to what our speaker said, it is hard to have these raw conversations. And I know that councils have the opportunity to go on retreat. You know, we can do it via zoom or whatever that may look like. But I know there's different options out there. And I know that we could, that staff could look into that a little bit further on how we can make it more feasible and more comfortable for us to have those open dialogues, that more open dialogues. So that's my comments for now. I'm not sure if I see council member for trans can raise. Do you have any other comments? Yeah, I don't want to extend this too much further, but, you know, Kristen had me think about an issue that I've been thinking about ever since I've been on the city council, even before when I was treasurer and the whole idea of the issue related to R1 zoning and the issue that came up a long time ago when we had a different person in community development about Parklets. I'm not Parklets, but ADUs, stuff like that. And I've gone through a lot of different changes in how I think about this. And a lot of it is basically because I walk around the city and I've talked to a lot of people here and I see what our community is like. And my view of something beforehand, didn't always coincide with the views of other people in my community. And that was a bias. And I totally, that's up to that. But as I saw the benefits of being more inclusive of different views of how to live and what makes a community, I changed. And I'm certainly a supporter of different ways of dealing with housing people, not necessarily all R1. And, Granny, it's expanded quite a bit, but that's just one example. And that goes across not only the people who would vote on something when it's a zoning change, but it would also go to the level of our zoning planners when they're trying to figure out what work. So those are my comments. Okay, so it looks like staff is looking for to improve the staff recommendations. So I'm going to see if there's any other comments. I know that, Larry, you were looking for a little bit more. Well, I think I've heard council say they need a little bit more information on how, you know, is it a one-time training? What were some of those things, some of those people that you asked for? What did those programs look like? I don't know if that needs to be addressed at council or brought back to us in terms of, or if we're a comfortable council, and you can kind of let me know if we're comfortable just with stating that it should be required and how often, and then let staff go from there. I'd like to complete that from council if we want to, council member Peterson? Yeah, I'm just, I'm wondering, well, for one, I think one of the things that I would like to recommend is that this be a mandatory training, that this not be an optional training. Also that it be required for at least for council members and planning commissioners when they take office and every time they are re-elected or re-appointed, so every four years, every term at least, in the same sense that our harassment training is required. And then that it also be required of the city employees for the same cycle at least every four years. And then I, you know, admittedly, I don't know enough about the police department training and if it's similar to the one we would be requiring every four years of staff or not, I think it's important that they have this training and it sounds like there's probably, there probably is going to be future state legislation that addresses this, but I think I need to know more about this. So I don't know, I'd be interested in hearing from the rest of the council what they feel comfortable with and whether or not there's comfort in moving forward with part of this recommendation or all of it or asking for additional information and Mayor Brooks, if you have any comments on this as well, I'd be interested in hearing it. Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I think what's important for me tonight is to walk away with council's agreements that these types of trainings is meant, that this type of training is mandatory for the three groups. I think that just does a lot. And then perhaps we have to come back with more information on, you know, when it's, how far the COST is with their training, what future trainings would look like for council in terms of a retreat or et cetera, there's more of those stillers. I think we've asked a lot of questions tonight that we don't have the answers to. But I think tonight what I would, what I'd like to walk away with is getting the consensus from council that we would like to see implicit bias training as a mandatory training. I can make a motion. Council Member Kaisers, oh, okay. If we would need it. Sure, go ahead. Can we say it? I'll make a motion to make the implicit bias training mandatory along our three groups, along with maybe a little bit more background information and as far as scheduling and all that. Thanks. If I understand the motion correctly, it's just that we require this training to be mandatory and that it'll come back to us from staff with additional information about what that training is, how often it is, all that fun stuff. Is that the motion? Yes. Okay. Okay, I'll second that motion. Okay, we have a first and a second. Any other comments or staff do you need any further clarification? No, I think I've got what the direction is. Thank you. Okay, so we'll go ahead and go to a roll call vote. Council Member Bertrands. I agree. Council Member Kaisers. Council Member Peterson. Aye. Vice Mayor Story. Aye. Okay, this item passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda is 8D. This is the Coastal Commission Preliminary Comments on Local Coastal Plan Zoning Code Updates. Good evening, Mayor Brooks and Council. Before you tonight, I have the Coastal Commission Local Coastal Plan Update. I am having an issue with my download because the presentation is so large. So I'd like to ask Larry Laurent if he could possibly pull up my saved presentation from the Citywide Drive. I will do that right now. Thank you, Larry. And I'll start my introduction as we go. So I've recently submitted the, or back in December, our LCP update to the Coastal Commission. And the Coastal Commission responded with four comments that they'd like us to address or that they're going to bring forward to the Coastal Commission during their review. So the purpose of this item tonight is to talk about those four amendments. I'm gonna break this into two items. I'll talk about the Monarch Code-In in the first section and then we'll follow up because our Vice Mayor's story will have to recuse himself from that item and following that discussion. But first I'll introduce the item and I'll pause when we get to the Monarch Code-In for the recusal. So as you know, we're working under two zoning codes currently, the 2018 Code and the 1975 Code. One is applicable outside the coastal zone, the new code, and inside the coastal zone, we're waiting for Coastal Commission certification. Next slide, please. We're at the final step. We have submitted our, the City Council adopted the zoning code last year and we have our submittal into the Coastal Commission. Next slide, please. In a perfect world, we would submit this to the Coastal Commission and they would approve it and we'd have a certified code. Can you forward? What we've received from the Coastal Commission is that they're prepared to take this forward to the Coastal Commission with an approval contingent to Capitola adopting Redline. So they have their four changes that they've drafted when they go to the, when we, they'll take the four changes to their Coastal Commission and there's three outcomes that can happen and Larry, if you can forward. First, we could accept the Coastal Commission Redlines and we'd have a certified code. Next, we can not accept their Redlines and propose revisions and we go back to the Planning Commission and then City Council process. And lastly, we can not accept their Redlines and decide to do nothing and then the submittal will lapse and we'll continue in the place that we are today with two codes. Next slide, please. So any questions about the Coastal Commission certification process before we step into the Monarch Code in discussion? None? Okay. And before Katie goes on with the Monarch Code, since I live so close to it, I have a conflict so I'm going to step away and come back for the discussion on the Capitola Hotel topic. Thank you. All right, she's like the other property. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And before Katie, we do jump in. I just would ask Samantha our attorney to just offer clarification on how this is going to go for the rest of this evening and however we're going to be voting in two parts. Samantha, can you just offer some clarification to Council this evening before we jump into it? Absolutely, Mayor Brooks, thank you. So because Council Member Story has a conflict of a portion of this item, we have set up a segment of this item to assist it with the STPC rules. And so Katie will present the portion of the item that pertains to the Monarch Code in, which is the portion of the item on which Council Member Story has a conflict. After that portion of her presentation, she'll let you know and ask if the Council would like to discuss it. And then we have some language that if the Council would like to take a vote to act on that portion of the letter, we can walk you through what that one looks like. And of course, if you'd like to make revisions or take any other action, we can walk you through that as well. After you're finished deliberating over and taking action on that portion of the letter, Council Member Story will rejoin the meeting and the full Council can deliberate over and take action on the remaining portion of the letter. Thank you very much. Okay, so moving forward. The first topic to be discussed tonight is the Monarch Code in. Next slide, please. The Monarch Code in is a very large parcel located at the very end of Depot Hill, the Depot Hill neighborhood. There is actually three parcels on the property. The first one shown on the slide has the office with a carport and one bedroom. The second, which was part of the Rite of Way, that is a private Rite of Way, not city Rite of Way, has a two bedroom cottage on it. And thirdly, the Monarch Code in is located where you see number three, which is an 11 bedrooms that in breakfast are in. There's three changes that we proposed. In our submittals to the Coastal Commission, we submitted our general plan map, which is known as the land use map in the under our certified LCP. In our land use map, we were changing the visitor serving designation that was originally there to single family zoning with R1 with a visitor serving overlay. So in that scenario, the three lots could become single family homes. And you'll recall that the city council placed some conditions upon it being visitor serving that they'd either have to provide nightly rental, some type of nightly rental or dedicate an easement to a public viewpoint. Also with the land use map, we had the Coastal Commission's reaction to that was they rejected the change to R1 and they want to maintain it as visitor accommodations with a visitor serving overlay. Next Larry. And then we made a modification to the zoning map. These kind of go hand in hand. Again, we have the R1 with the visitor serving overlay. The Coastal Commission rejected the R1 change or they're going to recommend rejecting the R1 change and maintain it as visitor serving with a visitor serving overlay. Next Larry. And then the zoning code itself. So I had mentioned that previously we had said it can be R1 with a visitor serving overlay, but single family will only be allowed in conjunction with overnight accommodation uses on the property or a grant of public access to a viewpoint. And the Coastal Commission is prepared to recommend prohibiting single family on the property and they deleted our note for the overnight accommodation or the grant of public use access to a viewpoint. Next slide please. So in the letter I've drafted, it provides a history of the property. This property has been in the Blodgett family since 1960. The current owner, that was Mrs. Blodgett that bought it in 1960. The current owner became a part owner in 1990 and then full ownership following that. And during the review of a project subdivision application adjacent to this, the Coastal Commission at that time changed the allowances of the land use on the property. When it previously allowed R1, it was modified to visitor serving. Also within the letter, I explained that the current owners provided 31 years of visitor serving use. They'd like to retire and have the ability to have two cottages under separate ownership from the main house. The reasoning for this and also as a retirement but also bringing in the facts of the neighborhood impacts of visitor serving on the Depot Hill residents, as you will call they moved forward with an expansion years ago and the neighborhood was not happy with the idea of expanding and there's been ongoing complaints about visitor serving use there as well as entertainment. And then just the public comments that we received during the zoning code update that were very much in support of this being modified back to R1. So we've requested in the letter that the Coastal Commission consider approving the draft as submitted this evening. The recommended action is to authorize the mayor to submit those, the portions of staff's recommended letter to the Coastal Commission that discussed the Monarch Cove-in. So this is where we're splitting up the two recommendations and asking for direction on the Monarch Cove-in piece. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any questions from council? Okay, so you know, questions, do we have any comments from the audience? Chair Spreen, it moved my controls, I apologize for that. Yes, we do have Lana and Bob of the Monarch Cove. Hi there, this is Lana and Bob. Hi. Mayor Brooks and the council. And we really and truly appreciate your stance with the Coastal Commission in that it really depicts what not only we would love to see in our retirement, but also the neighborhood as well in that as we both know that Monarch Cove is at the very end of a highly residential area, which makes it completely difficult to do any visitor serving whatsoever. And it's been a very difficult path for us. And I know that you've recognized that and I'm just extremely thankful and very grateful with your fairness and your equity in this situation. So again, we wanna thank you. And I've created the Monarch Cove-in and I'd like to retire from Monarch Cove-in now. And so thank you very much for your support. Do we have any other comments from the audience? Mayor Brooks, I do not see any other comments on this item. Okay, we can bring this back to council for further discussion and a vote. Okay, I see no discussion. Katie, I would just like to add that in the letter itself, there's just a few editorial things. This is a letter written by with your support, but from me and there was just a couple of things I'd like to work with you on the side that changes none of the content or the recommendation in and of itself. But I just wanted to think about and make it public that the council this evening that there was just a few things that I'd like to discuss but does not change the item in and of itself. Okay, so with that being said, do I have a motion to adopt the recommended action this evening? I'll make that motion. We'll present it in the letter too. Just to be clear for the record, the motion is to authorize the mayor to submit a portion of staff recommended letters to the social commission that discussed them while not closed in. I agree with that. Thank you. Do we have a second? Yeah, my apologies. I was just going back to the letter just to brush up on what it says to make sure that I'm understanding correctly what I'm seconding. So if I'm understanding correctly though, it looks like the letters, if I'm understanding correctly, it looks like the letters indicating that we don't object to removing the R1 land use designation. Is that correct? We're asking we do object and we'd like them to accept it as submitted. Does not object to the proposed. And so maybe I'm not understanding. Packet page, I'm sorry, go ahead, Katie. I think you're looking at the in it depot hill. There are modifications for the in it depot hill. We were not requesting any changes so that we're not objecting to that possibly. We're not coven in it depot hill. My apologies for the holdup here. I just want to make sure I understand. But in terms of the monarch coven, we'd like them to keep the R1 designation. You're right, my apologies. I was looking specifically at the in it depot hill. Yeah, okay. I'll second that motion. I have a first and a second. Can I have a roll call, please? Yes, council member Bertrand. I agree. Council member Kaiser, council member Peterson. Aye. Vice mayor, excuse me, vice mayor story is refused and mayor Brooks. Okay. Well, now we'll summon call vice mayor story to welcome him back, please. Welcome back vice mayor. Okay. I'll turn this back over to Katie. Next slide, please. Larry, can you, there we go. So next we're going to talk about the in it depot hill. Next slide. And as you know, the in it depot hill is located right on Monterey and Escalona. When you, you can see it right as you're leaving the rare city hall parking lots. Next slide. We treated the deep, the in it depot hill the same as the Monarch Cove property. And basically we asked for the R1 based zone with visitor serving overlay. This influenced the land use map forward, please. Our zoning map, as well as you can go one more. The zoning code, well, the zoning code it had no impact on. So what the coastal commission is asking is to remove the R1 and have it be visitor serving on both maps with a visitor serving base and an overlay zone. This change is not substantial. The in it depot hill plans to continue as an in it's visitor serving. It'll be allowed to continue as the end as it performs today. So it's not a substantial change. We're within the coastal commission letter. We're stating that the city does not object to this proposed change. Next slide. The next discussion is on the former theater site. Next slide, please. The next, for the coastal commission recommendation, the first was to prohibit the resident any residential uses on the former theater site. Next. And in doing so by prohibiting the residential on the site, it really takes away the current land use privileges that the current owner has. Right now they could develop the site with ground floor commercial and residential above. So in the coastal commission letter as drafted, we're asking that they do not make this change. And they allow the current owner to be allowed to move forward with a ground floor commercial and residential above if they were to choose to come forward with an application. We go over the history of the general plan and the zoning code update and how that was a collaborative process. We had multiple boards, commissions and the city council who worked on this and created an incentivized plan and incentivized development to increase floor air ratio and height for a future hotel working closely with the property owner as well. So it seemed to be a win-win. As you know, the property owner came through with a conceptual review last year on this project and is interested in developing a hotel on the site. And I think that's the outcome of all that work that was done through the incentives. So we've asked the coastal commission to approve the draft as submitted and allow residential on the site and not take that away from the developer. And just in the event that a hotel came through that could not mitigate it, having residential on the site could allow possible like nightly rentals of residential on that site, but maybe not as go as far as a hotel. Of course, visitor serving is a great use in that spot but it would take away some other allowances such as nightly rental if there were a mixed use there. So next, and then lastly, the coastal commission brought up visual resources. So they made modifications to the descriptions of when a hotel project would come in, how we would analyze the visual resource and the views from above the hotel and different viewpoints looking towards the hotel. So they modified languages to improve the description of the bluff, the viewpoints, rooftop design mitigation. And next, Larry. So in looking at these modifications in their red lines, the changes are not substantial and we wouldn't object to those changes. They bring more clarity to what they've asked for and the review process there. So changes are not substantial and we would not object to those proposed changes. So next slide. Does the city council have any questions? Council members, do you have any questions for that portion of the letter? Council member Bertrand. So, you know, it's hard to say what Swenson would be planning, but if the number of the units became condos, are they considering a mix at this point or is this units for sale? I mean, do we have any projections? Do we have any communication? No, at this point, in regards to what we've received from the coastal commission is they would not be able to bring in a condo project that would not be allowed. So they could only do a hotel on that site or another visitor serving use there, but not residential would not be allowed as long as it's a commercial. So I sort of thought that was their position. I was just wondering what Swenson was thinking about how they would move forward with the design. And, you know, we've seen their conceptual design right now and I don't know how that would change it and would they still, would they have a mix, you know, that kind of thing? You don't know anything at this point. You know, I have no additional information on that. Yeah, it's a good way to answer it. Thanks. Yeah, they're quite kind to some counsel. Okay, we know further questions. We can take it to the audience for any questions or comments from them. Yes, Mayor Brooks. I have a Jesse Bristow asking to talk. And I'm just gonna announce that we are officially opening a public hearing. Thank you for the slide. Good evening. Can everyone hear me? We can. Oh, good evening Mayor Brooks and council members. My name is Jesse Bristow with Swenson Builders. I'm a development project manager for our Santa Cruz office. So I can't speak a little bit to council member Bertrand mentioned and we'd like to provide some comment on the letter that is being written. So we fully support the letter that staff is proposing and that city council may adopt. We, I think ever since Swenson has been involved with the vision of the hotel, we've worked with community in 2019 and it may have been part of 2020 where there was discussion with LCP update of who gets to decide the roof line, the measurements, the articulation. And we worked with planning commission city council with that, letting that, hey, let us bring the project forward and let the community decide not to be restricted by arbitrary measurements from coastal commission. So I think the community and us as a property owner were aligned. So we do agree that the secondary non-significant changes being proposed are okay. But as far as the residential use, currently the general plan allows mixed use and essentially the coastal commission is spot zoning and taking away that use. Again, we've always had this vision to provide a visitor serving use and have a hotel in the longterm. But again, you know, it's nice to have the option and that land use right for a mixed use residential component referring to council member Retrans comment. We've done some conceptual layouts for a townhome or condo concept. But again, as what director Hurley mentioned is that they could be 30 day rental, daily rental, things like that, but still have kind of a residential feel to it. Probably not as accommodating as a full service hotel. So with that, we don't agree with the coastal commission recommendations in that respect of taking away that land use. Again, they're kind of just selecting this one site and not focusing on the remainder of the village. And so we don't think that's appropriate. And if there's any further questions, I'm happy to be available. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bristow. Okay, any other comments from the audience? Mayor Brooks, I do not see anyone else asking to comment on this item. Okay, so we'll bring it back to council for further discussion and a vote. Do we have any other comments or a motion? Vice Mayor Story. Thank you, Mayor Brooks. I just have one, the Inn and Deeple Hill, I agree with that, I think those are acceptable. But just speaking about the coastal commission eliminating residential use on the coastal area site, I would agree with the last speaker that that is spot zoning, and with contrary to our coastal area, coastal plan, and I would just as a recommendation include in the letter that the history of Apatola is about mixed use residential commercial. That's what the village is all about. And it would enhance visitor serving because if our only options between us and the developer are a hotel, we may end up with just a parking lot there. And with no additional visitor serving us. And so I think it would be good to show the emphasize that that kind of mixed use that would fit most closely with the village in terms of compatibility. And I think that's it, thank you, Vice Mayor. I don't know if you, while you weren't here earlier, there were some things I was gonna sit down about the letter, just some editorial, some advocates like that, not to the action motion or recommendations themselves, but I also noted that as well and can you bring us, I could talk with Katie about that, thank you. Council Member Betz. Yeah, thank you very much, Mayor. I detect a willingness to and a desire to go ahead with this project on the Swenson's part. And it looks like you've worked with staff to come up with something that's agreeable. Yes, I would like to see a hotel there, but we couldn't come to that kind of agreement before. And maybe this is the best way to move forward. And as Sam's story mentioned, it's a disgrace just to see a parking lot there, it really is. And it's not the best use of property in the center of our village. And so if this means that we can move forward and maybe hopefully work with City, excuse me, Coastal Commission to see our way around this. And I think the Swenson's might have enough pool to help that happen, not sure. But if we can make a project there, get going, I totally support this particular proposal. Thank you. I mean, I don't know if this is a success or failure. I'm echoing. I hear myself in somebody else's computer. Okay, so no other comments. Do we have a motion to adopt staff's recommendation and to submit this letter to Coastal Commission? I so move. I have to read the whole darn thing. No, is that enough? Thank you. I'll second. Okay, and just I see Samantha change her screen on, I just, I want to offer some clarification that the first and the second is for the staff recommendation authorize the mayor to submit the remaining portions of staff recommended letters to the Coastal Commission. Thank you, mayor. May I have a roll call, please? You're welcome. May I have a roll call, please? Yes. Council member Bertrand. I approve. Council member Kaiser. I have council member Peterson. Aye. Vice Mayor Story. Aye. Mayor Brooks. Okay, that item passes unanimously. Thank you, council. We're going to move on to our last item of this evening. Thank you, Mr. Jesper for sticking with us at the end of tonight. I'm going to go ahead and try. It is item three. Yes. Consider a cooperative agreement with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission concerning the regional Monterey Bay Sanctuary Trail. And I can see your screen, Mr. Jesper. If I can make it in presentation form. There we go. Good evening, Mayor and Council. The item before each night, as you mentioned, is an agreement with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. We're going to kind of review the project that this agreement deals with and go over some of the points to the contract or the agreement. So the project under consideration under this agreement is construction of a pedestrian pathway from the upper Beach and Village parking lot here behind City Hall. It goes up to Monterey Avenue and improved pedestrian crossing at Monterey Avenue to separate spikes and pedestrians and improvements to the vacant RTC land at Monterey Avenue and Park Avenue. A quick bit of background is the Santa Cruz that RTC has awarded $200,000 for this project and the city in previous years has appropriated $50,000 to this project. Those sums at this point today are probably not sufficient to complete the project, but I think we're probably 80% funded with those findings. This agreement establishes the roles and responsibilities of each party and the requirements for rights to develop the project on the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Own Railway right away. So I'll quickly kind of, this is a map from when we applied to the funding from the RTC. It shows the limits of it and then add some pictures to kind of help you time in. So this is the upper, well it's called Psitico parking lot back when we started this project now it's the Beach and Village parking lot. And then this is the road or the driveway that goes up to the intersection of Park and Monterey. So we will develop a trail, ADA compliant for bikes and bicycles that would go along the curb here, travel up to the right away. And then from this point on it becomes part of their rail trail that they're developing along their entire corridor. We would improve the crossing here. And then in the vacant lot we would develop it. This is a landscape area where we're going to have to work with the RTC. Buck shelter is considered, but right now this bus stop is not part of the metro route. So it's an inactive turn out. So there's some changes and how this finally gets developed will be in conjunction with the RTC. Quickly some pictures just to make sure we understand where we're going. And this is standing in the upper parking lot looking at this Monterey, this track white track path here is on Monterey in the middle of the intersection. The path would start at this little nose that sticks out to the narrow part of the driveway. See, here's a lady walking her dog, walking in the roadway because we do not have any other pathway for her to travel up there. Pathways start here when fall along this curb line for a certain distance. It really hasn't been finalized at this point but it would travel along this curb line so we'd have an at grade sidewalk in here that this lady could be walking on. It would continue up. Here she is continuing on her walks up into where we get a pretty good slope between the railroad tracks and the driveway here. And at some point it would start angling up into the hill and through the trees. As you can see there's a significant amount of oak trees and other trees in this area. We will try our best to snake through these but in reality there will be a need to probably remove potentially remove some of these trees. Unless we want to spend quite a bit of money building retaining walls and trying to isolate it within certain areas where we wouldn't impact the oak trees. Once you get to the top of the trail you'll be here along the railroad tracks. This is standing at Monterey Avenue looking down the railroad tracks you'd be coming in somewhere in this location and headed towards me to come to Monterey Avenue. Just to give you an idea what the cross section looks like this is a little backwards, imagine we now turned around sorry about that I just caught on. So the railroad tracks are over here the trails over here we will have a fence between the two that is consistent with the other portions of the rail trail that are being developed in city of Santa Cruz and the county in Watsonville. It's about a four foot high fence and we'd also have a fence between the trail and the driveway going down to our parking lot just because of the grade changes there. That's kind of how it would look. And then finally you get to Monterey and Park Avenue this is the crosswalk that would be improved to have bike lanes on the exterior and a marked designated crosswalk in the middle. So the cooperative agreement that's before you designates the city as the lead agency responsible for all aspects of the project. The city will prepare the design plans and specifications including that as an estimate of the cost will be responsible meeting with complying with CEQA retaining all the permits which would probably be a coastal permit and would be responsible for construction and be embedding and managing the project. The Retail Transportation Commission would retain oversight they would be issuing rights of entries to contractors to ourselves to engineers working on the project and they would be ensuring consistency with our design with other designs going on in the corridor. So just to kind of give you an idea on the next steps the approval of this agreement does not mean we're ready to move forward with this project. First of all the County of Santa Cruz is doing a comprehensive environmental and summary needs design for the corridor from live out to Aptos and that includes in it the city of Capitola. So we wanna try and leverage that work as best we can before we start conducting our own studies. Ultimately what needs to be conducted is a geotechnical study for designing of the pathway supports as we wind up the hill we're gonna need some retaining walls depending on how many as we finalize the layout the height of those walls could become substantial so we will need to do the geotechnical testing what we're really hoping to coordinate with the County's efforts is on the environmental studies that are required to the project. As I'm sure you're most aware of pollutants are on railroad corridors or in the soil itself are common arsenic is something that is typically found as fast as possible from the breaks of the railroad. So we need to conduct environmental testing to determine the presence of the pollutants and develop a remediation plan consistent with whatever levels are found. We're kinda hoping the County can do that and come up with something that we can apply to our project if they are unable to or we are able to do it in a more concise manner we will do it on ourselves but those are two studies that need to be completed necessary for this agreement before we can start them before the project can go toward construction. And finally we need to finalize the route as I've kind of been talking off and on here is the route between the trees and tree protection is something we're gonna have to measure figure out the best way. One end you take down the trees we build a single straight pathway it's probably pretty simple we probably can avoid a lot of retaining walls. Keeping all the trees is gonna require quite a few retaining walls that will be very expensive so we need to find a happy medium between those two. Also minimizing the disturbance to the RTC corridor because if we brought the pathway up you know closer and had more on the corridor their potential will have more pollutant remediation in that area. So it's again a balancing act to how much of the RTC corridor we're gonna attach versus how much of the trees we're gonna potentially impact. And then there's also ADA considerations the entire pathway is based on parking lot up and two Monterey Avenue will need to be ADA compliant which basically means it can't be very steep has to have turnarounds if we have a U-turn in it it needs to be a large landing so that again adds to trying to minimize turns and things like that. So our recommended action tonight is to approve the agreement Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to work on the Santa Cruz County grant flying for construction of a pedestrian pathway along the rail line connecting with the upper beach and village parking lot and Monterey Avenue. And that's my presentation and I'd be happy to answer any questions. That's my story. Yes, thanks Steve for the presentation. I guess I had a few questions if I may, Mayor. When Steve you mentioned that the whole project is about 80% funded by my calculation that's about $312,500. The trees that you identified are those on are those capitol trees or RTC trees? Part of this project will define that. I think it's about 50-50. I'm not quite sure where that line is up through the oak trees but I do believe it comes somewhere down the middle of that hill. Does that 80% funding figure, does that include making a concerted effort to save those trees? As I said, we will make a concertive effort to save the trees but there may be some trade-offs that we have to identify. If we wanna try and save them all that 80% figure may be closer to a 60% figure to be honest with you. Yeah, okay, okay. That's just good to know. The other, you know, I recall, you know, we've been talking about having a sidewalk going out of the parking lot for quite some time but why are we taking the responsibility to carry this trail across Monterey and into the RTC lot? I think it was, we saw this as an opportunity to maybe improve that vacant lot at the entrance to the village that probably more for beautification purposes than anything else. To make that lot look like it's part of a city and part of a system rather than a vacant lot at this point. Will there continue to be parking available? Okay, so the RTC does not allow parking on that vacant lot. I know there are trucks there that park on occasion and other things but during the festivals there was no parking signs put up there. So yeah, as part of this, that would eliminate the parking on that property. And in the other, you talked about the environmental materials there, particular potential hazardous materials, I expect that. But in reading the agreement right, if it's type two hazardous materials, that's going to be on the habit removed. So yeah, the, we're not going through the agreement. If they, if we find contaminants on there that need to be treated, no matter whether or not this project goes forward, then the RTC is responsible for that cost to the remediation plan and implementing remediation. If there are pollutants that can remain, if it's not touched, but we have to remediate them as part of our project, then those costs will become part of the project cost. Now we can seek funding. I should talk about funding real quick, I can hear. We do anticipate going back to the RTC to help fund any additional costs, but that remediation of materials that needs to be done because of the project would be part of a project cost. It would be included in the project. And what would happen if we realized, oh, this project is going to cost a lot more than the, we have currently 250,000 as I understand it. If it costs half a million or more, what do we do? What happens then? Well, one point, I mean, the, I don't think the agreement mandates that we complete the project. This is more the ground rules of that we, how we move forward to complete it. We would work with the RTC to see if they could provide, you know, the exorbitant amount of money it may cost to develop it. And then, or we could potentially back off the project and decide not to move forward with it. Okay, thanks, Steve. I'm the member of the JET. Hi, Steve, thanks for your presentation. Have you considered going on the other side of the driveway that goes up to, was it Monterey? We've looked at it. That is a, deeply canceling wall retaining wall that is holding up. And it's rather a sheer hillside at that point. So we'd have to cantilever a sidewalk out over the edge there and then have sensing. I think the cost of that alone, I have not cost it out beyond, I just looked at it like that, that would be extremely expensive compared to going up the other side. Okay, I just had to ask you that. So you're probably well aware that, you know, one of the main causes of cost overrun for the trails that were built in Northern part of Santa Cruz was remediation issues. And, you know, I just think if we take on this project or we're gonna be hit with that and I think that's where Sam's going. But my main point is we have no clue, we have no idea what the plans for the quarter is gonna be. It's in contention. So for us to be building something that's basically an adjunct to a trail that may not be there or trail that's gonna be a different design or maybe nothing at all. We have no idea at this point. The study that they're doing, they're preparing a study for something that RTC has no money to build at this point, came up in the last meeting. So I don't see any reason why we should jump ahead on this particular project to meet a deadline for something that doesn't even have a plan forward. And that's my question to you. Are we dovetailing with something that's gonna be built? And, you know, we expect to, you know, meet the deadlines of, you know, the RTC's plans to build a trail and we need to provide something, you know, in Capitolo for that particular trail. So you are following the guidelines on the RTC that's currently adopted, which is the rail trail design guidelines. I know the county is moving forward with those as they do their environmental studies. We will dovetail with the county preliminary designs because that's what's being designed right now. The RTC is going to change gears on us, then yes, then there may be other solutions or designs that are feasible out there. But right now, those are the guidelines that we're working under. Okay. So I'm just positing that, you know, when we know what a plan is gonna be for, you know, the majority, how many miles, 22 miles or something like that, that particular corridor and we just have this little egress, basically. You know, I kind of liked to dovetail what we are gonna do to what the overall plans are. Do you see a problem with that? I mean, why should we be doing something ahead of when we even know what the RTC is gonna do? Well, from the first standpoint, we're gaining a much needed pedestrian path between the parking lot and Monterey Avenue. To me, that is the goal of the project is to we really have a hard time putting a sidewalk anywhere else unless we run it up to the railroad. We can't run it along just along the curb, along next to the road the whole way because we can't be ADA as we go up that hill to Monterey. And so once we hit that point, we no longer have a legal sidewalk. So I really think the benefit to the city is getting that connection in and also providing development of that vacant lot so it's no longer a vacant lot. The rail trails and our very small portion that we're building has kind of slowed down this project enormously because they've gone through so many iterations of it, but that is the necessary part to get this very essential sidewalk from the lower parking. From the upper parking lot to Monterey Avenue. So my next question to you is, can we do the walkway if you want to call it from the parking lot up to the intersection of park and Monterey, but not through the other side? Because I have, personally, have no idea what's going to happen on the other side. I see the advantage of getting a walkway, despite the fact that we're going to lose some trees and it's been brought up by other council members that we need some science about that whole area because it's an area we need to address. But do we have to do both sides? So you're saying the vacant lot on the... Yeah, forget that for the time being and just do the driveway walkway first. It does make a lot of occasion of the project description with the RTC, but I can't really speak for them. I think they would potentially see that as something they would accept because I know they're looking at what to do with that whole side of the road as part of the county study going on there. But we'd have to approach them on that. The agreement does allow for changes in the project description. So if we did approve the agreement tonight and with direction to change the project description that's something we could look forward with. Thank you, Steve. And just a couple thoughts here really quickly. This project, I think Steve made this clear, but this project was originally conceived of totally independent of the rail trail. It was really about finding a safe way for people to leave the upper lot to the east. And ultimately we settled on having pedestrians access the rail trail as the most efficient way to get, sorry, access the rail corridor as the most efficient way to get people out of the parking lot safely. So, you know, it's relationship to the rail trails is tenuous at best. It's a standalone project. It's a city conceived of far before anybody had any plans for a rail trail. And then just to also add, Jock about the customer of the train about the little kind of vacant lot quarter. Quarter, that was really intended to be just sort of a cleanup. If that's a real gateway to our village and really trying to get in there, curb and gutter, a little bit of landscaping and nice entrance into the village as you come up the hill and then drop down into the village. So it's really what that part of the project was about was about getting a nice kind of finished corner rather than just a vacant lot by as you come into the village. Yeah, I can see the point of what you're making. And I remember walking with you, trying to figure out how to make that trail work. You know, we're actually up there together. So I totally understand that. I totally understand the benefits of Capsatola. But, you know, we're rubbing up against something else that is much larger. And I don't know if I want to feed into that. There may be other ways for us to get a pathway up that driveway. And so that's just my thoughts at this point. Any other questions? Council Member Kaiser, you have your question? Yeah, thanks. I think I did kind of have the same question along as Council Member Bertrand, as far as, is it necessary to have the trail crossing the intersection? Obviously intersections, I think, can be a little bit hairy. And so if we are just having that trail, just take, or the corridor, just take a hard right once it gets to Monterey and then not having to involve spending money and stuff on property that is RTC, whether they're helping us or not, just to try to not bite off more than we can chew right off the bat. But maybe it's something that we could add on if there's a second phase to it. Also, I don't know if there's a little bit more space sort of on that right-hand side, looking at the ocean, like pointing, looking at the ocean, where the trail, the train tracks are, if there's space there to sort of enhance that, maybe with a bench or a resting place, that would be ADA compliant. That's like right there, when you come up to the intersection, you are still seeing that. Maybe it's a little bit smaller scale than whatever would be across the street. But I do, I think it's a great idea and thank you for putting in the man hour and looking into it. Council Member Peterson. Thank you. I just wanna confirm with staff and to clarify that this is a project separate from what we are used to hearing as the rail trail issue that's going on in our county, that this is unrelated. This is just a pedestrian path that goes from our parking lot to get people up to the village and is not part of that larger project that we're not expecting to see come to our town in any time in the very near future. Can staff confirm that? So from our standpoint, yes, that's true. But the part of the project that is on the railroad property needs to comply with the standards that they have established for the rail trail. Correct. But it's not really, you look at the other projects, the other jurisdictions, they're building miles and miles of rail trail right now. That's what the county is looking at. We're building maybe 50 feet. Yes, it's gonna comply with what those standards are, but I wouldn't say it's a, you can't say we're building the rail trail. We're building this pathway and part of it is complying with that. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. Thank you. That's my story. I just wanted to follow up on that segment that is on the rail trail. What is the future plan? Will that ultimately continue on the rail trail to cross the trestle and continue to go east toward the Brighton? And if it were, when will all that happen? And my other, I had a follow up about the landscaping across Monterey. Is there a commitment that that will stay in place once the RTC does get in there and start building the rest of the trail? So to answer the first part as far as when will the rest of the rail trail come in? I don't know how to answer that. That's a tough one. The county is doing some preliminary design and environmental work to look at that whole from live out to Aptos, including Tapatola. When that work is done, that's probably still at least a year out. There's no funding for it identified. Does it include the trail, the trestle, railroad trestle over Silicon Creek? That's what they're looking at right now with those options are. And I think the timing is many, many years away before we see that development come in. As far as the landscaping, I think there's no commitment from the RTC that if they come in and want to build something different there, that they will not utilize that landscaping. In fact, I don't think, I know the plan that I showed had landscaping in it and that was from when we first pitched this project to the RTC. I think since then, we've kind of realized there probably won't be much landscaping and we'll need more of a developed pathway and bus stop area than it would be. There might be some small bits of landscaping. If we do it in conjunction with the RTC right now and they're planning, those parts should remain. Okay, any other questions at this time? Council Member Richard, is your hand raised? You're muted. No questions. We have to wait for public comment, my problem. Yeah, okay. We will move this to public comment. I see. Yes, Mayor Brooks. I have a very Scott wanting to talk on this item. Mr. Scott, welcome. Hello. Thank you for having this topic up. My name is Barry Scott. I live in Apatoc and I've been a board member for four or five years of Friends of the Rail and Trail. And I'm actually pretty excited to see this happening. I wanted to mention that the environmental mitigation that took place in Santa Cruz is where Neri Lagoon is. It's just a substantial wildlife, water riparian habitat with an extreme topography and terrain situation. And there were some local folks who were adamant about sure that extra measures were taken. I don't see that happening in anything in this little section. I'm looking at the map. I've been looking at the plans for a couple of years since they first started. I wanted to speak to the Jackson-Sams concern that we don't know what we're doing with the rail corridor. I can tell you that the tracks are gonna be there for a very, very long time. And the 120 or 150 feet of on the east side of Monterey, where trail is planned to be built within the corridor, by the RTC and modifications to the street there that'll include a bus bay. It will turn out for the bus line. It's not like we're gonna find out that the greenway side is gonna win this and get the tracks removed. That is just so unlikely that I think, I'd love to see Capitola go with the RTC, not jeopardize this funding and work in a cooperative fashion with them. I agree with Steve. There's an opportunity here. And it'd be great to see Capitola join Watsonville and Santa Cruz as municipalities that have permitted some trails to be constructed. I don't think that we're gonna see drastic changes where the tracks are removed and the trail is gonna become something else. And that's all I have to say yet. I thank you and I hope you'll support this partnership with the RTC. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Okay, let's bring this back to council for further discussion and a vote. Council member Bertrand, your hand is raised. Yeah, I like to make a motion to approve this agreement with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Committee but to bifurcate the project, we'll accept the conditions, which seem very reasonable. I went through them all. And we'll do the project from the parking lot up to the Bonneray Park Avenue intersection. And I think strapping is certainly of order to go around the intersection. That definitely needs approval. We'll wait till later before we continue the rest of the project after we get more clear plans from the RTC and their project is ongoing. So it would split it into two parts that Steve suggested and that's the recommendation of the motion I'm making. Okay, we have a first and a second. I can second that. Okay, we have a first and a second on the table. Is there any further discussion? Council member Peterson. I just want to clarify the motion sounded like that was staff recommendation, but I don't, that wasn't the staff recommendation packet, is that correct? Yeah, if I could clarify, when I was talking to Steve about doing one part of the project first, the trail up to the, or the walkway, excuse me, up to the intersection and leaving the rest for later when we're a little bit more clear about what RTC is going to be planning and eventually doing if that's what's going to happen. He suggested bifurcating the project. And so I was just trying to use his words or his way of looking at it that's all. So the motion is to approve the agreement, but as we move forward, we would move forward on the planning and the eventual carrying out of the walkway up to the intersection of Monterey and Park, but leave the rest till later. On the agenda this evening is the agreement with the RTC. My recommendation would be to take action on the agreement with the RTC and then maybe direct staff to come back, maybe in the budget cycle or something with information about the project. And you can really understand kind of what the project looks like and all the different components. My feeling is that making changes to it right now, you may or may not have a complete picture and the full council has a complete picture of what the project is. Well, then if that's your recommendation and we'd be too confusing then I'll withdraw my motion and make another motion to oppose this agreement with the RTC and the RTC's Regional Transportation Commission. I'll second that. I have one more question. I'll first add a second on the table. Do we have any further discussion? Yes, I'm only pulling this because Jamie suggests, it would be a little bit difficult and there'd be final more discussion and stuff to like that. So I kind of like to make the process simple and behind the scenes maybe there's gonna be some other discussion about trying to get the sense of how at least I think maybe some other people on the commission here, thanks. If I could just clarify Jamie, before you jump back in, it to me and I didn't make any comments earlier. So I just want to add a little insight to this. It sounds like there's just some more to it that we're looking for some more information and as you're suggesting, it could come back to us at a later time with more information and what the project would look like. Is that what I'm hearing you say? My suggestion is that the agreement actually in front of you is to approve the agreement with the RTC, which lays out the framework to move a project forward, independent of what that project is. So my recommendation is is move that forward and then what you probably it sounds like would like to do because this project was originally developed six or seven years ago, is maybe get a little bit more details on it and then if you want to pair it back in some way, do that. I mean at this point it's an older project, TIP project, and so I think it would make sense to deeply sort of dive into this project and figure out do you want to work at all the east side of Monterey or not. So that's my suggestion. Well, I have some concern about, pardon me, but I have some concern though that approving what's in front of us today is including what council member Bertrand and vice mayor's story are concerned about that extra piece. So my concern is if we move forward with this agreement this evening, I just want us to be clear tonight, if we move forward with this agreement tonight, it's about this relationship and getting funding for a project and we at a later time would decipher what that project would be. Is that what I'm hearing you say, Jamie? Can I interject real quick here? There is a project description in the agreement that talks about the project I laid out tonight. So that is in the agreement but there is clearly language in the agreement that we can modify that project description at a later date. Actually, and so we could come back, we could like I said earlier, we could approve the agreement tonight, get directions from you to try and modify that project description within the agreement itself and move forward from there. So I think you're all right that the project in this agreement does specify a project and that is going to be one of my questions. We could break it into two phases and see if they would agree that phase one was something we could construct down, phase two would be something we would construct later or we could propose to the RTC about just eliminating that. But right now that project description is part of the agreement but we can modify it. Okay, that offers some clarity and for me, council, it seems like it's a little, we're jumping the gun here. It sounds like there's a little bit more to it and it would be nice to start the conversation with the full council in the beginning. So that the agreement at face value would read how what the council would agree on. Council Member Peterson, would you have some comments? Yeah, I feel like we're getting a little bit in the weeds on a project that's essentially just a path, just a pedestrian path. It goes from our parking lot up to Monterey Avenue and I feel like we're reading a little bit into it as being part of a much larger trail trail issue and I'm concerned that we're making this something a little bit bigger than it needs to be. And so I hear the concerns that people are raising. I'm also hearing from our staff that we can move forward with staff recommendation now and determine at a later date if changes need to be made. But I mean, this has been going since 2014, since before three quarters of us were ever even on council. Or forgive me, Jacques, I think you might have been there already, so my apologies. But I'm concerned about the idea of essentially starting this all from scratch. And I'm not sure that anyone's with me on this, but for the sake of the fact that we already have a motion in a second, I would need, I guess, clarification if I were to make a substitute motion to move forward with staff's recommended action. City Attorney Sam, is that all I need to do is just make a substitute motion and hope for a second? Or is there something else that needs to happen? No, you could do that. Okay, well, then in that, yeah, then that's what I'm proposing is a substitute motion to move forward with staff recommendation and that staff will return to us with additional information for any changes that could be made in the future. And I'll second that. Listen, as a point of order, isn't there already a substitute motion to move forward with staff's recommended action? I will approve my motion. Jamie suggested that there'd be some issues with the discussion with the RTC. So they both got seconded once by City Council Kaiser and once by you. So quite, are we over for discussion now, Mayor? Let me just check in with our attorney, pardon me, Vice Mayor. I just wanna check in with our attorney here to make sure that we're following the rules. There's two. Okay, so let me just, okay, so we had a first by Council Member for Trend and a second by Council Member Story. And at that point, Council Member Peterson made a substitute motion and got a first and a second. Can you give me some guidance on what to do next? Sure, so the second motion is the one that you get any vote on first. And you would call for the vote on Council Member Peterson's position. Okay, so I'm gonna take Council Member Peterson's motion and the second to a vote now. May I have a roll call, please? Yes. We're not gonna have any further discussion on the motion. So we have a first. That's at the Mayor's pleasure. If you'd like to call for the vote now, you can call for the vote if you'd like to enter the discussion, that's fine too. Vice Mayor Story, you had more to add. Well, I wanted to speak to the motion. This is a new motion. I haven't had a chance to speak. To Council Member Peterson, if you'd like to add. Okay, Vice Mayor Story, were you gonna add, you wanted to make some comments to Council Member Peterson's motion? I did, yeah. Please. To me, this is very much a part of the rail trail. It never started out that way, but it has become that. And I think from the discussion tonight, it's fairly obvious that it is. And that's the design of the project is reflective of that. But aside from all that, the agreement I view to be flawed because one, we're dealing with a project that we don't know the cost of. And it has shifting responsibilities from the RTC to the city of Capitola. And it has responsibilities concerning hazardous materials which becomes our responsibility to clean up under this agreement. And that could be a very huge, you know, ticket item. At least there should be some testing done before we enter into that kind of commitment. So that's why I would oppose entering into this agreement. I don't think the city should be there cleaning up the hazardous material that should be the RTC's responsibility. My other concern is that the trees that are on the property, we do not yet know whether or not they, some of them are gonna be removed because of this project. And I would certainly want to know that and what that would cost and what it would cost to protect those trees if we were to move forward with it. So it seems like we're putting a cart before the horse. We're entering into agreement without knowing many of the fundamental material terms of the agreement and the impacts that it's gonna have on the city. So I think we should at least insist that that background information be provided before we make a decision on it. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. My feelings are mutual. And again, I just want to be clear because I seconded getting my seconded Council Member Peterson's motion with the impression that those things would take place as even though we approve the contract, if I am wrong, I would really like staff to let me know that I'm wrong in believing that. So everything that Council Member Vice Mayor Story just said, I am from what I'm hearing from staff this evening is that all of those things would be addressed and that it will come back to Council for final approval with all of that information about the trees, about the extra spot across the street. All of that would come back to Council by just approving this tonight is just moving us forward in that direction. And if it comes back and it's all horrible about as best as we could rescind that contract. Am I wrong? Because I seconded Council Member Peterson's motion. I just want to be clear because I'm in agreement with Vice Mayor Story. So Mayor Brooks, I believe you are correct. What we're doing tonight is an agreement that will allow us to continue working on the project. For example, we cannot do environmental studies to look for contaminants without and right of entry from the RTC. This is the agreement they want us to enter into before we get those right of entries. We can work on the tree issue and try and get back to you on that, independent of this agreement to be honest with you. It's just a matter of taking a look at it, but that involves some geotechnical studies that we need to do, which we can't do without this agreement. So we will be returning to the Council with that information to kind of finalize the scope of the project. And we can also, in the meantime, talk to the RTC about splitting it into two projects. But right now we can't advance the design or the studies without entering an agreement to be able to work on the property. Thank you. Council Member Bertrand. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with what Sam said. And, you know, Mayor, I see that these are concerns of yours. And I respect everyone on the board here that has those concerns. So my original motion was to split the project and our approval at this point. I don't want to wait for discussion with RTC and everything on the background. And, you know, we're sort of forced into something that we don't want to do. I see that there's problems working, putting that pathway in. It is, as Sam said, going to be part of the rail trail. And, you know, in a sense, we're going along with this plan at this point if we pass it. But I also see the advantage, excuse me, the benefit to the people who walk up that driveway of putting a pathway in there. So that's why my first motion was to split the two parts of this project. And at this point, I don't see anything wrong with that. That still gives us an option to get on the land to test for environmental concerns. As Steve said, he could do his best to wind around the trees, which will probably make the pathway more interesting. So, you know, I think there's going to be good staff support to make that happen. But I have no idea what the future of that segment is going to be on the other side, which is now a dusty path of rocks, patch of rocks. You're absolutely right, Jamie. It doesn't look very good. Many entrances, the capital is going to be very good like at Bay Avenue. But, you know, I want to wait to see what the RTC actually puts on the table. There's going to be a plan. We don't have it yet. And the way it looks right now, it's going to be 10, 15 years or more. It's not going to happen that quick. There's going to be a lot of studies. That's what the RTC has been doing. Lots of studies, because there's no money to build what we're studying to do. So I got a, you know, I'm sorry, Kristen, you know, normally I support your motions, but this one I have to not support. It just, you know, it doesn't make sense in the, when I look at how this rail trail plan is unfolding, part of the rail trail, you could get me going on this. You really could. It's not part of the discussion right now. But if at some point those plans are put before Capitola, that we have the plans ready to go with the rail trail or just the rail or what's just the trail, fine. And they have the money to do it, fine. We could contribute and do our part to make this a whole trail or whatever it's going to be. But at this point, we have no clear idea. So if this fails, I'm going to put my original motion back on to bifurcate the projects and approve the agreement, but to just do the portion from the parking lot up to the intersection. Thank you. Council member Kaiser. Thanks, Mayor. Steve, I was just wondering, is there like a hard deadline on this with the RTC? I didn't really see any, or if between that timeline, would we be able to do the minimal kind of homework that we can do before signing on to this to kind of get some more clear view as to make everybody more comfortable moving forward? Or is this something that needs to be done like this week and to get the process started? This project's been on the books for so long. There's no hard and fast deadline at this point. We're just trying to take the next step and move it forward. As far as gathering information, we can kind of lay things out, but I can't come back to you with what it's going to cost to build a trail here versus there, if there's retaining walls involved without doing a geotechnical report. And I can't address the content. We may be able to address the contamination or a pollutant issue once the county of Santa Cruz completes their initial study. That's probably a year away. It's been a while since I've checked in on that project, but I think that's reasonable time-wise. So we could certainly wait till then. This project is not going where we just don't have a pathway up a good way out of the parking lot. Right. Okay, thanks for clarifying. Okay, so we have a first and a second on the table to have a roll call, please. And Chloe, can you confirm or can you read? Yes, thank you. This is council member Peterson's substitute motion to move forward with the recommended action from staff to then bring back more information at a future time. It was seconded by Mayor Burke, okay? Great. Okay, great. So council member Bertrand. No. Council member Kaiser. Council member Peterson. Aye. Vice Mayor's story. No. Mayor Brooks. Aye. Thank you. We did it. We made it. Good meeting. We're at item nine, adjournment. I want to thank council. I would like to thank staff and I'd like to thank the participants for being here tonight in light again and everything that's going on in the world and we need to remember, we need to condemn the hate and the racism and the violence going on in our community and throughout our country. So please, please, please remember to find the good and others and yourselves in the meeting. Thank you. Goodbye.